Adele didn’t lose 4 stone in 1 month with just 1 easy trick. I’m pretty sure of that. 

I’m also *fairly* certain that the perfect gift for people who have everything, isn’t an oversized gerbil print t-shirt. 

I don’t want a FREE photo calendar, new smartpen or FAB UK app. And I am pretty damn sure all my friends don’t love Appliances Direct and Persil as often as you tell me they do. 

Now Facebook, I have always been one of the unpopular. Ignoring the hipsters who left FB yonks ago and sticking with you, despite the crap UX, rubbish privacy changes and poor returns for many marketers but really….you are pushing me to my limits. Seriously. 

You’ve been warned. Keep this up and I’m off. ‘k?

Yours exhaustedly,

Becky 

Camp Bestival is a magical experience for parents and kids alike.  I would describe it as the Johnny Boden of festivals and yes, there is a fair amount of Joules wellies / Bugaboo dodging to be done but when it comes to a formula that both parents and kids will love, this has it nailed.

The Olympic themed event, which for many families was more like a fabulous holiday than a weekend festival, ended with the most magnificent 3D projection and firework show and really sums up how great it was.

….check out 50 shades of social!

‘Share This: The Social Media Handbook for PR Professionals’ is a crowdsourced social media book from the Chartered Institute of Public Relations, due for publication in print and digital formats by Wiley on Friday 20 July.

It started as an idea at a meeting presented by Stephen Waddington as a way to capture all of the social media training that the CIPR SM panel runs over the summer each year.  Since then, the idea has grown and finally came to fruition this week.

Since launch, the book has shot to number 1 on the Amazon PR and marketing bestseller charts based on pre-orders alone. The book is split into 26 chapters over eight topic areas, covering the media and public relations industry, planning, social networks, online media relations, monitoring and measurement, skills, industry change and the future of the industry. Each chapter has been contributed by one of the foremost experts in the given subject area. Even me. I did the psychology chapter

What they mean: I am a lazy f***er who classes my job to be done just as soon as I have come up with a completely unscientific idea for a campaign that is basically abstract crap and I can pretty much guarantee nobody on the business side of the agency will ever be able to sell and no client will ever run.

Why would anyone brand themselves an ideas person?
As if people would hire anybody who COULDN’T come up with good ideas?

Ranty Thursday innit.

Facebook maintains it is giving the user the choice of email but as The Guardian blog puts it,

We shall gloss over the question of whether a “choice” really exists if a user is not aware of it.

Go to your Facebook profile, and click on the “About” button, which is somewhere under your profile picture. Where you see “contact info”, click on “edit”. Next to your real email address, click on the little box that says “hidden from timeline”. Change it to ‘Shown on timeline’. Now click on the box next to the impostor Facebook email address. Change it to “hidden from timeline”. Click save. Exit Facebook.

Licensed under creative COmmons from LydiaShiningBrightly

Why not? I am sure you’d want a bit more time off, no? Part time hours / three days a week but a role that is still senior, meaningful and client facing? Someone with complimentary skills to bounce ideas off? A team, even though you’re the boss?

Sounds pretty idyllic I think….

Why don’t more people work as jobshares in PR? I mean you see the co-CEO model every now and again but why not other pairings? Have you ever applied for a job as a pair? Have you ever received a pair of CVs for one job?

Part time jobs are so few and far between and flexible part time jobs (i.e. home working) even more so. Surely the best all round is if two people share the job, providing full time cover but allowing flexibility in their timings and their homeworking status.

As a client, I get two brains instead of one (pref a left and a right!). As a junior member, I learn two lots of skills, instead of one. As an agency owner, I have doubled my ideas, my perspectives and my skills whilst keeping my costs the same. As the jobsharer, I get to keep my job, have time with my family, be office based 50% of the time, have cover when I am on holiday and have a partner with skills different to mine to ensure the clients and teams get a kickass service.

Am I missing something?

Want to sell to mums, errr, have some mums on your team.

Want to sell to flexible workers….maybe don’t have an entire team of London-based twenty-somethings who live in Clapham and don’t have families doing the comms.

Running a campaign for women? Why are there only men on the senior account team?

You get it. I know. So I’ll stop ranting.

But a final plea to the PR industry….mix it up for Gawd’s sake….let’s get rid of this typical white middle class industry with mostly women at junior ranks and mostly men at the top. If we can’t get our shit together for equal opportunities, at least let’s get better at what we do.

If you don’t get it built, the work doesn’t matter.

List here.

Extremely helpful and thoughtful YouTube playlist here.

Let the good times roll…..

Summary – constantly.

Reasons – to stay connected when not physically present.

Benefits – learn and feed my appallingly low attention span.

Tips – be anti-social every so often.