VAMPIRE SQUID ON THE ROPES
Sometimes it's all in the timing. From the US President down, there's no love for the bonus-swelled bankers at the moment, with Goldman Sachs at the top of the hate list. Before Christmas, in a bid to turn around the PR onslaught, Goldmans agreed to some high-profile (Vanity Fair, Sunday Times magazine) features on CEO Lloyd Blankfein and his key lieutenants. The pieces were fair, but an apparently throwaway comment from Blankfein that the bank was 'doing God's work' was widely circulated and became the subject of particular ridicule.

Two particular lessons from this. First: if you're going to give good quote, make sure it's what you want to see on the page. Remarks that may be witty or self-deprecating in conversation can take on a very different hue in print - as in this case. Be boring on the things you don't want the reporter to focus on, and sparkling on the things you do. Second lesson: when you are stuck there in the stocks, with the press, politicians and public throwing rotten fruit at you, it's too soon to bring out the facecloth. Sometimes you have to bear it - grinning or otherwise - and keep a low profile, because nothing whatsoever that you can say is likely to engender sympathy. You have to wait for fresh villains to catch the public eye. Then, after the fuss has died down a bit, is the time to start rebuilding reputation, for instance with an initiative on charitable donations. Of course if the bank was half as clever as it thought it was, it would have gone on its charm offensive long before any sort of crisis hit, when the public might have been a lot more receptive. It'll be some time yet before the time is right once again.

WEEKLY MEDIA TIPS ON TWITTER
The start of 2010 has seen Media Training Associates embrace the world of social media. We are launching a series of weekly media tips and commentary on Twitter, some of which will be dealt with at more length on our new blog. The first of these are now online, both are easy to sign up to, to receive updates as they happen. They will enable us to react quickly with our commentary, rather than waiting for the newsletter - so in future some newsletter items will appear in the blog first.

WORST DEAL OF THE CENTURY?
Jerry Levin, who ten years ago sold Time Warner for shares in AOL inflated by the dotcom boom, has belatedly apologised for destroying so much shareholder value when he brought the two companies together in what has become renowned as the 'worst deal of the century' (so far.) Wouldn't it be nice if more chief executives would come out and say 'sorry' when a deal or a strategy goes wrong?

EUROSTAR DRAMA TURNS TO CRISIS
Another depressing communications-failure case-study has been the Eurostar 'wrong kind of snow' debacle. This one is close to our hearts as, after a day working with a client in Paris, we were travelling on the last train out of Paris that made it back through the tunnel on the evening of 18th December without getting trapped - two hours late back to London but at least we got there. Not only was the company's crisis plan totally inadequate, there was no proper comms programme in place either. Passengers were given conflicting information, there was no use made of newer methods of information dissemination (eg Twitter) until too late, and Chief Executive Richard Brown looked terrible - certainly not like a leader of men - when he appeared on camera to try to apologise. He gave a YouTube apology which gives the flavour. This direct communication to passengers was potentially a good idea, but it has to be done right - someone said this one looked like a hostage video. There is a whole raft of lessons the company is now learning the hard way - not least to keep the crisis media training up to date.

JANUARY PRESENTATION TIP
Keep it short. Few people watching presentations say 'I wish that had gone on for longer'. The human attention span is fairly brief, so stop the audience daydreaming by ensuring you have plenty of stories and examples they can relate to, and don't let the energy level fall back. Aim to fill no more than 80-90% of the time you have been alloted; that leaves time for audience questions and a slower delivery on the day. Over-running looks like bad planning and usually annoys everyone.

HOW TO OFFEND JOURNALISTS - AND PRs
A freelance journalist called Kevin Braddock caused a big fuss in the PR blogosphere this month by posting a long list of PRs who had offended him by sending unsolicited emails on topics he wasn't interested in. He said his aim was not to name and shame, and later took the names offline, but his point was made - essentially that PR's should do their job better, and be more selective, so reporters should only receive material if they actually have a hope of being interested. It's a perennial problem closely related to the issue of following up with the dreaded 'did you get my email?' phone call. Journalists themselves are hardly fault-free of course - many will scream loudly when they don't get sent a release they may have decided they are suddenly very interested in. Perhaps PR firms should see this as a wakeup call to re-visit their procedures, and go back to good old-fashioned relationship building rather than simply relying on automatically generated lists of people to contact, whom they wouldn't know from Adam.