BOTTLE Bank August 2010 now Online!

It's that time again, folks! The BOTTLE PR Spotify playlist for August is now online and awaiting a listen or ten. 

This month's playlist, put together as always from suggestions by the guys and gals in the office, has a distinctly groovy feel featuring, among others, all-time classics from Jamiroquai, Richard Holmes and Gill Scott-Heron, and some recent funky stuff from Paulo Nutini, Paloma Faith and St Germain. Also in the mix are club masterpieces from Faithless, Leftfield and Pendulum. Then throw in some brilliant Foo Fighters, Muse and  Wolfmother rock and you've got an eclectic line up that takes you on a real aural journey!

Listen to the full 21 track playlist at the BOTTLE Bank on Spotify now! 




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Are Celebrity Endorsements the Pits?

Deodorant manufacturer Sure discovered this week just how difficult it is to choose the right celebrity to sell a brand successfully. Much to their dismay, the popular toiletry brand hired X Factor winner and magazine favourite Alexandra Burke to be their new face (and underarm) but it appears that Alexandra is not too enthralled by the aerosol she promotes as she described herself as ‘sweaty, sweaty, sweaty’ live on radio.

Realising she was in hot water, the singer attempted to backtrack by justifying her sweatiness as a result of being on stage for two hours and told presenters: “Can you remember that I don’t sweat because I use Sure. I have just stepped off stage. But you know it definitely lasts 48 hours”. Really? It doesn’t sound like you’re too sure about that, Alexandra.

Sure should learn from this and realise that it is not enough for brand managers to believe that their new hire will be as enamoured with the product as they are; the celebrity really has to believe in what they are promoting to reduce the risk of ghastly slip ups. When choosing the new face, brands need to consider whether the celebrity will use the product as intended and judge if they can be trusted not to slip up in front of the media. This can be a hard one to get right as this example with Alexandra, a TV star used to broadcasting live, illustrates.

Perhaps brands should ditch the celebs in favour of an easier option, children, to help ensure that a product promotion goes smoothly. Five-year-old Mary Nunn, from East Sussex, has just won a top job with supermarket giant Sainsbury's as its school uniform tester. There is no six figure fee for this brand endorser nor any complicated contracts to negotiate; instead Mary will receive a shiny new bike and shopping vouchers for her mum. The self-confessed tomboy has been chosen to test uniforms to see how resilient they are and tasks will involve running around the playing field and ‘playing football with the boys’ before the team at Sainsbury’s get their hands on the uniform to see how well wearing it really is. She sounds like a much surer bet to me!

by Kate Baker, PR Consultant 




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Is the Rise of Mobile & Social Media a Good Thing?

An article in The Times a while back revealed that the Germans have coined a term for a growing unsettling of our time; Freizeitstresse, or ‘free-time stress’. It refers to worry over how we use our precious spare time; the fact that we work harder and longer hours, have consequently less free time and so feel like we must use it wisely. People can’t relax on holiday; weekends are time to achieve things around the house; doing nothing is seen as lazy and a waste of time. An expert in this condition from the German Sport University in Cologne said: “Figures show that about 75% of people are incapable of relaxing; even on holiday they experience high levels of stress and feel more overburdened than anything else.”

In modern working life, certainly in the UK, the USA and Germany, people can’t or don’t switch off from work. They need to be in touch with work 24/7 as much because they need to feel needed than any genuine necessity to be contactable at all hours. And I can’t help but feel that mobile technology and the social web exacerbate this problem. We have emails on our mobile; we can access our network on Twitter at any time; we’re in constant touch with work. Evenings and weekends are no longer sacrosanct now that we’re carrying around a portable communications device in our pockets. I remember when mobiles first became mainstream and resisting getting one because I didn’t want work to be able to contact me wherever I was. And yet that’s put firmly in the shade now that clients can email me in the evenings, the boss can text me at weekends and my Twitter network can message me when I’m asleep.

And, rather stupidly, I feel pressure both to be contactable and to respond. Everyone knows I have a smartphone and don’t need my laptop turned on. And I’m very sure that I’m not alone in this – do you feel this pressure? I do my best to fight the demands of being totally connected via email, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, text message et al. Not long ago I shut my Facebook page down for a month and was surprised by the results. But it’s a losing battle really, especially for someone working in digital communications. The web stops for no-one.

So the ever-advancing technological advancements in mobile technology and the social web are an amazing and beneficial thing in many senses; they make my life easier, fuller and more efficient. But against that, maybe we’re all driving ourselves into an early grave by relying on them. So what do you think? How do you cope with the demands that the mobile/social web place on you? Or it is just me - do you feel no demands?

by Paul Sutton, Head of Digital PR. For more from Paul, check out his social media blog, Tribal Boogie




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