What a great piece of PR.

I like it anyway.

A pub, probably with few stories to tell, suddenly has a “discarded” tank in its car park and some handy coverage in the local paper.  No-one knows whose tank it is, why it was left there; it is a good talking point: get a pint, have your photo on the tank – some useful revenue.

Actually there is only one “enthusiast” that has tanks in the area.  It is not a big mystery Poirot.  And you hardly forget where you park your tank; I have a silver Honda and in a big car park it can be hard to see, not so with camouflaged military hardware.

I just think this is quite a good example of how to create a story from nothing – a little bit of creativity, perhaps nothing special, but it tickled me.

I just wanted to give a mention to Matthew Goldsbrough in his efforts to raise £1000 for Ashgate Hospice in memory of his wife Philippa Kyle.

You might know Matthew from the Manchester business scene or perhaps from his social media communications.

You might not know that Matthew suffered the sad loss of his wife Philippa last year to a terminal illness.

Philippa was cared for by Ashgate Hospice in her last hours and Matthew says that they were a great comfort in this difficult time to his wife and himself.

Ashgate Hospice is an independent registered charity covering North Derbyshire, providing specialist palliative care to terminally ill adults and their families.  Care is provided on the ward, day centre, out patient suite and at home and all services are provided free of charge.  £1.8 million must be raised annually from voluntary giving.

So if you can help Matthew and Ashgate Hospice please go to this Just Giving page.

Well, getting a start would be ideal for most graduates or school leavers.

It is not easy to get a career; it is not easy to get a job at the moment, and a sought after career: forget it.

Even in good times things are not easy, so what do you do if you want to get started in marketing or PR in such a discouraging market?

Here are a few tips that I hope helps:

Social media – If you want to get into marketing or PR and you do not know about social media then you are letting yourself down.

You are not taking the opportunity of building relationships with professionals that could help you.  You are not noting opportunities as they come up.  You are not showing that you have the skills and intellectual curiosity to succeed.

Flexibility – It is tempting to wait for the right job.  But the right position rarely comes along.

Make a start, if you get offered an opportunity – a placement or junior role – think seriously about taking it even if it is not perfect, you can still look for your dream job in the meantime.  You might find the role you get offered turned out to be what you wanted or was much better than you imagined.

CV and applications – I have received CVs with grammatical errors!!  Really, do I have to say more?

Cultivate opportunities where none present themselves – I have received speculative CVs and reply and get no word of thanks when I offer advice.  I understand that if you want a job you have no time to dwell and you move on as quickly as you can.

But if only they called me or asked for leads or pointers, I would be happy to reward a little bit of initiative, so would many other people.  Yet my efforts to reply are never rewarded – if I was recruiting I would not employ such individuals although this might be unfair.  This one example where initiating a quick conversation might really help reduce that job hunt’s length.

Networking – following on, look for people that can help you.

Do not be afraid to ask: it is not cheating to ask contacts to get introductions that can lead to work experience or even, dare I say it, work.

Have a real think who might be able to help, ask those who you do not think could help, you might be surprised who they know.

Determination – it is a difficult road for many and one that I do not want to travel again.  But if you really want it, you are most likely going to get you dream job.  So have courage and keep at it even though it is a miserable process.

This lunch I was lucky enough to be invited by Manchester Science Park to hear Kevin Feddy.

Here is a synopsis of what Kevin, who runs the MEN business desk, had to say:

“It is all about (the business pages) people, innovation and ideas….how ideas relate to the public at large.  It is much more than figures, it is about people, dreams and aspirations.”

SMEs are of interest as much as the blue chips.  In fact there is a lot of room for stories about smaller concerns.

Kevin is especially interested in hearing from businesses that he feels will emerge from this recession in a very healthy state:

• Internationally trading companies / exporters
• Green technology
• Innovation – companies that will shape the way we live
• Technology – but make sure the layman can relate to it.  The MEN business readership is general and professional in nature and stories must be understood by all.

The key point is that business titles such as the Manchester Evening News want to hear from all types of business, of all sizes that have something to say.  As a PR I ask potential clients, “What can we say, what do you want to say?”

Everyone can have a voice, offline and online, providing their company, service or product, is of interest.

You might – if you are a business in Manchester, north Cheshire and parts of Lancashire – know about Creative Credits.

Creative Credits is a £4000 grant from NESTA, a government body, for marketing, PR and creative projects.  Recipients match it with a £1000 of their funding.  So a £5000 project for a cool thousand – that’s a good deal surely?

If you want to know more about Creative Credits click here.

If you registered for October but did not get a grant you will need to re-register.  You should be getting an e-mail reminder.

If you want to register for a Creative Credits grants, it only takes two minutes, click through.  It is simple and businesses are selected randomly, not on size or project idea.  The key rules are that you are VAT registered and have a company number and have been trading for a year.

So worth a few minutes of your time to apply, surely?

This is quite a clever piece of marketing: a campaign to banish cliches from B2B marketing.

IAS, a marketing agency, has set-up a site called 101 cliches that invites readers to submit the worst offenders and vote on those already up.  Connected up through social media channels this could be quite a hit as it asks for participation and is fun.

It is heartfelt for me as I cannot stand stock photography – are so many work forces repulsive enough to buy dull bland images rather than expose them to the public? – I really think it is insulting and poor marketing as you want to see who you are going to be working with: we can all spot stock photography.  I have commented on this before on this site.

(The image is number two of worst offenders at present).

Anyway have fun and thanks to Dr Dave Chaffey – who won’t remember me contacting him in 2000 when he was a marketing lecturer and I worked at Congress, a sales and marketing agency for US Internet businesses looking to get into European markets; I can’t think what my question was about exactly or even inexactly, but Dave was helpful.  Thanks for the tweet.

Today it has been officially announced that we are out of recession!!

Well if you are looking to start a career this news will make scant impression on you.

The 1990 recession ended when you had a “proper” job – I still think many people who graduated in the early 90s are still feeling the affects of their bad timing at being born some 20 years earlier.  Can do better next time if he applies himself.

The 90s recession ended in about 1997 if truth be told for many people.  Bill Clinton, new technology, the Internet easing communication and attracting investment, the start of de-regulation of US banks (which had been put in place by FDR in the 30s that helped create the worst recession since the 30s) all had a role to play.

The fact for many is that careers were missed, and why?, because in the case of the marketing industry there was a reluctance to develop people – give them a chance.  Of course some made it nevertheless, but the industry was unwelcoming and expected 21 years experience and candidates to be 20 years old.

I can only hope that the recovery does not exclude vast swathes of able people, but it will.

It is time for business to recognise that talent does not come from doing a marketing degree or experience only.  There is a lot to be said for determination, personal characteristics such as being sociable, open to learning.

For professionals that have lost their jobs who are on the other side of the age divide, there is no reason why some businesses should discriminate – it is the person, not the age that counts.

What am I saying: the world is unfair?

It is true.

What I am saying is:

Treat people with respect – there will be too many graduates wanting a career where there are too few openings and some HR departments will enjoy thinking they are of a higher power.  It is the personal characteristics that I think make a good marketer, but can you spot these and are they developed when you are a new graduate?

If you want a career in PR or marketing, the chances are you will succeed if you are determined and what might seem a bleak age now will dissolve away in time. Give yourself time and accept support when going through the often bleak process of finding a job.

I think I will tackle how to give yourself a real head start in an entry shortly – keep tuned

Winston Churchill said a politicians job is predicting the future, then explaining why it didn’t happen like that after all.

I am not going to make any wild predictions, but I am going to note how I feel at the start (or near the start) of the year and if I am here at the end of the year I will compare some notes.

I think this year is going to be hard for the economy.  Caution will still reign, but I saw signs of easing in November and December and that is hopeful.  Anecdotal evidence and that from surveys also seem to back-up that impression). (See my entry about the Bellweather Report about the PR industry Business Desk NW echoes these sentiments).

What is not is the public sector’s up coming tidal wave of misery.

Whoever gets in power in May will be making cuts, probably of historic proportions to re-balance the books.  The harbour of recessionary times will not protect in this storm.  In fact agencies in any marketing discipline that are focused on the public sector will have worrying times.  I can see Q3 being disappointing.  It is a pity that the election was not in 2009 and this pain had been addressed earlier.

Some sectors, and I am thinking digital and technology will prosper.  I only hear good things from the digital sector, if we overlook the demise of Flame Digital and Latitude.

I will be looking at environmental and technology as sectors I want to concentrate on this year.  I have a good technology record, with plenty of experience.

2008 and 2009 will be remembered by many in PR as times of change: traditional PR being eroded by social media and digital.  Unfortunately for traditional media there was change in a recession that acted as a catalyst for the transition to new media.  Change is painful, uncomfortable, and the combination did not help.

I don’t think traditional media is doomed – it is a re-ordering of the way we communicate.  Trade press is still resilient as is broadcast.  It all makes PR more challenging and interesting.  PRs must now be able to address traditional channels where they feel comfortable with new channels where they often did not, might still not.  The level of knowledge might surprise: some PR professionals have bluffed it quite a bit while they have tried to catch up; others are well-informed.  It makes it confusing for clients.

One interesting development might be that there will be more community based websites and forums: Facebooks for architects, LinedkIns for teachers. I promoted an Oracle professionals’ site for a new media agency that had used Drupal, an open sourced software, that will allow it to extend this concept to many other industries.

News and trade might communicate in a similar way.  Trade and business press is already generating revenue and connecting with events, seminars, awards.  But it is the nature of how it communicates: not pushing through information, more about engagement, building relationships to ensure that trust in the source is maintained and enhanced.  How-Do, a North West based creative media portal is one example, as is Salford Online and its aims.

I will be reading about social media and commenting on things of interest on this site throughout the year.

Anyway this is my general take – not earth shattering, just a few observations.

PR spend for 2010 looks hopeful, albeit weak according to the Bellweather Report.

As mentioned in my annual review post, it seemed that business was picking up in Q4 and this seems to be confirmed by the report.

Spend is still in decline, but at a rate of 4% for Q4 compared to 24.4% for Q3.  It might be that Q1 is the bottom and that PR money will be released.

Recruitment is positive with nearly 40% seeing new staff appointments in 2010 and client budget is also on the up for over a third of those surveyed.  However, respondent numbers are small although trends seem to reflect a lot of conversations I have.

There is still the shock of a public sector cut back as early as summer, so while the overall trend looks reassuring there might be some hard times for agencies with a public sector client base.

Will there be more shocks for the economy, even though the US and China picture is encouraging?

I have been designing my new business cards with James Dickinson from Chilli Cactus, and James has done a sterling job with four new designs.

(Funnily James sent through an incredible business card offer and I bumped into him next day networking and so briefed and agreed there and then).

I have a preference (I like the retro 70s feel on reverse three based on a 1974 shirt I have), but opinions welcome.  Reverse two would work if using only the two blocks of colours, but hard to get the logo on the other side – slighlty inspired by Orange, the mobile company.

The Spot UV means that the logo will be Matt and so will be highlighted.

The discount offer on business cards is open until the end of the month, James can give you details on james@chillicactus.co.uk

There is a slight distortion on the images’ proportions to fit them into the space on the blog.