There are many that view the smoking ban as new puritanism.

There are some that agree with that view and have decided to make some capital out of it.

One of those people is Dave West. He has claimed that his erotic club is merely an extension of his home as he lives above “the shop.” By that logic it is not a public place and his punters are free to smoke.

Who has he asked to help him with the legal fight? None other than the wife of the man who is responsible for the legislation, Cherie Blair.

Of course Cherie charges, she ain’t cheap.

It is an inspired choice as she has apparently charged him £3,500 for a bit of consultation.

The value of the PR for Dave’s lap dancing club?

A lot, more than £3,500. Dave has featured in the Daily Telegraph and the Independent amongst others and it is nowhere near court yet.

It doesn’t matter if he looses because he wins although I cannot fault him.

For a £200 fine I might have an illegal rolly but only if I can get an environmental health office there to make sure I get caught. From there I refuse to pay in the name of civil liberties and loads of publicity: fighting the power.

I can see my PR campaign now, but only because the smoke has cleared because of the ban.

The other day I was asked what I thought and know of Facebook, the thinking man’s MySpace.

All I really know besides that it is a social networking site is that Prince William might or might not be a member.

The question came from someone looking to use Facebook, the posh My Space, to make business contacts.

I had my doubts.

Last night I was recommend Xing, a business social networking site. I really could not get past the registration to find out more about it.

I have been a member of Soflow and I lost interest in that within in a week or so.

There are others such as Linkedin, which I came across when I was trying to find an ex-colleague although I found his contact details of his new company elsewhere very quickly.
I am sure there are others business social networking sites.

I just find it hard to see, when there is blogging and networking, why a company would put much resource time wise into using a social networking site.

Am I missing out?

Was that featured in Viz ? No .

How about The Sun? Possibly.

The BBC website. Yes.

It is the story of a man with a headache so bad he went to hospital to get treatment. The medical staff discovered the offending projectile, removed it and the police arrested his wife for attempted murder. The man was unaware that his wife had shot him. His wife, for the time being before a reasonably priced divorce lawyer is hired, claimed it was an accident.

That was in the most popular stories section.

One story of a man caught having sex with a goat and being forced by his village to marry the goat and provide a dowry to it’s owner also made the top stories, which is the 5 most viewed pieces on the site.

It not only was there, in the most viewed stories, for a few days, it reappeared after it lost its coveted place.

What does it prove?

Well, even the BBC with a reasonably intelligent audience wants the bizarre, unusual, entertaining.

PRs naturally must follow suit although perhaps not to this extent. Clients must also be educated that the media is not a prissy, conservative animal; they too need to go out on a limb to capture and retain attention. That can be a challenge.

By the way the BBC reported that the goat had passed away a few months ago. It has not been reported if the man has remarried but if he has married anything other than a human female I will let you know.

I am writing copy for a client’s Internet site and quite aptly I came across a very useful article by Dan Wilson, principal of Brand Etc on my regular e-mail newsletter from Wilson Web.

I have been receiving Wilson Web newsletters for quite a long time, but I only scan them, if that, before storing them away.

Luckily I read the current one on differentiating a homepage. Dan advises:

Differentiation in the First Paragraph: The first paragraph of your home page should explain concisely what you do. The next paragraphs should set you apart.

Find Your Differentiators: What do you offer that your competitors don’t? What do customers get from you that they can’t get anywhere else?

Build Emotional Impact: Now put yourself in your customers’ shoes. What motivates them? What solutions do you provide to ease their pains, alleviate their fears, and help them reach their aspirations? What resonates with your target audience? What is your customer’s world like without you? How will their world be better with you in the picture?

Chart Your Undiscovered Advantages: Which of your company’s best differentiators are hiding in plain sight, waiting to be discovered? Dan mentions a product that only realised it’s unique selling point after 10 years in business.

Five Tests of a Strong Message:

1. Is it important to the customer?
2. Is it unique to this company, product, or service?
3. Is this a sustainable competitive advantage?
4. Is it memorable?
5. Is this advantage easy to prove?

The complete and unabridged article on differentiating your home page click here.

It is not complicated stuff I agree, but useful reminder and there are some really insightful entries for those that are more Internet minded.

Just click on to Wilson Web to subscribe.

I was speaking to Joe Duncan of Business for Breakfast yesterday about monitoring the web.

It reminded me of an article for an Internet client of mine getting some interest. My client googled the interested party during his research for his new lead and found that under his listing the whole page was full of stories about the subject’s financially poor year.

I would also like you to note the subject was a notable player in their field.

Imagine your company name (to use a cliche) proudly displayed at the top of a search (as it should be) and underneath nothing but bad news stories. Would anyone bother to call you (except for Yellow Pages perhaps)?

The company, as is my understanding, had overcome or had been through the worst and were operating normally. They were, however, blissfully unaware (to use another cliche) of their online image and that a powerful tool was acting as their enemy.

Back to Joe (pictured in typical smiling frame of mind).

Joe told me he had been found online by searches specifically looking for him (rather than a generic search for his industry sector) on other peoples’ websites. He was unaware that he was mentioned on anyone’s website. Luckily, they were kind words.

I am sure a lot of companies have had the above experiences and many do not know the good or harm their online presence has for their business.

The point of this entry is twofold:

I believe it is the job of the PR to work in the online environment. With a new industry the game lines take a while to be drawn and even though a good Internet agency might monitor reputation online, the PR cannot absolve themselves of this responsibility.

Second, Joe and I want to see how easy it is to get my blog found with a search for Joe Duncan - fairly easy I should think.

For the Internet minded this is basic stuff. Yet, I am sure it surprises and will continue to do so how many companies are happily unaware of the business they are winning, but more probably losing, without even the slightest idea owing to online entries and comments from third parties.

I have interviewed Robin Hamman of the BBC for the creative media portal How Do.

Robin is a senior broadcast journalist/producer at the BBC and is responsible for the Manchester BBC Blog.

This is using local bloggers to provide news content and in turn supporting bloggers by driving traffic to their sites when featured. It is all about building community and a two way flow of information of engaging content.

It is a departure form current models of sourcing and distributing information. The whole article can be viewed by clicking on the How Do portal here.

Kate Adie, the veteran BBC reporter, has launched an attack on journalists that blog, as reported on the Journalism.co.uk website.

Kate was reported as saying: “But journalists shouldn’t have any time to blog - there are too many stories waiting to be told!”

What she really objected to was not so much communicating with their peers, “as the idea that journalists should spend their ‘precious time’ writing about how they obtained their stories.”

Newsnight editor Peter Barron disagrees and is quoted on journalism.co.uk as commenting: ““Nothing better to do than talk to and listen to their audience?”

And let us not forget all those bloggers that are fighting political repression or giving a unique insight into a situation that Kate could hope to emulate, but not better. Some of those bloggers do so at great risk and for no reward.

Perhaps Kate should learn more about blogs first and even get an RSS feed from my site, where I have featured blogging dissidents before making what seems to be uninformed swipes at something she doesn’t understand.

Maybe if Kate blogged under fire she might feel more at home - take a look at Spitting Images take.

Nick Rhind (pictured with the keys to his new office) of software business CTI Network Support Limited featured on this blog in early May.

Nick’s business was affected by the Dale Street fire. Luckily Nick practised what he preached and offered and had a contingency plan in place. All but a day’s information was backed up as well.

CTI was able to continue service clients. Of course, even with a contingency plan, there was disruption. However, CTI has come through May with some great account wins.

The PR aimed to get the message to clients and prospective clients via e-mail, the website, print media (Manchester Evening News and South Manchester Reporter; the coverage can be viewed by clicking on the links) and broadcast media (unfortunately we could not take up BBC Manchester radio for an interview because Nick had an hour to go back into his office to recover all his equipment at the same time as the time slot for the interview).

We also used the blog and many fellow bloggers to get the message he was operating, many thanks to all that helped.

We are featuring in the Manchester City Council contingency planning group newsletter as well.

The next episode has been to publicise the fact that CTI is winning new business:

The new client wins include marketing agency HCL, architects Taylor Design, data suppliers Consumer Contacts, psychotherapists Synthesis and property consultants Bridgestone Surveyors.

There should be no clients or few prospective clients that have any doubt that CTI is able to work effectively on their software and database projects.

The new release should reinforce that view and will show their resilience.

“When I first heard that NPower was causing a ruckus I was shocked! Why would such a great org cause so much strife. Oh, wrong NPower.

Now this NPower does bring a good name to its activities. www.npower.org”

Oh my!

I do declare!

That was the response that graced my comments box in March when I was commenting on the PR disaster that npower was creating for itself.

The affected Deep South phrases are mine.

Oxfordshire beauty spot Radley Lakes was being filled in by nPower to dispose of ash much to the bewilderment and opposition of locals and many others.

npower decided to use a gagging order from the courts to stop legitimate protest. The Mc crisis way of doing PR.

Anyway, I got a comment from npower, an unsophisticated marketing employee no doubt on a high wage, who feebly tried to point to all the brilliant charity work they do.

Don’t get me wrong I like comments and I am sure the company do some admirable charity work. However that is irrelevant here. The npower rep did not address the issue but came over as patronising, skirting round the issue and hoping we would forget the npower’s actions in Oxfordshire because it does some good thing in the USA.

Why bring this up now?

Well, no particularly strong reason except I have been talking about astrosurfing - putting in comments to back up a product or service and passing them off as independent comment although they are from a company with vested interests - with Robin Hamman of the BBC.

I have also mentioned recently Charles Arthur of the Guardian and the ridiculous pitches he gets from PR agencies to feature on his blog. And I have had my own experiences.

It is a small comment but it is so insulting to my intelligence that it rankles, think how annoying it would be to someone much cleverer.

A little transparency and respect goes a long way.

Besides the npower marketer completely ignoring the content of the entry, getting the case of their company wrong, that is lower case to start (I believe although I could be wrong and do not much care), when my entry criticising npower comes up on a search their are lots of npower pay per clicks. I know this might not be their fault but it brings a wry smile as they say.

The last entry featured OK Go’s amazing Here It Goes video. Treat yourself to 3 minutes of fun, it will make you happy for the day.

With over 18 million views on You Tube and many more seeing it through the video being forwarded to friends, the impact has been further increased by imitations.

Two worth seeing are a high school’s almost perfect recreation and one featuring lego men.

But how do you get people to imitate you if that is what you want? By being brilliant and innovative.

Networking4Business’s formula has been copied a number of times over the last couple of years, but never bettered. A sure sign they are the best networking meeting of their type in the North West as shown by their attendance and the copycats.