One inappropriately named PR agency (in this case) called The Good Agency annoyed the editorial team at How-Do with their epic release on Olivia Newton John saving a one day old cat in China.

As you might know How-Do is the North West portal for the creative industries.  So you might wonder what the relevance of Olivia Newton John and a cat on the Great Wall of China is to How-Do: none.

How-Do decided to name and shame the London agency for poor targeting.   The press release is fully of hyperbole including Olivia’s sleepless nights tending for said kitten called Magic.  This dross was accompanied by an e-mail clogging mega pixel image.

It is worth anybody’s time who needs a laugh (link above).

I could not find the Good Agency’s website because of a search of PR agencies there are a few that have good in their text, so they do not have a clue on online PR / marketing either.

Canberra, Australia’s capital had fewer protests than London, San Francisco or any of the other cities that has hosted the torch. (The image is of protesters outside the Chinese embassy).

But it was not China’s victory.

The protests, even though combated by Chinese students and citizens in Australia, brought the issue of Tibet and human rights and the environment to centre stage again.

Up until China being awarded the Olympics and especially the idea to parade it through so many cities the issue of Tibet was not high on many politicians’ agendas nor I suspect was it widely appreciated by the general population.  The last time I saw a big article on Tibet was in the early 90s in The Guardian.

The Chinese government has effectively supplied the oxygen of publicity to an extent unthinkable before.

It was foreseeable except to the Chinese government.

This has been a huge miscalculation by a government that does not understand the media because it suppresses its own.

Tai Chi and cows, can you believe it?  One farmer apparently performs in front of his cows and yield is up 10% apparently because the bovines are more content.  Of course it might all be down to any one of a number of farming reasons other than being prepared of making a fool of yourself (or local hero).

I cannot see that Tesco is going to pay him more for his notoriety.  The point of the exercise is unclear except for some showmanship and attention seeking perhaps.

Still the lesson is that original and silly stories sell.  This has been on TV, radio and national press.  The value must be tremendous.

The lesson is that there is a lingering misconception in some quarters that news is high brow or standards are slipping.  There has always been a place for low brow.

mad.co.uk ran a story on the current IPA Bellwether Report on the state of the UK marketing industry, the results give a mixed picture.

While direct marketing is suffering cuts across all sectors and PR is not fairing well, marketing spend is actually on the rise: reading between the lines things are slowing up but are still quite reasonably healthy.  This seems to be reflected on the ground from my observations as agencies continue to be busy.

How to interpret things?  Are we going over the edge into a recession, business is just being a little cautious or in the light of recent year’s healthy demand this news isn’t so bad?  I don’t know, but we will be all watching.  The fear is that we might talk ourselves into something worse than it needs to be - such are economies and that all important confidence.

You might have heard or seen the work of Banksy, the satirical and very sharp Bristol graffiti icon.  It is worth having a look at more of Banksy’s creative work.

As I was flicking through the above link I came across this image.  So my idea discussed below is sort of original, a dog and a cow are not exactly the same and anyway dogs hit a better demographic and are more mobile.

NW Business Insider had a wonderful piece on the dog advertising concept in their current feature on guerrilla marketing.

I originally came up with this concept after selling in the story of a certain dog called Dante in to the South Manchester Reporter. The story of the curry loving pooch spread to the Metro, Manchester Evening News and even The Guardian.

It seemed obvious that there was original and possibly effective advertising mileage to be had and so I teamed up with Mick Greer and Phil Howells, well- seasoned advertising pros.

The lucky recipient was a family lawyers called Greens & Co.

It is some fun but also when there is so much competition to grab our attention it is a little different and attention grabbing.

A quick note: Has no-one done it before? I don’t know. Churchill said an original idea is just a good one everyone has forgotten.