Since Summer decided to take its ball and go home, I've found myself spending the evenings catching up on instructional television (not really). Having devoted most of my time to avoiding adverts by watching DVD boxsets, it was almost refreshing to catch a few of them the other night - until I saw one for a product named Retardex.

I say 'product' because I'd like to invite you to have a guess at just what kind of merchandise would earn that sort of moniker. Actually, no, let's not waste time on guessing games; surely we can agree that it almost doesn't matter what the product was (mouthwash in case you're interested). Retardex is not, by any stretch of the imagination, a flattering name for anything. Perhaps every single Marketing and PR person at that organisation was off sick the day they made that decision.

All of which got me thinking about brand names in general - from the slightly-pretentious-but-really-quite-clever (Nike, named for the Greek goddess of victory) to the weird-but-it-works (Amazon, should bring to mind swamps and snakes but somehow harks of adventure and discovery instead) and even the far-too-graphic (Anusol, treats haemorrhoids, enough said). More than that, it made me wonder at what stage of the naming process do organisations decide to involve their comms teams?

While I always hesitate (albeit momentarily) to make sweeping generalisations, the answer to that seems to be 'right at the end'. Brainstorms are held, focus groups are brought in, research is done, marketing strategies are worked out but somehow the people who have to communicate what the product stands for often seem to have little or no input into one of the first things about it that anyone will see or hear. Which seems bizarre given the role we play in shaping how a product or service is perceived by its audience.

That isn't to say that every brand name chosen without consulting a PR person first is uniformly rubbish - indeed, I have no reliable statistics to back up any such claim - or that getting the PR team involved first guarantees good choices(no numbers on that either, sorry).  But as PR gets increasingly involved with different parts of the business and reports to stakeholders across client organisations, I imagine (and hope) we'll certainly get asked more often from now on. Makers of Retardex, our number's in the book if you need it.

Lakshmi

On a recent visit to the Channel Islands my attention was grabbed by a piece of graffiti, which you'll see for yourself below.

My eye was first caught by its visual simplicity - a few words chalked on a plain background. No gaudy colours and idents here.

And unlike the tag-obsessed graffiti that now adorns much of the urban landscape, this example harked back to something you don't see so much of any more - graffiti as a way of conveying a message.

It could be a political message.  It could be a societal message.

And I say could be, because frankly days after clapping my eyes on it I'm still not at all sure what's going on with this one.

What's it doing right? Well, it's informative. Assuming it's accurate information - which for the purposes of this exercise I'm going to. And clearly plenty of thought went into putting it somewhere where it would be read.

But what's it doing wrong? Well, I can't divine the author's intent; am I to infer there are too many people working in finance, or not enough? Does the author think the island is badly served by the finance sector? Or are they celebrating?

So it is (here comes the subtle segue into something to do with PR) with poorly written corporate communications, marketing, advertising and even PR material. You may have included lots of pertinent facts, you may have identified an issue that needs addressing, and gone to great lengths to ensure people read it. But have you told the reader what you think and have you helped them form an opinion - hopefully one that's the same as or very close to your own?

If you haven't, you're probably not best-placed to make the kind of judgement call required to improve on what you've written.

So, phone a friend or, if you haven't got any, phone a fiend. Or go 50/50 (whatever that might mean in this context). But run it by someone else and ask them to tell you what they've learned.

On that note, I shall sign off and ask someone to read through what I've just written.

Sean

We like to think of ourselves as a fairly modest bunch at Octopus. Well, most of the time. But every now and then we pull something out of the bag that just deserves a good old pat on the back; this week happens to be one of those weeks. We're very proud (and not a bit smug) to say our very own Customer Kings campaign for Cisco has been shortlisted for not one, but two awards this week. These are on top of the four nominations and the PR Week award that the inaugural Customer Kings campaign scooped last year.

When we started to think about award entries for Customer Kings 2010, we approached it with mild trepidation - could we really pull off something better than last year? Had we set the bar too high? Well its seems that we just might.

Today we found out that not only had Customer Kings 2010 been shortlisted for this year's PR Week Award for Best Technology Campaign but we're also in the running for Best B2B PR Campaign at the B2B Marketing Awards. So far so good!

Fingers crossed!

Sarah

Last night, I attended the launch of the REC's Youth Employment Taskforce reportsummarising the urgent steps that government needs to take to facilitate job creation for young people.

The evening kicked off with a few homes truths from CEO Kevin Green. For starters, more than 20% of 16 to 24 year olds are not working, that's a startling 1 million people. Not only is this costing the UK economy £4.7 billion, it is also damaging their future job prospects.

 Baroness Margaret Prosser, chair of the Taskforce and vice chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) put it like this, "When times are tough, people employ experience rather than taking a risk and employing potential."

 Both speakers made it clear that it's not about getting the stick out, but turning rhetoric into reality and policy into practice. Everyone has a role to play which is why this taskforce brought together leading employers, recruiters and welfare providers as well as organisations such as the CIPD, CBI, TUC and EEF to feed into the recommendations for government.

 As a bit of an aside, a big shout out to a couple of lovely ladies that I got talking to at the event. It's refreshing to talk to people who are so passionate about their jobs - and I can see why. Remploy helps people experiencing complex barriers in the workplace and Prospectus is a not-for-profit recruitment agency that specialises in finding work for homeless people.

 The clear message that I went away with from yesterday's gathering is that there's a real need for concrete action from business, government and education if we are to avoid a lost generation.

Susie L

I've been reflecting more than usual on the state of journalism in the UK.  This is a subject I find myself returning to frequently, but as a former journalist I'm wary of sounding like a "wasn't like this in my day" merchant.

Leaving journalism to join a PR agency, 10 years ago, my perspective changed forever.

The first thing that hit me was the number of journalists that were asking for PR people to "write around 500 words in answer to the following questions for a feature I am writing."

I'm sorry, a feature you are writing?  A feature you're compiling but actually based on the work of others, surely..?

When I was a news reporter, it was common practice to read rival newspapers and follow up on stories they had broken, adding our own additional reporting to give things a new twist.  The commonly-used line back then was "I'm busy forging my career!"

How we laughed.

But just lately, and this is something I'm convinced is linked to the convergence of journalism and blogging, it seems to be increasingly common for a story that appears on one site to be replicated almost immediately by several others.

Which means interesting stories, pithy remarks and insightful comments all get widely dispersed. But along with this editorial diaspora you also get misinterpretations, errors and inaccuracies.

Why? Because of the dangerous assumption that if a story has appeared in print somewhere then it must be true - it's fair game for copying.

There are too many examples to include here of stories I've seen written by people who would like to be thought of as serious journalists where there has been no basic fact checking, no second sourcing (if you don't know what that is you're not a journalist - I don't care what it says on your business card) and no attempt to introduce balance by including comments from all the parties within a story.

I checked to see what some of the leading lights of the world of journalism have to say on the matter. Here's the Basics of Reporting and Writing, according to Reuters:

"Accuracy must never be sacrificed for speed. If we lose our reputation for accuracy we lose everything. We reinforce to readers our commitment to accuracy by being totally honest about rectifying errors - promptly and openly. Double-check facts, figures, names, dates and spellings. Watch for typographical errors. Make sure the story is fair and balanced, and presented in such a way that it will be seen to be fair and balanced.

"Accuracy is also more than just getting the facts right - it is getting the right facts, and backing up our interpretation of the facts with authoritative and unimpeachable sourcing."

I think it would be a hard case to argue that all journalists adhere (or even aspire) to such ideals.

PR people come in for a lot of stick from grumpy journalists. This is not my attempt to even the score. There's plenty of shoddy behaviour on both sides of the supposed divide between hacks and flacks, and nothing will be gained by me adding to the pointless mud-slinging.

But I do think there needs to be a reflection on the issue of professional standards in journalism as well as in PR. After all, long gone are the days when editors would have clawed their way up the career ladder from cub reporter, attending NUJ-approved training courses and being scrutinised along the way. I fear not much has been done to replace that kind of induction into the responsibilities that come with being a member of the fourth estate.

And yes, before anyone asks, I agree something could also be done to make the PR industry more in tune with the working needs of journalists. Or looked at another way... journalists have the PR industry they deserve. Long may that continue.

Sean F

On 2^nd February, a group of individuals united by a mutual interest in the environment met at a pub in Angel to talk about corporate carbon. We organised the Carbon Conversation event on behalf of our client Cisco, intending to present the findings of a research project, carried out in association with key a influencer target, news site Greenbang.

The venue (The Duke of Cambridge) was chosen because it is an organic pub accredited by the Soil Association and powered by solar and wind energy, and it proved to be the perfect location (the organic London Beer went down very well!).

                                The new home for the UK's leading environmental thinkers

Organising the event, Octopus secured speakers from The Carbon Trust, British Gas and Greenbang, alongside Cisco, each of whom had just five minutes to talk about their area of interest in corporate carbon (following the ignite presentation rules of 20 slides, 15 seconds each, 5 minutes in total).

The event attracted well over our target 25 attendees, including environmental and technology media, prolific sustainability twitterers and bloggers, CSR consultants and executives from companies in the corporate carbon-reduction space. Attendees were secured from our team's Twitter activity, as well as traditional invites, and the event was organised through EventBrite.

In fact, the event was such a success that you should watch this space for a quarterly appearance of The Carbon Conversation.