Bob Dylan had one, so did Dr Martin Luther King as well as Luke Skywalker. Mentors. Take a look at any famous and successful person and chances are that they have been mentored on their path to success.

It may not be as fashionable as coaching, but mentoring is a powerful tool for personal and professional development and should be used in PR and Marketing to cross fertilize ideas and increase creativity.

I have always sought advice from mentors at critical times in my career and have found them immensely helpful and have been a catalyst to help move me forward.

A winning formula for me has always to find a mentor who works in the same profession but a different sector. One particular mentor I found to be incredibly helpful was in the private banking and gave a fresh perspective to the intricacies of my professional life in public sector PR.

A truly great mentor will reflect their success back to you so that you feel inspired and empowered to make big decisions.

So look around you, find the inspirational mentor who will help you reach your full potential. Or maybe you want to reach out and help another PR professional develop their career. As Martin Luther King once said “Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, ‘What are you doing for others?’” 

If you are looking for an innovative PR campaign, submit a brief now!

Image courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Chloe

Rebranding is a risky business. Get it wrong and you will leak customer loyalty. But get it right and you will stand out from the competition.

It’s understandable that companies are hesitant to make changes to their look and feel. But subscribing to the ‘it ain’t broke don’t fix it’ school of thought will often leave you behind the times along with the dinosaurs.

Why change? Well, businesses are living breathing entities that change shape and shift according to the market and external factors. What worked when you launched 5 years ago might no longer speak to your customers. And they increasingly expect more from their brands. They expect you to have a personality and to be available 24/7. Fail to tell your story behind your brand and you are less likely to connect with your stakeholders.

A winning campaign calls for more than a revamped logo. Rather it requires an inspirational vision that stirs your customers into seeing you with fresh eyes. Not only should the rebranding process be a great opportunity for employee engagement but also a useful tool to revisit what you stand for and more importantly what you don’t.

Rebrands can reap huge rewards. Take iconic British brand Burberry for example and backtrack 5 years. Remember the headlines about the down market celebs wearing the brand and the association with football thugs? Now fast forward to the present and Burberry has had its fortunes revived through creative director Christopher Bailey and is now championed by A listers including Kate Moss and actress Emma Watson.

So if you feel that your brand is looking tired, why not test the waters first with a mini poll or a focus group? It’s amazing what the looking glass can reveal. Get it right and it will be jam today and jam tomorrow!

If you think it’s time for rebranding, brief the Exchange now!

Image courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Chloe

It’s that time of year again when we start gazing out of the window and dreaming of lying on a sun soaked beach, and if you’re getting ready to pack your bags you might be having a struggle deciding whether to pack your Smartphone or not! And unless you are halfway up a mountain or in the middle of a desert chances are you’ll always be near to a wireless or mobile connection.

It seems that we can’t relax these days unless we have our technology at our fingertips. And according to latest research by Microsoft 75 percent of the people planning a holiday who were polled plan to take their laptop with them, and nearly ¾ their smartphone.

It just shows us just how wedded we are to our technology. But do you really want to be taking those work calls when you should be enjoying some hard earned R and R?

If you are a PR freelancer or the boss of an SME chances are you will occasionally dip in and out of your emails to check that you haven’t missed out on that important opportunity.

So if you really can’t chillax unless you are connected then the least you can do is make your poor colleagues and clients jealous by sharing your holiday pics with them on social networking sites. And you’ll be in good company as sharing adventures is the number one thing people do on their laptop while on holiday .

It seems that the internet age really has blurred the boundaries between work and play, and the price we pay for having the world at our fingertips is the constant sound of digital chatter in our ears. So if you really have to take your phone and laptop with you just remember to take your headphones too. You never know it might come in handy when you need to block out the sound of your phone ringing!

If you are looking for an innovative PR campaign, submit a brief now!

Image courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Chloe

It may not be fashionable to crow about the joys of being married in the workplace – but it seems that love does help when it comes to productivity.

Latest research reveals that love can really help us when it comes to good health. People with solid relationships tend to live at least 3.7 years longer than those that don’t, and single people spend twice as much time in the hospital as married people.

But you don’t need a marriage license to reap the benefits, it seems that long term partnerships serve us equally as well. And indeed, some experts say that the mental well-being of a marriage is equivalent to getting $100,000 more a year, which brings the idea that we need more money to be happy sharply into focus. And love of the platonic kind helps too.  It kind of makes sense, if we have happy relationships at work then we will take fewer sick days and therefore spend more time doing our job well.

In the PR world it’s often easier to think of our clients as simply clients, but look around you, those PRs who take time to get to know their clients have better relationships with them. This leads to longer working relationships and happier outcomes all round.

So, forward thinking employers. Start organizing those work parties now, throw open the doors and encourage your employees to have some fun. It will save you money in the long run, and who knows you just might enjoy playing cupid once in a while.

If you are looking for an innovative PR campaign, submit a brief now!

Image courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Chloe

It may not be fashionable to crow about the joys of being married in the workplace – but it seems that love does help when it comes to productivity.

Latest research reveals that love can really help us when it comes to good health. People with solid relationships tend to live at least 3.7 years longer than those that don’t, and single people spend twice as much time in the hospital as married people.

But you don’t need a marriage license to reap the benefits, it seems that long term partnerships serve us equally as well. And indeed, some experts say that the mental well-being of a marriage is equivalent to getting $100,000 more a year, which brings the idea that we need more money to be happy sharply into focus. And love of the platonic kind helps too.  It kind of makes sense, if we have happy relationships at work then we will take fewer sick days and therefore spend more time doing our job well.

In the PR world it’s often easier to think of our clients as simply clients, but look around you, those PRs who take time to get to know their clients have better relationships with them. This leads to longer working relationships and happier outcomes all round.

So, forward thinking employers. Start organizing those work parties now, throw open the doors and encourage your employees to have some fun. It will save you money in the long run, and who knows you just might enjoy playing cupid once in a while.

If you are looking for an innovative PR campaign, submit a brief now!

Image courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Chloe

Ten years ago in the PR world a smiley face was something you wore on your raver t-shirt in your down time. Fast forward a decade and emoticons are used every day in business communications, a sort of shorthand for chumminess.

But overuse the emoticons and you could end up like a raver with a rattle – that is, someone who isn’t taken particularly seriously, not a good look when trying to impress a PR client or your boss.

So dear reader, before I dissolve into a day glo haze of festivals past (all this talk of raving is bringing back memories!) just take a reality check before you press the emoticon key and take heed of a few simple rules.

1. Never ever use an emoticon in a first email to anyone – it will instantly mark you out as a lightweight.
2. Think twice before you use the smiley face after you write something amusing. It’s like having a big arrow that points to the words SMILE PLEASE.
3. Use an emoticon like a dress down Friday. That is, to show that you are relaxed member of the human race rather than a headline grabbing PR machine.
4. Use them as freely as you see fit on Twitter, different rules apply to this uber laid back social network.
5. Don’t over use emoticons in business emails. One is enough, any more and you run the risk of annoying your recipient.

And finally, don’t use it if you don’t know what it means. Consult Wikipedia’s list if you are unsure. There’s nothing more cringe makingthan getting it wrong >:X .

If you are looking for an innovative PR campaign, submit a brief now!

Image courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Chloe

We’ve got the attention span of a flea when it comes to reading emails. We all ignore those pesky emails that look too boring to open. It’s a bit like getting bills through the post, we won’t open them unless we really have to.

So, how can you make sure that your email press releases catch the attention of the media? Try using the twitter rule – make your header punchy and attention grabbing and follow through with the first sentence in the body of the email.

Web guru and PR consultant Steve Rubel, has coined the phrase tweetify to describe this trick of getting a click-through with a first line.  Try making your first sentence half the size of a 140-character tweet – and you will create a  punchier first impression.

And don’t just stop there – seed your headlines into twitter and you’ll optimize the chance of your content being read. Make sure it sings to your audience though, you need to give them a reason to click.

The rule book to PR is being rewritten – so make sure that you keep ahead of the competition and keep it snappy. We humans are a lazy bunch, you need to swat us to get our attention!

If you are looking for an innovative PR campaign, brief the Exchange now!

Chloe

The words local government and innovation don’t normally appear in the same sentence. Mainly because of the widely held perception of local government as an unwieldy machine that spews our ted tape and  ties the hands of industry.

Yet dig a little deeper and you will find some truly innovative partnership work between the public and private sector – born out of the recession’s requirement for new ways of thinking and approaching problems.

At Design for London (DfL) a   small team within the Greater London Authority who work on behalf of the London Mayor to support boroughs and project deliverers to steer developments they are spearheading a drive to improve Londons high streets.

This initiative to make our high streets better, more relevant places to shop and live is part of the Government’s efforts to help turnaround the rising tide of boarded up shops and identikit offerings. DfL have put together a package of ideas and solutions from some of the most innovative design and architects in the city so that local governments can pick and choose solutions that work best for them.

From light architects such as speirs and major who use light to develop environments to place shapers such as Space Makers who create inspiring regeneration projects driven by the people who live there – the possibilities for public and private synergies are endless.

So watch out London tax payers, while you purse your lips at yet another council tax bill through your letterbox you may yet find reason to smile as your local high street slowly changes its shape at the hands of some of the nation’s brightest thinkers.

If you are looking for a unique marketing strategy to stand out from the competition , submit a brief now!

Chloe