ArchivesAll the signals are good. The menu looks interesting, as do dishes being ferried to adjacent tables. The young staff are skilled and friendly.
"Have one of our new magazines," one offers. "They've just arrived. We've got 84 boxes of them." She passes each of us a 64pp + cover magazine. I am all but crushed by the weight. A huge Rolex studded with diamonds glitters on the back page. Sumptuous photography and celebrity food porn slither across the double-page spreads.
It's an impressive contract publishing job. I can't fault the production standards (or the proofreading).Clearly, pretty much every supplier has been persuaded of the value of an advertisement. It's all very flash - and seriously out of step with the quiet confidence of the place where I'm actually about to eat lunch.
OK, so I know the pub is part of a prospering hospitality group, but does it have to make its promotion so horribly slick? And please, spare me the loyalty card.
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( 3 / 256 )press release:
Award-winning photographer Rob Cook at Yorkshire Scientific Pictures has teamed up with Val Seddon at York-based Output Communicators to offer clients a unique, one-stop communications package – the Hotcom.
A Hotcom is an elegant fusion of communications strategy and technology. Top-calibre scientific photography is combined with carefully crafted text, ready to be delivered direct to recipients’ computer screens.There is no costly printing or time-consuming mailing. Live links can take readers directly to specific web pages for in-depth information, or generate reader responses.
Rob Cook says:
“This is a great way to maximise the value of distinctive science photography – particularly in specialist fields with identifiable audiences. On-screen images can create high visual impact, or be equally effective when underpinning more subtle messages.”
Val Seddon says:
“The Hotcom format is flexible yet robust. Anyone who can receive a PDF can receive a Hotcom. It’s ideally suited to conference newsletters and a whole range of marketing and internal communications tools. The art lies in producing short, readable text which retains both marketing messages and scientific integrity.”
Check out the related link below to Rob's site, then contact either:
Rob Cook, Yorkshire Scientific Pictures on 01904 499 533
info@yorkshirescientificpictures.co.uk or
Val Seddon, Output Communicators on 07852 149 669
input@outputcomms.co.uk.
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( 2.9 / 242 )There's been a lovely little framed cartoon on my kitchen wall for more than twenty years. It shows three cats settled down on a sofa and the programme they are watching so intently is "Floyd on Fish".
I loved the programme, and I loved the cartoon so much that I bought the original from cartoonist Jonathan Pugh ( www.pughcartoons.co.uk ), then at the start of his brilliant career.
Party on, Floyd, wherever you are.
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( 3 / 254 )"This editorial's a bit flat," says the client. "Can you do anything with it?"
Yes, yes, definitely yes. Writers are a bit like hairdressers. We just love to run our fingers through other people's text, snipping off surplus adverbs, slicing into clunky phrases and trimming up sloppy proofreading.
The piece of editorial text in question was over-long and terminally dull but I suspect the original writer was not at fault. Some editorial copy gets trailed around committees and legal teams. Each adds their own changes. The result can become little more than word soup. The copy is no longer fit for purpose.
Useful as Microsoft Word's multi-person review/tracking facility is, it doesn't think. It doesn't take a holistic approach. And it absolutely doesn't care about creative communications. So please, if you're going to mess with the text, think about giving a writer the last word - or as close to it as the legal team will allow.
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( 3 / 252 )There's no doubt that years spent working in PR remove a lot of life's mysteries. I learned how to 'bury bad news' many years before 9/11 made it sound like bad practice; I can spot a pharmaceutical 'disease awareness' campaign a mile off and am still amazed at how often a really duff story makes headlines because of a few questionable statistics.
But then, occasionally, a PR somewhere pulls off a stunt of improbable brilliance, reminding us that creativity is fun.
Today's case in point comes from York (so no prejudice there then!) York Castle Museum, where Dick Turpin spent his last night before execution in 1739, has worked with police e-fit specialists to draw up a "realistic" picture of the infamous highway man. They used descriptions published in an 18th century newspaper.
Does it look like him? Who knows. Do they ever?
But what a brilliant stunt. Look out for the idea-clones in a newspaper near you.
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