I was lucky enough to visit the Silverstone racing circuit on Saturday for an event with one of our clients, the internet security firm, Kaspersky Lab UK.

During the last few weeks it was my job to invite journalist’s to Silverstone for the final of the Le Mans series, and sort out all of their travel arrangements (which was rather more stressful than it sounds!).

Throughout the day we enjoyed the perks of our VIP tickets which allowed us to have lunch with the Ferrari drivers, check out the cars in the pits and watch the races from the Grandstand. The best part of the day was being able to build relationships with the journalists. It was a great way to get to know the journalists and their publications better, and I now feel confident in picking up the phone and letting any of the journalist’s I met at Silverstone know if we have a security-related stories they may be interested in.

I am slowly but surely making some strong  journalistic contacts that I know will be useful for years to come. Although I make numerous calls and send lots of emails to journalist’s each day, it is good to know that to the journalists I met at Silverstone I’m not another faceless PR trying to pitch a story, I’m John Paul from Berkeley PR – the guy they met at the Le Mans event.

John Paul Charles

As most people use Google as their search engine of choice, you’ll have seen the newest feature that they’ve introduced – Google Instant.  For a search engine that, on the surface at least, hasn’t changed that much since it was launched, this is a fairly ground breaking move from Google. Instead of typing in your query and hitting enter, all you have to do is simply type and results appear for whatever you have typed so far.  At first, the only thing it does is make the ‘return’ key redundant.  Maybe its part of Google’s plan to automate everything we want to do on the internet – just look at Google Scribe, which will auto-complete entire sentences for you.  For many people however, the change isn’t that significant as they use the Google search bar built into most browsers and sites like NetVibes and iGoogle.

However, Google Instant is much more exciting when it is combined with other Google products.  So, we have Google Maps instant search, Google Images Instant Search (although be VERY careful about the first letters you type) and You Tube Instant.

While it does seem like a bit of a gimmick, people involved in SEO now have a new target – getting their clients onto the top of the autocomplete bar, as well as the first page of the search results.  For the rest of us, it just seems like something else to tweet about, and before long we’ll even forgot that Google has changed.

Luke Davies

I’ve just returned from a week on holiday – splitting my time between seeing family in Tiverton in Devon and travelling around the deepest darkest Cornwall. Some highlights of my week were St Ives, Kynance Cove, Glendurgan Garden, watching my not-so-little brother play football and winning the raffle at the match (although the prize was either four cans of Carling or a litre of Lambrini – hardly living the dream!).

In Cornwall, we stayed in an amazing Landmark Trust property called The Egyptian House. The unusual house was built in about 1835 as a museum and geological repository. In keeping with the era that the house was built, everything was very minimal especially the technology available. No TV, radio, internet connection and neither mine nor my boyfriends phone had much reception. We felt quite literally cut off from civilisation.

I will be honest, I knew all this before we booked the holiday and I was a little nervous. The first thing I do in the morning is check my emails, Twitter account, Facebook and catch-up on my favourite blogs. Plus, my boyfriend constantly accuses me of having my Blackberry surgically attached to my hand. You can understand my apprehension.

I LOVED it. I didn’t miss the beep of my phone and I went back to basics – reading the paper while I had my scrambled egg and coffee. The only technology I used was my camera, doing my best impression of David Bailey taking pics of everywhere I went. It felt like a proper break from reality.

After four days back in the office, I am beginning to wonder again how I coped. My ear has been glued to the phone talking to journalists and clients, I efficiently sorted the 1,300 emails I had waiting for me in a few hours and I have caught up on all my favourite blogs. Moral of the story, sometimes you need a technology detox to reboot the brain.

Hannah Humphreys

In the PR industry, being able to use words effectively is a necessary skill. Our strength is the ability to turn often quite dry, technical information into exciting, newsworthy content. To that end, there are certain words that help to make a piece of writing more appealing to a journalist and catch the eye, but there are equally those that will make them (and us) switch off, and should be avoided at all costs. 

One misused phrase that comes up again and again is when clients describe their technology as being “quite unique”. By definition the term unique means, “existing as the only one” – so it’s either unique or it isn’t. Other phrases that make PR professionals cringe include best-of-breed, 360 degree solution, one-stop-shop, leverage, leading-edge, I could go on …

I recently read a blog post by PR strategist Adam Sherk on overused buzzwords in marketing where he did his own research into the most overused terms in press releases issued on PRWeb. It certainly makes for interesting reading!

What would be in your top 5 terms that make you squirm?

No doubt, there were many people that needed to be picked up off of the floor when I announced that I joined (and, more importantly, completed) Berkeley PR’s first running club session last week. Let’s just say, I’m hardly an athlete.

Having announced the fact I lived to tell the tale on Twitter, a couple of journalist followers responded and directed my attention to their blog, which features various gadgets to help make running less painful more enjoyable. I then went on to have a good read through recent posts, and passed it round to the more sporty-types in the office.

Aside from being a good chance to get even more gadgets on the wish list, I thought it served as a good, everyday example of how social media tools can increase awareness of a product or service. Even though this was on a small scale, it still meant that I took time out to check out a site I wouldn’t have ordinarily visited.

I’ve always been a fan of the overnight fix – hopefully I can now rely on fitness gadgets to turn me into Paula Radcliffe in no time!

Lauren Wood

In essence they have adopted a relatively low-cost, high value approach to managing editorial content. Instead of sponsoring articles within a magazine with advertorial, it has recruited journalists from eWeek, The 451 Group and ZDNet who have a strong record in the anti-virus space to produce content for Kaspersky Lab. All three do this under the banner of Threatpost, it’s security news site, which hasn’t been designed to compete with security titles but it has been written, in a non-salesy fashion that is proving popular. From a PR perspective, Kaspersky Lab have a very powerful tool which ensures that a load of thought leadership and the SEO savvy content benefits the company and a tool that their sales team are always happy to point potential customers towards.

Vikki’s article was based upon a post by the ever influential Todd Defren of PR Squared fame which is well worth a read. In fact, scrolling through the comments on his original post it was interesting to see that this is a phenomenon that is fast becoming popular in the US. According to a comment from Lou Hoffman the Business Week alumni can be found now working on similar projects for other blue chip organisations (Steve Hamm – IBM and Stephen Wildstrom – Nvidia).

At a time when we are increasingly seeing UK journalists moving to the dark side are we about to see another option. One where journalists can find the job security that they crave while still have the opportunity to remain a hack at heart. We are in an age when every person is a mouth piece for a company and so much thought and opinion is put into the public domain via blogs and Twitter, surely the approach of bringing an editorial expert into the mix improves the quality and thus makes it more interesting for the end user. I can’t believe any journalist worth their weight would agree to put their name to content that is basically advertorial, but if it is handled appropriately, with the right people and clear boundaries, I’m sure we will see more companies adopting this approach.

Paul Stallard

Career Path

Following a meeting yesterday I offered our client a lift to Reading train station rather than have her wait around for a taxis to take her. While we were working our way through Reading’s wonderful one way systems she was telling me about how her son is at university and isn’t too sure about what he wants to do. I agreed that it is hard to make a decision about what career path you want to pursue without having had the opportunity to actually see what that job is like.

I’m sure that a number of people have undertaken PR or Comms degrees under the pretence that the job is just like Absolutely Fabulous. My suggestion to anyone is to try and secure at least a week’s work experience in your chosen industry to check that it is as you expected and get a feel for what the job actually entails.

For the past week and a half we have been lucky enough to have been joined by Natalie Turner, a second year English student who approached us to see if she could take part in some work experience to see what the wonderful world of PR was actually like. Below is her guest post about choosing the right career:

During the last two years of university I’ve considered the usual careers associated with English degrees: journalism and teaching, but after doing some research of my own I approached Berkeley PR to see if I could join them for a few weeks work experience.

I think I’ve reached a happy medium – after a week with the Berkeley PR team I feel like I’m not just choosing a career for the sake of choosing a career but rather looking forward to something I’m really excited about.

Although I have really enjoyed my time at university I’ve also felt a lot of pressure to decide on a career, which to me feels strange when we’re still so young. We’re constantly exposed to career fairs, employability training and always notified when alumni have obtained noteworthy positions. The thought of just taking up a job for money rather than forming a life-long career is not even whispered!

Yet in PR I think I’ve found something which will constantly challenge me and will always be exciting. It’s a chance to be always working with new people and an opportunity to constantly exercise your creativity. Now, rather than dreading what will happen after I graduate I look forward to it.