Blog

In The Sunday Times this weekend, I read an interesting article that genuinely shocked me it was entitled “Big Tech Tries to Blank the Press”. The article covered the fact that big tech companies in Silicon Valley are annoyed at how the media is treating them, and now they are actively starting to bypass journalists, and even PR teams altogether, in a bid to communicate directly with consumers, stakeholders and their wider audiences. This stems from a distinct and increasing lack of trust from the corporates in journalists – they don’t trust them to write positive news stories about their ... Read more

I have been busy over the last month or so presenting a number of webinars on social media trends with my business partner Will. Every year I travel the country and present my predictions and I have been doing this for the last 7 or 8 years. However, this year it is all virtual but that means, I can now give my predictions to you “On Demand”. Social Media Trends Predictions The majority of marketers in the UK are now using social media marketing in a clever strategic capacity, whether it’s stand-out conversation campaigns, brand ambassador recruitment, customer competitions or ... Read more

I love working in PR but there is no denying that it can be a stressful job. There’s pressure to come up with campaign ideas, tight deadlines, difficult to please clients and even more difficult to please journalists – I recently gave my opinion on the long-running trend of ‘PR bashing’ feel free to share your stories with me as they can be fascinating. Even before the pandemic, it was clear that many PR professionals were struggling with the burden of stress from this sector. The CIPR’s 2019 State of the Profession survey reported one-in-five respondents having a diagnosed mental ... Read more

London has long held the title of the PR capital of Europe. I started my own career in London working for Harvard PR and the Chime Group for more than five years many moons ago. I love the capital and the bright lights and I enjoyed working down there and picking up the experience. There is a lot going for the capital, it is home to the headquarters of some of the world’s biggest agencies working with the country’s biggest brands. However, according to some London’s time at the top may now be coming to an end. In a recent ... Read more

I am delighted to announce that Prohibition has been selected as one of the Digital Enterprise TOP 100 and is now listed as one of the SMEs that have made the list of the Leeds City Region’s most innovative, digitally transformational and resilient businesses. After such a challenging year and business environment, I am going to take that as a big win! I think it is fair to say that for a couple of weeks in March 2020 I was asking myself are we going to make it out of this as a country and us as a business. We ... Read more

Social Media Training for Charity Social media is such an integral part of marketing for charities in the modern world. It allows for charities to connect directly with their audiences in a way that they previously couldn’t and giving them the chance to express their own voice. It also allows them to interact in creative ways with their audiences whilst also encouraging them to take action. The strongest platforms for charities to best connect with their audiences and have a strong ROI are Twitter and Facebook, however, Instagram and LinkedIn have also seen success. Master Social Media to Connect Your ... Read more

How to Prove and improve Social Media ROI ROI in social media is often thought to be hard to prove, as there may not always be precise data to show results through social media campaigns. Luckily, it is not as hard as you may think when you know what to look for. To find ROI through social media, you have to know your value can be anything such as link clicks, brand awareness, brand perception etc. So, to find your ROI, your business would compare your value to the investment. The investment could be hours spent working on the campaign ... Read more

This year has got off to a somewhat rocky start for everyone living in the UK as we all cope with the horrible third national lockdown. I am thrilled that my team has been able to continue delivering fantastic work for our clients this past month however, I am less thrilled about the recent ‘PR bashing’ I have seen on social media. In case you didn’t know PR bashing is a trend (not really a new one) where journalists take to Twitter to share emails or other forms of communication, they have received from PRs to call out behaviour they ... Read more

I love this clever campaign from Burger King after they decided to sponsor Stevenage FC in the real world because the team would appear in the computer game Fifa alongside the big teams. So they then created an online challenge to get people to get their own Stevenage team to be brilliant and buy the best players – in other words getting visibility on their brand. What a great idea for a relatively low budget. The whole campaign is wrapped up in a clever social media video. The bumf says: Brands pay millions to get soccer’s biggest players to endorse ... Read more

I have had a busy few weeks sorting a number of new team members out and adding a variety of new bits of software to our arsenal. One thing I really wanted to do was get involved in AI-driven paid social. We have been delivering paid social campaigns since organic social decided to take a huge dip and Mr Zuckerberg’s wallet starting getting fatter. I have always said that I felt advertising is driven by numbers first then creativity and I wanted a robot to delve into the numbers and then me and my team could use that to drive ... Read more