martinloat's posterous

Like every aspect of communications, PR and media relations are changing rapidly.  I’d argue it’s not evolution, but revolution.  Just look at how we get our clients’ information to market: while print-led mainstream and business publishers have been squeezed , lower-cost base bloggers, email alerts, social media groups and independent events have sprung up to meet the continuing need for analysis and insight.

Propeller aims to deliver business profit by building business profile. That hasn’t changed.  What has changed are the channels we use and the content we need.

It’s not that tradition of liaising with journalists to announce news and set up comment and interviews isn’t effective anymore: done well they actually now occupy a sort of premium position. But there are so many more ways of getting stories out to an increasingly fragmented market.  Stories we now call content. Modern PR has to be about finding the influencers our clients need to reach AND engaging them with interesting content that they want to publish – or share – with their networks. And measuring what works and what doesn’t.

Propeller is evolving its client promise of building profit by building profile by expertly exploiting these channels, embracing these influencers and creating content for clients that is seen online, offline and eyeline (ie. at events and experientially).

So besides the traditional routes, we now “do PR” by seeding and spreading our clients’ most engaging content in: social media (like Twitter and Linked In groups); file sharing sites like Slide Share; link-building and SEO; blogger relations; other companies’ websites/newsletters; online discussion forums; placing speakers and panellists at events (large and small).  Our PR plans now include influence maps.

And what counts as engaging content? Increasingly some pages of text and a photograph are not enough. Even in B2B communications, companies are deploying low-cost video and animated infographics. But it has to be interesting (not just to the client!) if influencers are to share it without money changing hands.  If pithy and attractive, such digital assets serve as ‘sharable objects’ and can be quickly distributed virally around an influencer’s network.  This is what some people call the new PR.

We need to measure better too.  Propeller is developing and buying-in research, monitoring and tracking tools.  From now on we will offer all our clients at least one measurement metric to show where we distributed their content (be it classic press copy, social media posts, video or infographic) and who saw it and how it was shared.

Propeller has a vision for how PR will be done in a multi-channel, social world.  We want to optimise the new opportunities for the benefit of our clients – today, tomorrow and into the future.

That future is about crafting the most compelling content our clients will allow, and smoothly sharing it with influencers who matter: online, offline and eyeline.  I’d welcome your views so please comment or get in touch if there is anything you’d like to share.

I want to give you my take on the advert created by media and communications agency PHD Worldwide, which featured a multitude of children supposedly discussing their vision of the future.

The adage that all publicity is good publicity is not absolutely true in every case, but it is based on a pretty sound philosophy that in my experience works in about 90% of cases –  and this is one of them.

I should declare that I run a company that works for a client in the media agency field, but I assure you I have no axe to grind in relation to PHD one way or the other. What I would say is this, there has been a huge overreaction to a few hundred negative comments posted by people who don’t fall within the ad’s the target audience.

Public reaction is not necessarily the same as audience reaction, and sometimes those in the eye of the storm need to weigh one against the other.

Put it this way; do marketing services agencies want to find ways to stand out from the crowd and be more famous? Yes. Is PHD more famous and interesting to talk to after this? You bet.

Was this film aimed at children (even though it featured them)? No. It was aimed at potential clients of PHD, who as professional marketers can be relied upon to filter out the gnashing of baby teeth and the cat calls, instead hearing the dog whistle that carries the essential message.

The message being that a huge overhaul is needed to conventional analogue marketing thinking if the consumers of tomorrow are to be embraced digitally. It’s a shift from bought media to earned and owned.

If I do have a personal criticism of the film it is that it would have worked better by filming real children and editing together a sequence of their genuine comments about what they want and how they engage. Instead, we get jargon-laden planner-speak without a hint of the irony that this industry loves, and that might have got the company off the hook.

But just like an old professional footballer, this thing plays at different levels.

The recent controversy will spread the PHD name and its vision to more professional marketers than if the company had made a bog-standard film, suggesting to me that the film has actually worked at the new business level it was conceived, albeit in an unexpected and disruptive way.

But, the bosses and colleagues of these marketers might turn round and say, ‘Aren’t those the people that came unstuck with a YouTube film and some kids? Won’t it be a bit risky letting them lose on our brand?”

Perhaps PHD has an answer to this, people say whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger – and PHD now has direct experience of the power of consumer reaction accelerated by social media to their own brand.

How many agencies can claim such braggable battle scars? At least they’ve been there and done that now without catastrophic circumstances. And surely emerged older and wiser from the experience. Hopefully.

B2B content rarely crosses the border into the consumer dimension and attracts such vitriol. So this is a useful lesson in real time digital crisis management for an agency with its own brand (not a client) in the eye of the storm.

When the controversy has died down, who will know more about dealing with how communications works in the digitally-enabled, socially-wired, sharable age. The naysayers, or the people who tried something different?

Flicking through a recent issue of new media age at Spitsbergen airport the other day a story leapt out at me. Dixons has appointed the Press Association(PA) to lead its online content and social media strategy.

Now there’s a surprise: what could a powerful high street retailer require digitally from a branch of what is still referred to as ‘the press’?  Some releases distributed and some coverage now and again? Maybe. The odd corporate editorial? Sure. But “leading Dixons social media strategy”? It’s a bit early for that isn’t it?

So we are back to one of my favourite themes; the increasingly busy intersection between the two previously opposed worlds of PR and journalism. And of course we don’t have to look far for the catalyst forcing oil and water to conflate into a new potent brew. Good ol’ social media.

An interesting by-product of this amalgam recorded in Gina Lovett’s exclusive are more jobs for journalists. It’s a reworking of the old school under-paid hack to fairly-paid flack route.

For as the old model mix for news provision: part ad funded, part subscription, part pay as you go (past the newsagent) is creaking to its foundations, so a new editorial dawn beckons. This time, though, purveyors of fine articles must (generally speaking) provide the news free at the point of consumer need, the paymaster being the client brand and corporation, however you dress it up.

It’s fascinating to see how many ‘I wouldn’t touch the ad department with a barge pole’ journalists are now ready to see their skills fore-purposed into parcels of content measured in page dwell time metrics, SEO rankings, RTs, Facebook ‘Likes’ and the like.

If this deal signals that traditional journalism providers are serious about providing social media strategy (not just services), how will this impact on the emerging social media agency sector?

I don’t want to scaremonger here and suggest that the genie’s out of the bottle for small social media specialists if massive content factories such as PA pile into the nascent branded content, link building and social media sectors. The writing is not on the wall – after all who would use such a quaint analogue medium in the digital age?

But you can see the attraction for Dixons, its parent DSG retail, siblings Currys and PC World, plus the other brands that use PA for other editorially-driven services, such as Asda Financial, ING Direct and RBS (I hope their monitoring is switched on!). PA has legions of journalists and the content gathering and distribution machine that agency specialists can only dream of.

This gives PA scale and big client corporations like dealing with scale.  They feel safe. Against this might, the social media specialists must play to their strengths.

Hopefully they are still in the lead on the balance score card for: client service, agility, strategic advice, creativity and their collective experience of providing campaigns for brands and clients.

So even if the big content providers have the brawn, it’s down to the agencies to show they still have the brain.

I asked around the office and this is what the team at Propeller Towers came up with for the top ten sites that may not be on your radar.

Beehive City  

We like this site as it gives us the latest media news in the UK, founded by three former Times journalists, @timglanfield @adamsherwin10 and Dan Sabbagh, now head of Guardian Media and Technology, so it is interesting to see how Beehive reports on Guardian media stories. They cover diverse media stories from gossip about David Hasslehoff getting Scotland and Ireland confused to predictions about the quality of local TV.

Follow them on twitter @beehivecity 

The Media Briefing

Established by @rorybrown and @neilthackray and edited by Patrick Smith @psmith in late 2010. The Media Briefing analyses the news to add a further layer of scrutiny to the stories, it is more geared towards the B2B community than Beehive. Recent issues for debate have been how to price newspaper digital subscriptions, taking some lessons from Starbucks and a write up of the December ABC figures.

PSFK

This great website picks out the newest trends from around the world, reading it means you’ll never be left behind. It began as the project of London-born New York-based Piers Fawkes in 2004. Stories include everything from Starbucks introducing technology to allow you to buy a cup of coffee from your phone to the future of cities.

Follow them at @PSFK

more about advertising

This site takes a global viewpoint and tries to place advertising stories in a wider context of politics and business. It’s also a good site for gossip, such as this little gem about where Eric Newnman will go after leaving Kinetic. Its columnists include; Stephen Foster, former editor of Marketing Week; David O’Reilly, former deputy editor of Campaign; (two journos who have been in the business longer than me) Richard Addis, former editor of the Daily Express; Pablo del Campo, CEO and executive creative director of Del Campo Nazca Saatchi & Saatchi; and Tom Ormes, creative director of iris Singapore.

Current TV

This is the website branch of a multi-platform company Current TV, the project of former US VP Al Gore, under-used on this side of the Atlantic, it is dedicated to investigating the world’s most important, interesting and entertaining stories. From drug smuggling pigeons to Keanu Reeves commenting on the sad Keanu meme.

brand-e

The site features covers the world of advertising and branded entertainment, everything from Cat made films to Grateful Dead Games! A truly eclectic site. The editor Steve Mullins tweets as @brand_e.

cream global

Part of Charlie Crowe’s C Squared stable, Cream uses 250 spotters across the world, who feed in the latest news about innovation to Cream’s library of over 2,500 case studies. Their predictions for 2011 are particularly interesting, as they point to the end of Google. It is edited by Mark St Andrew who tweets as @MediaMarksy. The site is a sister to the Media Festival.

 They tweet as @creammag.

Creative Boom

Creative Boom is a UK based online magazine and network that works using a series of regional hubs to bring the reader all the creative industry news from across the UK. We like its local element it’s great at letting us know what great ideas are coming out of the UK as a whole, not just London. It was created by Katy Cowan from Cheshire, who tweets as @creative_boom. Check out some of their stories, ranging from secret parties in London to fashion events in Bath.

Reputation Online

This is the sister site of nma and is focused at the world of online PR and online reputation management. I have a soft spot for this site as I write a log for it. In a refreshingly candid way, the site is split into two halves ‘Our views’ written by editor Vikki Chowney and Becca Caddy and ‘Your views’ written by the industry.

The Inspiration Room

This site features interesting Ads from all over the world, in all sorts of mediums. We’re big fans of this story about Australia’s Lambassador. There are also some great examples of out of home, such as this one about Baby Jesus’ ultrasound scan. The site was founded by Stephen Molloy in 2006 

It’s time to stare into the crystal ball. My chosen subject is how B2B brands will increasingly turn to mobile channels to build and engage with their customers on the move.

I try not to over-estimate the penetration of digital platforms – looking out of the media industry bubble can give the false impression that everyone loves tablets, apps and social media.

They don’t.

While some corners of society remain outside the grip of new fangled platforms and networks, this can’t be said of budget holding business people where smart devices, be they Blackberry, iPhone/iPad or Android are over the critical mass hump and heading down to saturation valley.

So it’s among business executives that I see most opportunities for monetising mobile content for brands (or suppliers and vendors as they say in B2B).

Business communications strategists can pick up a great deal (literally in some cases) from peer to peer and social sharing models such as FourSquare, Twitter and Groupon. Yet B2B style tends to be more staid, more corporate and more-risk averse than P2P, but it follows eventually. Consider LinkedIn.

Chuck in the wild card that business events – such as Expos, trade fairs and conferences – are well-established drivers of business opportunity and networking, and the possibilities of highly-targeted mobile web and apps supporting business people as they gather away from their offices becomes apparent. At these times, for business people, cost is not the issue – the desire for convenience, connectivity and commercial gain takes over. It’s not the money, it’s the moment.

If you agree that social media facilitate the motivations people already have (to chat, show off and be wanted, for example), then apps that connect business people wishing to network at big events would seem to be solution whose time has come.

So in 2011 look out for mobile apps that create and engage business audiences in real-time event, conferences and exhibition situations. Can they help them meet, learn, ask questions and find their way around, for example. And the kicker is that the budgets exist to make monetising apps for B2B events a realistic prospect.

Now forgive me, I have to write a business plan.

You wait all year to write a post with that word and then two chances come along at once, serendiptious....

Two events recently have reinforced my view that we are approaching a ‘perfect storm’ for those of us in PR who seek a place at the heart of the web-enabled ecommerce revolution.

It makes me smile that PR is newly-fashionable among the marketing commentariat. This is founded on the lustre surrounding all things social and the realisation that public relations can be just that:  managing relations with members of the public through conversations via social media.

But it’s the ‘old-school’ media relations style of PR I want to concentrate on here.

The old-fashioned arts of story writing, news creation, pitching in and coming up with something the editor likes, are about to become very fashionable again.

How do I know? Well, take my two serendipitous events.

The first came at a seminar run by the Marketing Industry Network where Propeller client, John Straw of Linkdex – a VC-backed start-up aiming to classify the web and help ecommerce business connect with the most influential sites for their audiences – made a number of interesting points during his presentation:

The speech that set me thinking ran like this:

1. Most businesses that sell over the internet need high search rankings on the products and services they sell and related terms. All the smart businesses have SEO strategies so differentiation is diminishing
2. In organic, we are nearing saturation where everyone is optimised to the eyeballs, both on site and off site
3. But one area with untapped potential is driving traffic with links that Google regards as ‘trusted sites’, such as the big editorial players, portals and communities like  The Sun, The Guardian and the BBC. To play that game you need soft old PR skills and genuine editorial stories
4. Editorial and editors are important in ecommerce. So too, by extension, are media relations experts who can pitch content that works editorially on a trusted site with a link back to the client’s site.

Lovely theory, but is it true in practice?

Event number two happened the next day when I had a meeting with a company that were looking for the ecommerce-enabling PR services outlined above.

They are a pure web-driven business, so the only game in town is high rankings, traffic, lead generation, and CPA.

The client are digital natives who’ve ticked every box, optimised page after page of content and connected every link they can, but the news editor I had lunch with last week has never heard about them. So there’s the problem.

That’s why this particular business needs an SEO-savvy PR resource. Interestingly, the client said he’d been surprised at how few PR companies he’d spoken to had grasped the net nettle

So old-school story pitchers in PR, you time will come again. Just make sure you put links in your press releases.

If you walk through Soho Square in London right now you will see a temporary display of billboards for Mencap. An effective use of public space  for advertising.  But given the number of media people who patrol said square, is there a lesson here in effective trade communications for media people.

At Propeller towers we constantly fight to find the perfect blend of channels to deliver cut through b2b communications for media industry companies.

Trade press, conferences, events, sponsorship and increasing blogging and social media are in the mix. But one option for trade communications seems sadly overlooked in our sector: namely placing messages in the heart of the media community.

I’m not talking about the digital space, but the real community: the hotels, bars, restaurants and streets well trodden by the leather slip-ons and stilettos of the London based media crowd (and that’s just the men).

Given consumer brands’ penchant for handing out samples, pulling stunts and driving branded vans around, it is a surprise that more media brands do not follow suit. Central London hubs like Soho Square, Charlotte Street and Old Street roundabout are Mecca for media types. I reckon a media brand trying to find business dollars (for example a media sales team or ad network) can reach many of its target audience simply by showing up here.

For example, Yahoo’s and Sport England’s placement of table tennis tables around London was popular. I saw people queue up to play in Soho Square, now that’s engagement.

I was pleased to see in Marketing magazine that GyroHSR, had successfully used sandwich bags to ad for job vacancies. Perfect targeting and stand out as so few b2b brands take this route.

I bet nearly as many media people buy sarnies in Shoreditch as read NMA. As Mencap and Yahoo have demonstrated, Soho Square is a medium in its own right, and it is one that the media sector should exploit..

The next client who asks for a trade press release is going to get a list of alternative ways to reach London’s mediaratti – including sandwich bags, hot air balloons, sponsored shots glasses and, of course, table bloody tennis.

I’ve been away on holiday where I did lots of country walking. I come back to a London tube strike where I still had to do lots of walking. That's what you call a busman's holiday (oh no, they weren't the ones on strike!)

Anyway I came across an interesting place while walking in the countryside.

Coming over a hill, I ran into a fence and couldn't find a stile, kissing gate or even a hole as I followed the fence along. Eventually I came to a wide entrance, an attractive sign and little cabin charging for admission and all was revealed.  

Turns out the landowner here had been a farmer and we all know what has happened to that tired old business model. His farm was barely breaking even a year ago.

He had been happy to allow people to roam freely over his farm land and enjoy the paths and fields, but after a while he couldn’t afford the upkeep, the land was declining and his farm buildings were crumbling.

To try and mitigate this he tried to rent out land and buildings to a tea shop and other businesses. But these tenants could only afford to pay low rents.

After doing his very best to make a go of it he changed strategy, scraped together some investment and turned his farm into a child-friendly leisure park. His old barn became a kids' playden, another building became a cafe and gift shop and the woodland became a nature trail.

Now he’s charging people on a daily or seasonal basis for entry. I hear there are fewer people on his land than before, but those that are there are paying for the privilege and staying around for a while.

The commercial concessions in his park are happy because unlike the ramblers who sometimes popped into the pokey old teashop, the customers who visit now are the sort who spend £5 on a tea towel or £12 on a book about horse shoes or even £36 for a meal for four.

Those who used to ramble on his land complain about the commercialisation and bemoan their lack of freedom to roam. Some even see it as an affront to their basic rights! However there are many other places where they can walk without having to pay.

These outraged types are penning letters to newspapers telling of their disgust, they post blog furiously and even take part in surveys that produce headline saying the scheme will fail and the farmer’s off his rocker.

However it is all to no end, the landowner sits in his manor house, looking at his profit and loss, which is the healthiest it’s been for years. He’s happy about his positive cash flow and can see an eventual return on his investment instead of continual drain on his cash.

He feels he's running a business on his land now, not giving away free access to it.

Quite an interesting story. And as I trudged back up the hill I wondered if it could ever be repeated in the world of media. 

A colleague of mine recently completed a spell of jury service.

When he came back to work he was full of stories of the contrast between office and courtroom life: the confrontational style, the accusatory language, the lack of trust and withering sarcasm to make a point.  He really nailed what makes working in PR Agency so compelling.

 Of course, any details of cases he heard must be confidential and no one who heard the jaw-dropping tales would dream of repeating them.  Yet one over-riding factor of criminal law came across like a clarion: the supremacy of the judge. His word is law – quite literally.

It got me thinking about how corporations value both the legal and reputational advice they receive from their respective advisors in each area. Contrast the high standing of law and legal opinion with the more modest place in the advisory food chain endured by PR. 

For traditional company directors and corporate power brokers, legal advice has traditionally been top of the pile, perhaps second only to finance and maximising share price.  In too many old and stuffy quarters, PR, press, reputation management – call it what they like – has historically been seen (in status terms at least) as somewhere between outsourced catering and the customer helpline.

Of course there are increasingly exceptions: From Virgin’s Richard Branson, Asda’s Archie Norman (now chairman at ITV), Stuart Rose and Marks and Spencer and Martin Sorrell at WPP, finding Chairmen and CEOs who ‘get’ reputation management and media relations is no longer quite as difficult as spotting a red squirrel this side of the Isle of Wight.

So the direction of travel is right. But the pace of change is too slow.

We need some sort of visible yardstick to measure a company’s reputational index against – rather like a PR version of the FTSE 250.

Like many PR people who have been round the block a few times, I can tell tales of preparing or planting a media story to dig a client out of one corporate hole or another, only to be told by the client “It’s a great idea and would be a good story for us. There’s only one problem: the lawyers think we shouldn’t do it/ hang fire/ let the dust settle first”

In my dreams, the hand-crafted crocodile skin loafer is on the other perfectly pedicured foot.

The lawyer’s on the phone to the CEO pleading with her to sit on her hands, stay tight lipped and not make this or that statement to the press. “Sorry,” she says” I hear what you are saying and technically maybe we should remain circumspect, but the PR people are adamant that I should be bold, unequivocal, engage the media and through my honesty and visible conscientiousness, prop up my share price. Besides I’ve never been on Newsnight.”

Of course the highest profile case this year where senior executives should have heeded serious reputational advice earlier is BP. Millions of column inches have been spilt on this subject and there’s little I can add.

At least Tony Hayward opened his mouth to speak to the international media. Even if he promptly put his foot in it when he did.  It was his chairman Carl Henric Svanberg who has largely evaded the media storm that has followed BP around.

Also the BP case has done a great deal in my opinion to force the commentariat to re-evaluate their view of professional PR advice as not a luxury, but an essential tool of today’s global corporate armoury.

A less famous but more apposite case, is that of the former Eurostar CEO, Richard Brown, who was very late to the media party last Christmas when his trains stood still at St Pancras and Gare du Nord due to the snow piling up around northern Europe, which oddly only affected the trains once they were in the relative warmth of the channel tunnel. 

Eurostar made a huge social media faux pas when they didn’t respond to the disgruntled passengers lighting up facebook and twitter with their complaints and more importantly queries. The twitter-storm that resulted from this was picked up by the mainstream press and did no favours for Eurostar’s reputation or sales.

So if reputation is so critical to corporations why do so many company bosses in big jobs remain intransigent to the overtures of PR people compared with, say, their legal eagles or bean counters?

Is it ignorance, fear or a misplaced feeling that PR is not a proper profession and peopled by oleaginous snake oil salesmen who belong to the wrong sort of clubs.

 That’s a topic for a book not a blog.

My parting shot is this: if Chairmen and CEOs are driven by their share price. We need a similar public and transparent index of reputation where a company’s 'reputation stock’ is valued next to its monetary share price. There are some indexes along these lines, but I am not convinced that these have gained widespread traction with PLC bosses, maybe they need some PR.

 That would render reputational errors visible to all and not just a nebulous matter of opinion.

Let me get one thing clear: I hate litter.

So I was pleased to see that Keep Britain Tidy is still going and has launched a campaign by Inferno urging people to "pick up litter and bin it".

I hope the idea works and doesn't end up binned itself but I doubt the whimsical "seaside postcard" style images of cartoon people bending over (to pick up litter, you see) will be enough to keep our country clean. In trying to get others to clear up after the offenders' mess, these bus side and local posters are not even trying to persuade the litter louts to change their behaviour in the first place.

Perhaps that's a task beyond the skills of any marketing agency.

The teenagers (if I may demonise) sitting on the grass in my local park every summer evening sucking on an eclectic cocktail of Stella Artois, Evian and WKD seem oblivious to the concerns of those locals who prefer this green sward punctuated with trees, shrubs and dandelions rather than tins, PET bottles and bloody ubiquitous supermarket carrier bags.

Sadly some folks seem to believe that to take their detritus home or to their nearest litter bin would be a concession to the establishment or a sign of unfashionable sensitivity in front of their peers.

So they amble off, leaving a paradoxically neat square of rubbish for a guy in a yellow hi vis jacket to pick up next morning. And now the rest of "the community" (you know, the real one, the actual neighbours, not some virtual digital surrogate) are being asked to help with the clear up operation in Keep Britain Tidy's well-intended if quaintly-executed campaign.

Now I'm warmed up, is there an Inferno solution for those hellish souls in cars (and probably white vans) who chuck their junk out of their vehicles windows as they burn up Englands green and pleasant roads?

The day I wrote this - no word of a lie - I spotted a Tesco bag (never Waitrose for some reason), a Coca Cola can and two McDonalds packages as I drove on a short stretch of non-Residential local highway in Taunton, Somerset, England, Europe (this is an international  blog).

While litter droppers happily deliver RoI for food drink and packaged goods marketers by consuming their products, they seem oblivious to the concerns of those of us who wish they would dispose of beautifully designed and branded packaging more carefully. With local authorities unlikely to fund increase in their rubbish work, is it really down to us - the conscientious community minded majority to do the dirty work and pick it up?

I have a radical suggestion. Let's ask the marketers and brands themselves.

How about we deem any piece of branded packaging found lying on state-owned land for more than 48 hours to effectively be a piece of marketing communication for the brand owner and therefore subject to a new law or at least local by-law or some code of practice. Namely if you are McDonalds, KFC, Coca Cola, Tesco or that sickly milk drink in a tin, and your packaging is found lying discarded it's your responsibility to come out and pick it up.

I know this would be difficult to enforce, but the same can be said of many laws. But at least with this one, an offence is public and the starting point for action is plain to see.

I'm not trying to stick one on the local fish and chip shop if a couple of their greasy bags waft down the high street. It's the big corporations I believe should have the resource and CSR desire to get something done to clean up the environment.

Perhaps to weed out vexatious and vindictive complaints over dropped litter, any one alleged offence might need three separate independent, photographic reported sightings of the offending item (there could be an app for this).  In the same way as the Advertising Standards Authority gets excited if it receives several complaints about one ad, so would my Branded Waste Packaging Authority start to flex its muscles if several complaints came in about Tesco bags clogging up the Grand Union canal.

Written warnings and a large fine as an example would focus the bright brains at HQ to think about how they could stop their logos clogging our rivers, streets and fences. And what might the best marketers and consultants come up with if the idea of doing nothing is to be vilified by my new authority and the negative PR resulting?

How about privately funded, jointly-branded litter patrol vans patrolling town and country picking up tins and packages baring those very same perfectly researched logos and Corp IDs?

Or more bins given free to local authorities for public spaces.

Or more money and effort into biodegradable packaging. We wouldn't be the first to outlaw plastic carrier bags.

Maybe a return to the deposit schemes of old with a few pence back on a can or plastic bottle would nudge people to keep them and take them back.  Or provide pocket money for anyone willing to pick up the pieces.

So I say, big brands and their packaging are part of the problem of litter.  They could do so much more to be part of the solution. We just need some lateral thinking to give them a reasonable incentive. Holding brands responsible when their logos are repeatedly found abandon in public places would be a good place to start.

Posted by Martin Loat