A PR Guy's Musings - Stuart Bruce

Come back GNER, all is forgiven

A short while ago Simon Collister asked me on Twitter what I thought of booking tickets with National Express East Coast, compared to its predecessor GNER.

The title of the post, should give you a clue.

I can't recall the GNER site ever being unavailable, whereas the National Express site is very flaky. On the surface the National Express site looks fantastic, with lots of AJAXy goodness, but it all counts for nowt because it is so anti-customer.

The most irritating thing for me is that it is DELIBERATELY designed to STOP you buying tickets. Tickets from Leeds to London are usually very expensive, but there is a perfectly legal way to usually cut the cost, and that is to split your tickets. So by buying tickets from Leeds to Peterborough (or Grantham or Stevenage) and then Peterborough to London you can end up paying less for exactly the same job. On the old GNER website it usually even allocated you the same seat reservations.

National Express has deliberately (I suspect) made this process harder than it should be by forcing you to artificially wait between booking tickets. It also makes it harder than it should be to book journeys for more than one day. Why would any company want to make it harder for you to give them business?

I guess, if they can be bothered to read this blog and respond, that they will have some excuse to do with "security", but for me I was quite content with GNER's clunky old website.

If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Alistair Darling and Gordon Brown bottom of popularity stakes for Labour activists

LabourHome has published its first grassroots survey of Labour Party activists views on cabinet ministers. I thought it would be interesting to compare it to my Iain Dale list comparing Labour cabinet ministers with their Tory shadows.

The first thing that strikes me is that similarity between the two, which to me indicates my thoughts chime with the majority of Labour Party members.

Those who I thought were being beaten by the Tories were Gordon Brown, Alistair Darling, Jacqui Smith, Des Browne, Harriet Harman, Ed Balls and Ruth Kelly. They all, except Harman and Smith, languish in the bottom half of the table. Indeed Gordon Brown, Alistair Darling and Ruth Kelly are in the bottom three spots with Des Browne and Ed Balls not far behind. Of those in the bottom half I believe only Ed Balls has potential to improve.

At the top of the table are David Miliband, Alan Johnson and Hilary Benn with just .05 between them, Jack Straw is just .21 behind. followed by John Denham, Ed Miliband, Andy Burnham and James Purnell. The only rating I'd personally really disagree with is Yvette Cooper who is in the bottom half of the table (but significantly above Ed Balls). I'd also like to see the table include Caroline Flint who attends Cabinet, but isn't a full member. I believe that she would almost certainly be in the top half of the table, probably just above Jacqui Smith and below James Purnell.

This isn't a scientific poll, as Alex Hilton sensibly points out, but it will become more fascinating as it is used as a tracking device to see how activists views change over time.

Technorati Tags: Labour Party

Small Business and Government: The Richard Report

This morning I caught the tail end of an interview with Doug Richard (the serial entrepreneur of Dragon's Den fame). He was talking about how government support for small business was woefully inadequate, if not downright damaging. I found myself nodding in agreement and thinking what a smart chap John Hutton (Secretary of State for the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform - the old DTI) was for commissioning Doug to produce this report.

Imagine my surprise and dismay when I discovered that the report was actually commissioned by David Cameron and that Doug Richard had just chaired the Tories Small Business Task Force. The result is Small Business and Government: The Richard Report (PDF), of which I agree with almost everything.

That said since David Cameron has stolen so many of Labour's ideas then I think John Hutton would be well within his rights and indeed very sensible to just get on with implementing the ideas in Doug Richard's report.

Mending the business support system

Our Small Business Task Force, chaired by the Dragons' Den judge, Doug Richard, has set out innovative proposals to overhaul the business support system.
Doug, a serial entrepreneur, described the current system, which involves over 3,000 different schemes run by 2,000 public bodies and their contractors, as "confusing and out of control".
Around two-thirds of the £2.5 billion spent on the system goes on telling companies where to find advice.
Doug laid out a number of recommendations to improve the support given to businesses, including:
- Creating a single, national, web-based Business Information System
- Improving access to finance for SME's
- Helping small businesses secure more Government contracts
- Overhauling enterprise education in schools.
Doug said, "These recommendations would enable the UK to once again become one of the best places in the world to do business."

Iain Dale's Brown v. Cameron - who has the better team?

Iain Dale follows up one of Gordon Brown's interviews this morning by asking readers to comment on who has the better team. It's a good question and one that's very telling when you go through it one by one:

Gordon Brown v David Cameron - CAMERON
Alistair Darling v George Osborne - OSBORNE
Jacqui Smith v David Davis - DAVIS
Des Browne v Liam Fox - FOX
Harriet Harman v Theresa May - HARMAN
Hazel Blears v Eric Pickles BLEARS
Yvette Cooper v Philip Hammond - COOPER
Ed Balls v Michael Gove - GOVE
John Denham v David Willetts - DENHAM
Douglas Alexander v Andrew Mitchell - ALEXANDER
David Miliband v William Hague - SCORE DRAW, both are really good
Harriet Harman v Caroline Spelman - HARMAN
Andy Burnham v Jeremy Hunt - BURNHAM
James Purnell v Chris Grayling - PURNELL
Alan Johnson v Andrew Lansley - JOHNSON
Jack Straw v Nick Herbert - STRAW
Hilary Benn v Peter Ainsworth - BENN
John Hutton v Alan Duncan - HUTTON
Geoff Hoon v Patrick McLoughlin - NEITHER, both are fairly dire
Shaun Woodward v Owen Paterson - WOODWARD
Baroness Ashton v Lord Strathclyde - ASHTON
Paul Murphy v Cheryl Gillan - MURPHY
Ruth Kelly v Theresa Villiers - VILLIERS

That's 16 for Labour and and just seven for the Conservatives. The only unfortunate thing for Labour is that in the five most important posts - PM, Chancellor, Home Secretary, Foreign Secretary and Health - it only takes two of the five.

Technorati Tags: Labour, Conservative, Gordon Brown, David Cameron

Time for Labour loyalists to speak out

This is both a professional blog where I talk about business and public relations, but also a political blog (more so since I stopped writing on my old councillor blog). For sometime I've been quietly fuming, with the occasional Twitter to express my frustration. I've had an internal battle to prevent myself blogging about my anger and some current Labour government policies. I've reasoned that I'm loyal to the Labour Party and it's not good to show dissent during an election campaign.

However, inspired by Luke Akehurst, I'm allowing myself to vent some of my anger (but not all, as some things are best kept quiet). There are a whole raft of current government policies that really anger me, because they are so damaging to vulnerable people and the economy:

10% tax rate

The abolition of the 10% tax rate is just plain dumb and what's even worse is the government's unwillingness to admit it that it is wrong. I've rarely seen such an abysmal performance as that given by Alistair Darling on the Andrew Marr show this morning.

Labour MPs and activists who stand up against this daft policy are the true Labour loyalists.

CGT up to 18%

Another incredibly dumb policy. Don't the fools who defend realise it is costing jobs. Small businesses are the lifeblood of the UK economy, employing more people than any other sector. The result of this policy is to kill investment and destroy jobs. The intention to hit the mega-rich private equity bosses was the right one, the implementation is idiotic.

Duty on beer

How foolish it is to think that hiking duty on beer will have any positive effect on reducing alcohol related problems in society. All it will do is further damage local pubs (small businesses) and hurt local communities.

Microsoft's dumb switch to Multimap

A long, long time ago there was a British internet mapping firm that was really innovative and I used all the time. That firm was Multimap. And then along came Google Maps and then Microsoft Live Maps and I forgot all about Multimap.

My favourite of the two was Microsoft Live Maps. When Microsoft bought Multimap I assumed it was to roll Multimap's advertisers and revenue generators into Live Maps, because Multimap was more than a bit dated, clunky and cluttered (useless, is the word I'm looking for).

So my question is what genius at Microsoft did it the wrong way round and decided to dump a brilliant product (Live Maps) and replace it with Multimap?

As dumb corporate moves go, this must be one of the dumbest.

Mike Butcher at Techcrunch has the full story all about Microsoft's disgruntled users.

There's even a Facebook group campaigning against it.

Technorati Tags: Microsoft, Live Maps, Multimap, Techcrunch, Mike Butcher

Ethics, cheer leaders and word of mouth marketing

Over on the Wolfstar blog there is quite a vigorous debate on word of mouth marketing and the ethics of marketing to young people. I've also just put up our 'blog rules' and would really welcome comments on either the youth marketing debate or the blog rules.

Technorati Tags: WOM, WOMM, word of mouth, marketing, blog rules

Who should YOU vote for London mayor

Truth is that even though I'm a political junkie I'm fed up with the level of national coverage the London mayor is getting. But this little London Vote Match quiz is still quite fun in helping you to decide who to vote for. I just wish it was available for all of the local council elections in the rest of the country, which are just as important, but get far less publicity.

Tom Watson announces Power of Information Taskforce

Excellent post on Tom Watson's blog announcing the establishment of the Power of Information Taskforce. It's chaired by Richard Allen, the former Lib Dem MP and now head of government affairs at Cisco. As Tom says "Richard has a vast breadth of knowledge in this field. He's also an all round good guy."

It's worth reading Tom's speech in full as it has quite a lot of interesting stuff for anyone involved in public relations, communications and marketing for government and other public sector organisations.

Technorati Tags: Tom Watson, Power of Information Taskforce, Richard Allen, Cisco

Is Gordon Brown the first head of government to Twitter?

Yesterday, DowningStreet started to Twitter. The bio describes it as "The official twitter channel for the Prime Minister's Office based at 10 Downing Street" and gives the web address of the official PM's site at www.pm.gov.uk.

Of course it isn't actually Gordon Brown sitting at the keyboard or tapping away on his mobile (in fact I seem to remember that when Gordon became PM he had to give up his personal mobile as all the PM's calls need to be logged).

But that's not what this should be about. The social media and social network purists will possibly criticise the move because the PM isn't properly taking part in the community. But come on, get real people. He's got a big enough job running the country.

If it is being done by someone close enough to Gordon in his office then that is good enough for me. However, at the moment you don't get that impression. The eight posts to date are incredibly dull and uninformative - even for a political junkie like me.

If this is to work then it needs to give an insight into Gordon's personality and what makes him tick. "The Prime Minister is greeting President Nicolas Sarkozy at the front door of 10 Downing Street" tells me absolutely nothing of interest.

What was Gordon thinking? What was he doing? That would make the Twitter channel work.

If it is to be a news channel then that's fine as well. But at the moment it doesn't do either very well. "No10 news: France and Britain pledge school places: The Prime Minister and French Preside... http://tinyurl.com/27sjzl" tells me nothing much.

That's probably because it is created using Twitterfeed from the PM's existing RSS feeds.

So far there are only 23 followers (it was single figures when I joined) and it is following nobody. It will be interesting to see if it does do any following. If it is a success and enough people start following then it would be unrealistic to expect real interaction and community. But, what you could do is monitor and mine the followers to glean insight into what they are talking about and therefore what matters to them. That would provide useful information as to what to Twitter about and also provides the potential for a quick, dirty and easy online focus group.

Edelman's Marshall Manson also has a post, as does Simon Dickson who alerted me to the story with his Tweet (incidentally it's hard to credit a Tweet and comment in 140 characters).

UPDATE: To be crystal clear, even though I've already said it above. I (245 followers) was NOT the first to Tweet or blog this story. That honour goes to Simon Dickson (39 followers) at 12:04 yesterday, mine was second at 13:18. It was just that mine got picked up by Marshall Manson (followers 150), which in turn was picked up by Steve Rubel (4627 followers). I think it's down to the number of followers.

UPDATE 2: CNET is now covering it as well. And as it's getting a bit of interest I've cross-posted it to the official Wolfstar blog as well.

Technorati Tags: Gordon Brown, Twitter, government, Downing Street