A PR Guy's Musings - Stuart Bruce

Leeds Loves Food off to a crackling start

Last night I had a great night out with my wife to sample the Leeds Loves Food tasting menu at The Living Room on Greek Street in the centre of Leeds. I have to admit I was a bit dubious about how well The Living Room could deliver as I’ve eaten there for lunch in the bar bit and it was great, but I was finding it hard to visualise how it could provide restaurant quality food in what’s essentially a trendy bar. I’m also not a big fan of ‘chain’ restaurants and that’s exactly what The Living Room is as there’s 14 of them all over the UK.

We started the evening with two excellent cocktails, made by a friendly and helpful bartender. Karen wanted a Passionate Fizz (funkin passion fruit and passion fruit liqueur with a hint of lemon, shaken and stirred into Duval Leroy Champagne), but no luck as the cocktail maestro was out of passion fruit. She ended up with a Strawberry Fizz, very nice, but not that different to champagne cocktails available at lots of other places. I wanted one of the selection of rather fine sounding whisky (from Scotland, note the spelling!) cocktails, but decided to help celebrate American Independence Day with a bourbon-based tipple. I was spoilt for choice with options that included a good old-fashioned Old Fashioned or a temptingly refreshing Pomegranate and Mint Julep. In the end I opted for the intriguingly named Gingerbread Manhattan (Woodford’s Reserve Kentucky whiskey stirred with gingerbread syrup, Maraschino cherry syrup, Punt Y Mes and Angostura bitters). It was very nice, but I’d have preferred a little bit more hint of ginger. All of the other flavours were pronounced, but the gingerbread syrup was so subtle I’d never have guessed it was there if it didn’t say so on the menu. Strangely delicious, but disappointing all in one glass.

Then it was upstairs to the pleasantly appointed Dining Room where we got to share a nice private booth with comfy leather benches. One of the best bits of the evening was the very friendly and attentive waiters and waitresses who provided sterling service throughout the evening. The tasting menu had a tempting array of starters. The most delicious by far were the beer battered tiger prawns with a sweet chilli sauce and wasabi. Piping hot with really crisp and light batter encasing juicy prawns. The sweet chilli dip was deliciously spicy (at most places they are usually they far too sweet) and the smudge of green wasabi delivered the knock-out punch you’d expect. The marinated Italian olives were plump, succulent and delicious. The houmous with toasted sesame seeds and grilled pitta bread was far tastier than the bland pulp that passes for houmous at far too many places.

The honey and mustard glazed baby sausages were disappointing. It’s hard to find anything else to say about them. When the centre of attraction is meant to be the sausage, you expect really good sausages. These were just bland, meaty yes, but with no distinguishing feature. With a such a bland centre piece the honey and mustard glaze couldn’t hope to add a shine. And now we come to the teriyaki chicken skewers with a satay sauce. Sounds good doesn’t it? Unfortunately a more accurate description would have been grilled chicken with a smattering of sesame seeds and some indeterminate brown sauce.

One of my standard tests in any restaurant is the ‘Can I make this at home”. The Living Room passed with flying colours for the beer battered tiger prawns as I couldn’t come close to replicating them, they were simply delicious. I could have done the olives if I could find the right deli. I could have done the houmous, but that’s only because it’s one of my specialities. The honey and mustard sausages would have been delicious if they can find a better butcher who can actually make tasty sausages! I don’t know what they were trying to do with the teriyaki chicken. How can you go wrong on such a simple dish? It should have been packed with flavour, instead you might as well as been at a fast-food joint.

So after an array of starters that pleased and satisfied more than it disappointed, it was on to the mains. The sea bass baked en papillote in a clam and shellfish bisque, with lemon roasted fennel was simply delicious. The sea bass was perfectly cooked and the bisque added an amazing kick the whole ensemble. It was Karen’s favourite dish, but she is a fish lover. I’m not a big fish fan, but still found it sublime. The miniature steak, ale and mushroom pie was perfect. Juicy, tender steak in a rich gravy, topped with a sliver of puff pastry. It was just right as part of a tasting menu. The mushroom and ricotta ravioli with parmesan sauce was a bit of a disappointment. The pasta was just a bit too heavy and therefore overwhelmed the very subtle mushroom and ricotta filling. The parmesan sauce lacked, well parmesan.

And now we come to, what was for me, la pièce de résistance - the roasted pork belly with grain mustard mash and caramelised parsnip with a red wine sauce. It normally comes on the ‘Home Comforts’ part of the standard Living Room menu, but you’d have to be a very accomplished cook to do it as well as this. The crackling was crispy and golden with just the right amount of salt, breaking off to reveal the succulent pork with just the right amount of fat. Simply splendid. Roast belly pork is always something that tempts me on a menu, but I’m often put off by the fact that it is accompanied by mashed potato. I’m not a big potato fan and can only eat mash if it is perfectly cooked – and it never is. Except on this occasion. It was delicious with just the right consistency and the perfect amount of grain mustard.

And the Caesar salad was just a nice Caesar salad. Crispy lettuce, crunchy croutons and lots of parmesan (maybe that’s why there wasn’t any in the parmesan sauce for the pasta). Just what you’d want. as a refreshing accompaniment to the rich selection of delights on offer.

And now we come to the pudding where we were encouraged by the friendly waiter to continue the theme and go for a sharing board of summer desserts... a warm chocolate and orange pudding, crème brulee, blueberry cheesecake, lemon meringue, strawberries with clotted cream and ice-cream. Oh dear. This was a massive fail on every level. The warm chocolate and orange pudding was dry and tasteless with too much of it even though it was a tiny taster size. We were warned there was no crème brulee, so we were offered extras of other items. The blueberry cheesecake was just disgusting. I’d be amazed if the pile of goo on top actually was made out of blueberries – it was simply very sweet, unidentifiable goo. The cheesecake would have disgraced the cheap and cheerful range at a supermarket. The biscuit base was soggy and the cheesecake had a fluffy, foamy texture as if it had been frozen. The lemon meringue was acceptable, nothing wondrous, but at least it was edible. And finally the strawberries with clotted cream and ice-cream. Surely you can’t go wrong? Well you can if you forget the clotted cream. The strawberries and ice-cream were nice.

Overall I’d score The Living Room 6 out of 10. It would have been 7.5 if it hadn’t been for the truly terrible desert board, which seriously let down what had been a really good meal. The only other minor criticism was that the music was just a bit too loud to enable comfortable conversation.

DISCLAIMER: We ate at The Living Room courtesy of The Living Room as part of the Leeds Loves Food festival organised by Marketing Leeds, which is a client. If you want to take part in the Leeds Loves Food Twitter competition then all you’ve got to do is tweet your 140 character restaurant review and include the hash tag #LLF. 

If you want to be a thought leader, blog don’t Twitter

Robert Scoble is one of those A-list bloggers I read because I think I should rather than because I want to – mainly because even though I like him, I don’t often agree with him!

However, this time we’re on the same page. Robert quotes Jeremiah Owyang telling him that “thought leaders should avoid spending a lot of time in Twitter or FriendFeed because that time will be mostly wasted.”

If you want to reach normal people, he argued, they know how to use Google.”

Most people use Google to find what they need to know and as Robert says Twitter search just doesn’t cut it, it’s way too difficult to find what you need, so if people miss your tweet hurtling by then that’s pretty much it. OK, you might get some fantastic re-tweets, but it still isn’t easy to find them.

If your words of wisdom were in a blog then you can still get people tweeting and retweeting your content.

What this all really means is that you need to participate everywhere that is relevant, which for me means primarily blogs and Twitter. Unlike that other early PR blogger, Steve Rubel, I won’t be shuttering my blog in favour of a lifestream anytime soon! It was Steve that told us in 2005 that PR was dead, well I’m still at it and so is he (as is Tom Murphy, another of the early public relations bloggers).

I’ve been trying to remember when I first met Robert Scoble and I think it was at this blogger dinner in 2005 at the Texas Embassy Cantina, which was also the first time I met Hugh MacLeod. Photographs courtesy of Neville Hobson (think it was the first time we met as well!)

Stuart Bruce, enjoying the hospitality at the London Geek Dinner in June 2005.

Robert Scoble and Hugh MacLeod, the ‘stars’ of the London Geek dinner in June 2005.

Citizen journalism in action, or not?

Today’s Guardian diary leads with a piece about me Twittering an indiscrete conversation I overheard on the train. It appeared to be an executive from French energy company Total talking about how Total could beat the unions at the Lindsey oil refinery.

In one respect it’s a great example of citizen journalists. Companies have to behave more responsibly because there are so many extra ‘citizen journalists’ watching what they do and ready to expose malpractice.

In reality the reason two national newspaper journalists called me for more information and the Guardian ran it as a diary story is probably because of the number of ministers, MPs, journalists and other PR people who follow me. The papers and unions would still have found out about this without social media. I’d have simply have phoned them to tip them off (waiting until I was somewhere more discrete!)

It would always have been a stupid thing to do to have such a conversation in a public environment like a train carriage (particularly in one that was almost empty and quiet). What social media means is that number of potential witnesses are far more and it is far easier for them to spread the word.

I’ve worked on issues management for client companies who are in the midst of industrial disputes, plant closures and redundancies. As a lifelong Labour Party and trade union member (Unite) I’ve found this isn’t as difficult as you would suspect and it is usually never at conflict with my beliefs. Closures and redundancies are often a necessary evil, but it’s up to the company doing it to decide if they want to do it in a moral and responsible way or an immoral and deceitful way. When I’m providing public relations consultancy it’s to help them do it right and to help ensure that corporate social responsibility is about the way they behave and not simply a publicity stunt.

Jaw jaw is always better than war war. A lesson that the management at Total would do well to learn. Total appears to have managed its relationship with employees, the unions and the media disastrously. It comes across as an arrogant, foreign owned company attacking and undermining the rights of British workers. I suspect Total isn’t as bad as it appears to be, but it’s doing a terrible job of explaining its case and indiscrete, (and one would therefore assume badly trained) executives like the two I heard don’t do anything to help its case.

Technorati Tags: PR,public relations,citizen journalism,Twitter,Guardian,Total,Lindsey refinery

Social media campaign hammers the Daily Mail

The Daily Mail is running an online poll that is shocking even by Daily Mail standards. It’s asking “Should the NHS allow gypsies to jump the queue? A Twitter campaign has sprung into action urging people to vote the right way, which means that at the moment the result is YES 93%, which given the leading question isn’t the hate filled answer the Daily Mail was looking for. I’m surprised the Mail hasn’t pulled the poll yet and it will be interesting to see how it covers the story and if rival papers pick up on it.

It’s an excellent example of just how effective a social media campaign can be.

Hugh McCloud ‘Ignore Everybody’ signed prints

To celebrate the launch of his new book ‘IGNORE EVERYBODY’, Gaping Void cartoonist and social media evangelist  Hugh McCloud has made available a limited edition collection of prints of his most popular cartoons. He’s also done a special square version of the cartoon above so that you can use it as an avatar – ideal for us public relations folk!

We need more hope and less hate to defeat the BNP

PR Week has another story on how the BNP managed to win two seats in the European parliament:

'Hope Not Hate' campaign 'did not connect' with communities

Questions have been asked about a recent UK campaign 'to counter racism and fascism' following the BNP's success in the European elections.

The Hope Not Hate campaign was founded by anti-fascist organisation Searchlight and had been worked on by Blue State Digital, the consultancy behind Barack Obama's online success.

I’m quoted:

But Stuart Bruce, MD of Wolfstar, was not convinced that YouTube attack videos and mobilising activists via the internet was an effective approach.

He said: ‘The professional classes may by motivated to go out and campaign against the BNP, but I do not think it did anything to connect directly with people in the communities being targeted by the BNP. The proportion of people that a digital campaign could reach in these communities is tiny.’

I’ve had a couple of people ask me to expand on my thoughts, so here’s the full text of what I said:

It’s probably useful background for you to know that for seven years (until 2006) I was an elected local councillor for Middleton Park in south Leeds. Middleton Park is a very white working class ward with lots of council and social housing. It was always a BNP target (it won its only first Leeds council seat in the neighbouring ward of Morley South). In the last local elections (2008) the BNP came within 49 votes of winning Middleton Park.

Personally I think one of the problems with Hope not Hate’s campaign was that it was too much hate and not enough hope. Simply attacking and demonising the BNP can actually have the opposite effect.

Look at where the BNP won its votes. It was in communities that are feeling threatened and alienated. Trying to just portray the BNP as racists isn’t enough when what the BNP is saying is resonating with people on the ground. Instead we should make more effort to understand the real despair that people feel and connect with them on a more local level.

I’m not convinced that Blue State Digital’s emphasis on tactics like YouTube attack videos and mobilising activists via the internet was the right approach. I can see how it would be successful in motivating the ‘professional classes’ to actually go out and campaign against the BNP. They might respond to YouTube videos superimposing Nick Griffin’s head onto Hitler’s body, but I don’t think it did anything to connect directly with people in the communities like the one I used to represent that are being targeted by the BNP.

According to MORI 80% of ABs have personal internet access, compared to less than 40% of DEs. The proportion of people that a digital campaign could reach in these communities is tiny.

What worked for Obama was using the internet to organise activists and get them out on the doorsteps talking to voters and delivering leaflets. You can’t just replicate that approach in the UK and expect it to work in the same way. Local communities with their own problems don’t want ‘outsiders’ coming in and telling them how they shouldn’t vote, especially not when the BNP talking to them about issues that concern them are often from their own community.

Mandelson v. Marr: Master class or disaster class – you decide

On Sunday’s Andrew Marr show I think Lord Peter Mandelson totally obliterated Marr. Mandelson was cool, calm and confident while Marr became more flustered as Mandelson continued to pick holes in Marr’s frequently inaccurate and vacuous questions.

At least that was my take on the interview. It was a master class that other politicians would do well to emulate. Mandelson didn’t evade answering questions, but also didn’t fall for any of Marr’s attempts to trip him up.

Lewis PR’s David Brown disagrees and thinks it was “an example of all that can go wrong when media training tactics are taken to an extreme.” In the comments Edelman’s David Brain says: “I could not disagree more. I thought he handled Marr brilliantly and Marr was left at the end floundering around trying to back up his own use of rumours and interrupting Mandy when he was answering. I can't think of any other politician who could have handled that situation with such skill.”

Hotwire/33Digital’s Drew Benvie thinks it was “Essential viewing: how to handle an interview under fire. The Mandelson Vs Marr show.”

If you’re in public relations and didn’t see it I’d definitely recommend watching it (YouTube videos below). So what did you think? Vote in the poll below:

Technorati Tags: Labour Party,Peter Mandelson,Andrew Marr,PR,public relations

Time magazine: How Twitter will change the way we live

In May 2005 Business Week ran a front cover that declared “Blogs will change your business”, the June 15, 2009 edition of Twitter makes the even bolder claim “How Twitter will change the way we live”.

      

As someone who started blogging at the start of 2003 the Business Week article was a tipping point. It was when I began to get approaches from global PR firms and their clients eager to learn about how social media would impact on their work. I first spoke at a social media conference in November 2005 (organised by Don’t Panic and Philip Young at the University of Sunderland).

I originally started blogging as a local councillor, and I’d love to be able to claim it was that as a public relations professional I’d had some great insight as to how social media would disrupt traditional media and communications channels. But it was nothing so profound, it was simply that I thought doing a blog would be a lot easier than maintaining my councillor website (which forced me to try and understand things like FTP and HTML). It was a lot easier, but more importantly I very quickly found that it was actually a lot better. Suddenly I was able to have conversations and maintain relationships with key stakeholders in my ward far better than I had before. It was only about a month later I realised it could also have enormous potential for me as a public relations professional.

When Business Week ran its “Blogs will change your business” cover blogs were at the peak of inflated expectation on the Gartner hype cycle. As the work we’re doing at Wolfstar demonstrates we’ve now reached the slope of enlightenment. The Time front cover asking “How Twitter will change the way we live” is another indication that micro-blogging or Twitter is at the peak of inflated expectation.

If you’d like to see some case studies demonstrating real social media success for businesses in the UK and globally then give me a call on +44 (0)845 838 7282.

Technorati Tags: Time,BusinessWeek,Twitter,blogs,Wolfstar,public relations,PR

Behind the scenes shots from Sony Ericsson’s GreenHeart launch

Sony Ericsson announces new GreenHeart strategy in live Kyte webcast today

Today Sony Ericsson is announcing GreenHeart, which represents its commitment to bring to market more environmentally friendly products. It will be announcing more details in a live webcast in the UK at 13:00 (GMT+1) today (for early bird’s that 5:00 PDT in San Francisco, the more realistic 8:00 EDT in New York, 14:00 CEST in Paris, 22:00 EST in Melbourne – you can see your local time here).

There are several ways for you to take part:

We’re using Kyte to live stream the webcast on the Sony Ericsson GreenHeart website. You can use Kyte’s live chat facility to ask questions and the panel will answer as many as they can. If you want to be more involved then you can even embed Sony Ericsson’s Kyte channel on your own blog, website Facebook etc (just click on Get & Share).

 

You can follow GreenHeart on Twitter, we’ll be tweeting the highlights of the webcast and you can also tweet your questions and comments to @SEGreenHeart or use the hashtag #greenheart.

Finally, as you’d expect from a mobile phone company, you can also take part by phone using Ipadio! Just call +44 20 3384 2144 (it’s a standard UK number so if you’re calling from outside the UK, there may be extra charges) and enter the pin number 2344. You’ll then be streamed live onto the Sony Ericsson GreenHeart website.

Usual disclaimer, Sony Ericsson is a client of Wolfstar.

Technorati Tags: Sony Ericsson,GreenHeart,Wolfstar,public relations,PR,social media,Kyte,ipadio,Twitter