A hat tip to Column Five for creating this info graphic.

It’s always nice to feel appreciated. And, with a host of professional accolades now proudly hanging from our Quay Street HQ walls, it’s safe to say the work of staff here at this particular Manchester PR firm has been gaining some serious recognition of late.

Last Thursday- February 28th- saw our company claim another two trophies, this time during 2013′s Golden Hedgehog Awards ceremony, which was held at the Etihad Stadium in East Manchester. Thanks to Nissan Shows It Cares we picked up Consumer PR Campaign of the Year, meanwhile endeavours elsewhere were deemed good enough to win the coveted title of Small Agency of the Year, against some truly worthy and impressive contenders. Needless to say then, it’s certainly put a tangible spring in our step, which is fitting really, considering March’s arrival and the sudden onset of warmer weather. Here are a few more details on this most recent success story…

Small Agency of the Year

Winner: Smoking Gun PR

Nominees: iseepr / JAMpr / Refresh PR

Consumer PR Campaign of the Year

Winner: Smoking Gun PR – Nissan Shows It Cares

Nominees: Approach PR – Saving Ilkley Carnival! / Weber Shandwick Manchester & Hybu Cig Cymru (HCC) – Welsh Lamb’s Quality Time On-Pack Promo

Here’s the slides:

This week’s infographic shows the difference between user and business activity on five of the key social networks and shows some clear opportunities for the future.

A hat tip to Ubervu for creating this infographic.

Thought for the week

“Google’s unfair conduct threatened to block [US consumer] access to laptops, smartphones, tablets and gaming systems or raise their prices which would have been passed on to consumers — for example an iPad, BlackBerry smartphones are all under threat if this practice continued.“ Jon Liebowitz, Director of the Federal Trade Committee, on Google’s use of ‘standards-essential patents’ to force rivals into paying a MMI license fee, after the search giant was exonerated of biasing results in favour of its own products following a U.S. investigation.

Weekly high

Hardly a PR stunt proper, we can only imagine how delighted the eBay bosses where to learn the trading site had been inundated with unwanted, and in many instanced unopened Christmas presents in the wake of December 25th. Cue countless column inches in many of Britain’s best selling newspapers and most read online outlets, which is a success story from our perspective.

Unwanted and unopened Christmas presents give eBay a post-Yuletide PR boost. Image source: eBay

Weekly low

Cinemark Aurora will soon re-open its doors after a forced closure following The Dark Knight Rises shootings of last year, in which members of the audience were gunned down during the film. Insensitive, and tantamount to unforgivable, brains in the marketing department decided it best to invite the friends and families of those that lost their lives to the launch event- ‘an evening of remembrance followed by a movie’. Shocking.

Aurora Cinemark manages a truly insensitive PR disaster by inviting families of the shooting victims to the cinema’s re-launch. Image source: Sourcefednews

Things that might happen next week…

Speculation as to whether we are already falling back into another recession could well mount following the first fall in service sector activity in 24 months, the nominations for this year’s American Academy Awards- AKA The Oscars- will be announced (on Thursday January 10th), meanwhile the behaviour of Italian football fans is likely to fall under scrutiny following the abandonment of a Milan friendly as a result of racist chants.

Dates for your diary

Tuesday 8th January; Britons Protection Pub, Manchester; Social Media Cafe Meetup- The first in 2013′s series of monthly socmedia related meetings, with anyone involved in marketing, public relations, and the creative industries more than welcome to join.

Tuesday 8th January, MMU New Business School, Manchester; 1001 Social Media Marketing Tools You Must Use Before You Die; Despite the rather pained title, attendees at this online-focused seminar will certainly walk away better educated in the world of web promotion.

Wednesday 9th January, Town Hall, Leeds; Bettakultcha; An evening of five-minute stories, each presented by a different person with the aid of (apparently) ‘interesting slides’, along with drinks, music, and even a little comedy to boot.

If there is a success story, blunder, or news event you’d like to see included email helloATsmokinggun.co.uk or tweet using #blaggersblog. Happy Friday!

A hat tip to twilio for creating the infographic

A hat tip to Brafton.com for creating the infographic

This year’s has met with nearly universal approval in Smoking Gun HQ and today we were tickled pink to see this meme break in spoof honour. Watch until the end and enjoy!

Thought for the week

“Four more years”. Barack Obama’s post election victory tweet – now the most popular tweet of all time.

Worth the paper it’s printed on

Light news success stories in the papers this week included…

… General fodder about Kim Kardashian made the headlines 31 times beating expenses shame Labour MP Denis MacShane who made the headlines 29 times.

… Self promotion queen Rhianna found herself at the centre of 34 news stories this week vs just one story on Equalities minister Helen Grat who altered an employment contract to deny her aide statutory sick pay ‘to save tax payers money’

… Tabloid favourite Chery Cole racked up 30 articles, 22 more than the 8 pieces found about the end of the Miners’ industrial action in South Africa which left 47 people dead

(Source: Journalisted)

Weekly high

Following news this week that Comet had gone into administration, Dixons hit the headlines with some Christmas cheer by announcing that it has delayed its annual festive recruitment drive to offer jobs to the stricken stores’ workers.

Dixons is recruiting 3,000 Christmas staff and has delayed the process by a week to allow Comet workers the chance to apply.

Weekly low

Channel 4 were forced to issue an apology this week after removing the word ‘gay’ from an episode of the Simpsons.

The word was censored during a re-run broadcast on Sunday afternoon after the broadcaster deemed that it was not suitable for a daytime audience.

Channel 4 explained the censorship as a ‘mistake by an overly cautious compliance checker.’

Things that might happen this week …

The world premiere of the last film in the Twilight franchise will take place in LA. Dozens of Twihard fans have already set up camp, with 2,200 people from across the world registered to set up home outside the downtown LA theatre ahead of the screening. Special activities, including a marathon screening of the four previous films, have been laid on to help pass the time.

Dates for your diary

Tuesday 13th November, Manchester – Northern Soho Networking Event @ Bohemia Bar; Come and get to know Manchester’s finest creatives including a speed networking session.

Friday 16th November, Manchester – Manchester Hackathon @ MadLab; FutureEverything, Open Data Manchester and Manchester City Council are looking for experts and innovators to hack, code, programme and experiment with the city’s sets of open data to build new applications and develop future services.

If there is a success story, blunder, or tweeting town you’d like to see included email helloATsmokinggun.co.uk or tweet using #blaggersblog. Happy Friday!

It’s no easy thing, landing a role you enjoy with an agreeable firm, least of all with the current lack of available positions being advertised. As the cliche goes, standing out from the crowd is the only sure fire way to get yourself an interview, let alone hired, but now more than ever this is becoming difficult to achieve.

To quote another statement from someone or other: “everything that can be done is being done, or has been done.” Of course that’s spurious at best, but there’s a degree of truth to the statement, albeit served with too much pessimism. Because, in a world of widespread access to advanced technology and instant communication, creating something genuinely unique is far from easy. Just think of the last time you stumbled on a website that lived up to its promise of difference.

It’s not impossible, mind, as Smoking Gun’s recent Account Executive recruit Anne-Marie Bailey proved this year when she blogged (not blagged) her way into a job here at our fine Quay Street office. An MA student studying Public Relations at the University of Sunderland, we were blown away by her approach to one particular assignment, specifically the creation and maintenance of a blog.

Raising the Profile was born, wherein another age old mantra was followed as Anne-Marie wrote about what she knew- in this instance getting to grips with the PR world as a further education student. Better yet, she then added to this by following the second of our key blogging rules, ensuring that the information posted was informative, well written, and useful for visitors.

Interviews with experienced PR practitioners, who offered advice on finding work, news stories and opinion pieces all helped build a respectable following of likeminded young hopefuls. As did Twitter conversations with experts, and the subsequent analysis, again with the focus being on a specific target audience, namely aspiring academics in the discipline.

Of course, the CIPR’s recommendation helped too, and moreover points to the quality of Anne-Marie’s work; the reason for our decision to enlist her skills. To those looking for a foot in the door of this often appealing, unarguably demanding sector the message is simple, then. Be prepared to work hard, not to mention think professionally for a shot at a desk, and be willing to go that extra mile in order to impress. After all, public relations is an industry that relies on its practitioners’ ability to catch the eye, and leave an unforgettable first impression.