Earlier this month Kate and I attended a seminar on social networking at the CIPR, hosted by ex Telegraph journalist Alex Singleton.

The focus was all about tapping into the potential of social media to drive real engagement with your company, product or brand.

We learnt a lot on the day, but perhaps the most interesting nugget of advice, reiterated by all of the speakers on the day, was this: social media should be used to build relationships with customers and potential customers – NOT to try and sell them stuff.

This seemed to make sense – after all, who logs in to Facebook to be pitched at?

Other advice was that conversation is really important on social media: in other words, asking and answering questions is a great way of engaging people – and giving something back.

‘Participate only where you can add value’ was another key point – don’t witter on for the sake of it, or people will get tired of you.

And on that note, I’m off...

So the news says: “UK economy shrinks by 0.2%”; “Are we going back into recession?”; “Double-dip recession fears as economy shrinks”; “IMF warns of global slump”. Not only is January statistically the gloomiest month, but now we’ve got yet more ominous news shouting at us from every newspaper and television screen.

Yes, of course it is vital to keep up-to-date with the news (particularly in this profession...), but there comes a point when constant media negativity can take its toll. It can be hard to stay positive and look to the future when all around us is, we are led to believe, going to the dogs – and when we’re reminded of this every hour of the day.

This barrage of constant negative news is a modern phenomenon. As the world has switched on to technology, news is all of a sudden ubiquitous where it was once something accessed in discrete amounts – and by people who actively sought it. With news bulletins now screaming out at us from all directions, sometimes it can feel harder to avoid the news than to hear it. And there are real studies into the toll that sustained bad news can have on your health – there’s a fantastic article by Mark Sisson on the topic here*.

So how to temper the cloud of gloom that comes with the half-hourly death-knell bulletins? C. John Sommerville, author of How the News Makes Us Dumb: the Death of Wisdom in an Information Society, suggests that spending less time staying on top of each trivial update and devoting more time to discussing, reflecting, and thoughtfully acting on the major issues and events that we feel require our attention could be the healthier solution.

And once in a while, it can’t do any harm to switch off that television.

*I’m aware that including this link might seem hypocritical, but the article has positive intentions - really!

In the loop – or out of control?

You may have been following the Leveson enquiry into phone hacking with as much interest as I have. In reading the coverage, I couldn’t help but be reminded of the last scandal involving the press that was discussed in these very pages – that of the superinjunctions.


The superinjunctions were about paying to limit the freedom of the press in revealing information. On the other side of the coin, the phone hacking scandal is a lesson in what happens when press ‘freedom’ is taken to the extreme, and lives are intruded upon in the most intimate and damaging ways.


As we watch public figure after public figure reveal their nightmares at the hands of prying reporters, one thing is clear – the ethics around the sharing of information are all blurred at the moment. No, we cannot allow journalists to pry into people’s privacy, but on the other hand, if all journalists have to be regulated, how many government scandals and issues with real public significance could be muffled and kept out of the news?


It is clear that some kind of balance needs to be established regarding information-sharing. But in a world with a genuine appetite for gossip –evidenced by the fact that, as the Salix crew discovered at a briefing a couple of weeks ago, the Daily Mail website is the second most viewed in the United States –how is this balanced achieved without causing irrevocable damage to journalism as an industry?

What’s on the box?

I was struck by this story on BBC News this morning.  According to a recent US study, nutrition information labels on food packaging are not easily visible, and should ideally be placed in the centre of labels rather than on the sides or at the back. According to University of Minnesota scholars, “prominently positioning key nutrients, and labels themselves, could substantially impact on public health."

What struck me most about this is the inference that, in order to take any notice of information that could potentially “substantially impact” on our lives, it has to be put, literally, right in front of our faces. Are we really so lazy and incompetent that we can’t muster up the energy to turn over that box of Frosties and have a quick look? Have things got that bad? Because the implication is that they have.

But I’m not sure that this is true. I think a very large proportion of the population now understand the function and purpose of nutrition information labels. The fact is, though, that examining them can be mighty depressing, not least because they reveal, in stark detail, the array of rubbish that goes in to the food a lot of us eat on a regular basis. This is the problem. We’re not stupid, we’re shielding ourselves from reality (even if you stuck a gigantic flashing, dancing fluorescent nutrition information sticker  with sound effects  on my daily packet of Space Invaders I would probably ignore it. Ignorance is bliss). It’s only once we make the decision to face up to exactly what we’re eating that we’ll start taking more responsibility for our nutrition – and no amount of singing and dancing will achieve that.


Flo Wales Bonner

Last week, I had the privilege of attending my first ever London Fashion Week catwalk show (daaahling).

It was the show of up and coming menswear designer Paul Bench whose creations, unlike his name, were far from mundane.  Think indecently short shorts, spray-painted shirts and male romper suits, all modelled by skulking vampire-pale teens with unwashed hair and you’ll start to get the picture.

Now, fashion is a bit like marmite. There are those, like me, that love it. And there are those that look upon it a bit less favourably. This post is written in response to Angus’ from earlier this year (see here). I do absolutely agree that the media-fuelled obsession with being seen in the very latest designer gear borders on obscene, and is breeding a dangerous consumerism that always wants more, new, and now.

However, that is where our opinions part ways. Because I disagree that fashion is ‘vacuous’, a word which is defined as ‘mindless’ or ‘empty’. Those who have read up on or studied fashion will know that a huge amount of thought  and research goes into designing a collection. Each season, the fashion world presents a selection of garments that pull together a huge array of cultural, literary, artistic and historical references. True, the garments that result are rarely practical (tried going to the loo in a onesie?), and rarer still are they affordable. But I’m one of those who consider fashion to be a high art, not least because it has the capacity to shock, mock and get us talking – as the best art does.

A romper suit is, I am sure, not going to be on the top of most men's Christmas lists this year. But if the sight of one lurching down a catwalk can push boundaries enough to get the audience thinking – even the littlest bit – about our preconceptions about what people should wear (why SHOULDN’T men wear babygrows?), it’s got to be a good thing.

Flo Wales Bonner

View from the fringe: The London riots

People often talk about motherhood being like a bubble with nappy changing, burping, feeding and sleeping often being the most important things to consume your day. Then something happens so shocking that suddenly the bubble bursts and the huge tidal wave of Life sweeps in.

As a former PR practitioner and first time mum of a nine week-old, I miss being abreast of the news, and to date, not knowing the latest machinations of the hacking scandal or grumbles about more 'cuts' has hardly impacted me at all. So I was dumbstruck when a chance glance at BBC Breakfast flashed images of the riots across London to break my otherwise sedate morning routine.

The riots were all the talk at the weekly bumps and babes class, in fact, it was a matter of some comical chatter. "We should firebomb Jo Jo Maman Bebe and steal all their yummy clothes", piped up one mum. "We could disguise ourselves with muslin cloths"', added another. "Yes", I eagerly added, they could call us the 'Muslin Mob'!" A good five minutes was spent debating all the mother-based shops we could steal from. Then someone mentioned that there had been riots in Slough too, just a few miles away from where I live.

As I returned home, I returned with an increasing sense of foreboding. The news continued to carry worrying stories of further injuries, death and violence. Being a history buff, I started to over dramatise and feel like I was on the fringe of some major historical event.

I then recalled the day of the 7/7 bombings. Living and working in London at the time, I remember being shocked but recall grumbling more about the 6 mile walk home. But life carried on, and somehow being in the midst of everything made it less scary and more manageable.

Away from work and now living in the provinces, the events in London appeared terrifying and I considered how, in my new circumstances, it might be impossible to gain any perspective at all. As we all know, the media love to capitalise a crisis and word of mouth suffers from the even greater challenge of inaccuracy (there weren't any riots in Slough at all).

There is some sick allure to getting wrapped up in the news as the drama unfolds. But equally, there's also an argument for trying to maintain a sensible distance and just concentrate on raising my son.

I don't think I know yet which way the pendulum will swing but I do know that in the least, I'll never miss checking in with the news agenda again.


Sam Currie

Do we share too much?

I went to Tracey Emin’s Love is What You Want exhibition at the Hayward Gallery last week, and I was shocked. It wasn’t the explicit stories she had stitched into quilts that shocked me. Or the pieces that incorporated her own blood. Or even the video that charted her shady exploits in Margate’s dark alleyways. What really shocked me was the air of desperation exhaled by Emin’s work – to be seen, to be heard, to be appreciated.

The raw candour of her pieces displayed an obsession with communication – an unhealthy one, in my opinion. I totally understand Emin’s commercial success, though – the woman is a personification of the times. The fragments of stories, curses, confused exclamations stitched onto the huge wall hangings around the exhibition could have been the twitterfeed of an overzealous user. An account of her trip to the doctor for a termination, the script for a documentary. The vast album of photographs of Emin trying on her friends’ clothes would not have looked out of place on Facebook. All in all, though, it did not make for a healthy picture – rather, it revealed an addiction to sharing with an iron grip.

The exhibition got me thinking: is it time we weaned ourselves off airing our dirty laundry in the public sphere? Or is it time, conversely, that we stopped taking an interest in each other’s dirty laundry? Or are we, as a society, too far gone to break this most engrossing of addictions?


Flo Wales Bonner