As a company, we each donated a home-made baked delight and spent our lunch money tasting all the pleasures produced. In total we raised £220 for the charity, which helps people living incredibly tough lives, both at home in the UK and across the world’s poorest countries.

Whilst we try to fight our sugar downer this afternoon, at least we can all rest assured that stuffing our faces this lunch time actually went to a good cause for once!

Shout outs go to today’s most olympic competitors and winners of the bake sale:

• Best tray bake – Tim’s brownies
• Best savoury bread – Lara’s cheese and leek muffins
• Best small cake – Louise’s jam tarts
• Best large cake – Philippe’s Guinness cake
• Best savoury pastry – Lottie’s samosas

… maybe next year for me.

When researching the pros and cons of starting a career in PR, there are many information sources which highlight the difficulties of taking on a junior role in the industry. These include having to manage a never-ending to-do list, being stressed and fatigued and the need to be competent enough to prioritise many requests, multi-tasking your way through most days.

Although these pressure points can come across as a negative side to PR for anyone looking to get into the industry, they are also what make this career choice enjoyably challenging and the results are so much more rewarding when you have worked hard to achieve them.

Recently, I joined the Consumer team at the premiere of Barbie: A Mermaid’s Tale 2. As I was never ‘one of those children’ who cut their doll’s hair, pulled off their heads or left them in the garden for the dog to bring in, I was what they call a ‘pro’ at Barbie maintenance. I was beyond excited to be on-site for the premiere to witness the glitz, the glam and the glitter.

And never have I been witness to so much pink than at the Vue Cinema, Leicester Square, in our activity room when over 100 competition winners, dressed to the nines in their most sparkly outfits, came face to face with Barbie herself.

As a team we worked non-stop from managing the door in the freezing cold, to colour-coding an entire cinema and trying to fine-tune walkie-talkies – technology has never been my strong point! A particular highlight was running the wrong way down an escalator having realised it had changed direction whilst mid-pursuit for fizzy drinks for VIPs.

You would think that all the running around would take the shine off working at a star-studded event, but actually it makes the job so worthwhile not only when you achieve great media coverage butalso when (in true Consolidated PR style) you can sit down with the team at the end of the day over a bottle or two of wine and know you’ve done a great job.

After reading up on the latest technology developments to come out of CES 2012, it’s safe to say that there are some truly incredible technologies to appear over the next few years. From 4mm thin TV sets to the latest in laptop killing tablets, smart/internet connected TVs and even a way to make your smartphone almost indestructible (well, waterproof at the very least…)

Reading all of this it’s very easy to get caught up in the whole ‘wow’ factor, but if you look a little bit deeper our need to get our hands on the latest all singing all dancing gadget gives an insight into a future that is more a cause for concern than a reason to say ‘wow’.

Already it’s hard, no, almost impossible for us go a day without checking our smartphones for some form of communication; be it a text, email, tweet, post or BBM. Our obsession with phones is so strong that researchers have come to the conclusion that we invent “phantom” vibrations hoping that we have a message; and if you think about it it’s hard to deny that you’ve ever experienced such “phantom” vibrations.

If you think about the last time you met a group of friends for coffee or for dinner, the first thing at least one person present will do is place their phone on the table occasionally checking for messages. I find this infuriating and unbelievably rude, yet if I think about it it’s hard to deny that we all do this from time to time. Thankfully I’m not alone in this as I recently came across an entertaining dinner game I suggest you play the next time you find yourself in this scenario. Next time you meet with a friend for a drink put your phone in the middle of the table, the first to ‘blink’ by checking their phone picks up the bill. Simple really.

But it’s not just smartphones that are having a slightly worrying effect on the way we communicate with each other. I recently read that the TV remote is soon to become obsolete as TVs become so smart that all we need to do to change channel is talk to them. Our obsession with the internet is also something bordering on unhealthy, brain scans of so-called “internet addicts” show similar results to those of alcohol and cocaine addicts!

Racking my brain to find to come up with a comparison (and trying to avoid the ‘machines taking over the world’ cliché) for this potential future, I found one in an unlikely place; Pixar’s Wall.E. Before you laugh think about it, a future of humans so reliant on technology they’ve become hugely obese and detached from all forms of human contact; doesn’t seem so far fetched anymore does it. I’m not saying Siri is going to try to kill you, but don’t be surprised if it starts telling you what to do.

So what can we do to avoid this grim vision of the future? Simple, technology is fantastic and has all sorts of weird and wonderful uses but it doesn’t have to takeover everything you do.  At the end of the day nothing beats a face to face conversation; you are human after all.

The moment I wake up to church bells emanating from my iPhone, to the moment I peer back at the same clock come half-five, commuting infests my mind like food at lunchtime or racism at a football game.

No one likes the commute in either direction, but it is a necessary evil amongst all the wonderful things our day usually brings. To think we have to pay for the privilege is truly the biggest kick in the face any reasonable government could ever inflict upon us.

In these austere times the top-brass think it only sensible to raise the TFL fares to unfriendly proportions, causing us to wrestle with the idea that maybe, just maybe, we should cycle… or move closer to work… or, God-forbid, walk.

Despite trying to sew up our pockets to stop our salary cascading out on to the train floor, it seems it’s being fiendishly unpicked. With fare rates on the way up, the unfair increase could reach an earth shattering 11 percent this year alone. Boris Johnson blubbers it’s needed for transport upgrades and Ken Livingston, pining for power, promises to upgrade while also cutting travel costs significantly. Someone’s lying. While Cameron and Miliband have been fighting it out at Westminster over who really cares about the commuter enough to actually help them, besides just saying it out loud.

Broken escalators, limited gate access and leaking station roofs suggest that despite all the rhetoric perhaps that money is not getting through. And we need to see the improvements if we are to absorb this right hook on the wallet.

Still, we have those 7 new Boris buses to look forward to, despite their teething problems.
With their bright red paint and open-backed rear, we have easy access to fall out after we’ve paid our fare… a delightful by-product to reduce the overcrowding on the transport network.

We ride these commuter routes not uttering a sentence to our floor-sharing brothers and sisters; a real-life Facebook if you like. With ‘pokes’ born from shoves and nudges from elbows and knees, our unimpressed bodies de-friend the person immediately. The evil commute is a worryingly similar pastime we all have to tackle and hopefully, despite all its throbbing pain and forced community spirit, we can share a little moment of solidarity together.

Let’s clink overpriced Oyster cards for tomorrow morning.

Last week I noticed a friend tweeting his surprise at witnessing a passenger thank a bus driver when getting off at his stop, and this got me thinking. Even though politeness and common courtesy come as second nature to a number of us, they seem long forgotten virtues to the majority of Londoners…

I’ll be the first to admit that the morning commute in London isn’t exactly the sort of thing to inspire politeness; after all I’d struggle to think of anyone who’d prefer to be wedged onto a cramped, overheated and frequently strange smelling tube carriage rather than tucked up in their bed first thing in the morning.

But the levels of ignorance and rudeness you see on a daily basis travelling in London go far beyond a case of early morning grumpiness. Whether it be those who insist on wearing their oversized rucksacks in what I can only imagine is an transport based interpretation of skittles, or those who barge their way onto a carriage regardless of whether anyone has got off or whether there is even any space left. Common sense seems to be something left behind as soon we take that first step underground.

Those of us the right side of 25 are often told how it’s all our fault, that we’re the generation that manners forgot. But as troubling as some sections of the so-called “ASBO” generation are, the decline showing a little common courtesy can’t be solved by playing the blame game; after all the worst example of such behaviour I’ve witnessed came when a middle-aged man refused point-blank to give up his seat on the Tube to a heavily pregnant woman.

Another argument is that with the rise of social media we’ve lost touch when it comes to dealing with other people face to face, but while it’s undeniable that social media has had a major effect on the way we socialise and engage with each other, we can’t just blame Twitter for the lack of respect people show each other. After all, the organised clean-ups and fundraising for victims of the London riots could not have taken place without the inherent altruism and goodwill that social media brings out in so many people.

The fact remains though that it shouldn’t take an outbreak of feral violence and looting for a nation to show its true colours, and with the eyes (and in many cases feet) of the world descending on London for the Olympics this year we have a chance to show that we’re not the rude and miserable bunch so many see us to be. So my message to Londoners is this. A little common courtesy costs nothing and after all it might just make you feel a little bit better about yourself. And you never know, someone might just return the favour.

Quietly impressed with Stuart Lancaster

We were quietly impressed with two sports teams this week and less impressed with another.

The England cricket team’s media handling went awry in India last Autumn. Graeme Swann decided to launch his autobiography just before the tour by rubbishing star player Kevin Pietersen’s captaincy stint in pursuit of headlines. As Swann is by far the best copy in the sport already, it was hardly necessary and overshadowed the tour preamble. How that one got through is anyone’s guess. The team were then soundly beaten in just about every game on the tour. We doubt the two are causally related… well not totally… but it can’t have helped things in the dressing room.

So it was good to see skipper Andrew Strauss on the back pages this week neatly diffusing tensions ahead of the team’s series againstPakistan. As you will know, three Pakistan internationals are in prison for match fixing offences (in games against England) at the moment and the sides don’t have a great working relationship down the years so it was refreshing to see him clearly setting out the side’s intention to build bridges and concentrate on the cricket.

Similarly temporary England rugby coach Stuart Lancaster has hit the headlines this week. You will remember that England’s world cup ended with a scrum of journalists writing up stories of ill discipline and dodgy ethics. So the new man scores PR gold at the first opportunity by dumping drink-drive half back Danny Care from his Six Nations squad in a canny bit of internal comms which sends a message to all concerned that ill-discipline will not be tolerated. We’re waiting to see whether Chris Ashton scores with “that” swallow dive as the ultimate leadership test for Lancaster…

But in the week that two individuals were jailed for the murder of Stephen Lawrence, Liverpool Football Club is still making a complete mess of its comms over the Suarez racism case. We aren’t equating the two of course but if there was ever a week NOT to be equivocating about what does and doesn’t constitute racism, this is it. Our advice? Stop digging a hole. Apologise, mean it, get some training and move on. Drop the shovel and run.

And what better way to welcome in the New Year than with the ‘Absolutely Fabulous‘ Patsy and Eddy returning to our screens to show us just how the media world has evolved since their first appearance in 1992… Well, their flamboyant frivolousness remains still as outrageous as ever before, but that’s the way we know and love them.
In actual fact, Eddy’s PR ‘career’ instructing her assistant to twitter her favourite cheese to be seen as hip and happening is a world away from the PR industry I have witnessed (though maybe that’s because I’m still a junior member of the team!) In actual fact, PR is a real-life and caffeine-dependant ‘busy busy busy’ industry which contributed £7.5bn to the economy in 2011 according to a recent PR Census.

In addition to light-hearted social networking, Ab Fab has brought the series into the 21st Century through the introduction of interns… although the job role is pretty non-stop and entails assisting all members of a team, running out for your boss’s cigarettes does not come as standard in the list of company duties. More temptingly, 2012 will witness the launch of 600 PR apprenticeships starting over the next three years due to a new £1.2million scheme supported by the PRCA. This initiative ties in with the current climate of students trying to find a way into a career without the help of University. For college leavers, this could be a brilliant way to not only beat uni fees but to super power their way up the PR ladder, ultimately being more employable in later years due to their experience and knowledge of the industry than future graduates .

So while Patsy and Eddy are off for ‘a little mosey down Bond Street, a little sniff around Gucci, sidle up to Ralph Lauren, pass through Browns and on to Quags for a light lunch’, we are looking forward to getting stuck into an absolutely fabulous 2012!

As the majority of the UK’s desk-bound population comes to terms with staring at terminals again for as long as they’re in work, there aren’t many reasons to be cheerful in our media today. During the break the messages that did cut through the thick miasma of our feverish holiday cabins were pretty stark.

To select a few from memory: all diets are rubbish apart from ones where you control the calories you put in and increase the exercise you do. There’s no point giving up booze in January if you aren’t prepared to give it up for three days each week for the rest of the year. Family budgets are going to be stretched even further this year. Commuters must pay a higher proportion of the price of having a rail network as the Government can’t afford to. The economy is doomed and the public will have to accept further cuts in Government spending. We’re heading for a recession. The global economy is heading for recession.

The key message behind all of this? There’s no quick fix. Don’t expect the good times to come back any time soon.

2012 has already been written off by many commentators as a year we just need to get through. It’s a waste of a year. Three hundred and sixty-two days to go and there’s no hope. Wish it away and hope for better from next year. Cut back. Trim excess spending. Turn your cupboard space to storage of tinned foods and ammunition.

So used are we to hearing Government ministers, business folk and media commentators pushing this messaging out that we’ve almost become inured to it. CEOs with problem balance sheets aren’t going to pass up the opportunity to blame the external environment. And people are no longer shocked.

Which leaves all of us as business people and as consumers in a bit of a bind. The key thing that the vast majority of businesses need – whether they are selling to consumers or other businesses, is a sense of confidence. Confidence that folk will want to buy stuff. Confidence that there will be markets for products and services. Confidence that we should be employing others. Confidence that it’s okay to spend again. Confidence that the Government isn’t lining up a new raid on our disposable income.

If the political message we have to stomach is that the Government needs to cut more and spend less, it needs us punch drunk and out on our feet so that we carry on accepting it. So you can bet that there will be no relaxation, no let up in the deluge of bad news. Which in turn will prompt more caution from consumers and businesses and dry up investment.

Which places the ball of trying to create some form of confidence firmly in the court of private companies. And when it comes to their public utterances, in the hands of communication professionals. Which presents us with a problem. If the media aren’t interested in positive stories we’ll need to be extremely creative to get any such message across.

But unless we start now, the prophecies for 2012 will become self-fulfilling. The zeitgeist will continue to be that in every area of our lives there will be no quick fix, nothing will come for free and we’ll all have to pay more for everything. So that’s my New Year’s Resolution. Find the positive story, back it up with as much evidence as can be found and get pushing it. It’s not in any of our interests to talk things down.

So North Korean leader Kim Jong-il was sick after all and has now officially passed to the other side… and no, this does not mean South Korea.

The well-known, and incredibly short, tyrant had aspirations to become a film-director as a child, but instead became a dictator. Ruling this distinctly underdeveloped state and keeping its secrets intact proved his piece de resistance. In fact, no one has access to the internet in North Korea so I am safe in the knowledge I can spout what I want without fear of being reprimanded by the communist machine.

Locking all borders to the outside world North Korea effectively crippled their economy, reducing its own people to a basic, often poverty stricken life. Though it cannot be stated as gospel, rumours are rife that Kim essentially allowed millions of North Koreans to die of starvation and hardship.

Images were beamed around the world of mass hysteria and balling eyes of sobbing supporters. It was quite a shock to see so many adults crying.

The wider world knows little about the repressed region, yet they still hit the top spot in the world’s most corrupt country stakes according to the Corruption index 2011.
But fear not…they hit the heights as the second happiest state just losing out to a smiling China and edging out a late push from beaming Cuba and grinning Iran, according to the joy index anyway. With the ‘American Empire’ coming in a lowly 152nd, it can only point to some bias from the authors; the North Koreans.

This North Korean Truman show – with inhabitants scrubbing streets with brushes, cutting roadside grass with scissors and worshipping a khaki-wearing, platform shoe-sporting star of Team America: World Police – has hopefully changed for the better. The voyeuristic media have consistently peered inside this country’s windows and the residents living in this Eden project bubble have not looked out, blindly unaware.

Westerners really are a nosey bunch.

To think we have evolved from on-the-beat journalism to the tweeting of short anecdotes via our mobile phone has firmly left North Korean residents in the social media dark. The media-oblivious immigrants, who venture beyond its boundary and enter the technology prominent state of South Korea, spend months in special government schools with one sole goal… to learn the workings of the 21st Century.
Oh how they have a long way to catch up.

With the ‘Great Successor’ Kim Jong-un ready and waiting to take the reigns of the labouring country, the world is watching to see what happens in the next chapter of this North Korean closed book…

Well, Christmas party season is here. We can hear them outside our office windows in Covent Garden as the afternoon sets in. We’ve got ours coming up next week and, in full Christmas mode, even have the carols playing on the office radio.

Last week our client, American Express, held a Personal Finance media Christmas party for the Amex Platinum Cashback Credit Card. The event was a massive success with 50 guests sprinkled around Christmas gift-making tables and sipping on Platinum Cashback Credit Card cocktails. The party was held inside Wellington Arch, a heritage listed venue (so no red wine on the balcony!) which was transformed into a purple and platinum heaven for the night.

One of the highlights of the evening was the chocolate bar, where everyone handmade their very own set of designer chocolates that magically appeared in their goody bags to take home. The bar, run by My Chocolate, was a delectable success and there were certainly a few who couldn’t help but eat their treats straight away.

Another favourite was the perfume bar, where guests were run through the different smells by fragrance aficionado Robin Taylor and the team from The Perfume Studio. Once each guest selected his or her array of scents, Robin whipped them up and each guest got home their bottle of unique perfume, which they even got to name.

The night was a huge success and set a very high standard for all the forthcoming Christmas parties our team here at Consolidated PR are going to organise, attend and maybe even gatecrash…