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In issue 16 of esPResso...

BMA Communications, Custard PR, Lighthouse PR, Mantra PR and Rainer PR – all acquired by Loewy in the last three years – will merge to create Speed Communications, a Leicester Square-based agency that will have a head count of fifty and a combined client list that includes the likes of Tesco, Toshiba, Wickes, The Economist and the ntl:Telewest bit of Virgin Media.

The new company will be headed up by Rainer PR's Steve Earl and Stephen Waddington, with Lexis co-founder Bill Jones as its chairman.

Confirming the revamp, Waddington told esPResso: "The PR industry has reached a watershed moment. The fragmentation of media, rise of social networks, increasingly savvy purchasers and the recession are combining to challenge the established PR industry hierarchy. Speed is a modern consultancy that is seeking to tackle this head on in delivering assured impact for its clients. We have combined five strong teams to create a much stronger PR consultancy with multi-sector expertise. It is now a very able challenger for the UK's most exciting PR accounts".

Commenting on the rebrand of its PR division, Loewy CEO Iain Johnston added: "We strongly encourage collaborative working and the PR staff in particular have been brainstorming, pitching and managing clients in cross-agency teams over the last six months. This structural change and rebrand further cements the team as one entity and is a strong statement of our intentions in the UK PR market".

The new company has a website at www.speedcommunications.com.

And the trade magazine says that levels of paranoia among some agencies are higher than ever because some clients, presumably wary of being wrongly accused of stealing a pitching firm's ideas (after all, in many pitch processes multiple agencies will often propose similar ideas), are now asking agencies to sign pre-pitch agreements that stop them for taking action if they believe their original ideas have been nabbed. These agreements may go as far as to give a client rights in any ideas put forward in a pitch, even from agencies who don't win the account.

PR Week quote various agency chiefs who want the PR Consultants Association to review the issue of idea protection during the pitching process, and to come up with some sort of industry-wide policy on the issue, in a bid to protect agencies from idea theft, and clients from false allegations.

Kinross + Render CEO Sara Render, a PRCA member, told the magazine: "The PRCA will be letting all of its members down if it does not address the issue. I think it is outrageous to ask agencies to sign away their right to any remuneration for their creative and intellectual property unless you are paying for the time they spent putting the creative content together".

The PRCA, though, is keen to stress that while it is aware of this issue, and takes genuine cases of ideas theft seriously, such pitch-time idea stealing is the exception rather than the norm. The trade body seems to prefer getting involved in specific isolated cases, rather than trying to find a one-size-fits-all solution to the problem. A spokesman said: "Where an idea is used the consultancy should be rewarded for it. Problems are the exception, not the rule, but in these isolated incidences the PRCA is very happy to represent members' interests with clients".

Up to three quarters of those agency bosses questioned by the Public Relations Consultants Association said that they spend up to 5% of a PR budget on measurement programmes that assess the success of any comms initiative. 11% said they would allocate up to 10% of budget on evaluation.

The same survey asked whether evaluation spend was likely to be cut as agencies and their clients look to reduce the cost of PR campaigns in light of the recession. 28% admitted there would be cuts.

Commenting on the findings, PRCA Director General, Francis Ingham told reporters: "Evaluation is crucial to the credibility of PR. In spite of the challenging economic conditions less than a third are reducing the proportion of budgets spent on evaluation, this is welcome news but still too many. The best way to fight budget cuts is to demonstrate the value you are adding".

Barry Leggetter, Executive Director of Association Of Measurement And Evaluation In Communication, and also head of Bite Communications, added: "In a recession, evaluation is already playing a more important part in PR campaigns as clients demand proof that the programme is working. We can improve the client appreciation of the need for and value of evaluation if PRCA and AMEC members work together".

However, speaking for those that believe spending too much time and money on evaluation is not a good use of resources, Diana Soltmann of Flagship Consulting Ltd observed that: "Clients want evaluation but don't expect to pay for it. Hence evaluation is not objective and does not help either the consultancy or the client".

A first draft of Digital Britain was published earlier this year. Spearheaded by Lord Carter, Minister for Communications, Technology and Broadcasting, it looks at the future expansion of digital content and communication networks – and the impact that expansion will have on the owners and users of more traditional media.

Interested parties, including all the major media, telecommunication and entertainment companies, were invited to submit their responses to Carter's original report earlier this month. Those submissions will be considered before a final report is completed later this year. The report will propose more cross-sector collaboration, will discuss the education and outreach requirements of ensuring less web-savvy people have access to new digital media, and may propose new legislation, particularly regarding the policing of online copyright.

Among the organisations to make a submission was the PRCA, who don't seem to have any specific comments on the issues raised by or proposals made in the first draft of Carter's report, but who do want to make sure they have a seat of the metaphorical table for any future cross-industry debates on the digital world.

The submission takes the form of a letter from PRCA chief Francis Ingham which welcomes the report, and adds: "Public relations has a crucial role to play in ensuring [the development of digital communication]. The industry exists to improve communications between organisations, businesses and individuals. It is hugely innovative, and members of the Public Relations Consultants Association have been quick to integrate digital technology into their services generating growth for those clients and innovation that benefits us all".

He continues by outlining the various efforts of the PRCA and its Digital Group to promote the adoption of digital communication tools in the PR sector, in particular the training courses and events it has staged in this domain. He concludes: "The PRCA would welcome the opportunity to represent PR consultancies in future discussions about Digital Britain, reinforcing the need for this adoption, extending the PR industry's remit, and protecting our interests against new kinds of competition that we must inevitably meet".

While the PR sector's role in this digital debate is possibly not quite as obvious as that of the tel cos who provide the digital networks, nor the media and entertainment firms who use them to distribute their content, one would assume that former Brunswick chief Carter will remember to include Ingham and other PR bosses in any future government reviews of the way Britain communicates in the digital domain.

But why this sudden apology from the 41 year old Robert Van Winkle? Is the rapper, who recently staged a co-headline show with MC Hammer in Utah (I kid thee not), planning a comeback?

Well may be, though the apology is actually a clever bit of viral marketing by Virgin Mobile Australia, though you'd never know from the clip itself. The clue is the URL given at the end – www.rightmusicwrongs.com – which takes you to a Virgin Mobile website in Australia which announces its mission as follows: "In a world awash with silicone and botox, where lip-syncing is normal and real singing is a special event, it's time to take a stand, it's time to right music".

The site invites music fans to vote on whether Vanilla Ice should be forgiven for his music crimes, and on what have been the biggest music wrongs in history (the Fast Food rockers are currently ahead of Timmy Mallett's 'Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weeny' cover). We hear that other pop stars willing to make fun of themselves in return for a cheque from Virgin Mobile may also go on trial.

This interesting variation on the common brand-music partnership strategy, devised by the Sydney office of marketing agency Droga5, has certainly delivered for Virgin mobile, with the Vanilla Ice video attracting hundreds of thousands of views, comments and blog mentions across Australia and, of course, this being a viral campaign, the world at large.

Unlike in England and Wales where all of the once independent regional 'ITV' stations are now owned by ITV plc, in Scotland the third channel continues to be operated by an independent company, STV Group Plc (formerly Scottish Media Group, but corporately known by its on-air name since it offloaded its newspaper and radio businesses).

Most of STV's output is the same as ITV in England and Wales, but bosses there have decided that, while ITV south of the border reduces the amount of local content it broadcasts, in Scotland STV will start opting out of the national network more and more and air instead programmes made in Scotland for Scotland and often about Scotland.

As part of that move, the TV firm have announced they will launch a viewer poll similar to the one undertaken by the BBC in 2002 to find the nation's favourite countryman, though while the BBC's poll was to find the best Briton, the STV poll will seek to name the greatest ever Scot.

STV presumably hope the survey will, like the BBC poll, generate many column inches, and in doing so communicate that the TV channel is more Scottish than ever.

Commenting on the poll, and the channel's accompanying rebrand, STV's David Brook, who has both programming and marketing within his remit, told reporters: "We wanted to introduce a new look for the station that would not only reflect Scotland's strong heritage but also its vibrant, contemporary culture. Our new look ties in perfectly with our strategy to opt out of the network schedule more often, and bring viewers more Scottish-produced programmes".

The doomy gloomy feel was initially initiated by Claire Enders of media analysts Enders Analysis who told the conference that advertisers were going off radio as a medium through which to flog their wares, and that as a result the commercial radio sector was ceasing to be commercially viable. The sector would probably be dead within two decades, she implied, saying that outside the BBC only "hobbyist" radio services would exist.

According to the Guardian, Enders told the event: "There is a next generation of people in agencies who are not that keen on radio. There has been a dramatic change in the position of radio in the last ten years, dramatic even though consumption has not been affected as much as newspaper consumption".

Enders wasn't the only pessimist in the room. Matt Wells, podcast supremo for the Guardian's website, observed: "We are witnessing the slow death of commercial radio in this country due to a number of factors, [including] the complete failure [of the radio industry] to grasp the digital nettle. The proposition for consumers of digital TV is completely transformative compared to analogue TV. The same cannot be said of digital radio. And now the worst advertising recession we have ever seen means that commercial radio is on its last legs. If people running commercial radio do not recognise that, we are in worse trouble than I thought".

Fortunately for the commercial radio sector, they did have one of their own in the room to offer a little albeit cautious optimism. Absolute Radio boss Clive Dickens, while admitting "there are a significant number of radio stations in our business that are not profitable and are not going to make it through the next two years", argued that that didn't mean all radio stations were doomed. He added: "The investment in the relationship you have with the audience will define whether you stay in business. It's not about the sector or structure of business, it's about the audience's relationship with those brands and that content".

Dickens said that radio firms needed to explore new methods to ensure longevity – in particular expanding content choice and finding revenue streams other than spot advertising sales.

The legal types went to court earlier this month after one pap's car collided with Lily's own car as she left her London home. Having bumped into her car, the charming photographers then continued to pursue Allen by road.

Arguing that that activity amounted to harassment under the law, Carter-Ruck got two photo agencies, Big Pictures and Matrix Photos, and one specific photographer to make undertakings in court to not harass Allen in the future. Mr Justice Eady also issued an injunction "restraining further harassment" by other paparazzi photographers, which basically means that anyone considered a pap cannot approach Allen within 100 metres of her home, photograph her at her home or the houses of her family and friends, or pursue her by road.

Confirming the legal action against the paps, lawyer Mark Thomson told reporters: "My client, Lily Allen, has faced constant harassment over the last few months from the paparazzi. As a result of this and various incidents of harassment that took place in London on Thursday, my client has now been forced to take legal action. In a court hearing that took place on Friday afternoon, my client, Lily Allen, has resolved issues with two picture agencies and a photographer. She has also obtained from the high Court an injunction restraining further harassment of her by other unnamed paparazzi photographers. My client is delighted with the outcome of the hearing on Friday".

I instinctively thought people in the industry would much prefer office life but from the responses I received that's not exactly the case. So, I'm doing a more formal poll.

I've slightly changed the question because asking people if they prefer to work from home rather than work is a little restrictive".

To take part in PRBlogger.com Stephen Davies' poll click here.

Whether you do have a good laugh at the video (I did!) or see it only as confirming your suspicions that everyone on Twitter is a vacuous twit, one thing is clear – the growth in the numbers of people signing up on Twitter is non-stop.

Market researcher Nielsen published new data on March 18 that shows dramatic growth in Twitter numbers over the past year in the United States. (To be sure you get that point with crystal clarity, CNET News says that Twitter's growing really, really, really, really fast.)

Nielsen has overall metrics that make interesting reading:

• Twitter site visits up 1,382 percent over the past 12 months
• The largest age group on Twitter was 35-49; with nearly 3 million unique visitors, comprising almost 42 percent of the site's audience
• 62 percent of people visit Twitter.com while at work, while 35 percent accessed it from home only
• In January 2009, 735,000 unique visitors accessed the Twitter website through their mobile phones
• In Q4 2008, 812,000 unique users sent or received Twitter text messages from AT&T or Verizon cell phones. There was an average of nearly 240 tweets per person for the quarter

I found those last two metrics the most interesting as people can easily use Twitter anywhere they are from a mobile device, not tethered to a PC somewhere. Indeed, see what Nielsen says on that point: 'The ability to twitter via a mobile phone - whether through the mobile Web or via text messages - is a driving factor in the social network's success'.

That makes complete sense to me especially as there are many third-party Twitter applications for mobile devices that make it so simple to interact with Twitter and so your friends when you're mobile.

The biggest scope for further usage growth, I reckon".

Read the full blog here

And while we're talking about Twitter, why not follow the esPResso feed for updates on when the latest news stories and job ads go online at Unicorn Jobs. Click here to check our Twitter feed and follow.

	I'm a PR professional looking for a new job and keep seeing interesting looking marketing roles. Do my PR skills make me suitable for a marketing job?
	While many companies have separate PR, marketing and advertising departments who often operate pretty autonomously from each other, hiring the services of, respectively, PR, marketing and advertising agencies, there is clearly a lot of common ground between these three disciplines, simply because they are all involved, in one way or another, with a company's communications. There are, of course, many differences too. They generally employ different techniques and channels in order to reach and engage target audiences, and PR can generally be distinguished from marketing and advertising in terms of who is being communicated with - advertisers and marketers are generally targeting consumers direct, whereas PR people will normally talk to investors, decision makers, employees and, of course, the press. But a lot of the skills required for all three disciplines are the same, and it's not unheard of for people to move from one to the other. How suitable your PR experience will make you for a marketing role depends very much on what kind of PR you've done and what kind of marketing job you're going for. Obviously if you have been working in a consumer PR role then your experience will be much more relevant. While you may have been communicating primarily with journalists, you do so knowing that they in turn communicate with the general public, so presumably - if you've been doing your job right - you've been getting into the mindset of your target consumers, considering what kinds of events, stories, stunts, media and messages will attract those people. That's the same process someone working in marketing communications goes through too. And if you've been doing a lot of writing about your company's (or clients') products or services, or staging press or corporate events, or overseeing the production of websites or corporate literature, then these too are all tasks that marketers will get involved in. If you've led viral or social media PR campaigns then you are particularly well equipped for marketing roles - it is in this domain that the wall between PR and marketing is truly falling down, as viral marketing campaigns often use PR techniques, but talk directly to consumers. So, let's assume your past work has been on the border between PR and marketing. Now you need to analyse what exactly the marketing role you are applying for involves. Remember, just like there is a lot more to PR than consumer-focused press or viral campaigns, there is a lot more to marketing than the events, websites and such like that I've just mentioned. The discipline of marketing covers a diverse range of business tasks, not all primarily concerned with communications, and certainly not outward communication. Technically speaking marketing also includes a lot of a company's research and development, consumer analysis and product distribution. Even within marketing communications, those jobs dealing with stats-heavy loyalty card programmes, or, in the advertising domain, media buying, would probably seem quite alien to many PR experts. To make things more confusing, different people use the word 'marketing' to mean different things. In some companies the marketing department will almost exclusively work on the kind of promotional campaigns that sit close to the PR territory. In other companies marketers might work primarily on research and analysis. All of which means that if you are going for a marketing role, in house or at an agency, you need to pay extra attention to the job spec and skills outline in the ad, and think hard about how much of that is covered by your PR background. If you score high, you should still rework your CV and use your covering letter to explain why, although coming from a PR background, you are a good candidate for the marketing job you are going for. Arguably companies would do better if there was more collaboration between those working in PR, marketing and advertising and, as I said, in the digital domain the divide between each area is more blurred than ever. Therefore, especially if you're early on in your career, having some experience in all three, and especially marketing and PR, can only make you more employable long term.

If you have a PR or careers-related question, Ask The Unicorn at info@unicornjobs.com

Why did you choose a career in PR?
Growing up with two hard of hearing siblings, effective communication was often difficult. Accordingly, becoming a good communicator was something that came naturally to me – it had to. That, coupled with a driven passion for the written word led me to pursue a degree in English.

I guess opting for a career in PR was a natural progression for me, and my choice of which specific discipline within the industry to aim for was too. Ever since I can remember I've always been an early-adopter, interested in the latest gadgets and gizmos – from game consoles to minidisk players. With that in mind consumer PR was to be my avenue, and technology and lifestyle PR my forte.

How did you get your job at Firebox.com?
As PR is a competitive career choice, after university I was proactive in getting myself various work experience placements. After doing a placement at Tiger White PR, a consumer PR and marketing agency that specialises in health, wellbeing and lifestyle, someone suggested I join the 'PR & Communications Network' group on Facebook because PR job opportunities were published there. I did just that, and on just my second application sent out using the group I received a reply which led to my job at Firebox.

Some people might think that working for a fun company like Firebox consists mainly of larking about. Does it?
Not at all. I think the only real difference working here is the products we work with. Regardless of what you're selling in as a PR it's your job to understand – inside and out – the product(s) that you're dealing with, so when you do get that odd query from a journalist you can deal with it quickly, effectively and efficiently.

Just because I enjoy working with Firebox's product range doesn't make my day to day job any different from any other consumer PR's job – for instance, someone working on a campaign to promote an organic turnip has to utilise the same set of skills that I do. There's always going to be a professional methodology behind your work, and that never changes.

Find out more about James' career and what it is like working in a PR role at Firebox by reading the full interview here.

If you're starting out on your own PR career and James' work interests you, then how about some work experience in the Firebox press team? Firebox are offering internships for bright and enthusiastic university students and graduates. These are unpaid internships, though Firebox would cover travel expenses and the experience should be invaluable. The length of a placement depends upon the individual. To apply email claire.wood@firebox.com with a covering letter and CV.