Whether or not you’re a fan of Tony Blair, one of the welcome things that came into being under his watch was the Freedom of Information Act (FOI) in 2000. This gave UK citizens a legal right to information held by most public authorities. American citizens have had this right for some time, of course, and the UK is now one of about 85 countries that have introduced similar rights. Now, back to this post’s subject: how can you use FOI as part of your organisation’s PR activities? There is no universal answer as it depends on what your organisation does and what it’s aims are, but here’s an example I orchestrated a few years ago, which might prompt some ideas.

Pre-recession (and a change in government), I was working with a trade association of large construction companies. It wanted to put pressure on central government to maintain its promises to increase capital spending on public hospitals, transport, housing and schools. Part of this campaign was an annual monitoring report on the subject and I was asked for ideas to make the report a little more newsworthy. Among my suggestions was to make Freedom of Information (FOI) requests to the facilities management departments of the top 20 NHS Health Trusts, asking them about the size of their respective repairs backlog, and in particular, the amount of work still outstanding to meet basic hospital fire safety regulations (these had recently been tightened).

From the answers we were able to compile a Top 20 worst-to-best league table for hospital fire safety. Releasing this alongside the usual annual report gave a potent illustration of the scale of outstanding repairs in UK hospitals and an attractive talking point for journalists. It also gave us a story angle for local media. The whole thing cost very little and worked very well indeed, providing a platform around which the trade association’s chief executive could make his key points. He was able to do so in The Financial Times and numerous other national and regional media outlets.

As a tactic worth considering, I don’t think it matters whether you sell to the public sector or not. All you need is an issue that you want to be associated with and a little imagination. Plus there are now websites geared around making multiple FOI requests easier to administer, such as www.whatdotheyknow.com. A little time spent browsing the requests and responses made should soon provide lots of ideas. It will also produce some fascinating trivia. For example, I just found out that Royal Mail used a staggering 870 million elastic bands in f/y 2007-8. If your company supplies these and Royal Mail is not on your sales prospects list, it’s time to correct that situation quickly.

Elle Macpherson and a ceo. I know which one I'd prefer to have in my boardroom

Earlier this month Elle Macpherson, one of the original ‘supermodels’, was interviewed by Lucy Kellaway in The Financial Times. You can read the article here (although you may need to register). It’s a great read, though it left this formerly neutral reader, and I suspect many others, with a rather dim view of ‘The Body’, as she used to be known. It made me wonder what the original objective for doing the interview was, what preparation went into it and whether the outcome might have been better for McPherson, who clearly went into damage limitation mode judging from the writer’s account of post-interview phone calls.

Super models, like others at the top of their game in fashion, media and sport, are used to journalists fawning over them. Because they are hugely in demand, they can pick and choose who they grant interviews to, with the result that most journalists have to accept the sometimes ridiculous conditions they (and their publicists) demand: so-and-so will not talk about this; you are not allowed to mention (insert sensitive issue). You can see evidence of it in Kellaway’s piece but all such attempts at media interview control were never going to work with The FT, which as most people know is much more interested in business than celebrity stories.

Kellaway doesn’t make her living interviewing the likes of Elle Macpherson so had nothing to lose from writing an honest and frank account of the meeting. Though she is fair, she has a low tolerance for flaky business ‘guff’ and isn’t afraid to get the highlighter pen out when she encounters it. So why did Macpherson’s PR firm, a high-end fashion PR agency based in Savile Row, think it was a good idea to do this interview? My bet is that they approached Kellaway rather than the other way round. Why, at the bare minimum, wasn’t Macpherson briefed and ready to talk about business instead of underwear? Did they think their client was safer talking to a female reporter?

Tellingly, Macpherson misinterprets Kellaway’s reference to the basic accounting term ‘wasting asset’ and responds frostily (savour the mental image, as the ‘Ab-Fab’ PR agency minder sitting in on the interview didn’t get it either). We are left wondering if she really is as deeply immersed in the business world as she claims to be.

What’s the most important lesson? I’m torn between “never use a fashion PR agency to handle business media relations” and “if your client is the brand and writes a ‘brand poem’, make sure they never mention it during a media interview.”

This is a story that will ring plenty of bells, and should be encouraging, for those who spend most of their time pitching stories to media. It might also be revealing to those who pay their salaries.

A couple of years ago I worked for a management consultancy. The firm specialised in the corporate finance function, helping CFOs of medium to large corporations improve operating efficiencies, and generally improving the ability of their finance functions to serve the business strategically. It was all very sober stuff and, as might be expected, the firm’s employees were smart and switched on. That’s the background, here’s the story. I got talking to one of the firm’s principals about ‘corporate social responsibility’ (CSR) and how it seemed to be gaining some traction beyond the early hype. He presented a compelling case about why finance directors were the best people to lead a company’s CSR strategy. In a nutshell, it was all to do with their knowledge about data, its collection and its presentation. I was convinced. After a bit of digging around, it became clear that no one else had really talked about this.

Now, The Financial Times has a weekly accountancy column that’s occasionally opened up to outside contributors. Knowing this, I did my preparation, called up the column editor and pitched the idea of an opinion editorial for my client, timed around a topical industry event. He quickly rebuffed the idea, doubting accountants were interested in CSR and telling me that, in his opinion, it was a flaky subject anyway. At that point, most in my situation would have given up and reported the rejection back to their client. But I was bemused. A well-developed instinct for stories told me this was still a good idea. So, a few weeks later when the section editor was replaced by someone else, I tried exactly the same pitch again. Her reaction was the diametric opposite of the first and produced this article.

The lesson here is twofold: trust your instincts and be (selectively) persistent when pitching media stories. I said there was something in this for the PR team paymasters and here it is: a good media result often takes time, skill and effort. Please set your budgets accordingly.

Some would say lawyers deserve all they get reputation-wise: they communicate in a strange, obscure language, deliberately designed to complicate the simple; they inhabit a rarefied, archaic world largely untouched by modern business norms such as offering high customer service levels and value for money. I suspect Luke Johnson’s recent damning column in The Financial Times speaks for many. The British government clearly thinks things need shaking up too because its ‘Legal Services Act’ comes into force next year, and aims to open up and deregulate the market. It has been described by The Times newspaper as the legal sector’s own version of The City’s ‘Big Bang’.

This polar bear ‘brief’ in Vancouver is probably the world’s only cool lawyer. Credit: photo courtesy Claire Dancer, Flickr

If, as expected, it creates greater competition, in-flows of capital and outside management, will these factors drive a big improvement in the way British Law firms market themselves? I think it will, and it’s long overdue according to James Baxter*:

“The legal sector remains on the whole undifferentiated: the same lawyers, offering the same services to the same clients who have little idea what distinguishes the amorphous mass of firms before them.”

Baxter ought to know. He is a former editor of Legal Business magazine. For those firms who’ve not yet taken the plunge into marketing, here’s one simple, important and overriding rule:  never entrust the task to any of the partners, unless they can demonstrate genuine, business and brand-building experience. This is what happens when you break that rule. Last month I received an alert saying my Twitter stream @andymturner was being followed by no less than ‘London’s coolest law firm’. How do I know this apparently oxymoronic claim is for real? Because that’s how the firm’s founder and senior partner trumpets his firm’s Twitter account biography. Somewhat surprised, I clicked through to the firm’s website expecting to see the epitome of cool, but of course, found just another dull-looking law firm with an equally ordinary client list. So I couldn’t resist writing to tell said senior partner that it’s unlikely anyone wants ‘cool’ from their law firm and to find a better USP fast before anyone important sees it, or at least just drop it. He replied with what seemed a little ‘froideur’ saying that he probably will, that he didn’t take Twitter seriously anyway (which is evident because he’s following 8,000+ people) and that it’s better to be talked about than not at all. I took the trouble to reply but haven’t heard from him again. Some people are so damned ungrateful on receipt of free, sensible advice.