Richard Bailey comments that this news release from Virgin Money is "a (successful) example of writing for press publicity". He highlights how "the story comes first amd how the client is only tangential to the story".

He's right, it's a good release except for a couple of minor quibbles. The final paragraph is badly writen. We don't need the word "outstanding" as that is simply their opinion and the author obviously haven't consulted their editorial style guide as he appears confused about when to use integers (e.g. using 9 instead of nine and twelve instead of 12).

That final paragraph looks like a standard boilerplate that a marketing manager at the client has forced the PR consultancy to include because they don't understand PR and/or the consultant hasn't explained it.

The Guardian style guide says:

numbers
spell out from one to nine; integers from 10 to 999,999; thereafter use m or bn for sums of money, quantities or inanimate objects in copy, eg £10m, 5bn tonnes of coal, 30m doses of vaccine; but million or billion for people or animals, eg 1 million people, 3 billion rabbits, etc; in headlines use m or bn

In Tuesday night's US vice-presidential debate Dick Cheney made rather an unfortunate slip of the tongue. Instead of directing people to factcheck.org, a non-partisan site run by a US university, he urged people to visit factcheck.com, a commercial site registered in the Cayman Islands. The domain owners were unable to cope with the deluge of hits - more than 100 a second - so redirected it to the website of billionaire George Soros, a leading critic of Bush and Cheney.

Three PR lessons from this:

1) Make sure your spokesperson is well briefed and cites the right web address/phone number in any interview.
2) If you're setting up a website then buy up as many of the similar domains (.info, .biz, .org.uk, .me) as are available or you can afford. Also look at commonplace mispellings.
3) If you're going to promote your website in a very high-profile way then make sure your infrastructure can cope with the extra traffic that might be generated.

Following on from Dick Cheney's gaffe in giving the wrong URL in a televised debate here is another good example of campaigning incompetance, this time from the Liberal Democrats in the UK. Charles Kennedy is the Leader of the Liberal Democrats, and Lib Dem Watch is a site dedicated to knocking them, and the URL www.charleskennedy.co.uk now leads directly to Lib Dem Watch!

This blog by Steve Rubel has sparked a lot of comment, including this from Shel Holtz. I must say that I think Steve is right and that Shel and Jeremy Pepper (who comments on the blog) have it wrong. Steve was right for so many reasons including:

1) He makes it clear that it is a personal opinion and not that of his company.

2) Companies do not exist in a vacuum. Corporate social responsibility is about companies facing up to their responsibilities to society and the wider community, just like individuals but usually with a lot more influence. This means you can't divorce politics from business. The difference between Kerry and Bush will have a profound effect on the economy, society and the world.

3) Jeremy Pepper talks about the negative effect the endorsement might have on the ability of Steve's company to win new business and says: "Now, you have possibly alienated half (more than half?) of potential clients for Cooper Katz, and gave publicity to a movie that was a divisive issue for many in the country."

Well personally I wouldn't want to do business with anyone who felt alienated by the endorsement. I'd be happy to do business with either Republicans or Democrats but I'd be unhappy about working with people who wouldn't work with me because of my political beliefs. That smacks of political extremism of the worst kind and I wouldn't want to taint my corporate reputation by association with them.

In my business in the UK I'm quite up front about being a Labour Party supporter and that my business also supports the Labour Party. This doesn't stop us working with clients that are Conservative Party supporters.

Thanks to Kevin Dugan for this cartoon from the Cincinnati Enquirer.