Monarchy PR 2.0

HM The Queen features in a Google doodle for the first time today. As royal watchers (of which I am not one, admittedly) have observed, she's getting very tech-savvy of late, with podcasts, a YouTube channel and alleged iPod ownership.

But the modern, media-shrewd Monarchy is not just to be praised for embracing web services and gadgets. Its PR has been teaching industry a thing or two, albeit with vastly differing tactics.

Take the Dancing Queen incident, and my favourite, the brilliant Scouse of Windsor claim.


The Palace is even doing its SEO well. Google her and she has an iron grip on the rankings, and is even encroaching on the late Freddie Mercury et al with 'Queen' searches.

What's next? Media training and crisis management consultancy for the FTSE 100?

A streetcar blamed desire

Have you joined Britain's fastest-growing club yet?

It's a fashion thing, but apparently if - like me - you've been snapped by one of Google's StreetView cars, you can consider yourself lucky.

People across the UK have been spotting what Google has been quietly working on - taking pictures at street level in towns and cities across the country. I was pictured in Soho recently, no doubt looking fairly moronic in an early morning attempt to cross the street.

Today SC Magazine raises an interesting point - putting the rest of the privacy debate to one side, what if you get pictured in a compromising position, like the Arsenal fan outside the Emirates photographed by the Spurs fan who leaves the last three letters out of the frame?

What if half the PRs working in central London get pictured outside a peep show premises as they walk innocently with a client through the streets?

What if journalists who said they didn't want an interview because they were at a press event all day are actually snapped popping out for a sarnie across the road from the office?

Google will no doubt say it's not driving the need for this, that it's people who desire the ability to see images at a street level.

At least it might save me the cost of that webcam above the door to our building, so I can see who's sneaking in late.

Kissed by a, er, thorn

Cold calling and email pitching for sales is rarely pleasant. But PR suppliers seem to be particularly bad at it. PRs are not perfect beasts, but we do spend our lives selling over the phone to tough hacks, so surely sales approaches to us have to cut the mustard?

This morning's example is a PR intermediary whose sales guy seems to have spotted my email address, not bothered to check my name (Google might help) and confused me with a small furry mammal or the Kissed By a Rose crooner. Not me guv. Anyway, here's the evidence:

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Hi Seal,

My Name is Kashif and I work for AMIPLAN. We help the national media journalist to source their future news stories and used by number of PR agency to forward plan for their client. I have attached a brief information along with this email. Please have a read and if you think this will be something which will be helpful just let me know and I will contact you to arrange a quick phone call.

Best Regards

Kashif


Kashif Michael
Account Manager | Advance Media Information
The Registry, Royal Mint Court, London EC3N 4QN
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Power selling eh? Kashif, chin up, at least you don't work for Cision.