Alex Pearmain interview – Flawless Buzz

I’ve always liked Adam Lewis’ Flawless Buzz blog chronicling his quest for his first job in PR. Today’s post has to be his best ever, though. (Ahem- self-promotion over-drive).

In between the bad banter hopefully some points of passing interest for students/people looking for jobs in the industry, based upon my experiences when I was starting out.

This is why you’re fat

Is required reading from me these days. I have a morbid fascination, even as I feel my lunch rise at the very sight.

Wouldn’t it have been great if one of the health food companies had set this up? Or a diet company. I’m sure you’ll say they don’t want to hector people about their indulgences, but there would be few examples of such complelling and viral content to ram their point home.

I often look hard at it before deciding if I really do want random unhealthy food for dinner…

Believe me…?

There’s been a whole lot of media on the new Brian Clough film ‘Damned Utd’. Or maybe there isn’t lots, and it is just very well targeted at Brian Clough fans like myself.

Either way, it got me thinking about why his well known quips were taken as justified confidence (albeit slipping into arrogance on occasion). Put briefly- when he said he was the best manager, people believed him.

Conviction counts.

Clearly that matters for anyone in the media spotlight. But is it soemthing you can coach? After al, in sport you have ‘confidence’ players. Is there such a thing as a ‘conviction’ spokesperson, who becomes more or less credible? (Clearly politicians are something of an exception).

This is moe of a thought than a statement. Interested in anyone else’s views.

Taste the start-up rainbow

I really do like a good bag of Skittles. I’m also a fan of other people telling me about brands, not brands themselves.

So I’ve liked Skittles recent efforts. (In case you missed it, they’re rotating thier homepage around various social media properties. Currently they’re on thier wikipedia entry). Thing is, it’s a really good stunt on their part, and rightly they’ve picked up the digital column inches. It’d be really brave for a start-up to do though. Get your early customers to shape your story. Literally. After all, if you’re going to be a success, they’ll be your biggest advocates. True, the white spaces could get frightening at first, but they’ll fill. And evolve in the process.