Credit squeeze prompts Ministerial briefing

Restoring business confidence during the economic downturn was the key theme of a meeting between John Denham MP and the Southampton and Fareham Chamber of Commerce and Industry today.

More than 50 Chamber members, including accountants, solicitors, property agents, office suppliers and motor dealers, attended the lunchtime briefing at St Mary’s Stadium, home of Southampton FC.

Mr Denham, who is Secretary of State for Innovation, Universities and Skills as well as a local MP, said it was critically important that small- and medium-sized businesses had the best available independent professional advice to keep going.

And he said it was a challenge for both government and the private sector to ensure there were sufficient lending opportunities around for fundamentally sound business propositions - hence this week’s meetings between the Chancellor, the Business Secretary, banks and other lenders.

I enjoyed today’s briefing which was a great chance for business people to communicate directly with a senior politician who sits on the National Economic Council. Mr Denham promised to take on board the various points made and to report back through the Chamber.

Today’s event is just one of a number of Chamber initiatives to help local businesses concerned about the credit crunch and risk of recession. Members are also being canvassed for their ideas on rebuilding confidence which will be passed on to the Chancellor for consideration in his Pre-Budget Report this winter.

In praise of jargon

If you thought “stakeholder engagement” meant agreeing to marry someone who aids and abets the killing of vampires, then there is good news today from Harrow council.

Such jargon is to be banned from the council’s communications with the public and replaced with plain English expressions such as “asking people what they think”.

Acronyms such as “CPZs” (controlled parking zones) will once again just be “double yellow lines” and terms such as “civic amenity sites” will be revert to being “rubbish tips”.

Local government does incredibly complex work and a lot of its jargon was foisted on it by central government dictat so I don’t think we should blame council officers for confusing language, but it’s great to see Harrow tackling the issue head on.

Every job has its jargon. The newspaper trade is full of it – sidebars, crossheads, widows and so on - and I recall a military expression that made me chuckle. Covering a territorial army exercise as a reporter, it was explained to me that the most important items of kit a soldier could ever have were MPCs or mobile personnel carriers. On closer enquiry this turned out to mean a sturdy pair of boots.

Later a cartographer told me how he had spent much of the 1960s involved in LSD, by which he meant “large-scale development” maps.

It’s obviously good practice to avoid confusing terms and stick to plain English, but I suspect jargon just has a way of creeping into any line of work and it will be with us for a long time to come.

A healthy eating promotion with the taste of success

You’ve got to feel a bit sorry for TV chef and celebrated geezer Jamie Oliver.

His heart is in the right place by attempting to promote healthy diets but his new show has clearly upset some of the good people of Rotherham.

And pardon the pun but the recipe for PR fall-out was there all along. Take an aspirational Southern do-gooder, throw in an expose of unhealthy eating habits in a northern town, mix with the perception of being lectured to, and hey presto, angry community representatives.

I’m sure Jamie will survive and continue to do good work, even if that northern sage Michael Parkinson thought it was all a bit exploitative when speaking on the Andrew Marr show.

For an example of a local health promotion that worked and was non-controversial, go no further than Sandwell in the West Midlands. In an initiative called Eatwell, partners including the local primary care trust identified all the homes that were more than ten minutes from a supermarket by public transport or on foot.

The partnership then looked at what shops there were in these spaces and encouraged them to stock fresh fruit and vegetables at affordable prices if they were not already doing so. The aim was to prevent so-called “fresh food deserts” where people have little or no access to health eating choices.

It was sensitively handled, promoted locally and as a result more than 40 retailers came on board to join the initiative. No-one got upset and it didn’t leave a bad taste in the mouth.

Shaping a reputation

Hello and welcome to a personal blog on journalism, media relations and PR.

I'm Scott Sinclair and I’ve been working as an account director at a media relations consultancy since May 2008. I love my job and I’ve wanted for a long time to set down in a kind of diary mode some random musings about what I do and the feelings I have about the way the media is changing.

My boss and colleagues at Deep South Media are happy for me to blog about all this but I want to say upfront that I’m talking from my own experience and nothing is being vetted by anyone else – though you’re welcome to contribute like anyone else, guys!

I’ve no idea how this will go! Maybe you’re a journalist, a press officer who was a journalist, someone in-house moving to an agency, going from public to private sector – I’ve done all of the above. Maybe you’ve done none of them – that’s fine too. Please feel free to leave comments (no spam please) and maybe we can get into some discussions.

Certainly, we’re all seeing strange times right now with the credit crunch affecting people’s livelihoods and causing serious loss of confidence in financial markets. How this will pan out for businesses and other organisations seeking PR services over the longer term is unclear but I guess there is always a need to communicate. Maybe we just ought to hunker down, focus on what we’re good at and continue to come up with those brilliant ideas.

By way of a first thought I confess to being bemused by this week’s Tory plans to cut down on “town hall promotion”. No surprise that local authority press officers are less than pleased. If you stop telling people what their council stands for, they will be less likely to know what services there are locally and what their council tax is being spent on. Ignorance is hardly bliss. When the LGA commissioned MORI to look at this, they found that while services have seen steady improvement, very few people attribute that to councils themselves.

There is some excellent LGA advice on building local government reputation as we move towards comprehensive area assessments and “place shaping”. It is no time to stop talking – community consultation and involvement will be ever more important.