I have been watching the wonderful blog Glum Councillors with glee lately.

It it absolutely true that local newspapers in the UK are stuffed full of pictures of councillors and all manner of local people looking glum. It is the classic pose to underline the alleged gravity of the story (God knows I over-emphasised a load of this stuff in my earlier career – bypass protestors, fears over poor streetlighting, a historic public privy suffering untold decay..).

And this all brings home a point about PR agencies – too many of us are bad or neglectful at coming up with good picture ideas. Yes print is less of a factor now, but good ideas for print pictures will still elevate a story’s prominence, give a far greater chance of inclusion and be more memorable. So why are trade media littered with cheesy grins and pictures of dull objects while some of the photo ideas the newspapers get from PRs showcase an utter lack of understanding or appreciation of a picture desk’s role?

Of course we’d never want glumness like in the first picture below for a client campaign. But still we’d want to avoid any lack of picture and sensibility appreciation that would spawn something like the bottom photo.

Tips for a better approach to photography by PRs:

1. Web or print: thinking about the different requirements
2. Thinking about what you’re trying to communicate, not what you’ve been asked to get a picture of
3. Tight, bright, upright (but provide landscape alternative for print if you can)
4. Caption writing is different to other types. Study it and work out how to communicate the picture’s message in less than 10 words
5. People make good pix, but make it clear who they are
6. If there’s a picture editor or desk staff, get to know them

PR is bloody hard work. Made harder by the fact that many people in other careers (and certainly in other marketing disciplines) have very little understand of what we do.

But at least it used to be fun, sometimes.

Journalists and clients would have a chuckle together. They’d revel, to a degree, in the game they were playing. And agencies would, by and large, be fairly friendly competitors who would do their best to outwit each other but then do some back-slapping at the PR Week awards as all’s fair in love and war.

Which is why two things have occured to me in recent days that are driving some of the fun out of PR:

1. Humour. It is getting harder and harder for agencies to get clients to commit to doing funny stories, or even lighter-hearted ones. The British public likes a laugh, people in business like to smile, the British media has a peculiar comic bent that is admired around the world. We need to be braver in PR at tapping into this – agencies need to make the merits clear to clients, and clients need to embrace it rather than dismissing it.

2. Severe sense of humour failure. I’m helping the Jackenhacks team by handing out a few awards tonight, most of them deeply satirical, some borderline offensive. This is an annual PR get-together where people let their hair down, take the p*ss out of each other and enjoy the limelight of PR’s anti-Oscars. Yet there are always some old moaners how come creeping out of the woodwork, questioning why they’ve been nominated, have a pop at agencies and individuals, and trying to run the thing down. It’s time to grow up. The Jackenhacks may sail close to the wind but it is nonetheless a worthy and much-enjoyed vessel in a sea of mediocre PR celebration. Perhaps next year a the-lady-doth-protest category should be added to the list? In the meantime, those joyless types who have slung mud should be aware that writing styles make it easy to identify you no matter how you attempt to mask.

Ironically, their sense of humour failure gave me a big laugh.

I could hardly contain myself this morning as I knew PR Week’s Digital Survey 2009 was out today.

It makes a lot of sense. Nothing revolutionary, all good common sense, mostly pretty obvious.

But it has one gaping void, and is a little behind the times in another important aspect.

The void: evaluation. The main difference between digital and conventional PR techniques when it comes to demonstrating returns on investment is that digital leaves an audit trail – and when there’s a trail, things can be tracked, and engaged with. As the slaughtered slugs in my garden this summer would posthumously testify.

So for the agencies questioned to come out with dribble like their methods are confidential (er, so the internet is one big closed shop?), AVE-like statistics or PR Week hits, glorious though they may be, are the forefront of evaluating success is utter bollocks. It undermines the other good content in the article about the innovation that is going on in the industry, and makes a mockery of PR’s endeavours to modernise and commercialise its work. Overall, the range of answers to the evaluation question highlighted how too many of us are fumbling around for the lightswitch rather than taking a step back and really examining what can be measured and how. Fundamentally though, it has to be clearer and more valuable than assessing a pile of print press clippings.

The behind the times bit is all about skills. Asking agencies whether they have a head of digital or a digital team is a flimsy way to gauge the degree to which the sector is embracing digital. In fact, I’d argue that those statistics merely show how many agencies may be masking their overall lack of digital understanding with a figurehead approach.

The better question would have been what investments agencies have been making to ensure all of their personnel understand and can excel in digital work.

But then again ‘agencies masking digital nay-sayers with geek camps’ is not really a PR Week headline I suspect. And unfair.

There is no magic formula for getting the transition to digital right. No-one has all the answers. But my bettering is that it won’t be long before digital is dropped from job titles and org charts altogether. Because everything will involve digital.

Let’s hope by then that no-one still warrants the title Head of Analogue.

Easy winner.

Footy web site teamtalk on the rumoured transfer of a Rennes player to Everton.

God bless subs.

Given I work a three minute walk from it, it’s shameful that it took me until last night to go and have a look at the Fourth Plinth, Antony Gormley’s mildly contentious living art project in Trafalgar Square.

Given my new sister-in-law was up there in her wedding dress (as this grainy and horribly overexposed iPhone clearly pic shows) I didn’t have much choice.

I had a quick look through the schedule of the week’s plinthers and those from the recent past. Conclusion: yes some people do waste their time up there, but it’s surprising that the PR world hasn’t been falling over itself to exploit the media (and social media) opportunities around One & Other.

Sure, some PR managers have successfully applied to take the ‘stage’ but given the volume of PR exercises that involve some sort of fairly costly in-the-street stunt to communicate a point, it’s strange that more PR types haven’t attempted to turn art into a commercial opportunity.

They might have little chance of success, given the volume of applicants. But surely multiple submissions from the same company would get around that?

Perhaps PRs wanted to hold off to see whether the project gained momentum. But at a time when trust in brands is very difficult to come by, art could well present some worthwhile openings for developing reputation.

In previous General Elections, The Sun has boasted of its might in bending the minds of the electorate towards the winning party. Whatever the nation’s favourite tabloid said, voters were sure to follow.

Rupert Murdoch (OK, he’s rarely there) looked up-river from Wapping towards the Palace of Westminster every four years with a knowing sneer.

2010 will be different, thankfully. While I failed to agree with much of what the Rt Hon Ben Bradshaw had to say on Question Time last night, one point was spot on: social media and the internet at large will have a far bigger hold over votes than The Sun’s stance.

Following Obama’s strategy, political parties in Britain will be clamouring to use social media to tap into not only first-time voters, but us older timers who are scratching our heads about what the parties stand for and whether any of them are even worth voting for.

Commentators may be saying the election is already won, but once the keyboards get busy, every effort will be made to ensure the election is swung.

It almost might make British politics interesting, for a while.

Jockey Willie Carson reveals his guilt over the illegitimate daughter he’s never met.

Only the Mail could have run this headline and this story. Because only the Mail would still consider Willie Carson to be any form of celebrity.

He has an autobiography out.

I know this has been causing sleepless nights.

The votes and tweets are now in (a hung jury?) and it seems handed-ness has zero bearing on how you handle yourself when relieving yourself. Some of us stick to the same side, others mix’n'match. Liars say they have to employ both hands to safeguard sanitation levels.

HOM and Debenhams: please note for future pants PR.