The Einsteins out there will not failed to have realised that this is a rather frivolous blog post.
While chuckling at the fantastic output of LEGO’s latest PR sting, a re-enactment of England versus the USA at the World Cup, I started thinking about what other momentous events and everyday happenings could be captured in glorious Danish-designed miniature plastic technicolour. The Battle of Waterloo. The (alleged) Moon landing. When Tony met Gordon at Granita that night.
Better still, what about those moments all agency PRs have during their careers? When only a very special facial expression will do, and the scene is a carbon copy of many like it that have gone before – same scenario, different time, different client.
So here are 10 PR scenes that, once the hay-making of the World Cup is done with, LEGO really should enshrine:
1. The press conference is about to begin, but just one journalist has turned up: agency people dash about barking into their phones, client sweats profusely, spokespeople try to play it cool but are privately miffed that the hacks are late. Again.
2. The ethereal client brief: agency team plus client in a meeting room, client seeks to pinpoint the action required on a new initiative but does so using words like ‘thing’, ‘lateral’ and ‘excite’.
3. The drunken account executive: clear-the-air meeting with line manager or boss the morning after the keen-as-mustard PR has had one too many Babychams and done something immortal in front of the media or clients.
4. The deviant of the brainstorm: in the heat of the action, as multiple minds come together to apply brilliance to a client’s strategic problem, someone blurts out some supposed wisdom. Normally involves donkeys or mass adult nudity.
5. The ‘virtual team’ planning meeting: PR agency, ad agency, media agency and some other agency people muster with the client to join forces, but then the ad people use an acronym or terminology that no-one else understands, although no-one admits it.
6. The video that won’t work in the pitch despite more testing than a Maclaren F1 car: having started all chipper, the beaming team is reduced to a nervy and shrug-shouldered muddle after the dynamic and engaging vox-pop video fails to start.
7. The kiss goes wrong: at the end of an uplifting meeting, the PR goes to kiss the client on both cheeks, the client (probably non-European) recoils slightly and the PR ends up undertaking a clumsy air-kiss with all the panache of a wrestler.
8. The journalist actually, really just did that in the interview: we’ve all been there. The one who threw up in the wastepaper bin, the one who made an offensive remark, the one who picked his nose and ate it, the one who threw up on the spokesperson. Such is life.
9. The salesperson comes to the PR meeting: the client thought it’d be good to bring the sales head in so we’re all on the same proverbial page. The sales head spends most of the time saying silly things, chucking his weight around and staring at the account manager’s tits.
10. The office tiff: in newsrooms, journalists just stride up to each other and call the opposite number a total w^anker. PRs are sweeter types, preferring to conduct their disagreements behind closed doors, or by email. Apart from the almighty office rumpus, when tongues have been bitten for ages but then tempers flare at a catfight begins. My favourite exchange witnessed: “In my professional opinion you were not being professional.” Cue “In my professional opinion, you’re a f*cking bitch.”
