Whitehorn is known primarily for his role as president of Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic and his 20-plus years working within the Virgin empire, mainly in a PR and corporate affairs capacity.

Kate Magee has the story here for PR Week.

Mark Pinsent has done a great job of capturing the debate.

[…] the novelty of Confused.com’s action serves to highlight how happy the PR industry still is to give away what should be its most valuable assets: creative and strategic thinking. It really should stop, but when even the biggest, most successful firms haven’t got the bollocks to change things, it won’t.

Loewy Pitch Masterclass

By coincidence I was in the audience of Loewy agencies yesterday afternoon for a Pitch Masterclass at the Wellcome Institute in London.

We heard from a mix of agency and client speakers from inside and outside Loewy, including Branded, EMI Music, Seymourpowell, The Team and Wieden + Kennedy.

Payment-for-pitching

Richard Williams, founder of design agency Williams Murray Hamm said that his agency rarely pitches for work and only under well defined circumstances. When it does pitch, it charges for creative work.

It’s a bold approach. But as a result WMH has developed a phenomenal reputation and is a highly profitable business.

Dick Powell, founder of design and innovation company Seymourpowell said that his agency always charged for pitching.

Pitch porn

At the opposite end of the spectrum Neil Christie, managing director of independent ad agency Wieden & Kennedy shared some of his agency’s pitches for multi-million international accounts.

Like its contemporaries in the ad industry Wieden & Kennedy doesn’t charge for pitches but does have a rigorous selection criteria and process for work that it chases. As a result it has won four out five pieces of work that it has pitched this year.

Update: Wieden & Kennedy’s Neil Christie has blogged about the Pitch Masterclass.

“The ad model has been well and truly disrupted. New means of communication combined with the fragmentation of media has ended the comfortable ‘effectiveness’ of conventional media,” said Earl.

Half a dozen speakers from Prescient, Speed, Seymour Powell and The Team, each described how digital was changing their marketing discipline, from research to PR and from product design to brand communications.

Case studies (most of which remain work in progress and so aren’t for publication) included Becta, Bombardier, the Fat Duck, Interoute, The Economist, the NHS and Virgin Galactic.

What you can have a look at is Phil Whitehouse’s presentation. He encouraged the audience to think of the web not as a channel but as a democratic network.

Who is Branded?
Branded is a brand strategy consultancy run by ex-Marketing Directors and senior agency specialists. It is run by people with real depth of experience offering real advice. We are specialists in helping organisations create or revitalise brands by developing robust, media-neutral branding and communications strategies.

Why is there a chasm between PR and marketing?
Where marketing is the dominant discipline the combined function is often overseen by a marketing professional. This means that marketing culture often prevails, and PR considered less important than it should be.

The lack of control over implementation (exactly what appears and when) can lead marketers to feel uncomfortable. Marketing is increasingly accountable, yet PR metrics are traditionally difficult to align to business strategy.

How does PR fit within the marketing mix?
PR should be close to the very centre of the marketing mix for reasons which good Marketing Directors recognise. The choice of PR channels and tone of voice should be directly influenced by the brand’s promise/story. This ‘story’ should be a persuasive source of competitive advantage that is easily delivered via these PR channels.

How can PR better engage with marketing?
Our experience suggests that PR teams are often fertile ideas generators, but too often these ideas lack a strategy. PR teams need to get involved earlier in the brand development process – they should be at the table to advise the marketers on how the brand should be crafted in order to gain maximum editorial interest – including the key brand messages and language the brand should use to maximise potential interest amongst users/audiences.

We’re working with Loewy colleagues at The Team on a social media campaign aimed at positioning Platinum by Jo Rees, published by Random House tomorrow, as this summer’s hottest beach book. The Daily Express has described it as “a blue-chip, classic bonkbuster [that] makes contemporary chick-lit look down at heel”, so we’re clearly working with good material.

We’ve created a cracking campaign which will see the novel’s three main characters come to life on Twitter with content written by Jo herself. If you want to follow the launch make these characters your friends and follow their feeds.

Peaches Gold (@peachesgold) is an LA madam, servicing a celebrity clientele on both sides of the pond. Frankie Willis (@frankiewillis) is a young personal trainer slaving away below deck on a mega-yacht owned by a shady Russian oligarch. And finally, Lady Emma Harvey (@ladyemmaharvey) is old money aristocracy, a social mover and shaker with a taste for Asprey and holidays in Mustique.

There’s also a Facebook campaign to follow. Watch this space for updates as the campaign rolls out.

Week 3 was the design task. The teams were mixed up and the challenge was to create an original piece of personal exercise equipment and flog it to retailers. Debra led Ignite which designed a version of a traditional exercise ball. James led Empire which developed a gym-in-a-box. Here’s what we learnt.

Delegation
James delegated the design of Empire’s product to Ben and had no input in the project until a prototype arrived from the product design company. Delegation is fine, but for a team leader to have no involvement in the key activity of the task is poor. Ignite won the task despite fiddling and meddling from team leader Debora. She’s a strong assertive leader who delegates tasks, but not authority or responsibility.

Team motivation
When James was given the opportunity in the boardroom he voiced reservations about the design claiming that he kept quiet during the task as he didn’t want to demotivate the team. There’s never a good time to share bad news and human nature is to focus on the positive, but good communication is key to motivation and a good leader would have been able to rally a team despite misgivings.

Demonstrating value
Majid was fired because he wasn’t visible enough. In a team task make sure you’ve got a clearly defined role, that you complete what’s expected of you and that you make sure your boss recognises your work. This is applies in almost all aspects of business and is an excellent lesson for anyone in a client service business.

Product design
Maybe it was harsh editing or maybe the teams really did fail to take full advantage of insights provided by retail stores and personal trainers. Both teams arrived at their chosen product routes by luck rather than rational judgment. Research must lie at the core of the design process. Its why Loewy’s product design gurus Seymour Powell have a team dedicated to ethnographic research.

Selling
Lorraine stepped right outside her comfort zone in a bid to sell and did an okay job once she ditched the script and told a story. Debra would almost certainly have had her in the boardroom had Ignite failed the task. Instead she should have been congratulated for her efforts. Selling is a tough skill to learn if it doesn’t come naturally.