It used to be that AVEs (Advertising Value Equivalents) were used to evaluate coverage with an extra uplift added for editorial objectivity and credibility. This is still the case with print media but far from it with online coverage which, as yet, has no method of evaluation.

This poses a problem for the modern PR agency. Despite online media growing at a pace and the more traditional print media, sadly diminishing by the minute (who would ever have thought the Manchester Evening News would end its business pages and supplements?!), clients still prefer hard copy coverage and value it more. This is not helped by the fact that while the press cuttings services do monitor online coverage, the values they attach to them are ridiculous, simply because there is no known way of calculating it. This does nothing to encourage clients to view online coverage as valuable.

Take for example The Marketer, a credible magazine aimed at those responsible for marketing campaigns and their budgets. We set up an interview for the online version with one of our clients, PH Media, providers of on-hold marketing and audio branding services. Perfect target audience, the readership couldn’t get any better as specifiers of our client’s product. The result was an in depth feature which positioned PH Media s thought leaders in their industry. The value of if according to our media monitoring service? £35. Nonsense.

Agencies can do their own homework and find out what the site’s visitor demographics are, what they charge for advertising, how Google judges the page rank of the site, whether the coverage contains backlinks and so forth. But we do PR. We do media relations. We do marketing. If we wanted to become a cuttings service we would – but we don’t.

Is it really beyond the wit of man to establish some sort of formula? And in the absence of one, is it really the job of the PR professional to come up with it? What are clippings services for? With ever increasing pressure on budgets, it is more important than ever that we demonstrate ROI – evaluation is one of those methods. If there is a cuttings service out there that can tackle this issue, you can have our business today.

When the prickly Scot talks, the press listens. Yet when the press talks, they don’t tend to get a slightly different reaction from Ferguson.

In fact, they would usually find themselves on the receiving end of a sharply-worded, withering blast designed to re-affirm the hierarchy in this particular relationship.

Celebrated sports broadcaster John Motson was one such recipient of the hairdryer treatment. After enquiring about the disciplinary status of a Manchester United player, he was firmly reminded, “You’ve no right to ask that question John – you’re out of order. You know fine well my ruling on that.”

So, can we learn any PR lessons from Sir Alex Ferguson?

I’m not sure many of us would advise our clients to counter challenging questions with utter contempt for the interviewer. This press conference prior to United’s exit at the group stage of the 2011-2012 Champions League being a case in point:

Ferguson’s particular brand of crisis management usually involved angry denial, outright aggression or a refusal to even engage in conversation. The long list of journalists banned from Old Trafford during his reign would attest to the difficulty in keeping him happy.

Yet somehow, he made it work.

It could only happen in the mixed-up world of sports journalism but Ferguson’s approach actually strengthened the United brand and stemmed the flow of bad news stories surrounding the club.

Journalists became so wary of annoying United’s Knight of the Realm that they began to think twice about publishing stories which would cast him, his players or the club in an unfavourable light.

This culture of fear and deference is fairly unique even in the bizarre footballing eco-system, let alone the wider world of media relations.

Maybe there’s a role waiting for Fergie as an advisor to some of the world’s biggest brands. If nothing else, it would be hilarious to see the likes of a national train operator tell the press and consumers ‘our service is top-class and you lot know nothing’ in the event of any serious disruptions.

Not that we would advise any of our clients to adopt that approach!

We applauded the move away from flowery language that boasted only of the client and not what they could do for their customers to much plainer, more easily digestible English, talking about benefits to the people buying the stuff, not fatuous boasts.

So it fills us with some dismay to see the marketing industry take a retrograde step in what seems to be an ever growing popularity in mystifying the language some are using to get their message across.

Here are some examples I came across only today.

Unified Communications – what used to be called video conferencing which surely did what it said on the tin?

Experiential marketing – otherwise known as sampling.

Intent-based marketing – is all marketing not intent based?

Advocates – loyal customers to you and I.

Shadow IT – Dropbox.

Real time brands – brands that react quickly to change.

Come, come now. Is this really necessary? Why confuse your prospect or customer? Is it really a good idea to alienate them by making them feel stupid because they don’t know what you are talking about? Or are modern day marketers trying to make things look terribly complicated to make themselves look smarter? I’d like to think we wouldn’t patronise our clients like that, after all, aren’t we supposed to be partners?

Ouch, was my first reaction. Not because of the patronising sentiment but, being in the PR business, I knew exactly how this would be reported in the media.

So I cringed as Sheila Doran, chief executive of Eastlands Homes was introduced onto The Today programme on Radio 4 – we media and marketing types cannot listen to an interview without critiquing it.

Hats off to Sheila. She didn’t put a foot wrong on a show where seasoned politicians that have been media trained to within an inch of their lives have fallen to pieces under intense pressure from its gifted presenters.

What struck me most was how sincere she sounded – she wasn’t patronising her tenants, she feared for them. New cuts in benefits and the introduction of the bedroom tax would leave her customers living hand-to-mouth, with some losing their homes and she didn’t want to see that.

If she’d been my client, I would have been really proud of her. I don’t know anyone who heard that interview and didn’t come away thinking better of her.

She was forced to issue a statement and apologise. I think did a pretty good job of it.

“We’ve lobbied continuously against the government cuts which threaten the quality of life for many of our customers. We’ve increased the range of support and advice for anyone struggling in the face of these cuts,” she said.

“We know there will be stark choices – our message is that we are here to help wherever possible and we’re sorry if we worded it clumsily”.

I bet what she wanted to add is that they aren’t some big fat cat corporation creaming off profits while ripping off the little people. What has been lost in this ridiculous over-reaction by the media and public alike is that THEY ARE A NOT FOR PROFIT ORGANISATION. They exist solely to service tenants – there is nothing in it for them.

As we said, however, when we were providing some media advice to one of our clients the other day, there is nothing the media like more than the abuse of the vulnerable. I’d argue on this occasion that has been Eastlands Homes. As long as we are all politically correct though eh?

In the lead up to the production, Topshop gave me plenty of opportunities to get involved with the hype. I could watch clothes fittings on YouTube and view Google+ diaries from designers while on the day, I could walk down the runway using a tiny HD camera attached to each model.

I, for one, loved it. Sitting in my pyjamas with no make-up on while pretending I’m a fashion clotheshorse – what’s not to like?!

But what has this got to do with B2B marketing I hear you ask?

The tie-in with the internet giant has allowed Topshop to prove its accessibility to a huge audience rather than limit it to those who were invited to the event.

By creating interactive and shareable content, the store has knocked down walls of brand exclusivity and reached out to customers through emotional engagement. Clearly it is a highly beneficial technique as in the first five minutes of the online screening, there were over 200,000 shares on social media sites using its ‘Shoot the Show’ stills. Wow. A lasting online footprint indeed.

Its ‘Be the Buyer’ app also allowed users to produce their own Topshop moodboards using runway outfits both during and after the live show. This clever creation has been able to indicate what consumers find most popular and will be essential when it comes to the brand choosing what they will have in store over the coming months.

B2B companies need to take heed from Topshop. Regardless of the contrast in consumer and business markets, personalisation and innovation is powerful when it comes to marketing products. Getting the customer involved to dictate the direction of the company and using social media is a sign of a forward-thinking company that is there to stay.

This was the question that popped into my head while writing a press release for one of our clients the other week.

I must confess I don’t have the definitive answer. For all I know it could be 42 but then I also don’t have a Deep Thought-style super computer to provide this information, just a laptop with a dual core processor and 2GB of RAM.

This tangential train of thought arose as a result of research conducted by PH Media Group, which noticed a greater trend towards the use of regional accents among its business clients. You can read the Yorkshire Post piece on the research here.

Now, I’ve always been conscious that many Mancunians deliberately speak with an accent to assert a sense of belonging but I had never thought deeply about increased use of the Manc twang.

Pondering the matter made me realise a number of friends have, in fact, adopted a slightly more pronounced accent in recent years, while more Mancs have started to make their presence felt in the media and even television and radio advertising.

For a long while, I thought there was a stigma attached to my accent, a common disclaimer being ‘sorry sir, I may speak with a nasal resonance but I can promise you I’m not a scallywag’.

But apparently, the Manchester accent is actually perceived as industrious and creative by the large majority of the British population. Perhaps this is a throwback to the city’s role in the dawn of the industrial age but the more I thought about it, the more it rang true.

Putting aside Manchester’s prominent role in the development of the computer, the evolution of British popular music and the establishment of the Football League, this creativity and attitude to work is evident in marketing and PR.

The focus is – and always has been – on London but there are a number of PR and marketing agencies throughout Manchester and the north west which are creating work of an astonishingly high standard.

Not only that but the 2011 PR Industry Census revealed a higher concentration of young people working in the north west than in London.

There is a rich vein of talent emerging from this region so and the industry needs a shift in attitude if it is to be properly cultivated.

Rather than billing Manchester as a second-class citizen, the entire industry needs to recognise the importance of difference and encourage young people to see north west agencies as more than just a stepping stone.

Just as accents are getting stronger, so should creative output from the UK’s numerous regions, fuelling a more progressive industry with a greater selection to offer its potential clients.

On an average day, I have tweeted, Facebooked, Instagrammed and emailed. Not to mention looked at my favourite blogs and (not quite reluctantly) browsed the celebrity gossip pages of a national newspaper (all over lunch of course!)

Thing is, I don’t just do it when I’m in the office or when I’m sat at home on my laptop. Having a smartphone has enabled me to glance at Twitter to see what’s going on or surf the web whenever I have a spare minute.

I don’t even want to know how many hours daily I must spend doing the above activities without the risk of running to the hills and fearing for my social life. Yet it’s something I genuinely can’t give up – believe me, I tried to during my final year university exams.

However, it seems like I’m not alone in this addiction with Siteopia’s recent research finding that almost two thirds of people admit they ‘need’ the internet to function in day-to-day life and one in ten are unable to go longer than 10 minutes without logging on to social networks and email accounts.

Slightly scary to be so dependent on something without even registering it.

It seems that business-to-business companies are also becoming more reliant on the internet and social media with more than nine out of ten using one social platform or more in 2012 (Social Media Marketing Industry Report, 2012) and 62 per cent of companies claiming that social media had become more prominent in acquiring leads in 2012 (The 2012 State of Inbound Marketing, Hubspot).

So, for an organisation, spending time online is business-wise rather than being seen as time-wasting.

Working at a B2B PR and marketing agency, perhaps I can get away with telling everyone it’s an essential part of my job to spend all of my time on these channels and websites rather than admitting the truth – that I am in fact an internet addict. Although I really don’t know how I will explain looking up celebrity gossip…

If you’re not aware of the man in question, the now-famous QC was lead counsel to the recent Leveson inquiry into newspaper ethics.

Earlier this month, Jay spoke out once more against our country’s Fourth Estate, labelling it “the most unruly and irreverent in the world”. He also criticized “prurient or intrusive tendencies” among tabloid newspapers and, given the content of the Leveson inquiry, maybe his outlook could be excused somewhat.

But, having spent life on both sides of the fence, I feel he is among a number who have been unjustly harsh on the written press in recent months.

I have worked in newspapers, magazines and PR across the north west and Yorkshire during a nine-year professional career to date and not once have I been witness to anything resembling prurient or intrusive behaviour.

Sure, the phone hacking scandal included both ‘qualities’ in abundance but herein lies the problem.

The majority is paying for the sins of the few.

I’d be naïve and misguided to claim all non-tabloid journalists are true of heart and well-intentioned but, having spent significant time in newsrooms across the gamut, I believe the future of journalism is in good hands.

Visit the offices of any regional or local newspaper and you’ll find hardy, honest folk doing good work for little pay and even less respect.

I remember getting chased down the road in Partington by an irate member of the public while out on a job for my first paper. They didn’t know who I was or where I was from but the knowledge that I represented a tentacle of the slimy, nefarious media beast was enough for this particular fellow.

There’s a danger of this happening across the country and it would be a crying shame if journalists who already have a tough job on their hands find life getting even harder. It may be the final straw for some in the profession.

Ethics are important in any profession but let’s not get carried away and suggest journalism is a snakepit of back-stabbing, subterfuge and evil intent.

Legislative interference is not needed as long as we work towards a stronger framework for enforcing the morals and values which are supposed to have represented the press right from the start.

The site aims to deliver up-to-the minute media and creative industry news to a hungry audience.

Nick Jaspan’s latest venture proves that you can’t keep a good man down. His dignified silence last year during an acrimonious split with Manchester Confidential was to his eternal credit and admiration of reputation managers across the region.

Good luck in the new venture.  With Stephen Chapman and David Prior bringing experience in journalism, PR and media production to the editorial team, I doubt they’ll need it.

B2B marketing has been slower to get involved in social media, but boy when we latched our teeth onto it, we embraced it at in incredible pace.

New members are joining the site at a rate of two per second – that’s 172,800 per day.  If it were a country it would have the fifth largest population in the world. A cursory look at my own profile shows 12,805 professionals are new to my network in the last two days alone which staggers me!

Not surprisingly, the top five most followed people include three of the most successful entrepreneurs in the world – Richard Branson, Tony Robbins and Jeff Weiner (practice what you preach).  Also on that list is the leader of the free world Barack Obama, largely down to the States having 74 million members alone.

We must be looking for spiritual advice as well as business, with Deepak Chopra randomly being the third most followed.  Or was this just a temporary blip while we were all expecting the Mayan apocalypse?!!