Weekly High

We’ve done it again! In the last week Smoking Gun PR has been nominated for five- yep, that’s FIVE- CIPR Pride Awards. How’s that for ingeniousness. We’re up for Best Integrated Campaign, Best Use of Digital, Best Use of Social Media, Best Use of Photography or Design, and Outstanding Public Relations Consultancy.

Weekly Low

As if the media wasn’t worried enough about fake news, this video, published on The Guardian’s website earlier in the week, shows that it’s not just what we read but what we watch and hear that’s now under threat from fraudulent and malicious parties. The future may be bright, but it’s also a bit terrifying.

Need to know

• KFC’s ‘Whole Chicken’ advert may face investigation due to the high number of complaints it has received.
• Madonna has accepted damages from Daily Mail after the website revealed names, ages, and other personal information about the pop star’s two daughters before she adopted them- ‘a serious invasion of privacy’.
• Cleveron, a company in Estonia, has invented a cloud-based mailbox for packages, effectively putting an end to the hassle of missed deliveries- recipients of parcels get a message to tell them something has arrived into a shared community box, which they can then collect using an individual QR code.

Just in case you missed us

Next week marks the start of August, and the beginning of the media silly season proper. As such we lumped together some of our favourite silly season stories, and considered whether this year- with all its ongoing hard news- might be harder than ever to sell in soft stories.

The Blagger’s Blog is Smoking Gun PR’s weekly roundup of media news, sans effort

Looking for more advice on PR, social media, and marketing? Why not get in contact or submit a brief to inject a little ingeniousness into your brand.