18,000 complaints now, and Brand-Ross suspended.
Having listened to the audio here and here, I have a theory.
I don’t think they actually left answerphone messages on Andrew Sachs’ mobile. I think they called him once and recorded the audio of his answerphone message, then pretended to leave a series of increasingly-worse fake messages.
There’s something [...]

OK, so the economy is apparently dead, we’ve lost £1.8 trillion down the back of the settee, house repossessions are up 71%, and the biggest US election for a generation is next week. Not a quiet news day then.
Yet Russell Brand’s niche weekend radio show has attracted so much mainstream media that it has [...]

In the internet age every piece of communication between you and your customer is open to scrutiny.
Electronic communication is scarily permanent.
Websites like HelpHound are a record of people’s thoughts on your business.
And anything you write on your website or any email sent to a customer could come back and be used against you.
I’m [...]

Just listened to a successful interview done by a man seeking publicity for his charity on a local radio station.
He got his point across OK and created a demand within me the listener to learn more. But when the interviewer asked him to give out his website address, he screwed it up.
The address he gave [...]

The breakfast presenter on one of our local radio stations has just been talking about a new shop she spotted on the drive to work today.
It hasn’t opened yet but it’s exciting her… apparently its name suggests it’s a shop selling handmade chocolate.
And she said the website address was splashed all over the window. [...]

Last week I said bank holidays were a great time to try and get free publicity.
A client of ours was featured in the news bulletins of a local radio station on bank holiday Monday, and again this morning. All this from a press release we sent a few weeks ago (the station was holding onto [...]

A great publicity move by Gordon Brown today (MediaGuardian, free registration required).
He’s announced he wants local newspapers and radio stations to get their readers and listeners to nominate local heroes for the honours’ list.
Not only could this kill off the cash for honours scandal and produce a more deserving list of winners, but Brown is [...]

There’s an article on today’s MediaGuardian (free registration required) about a new internet player launched by the commercial radio industry.
It allows you to listen to any commercial station in the UK, and track down the BBC ones too.
Very useful. If you are planning to target an area with publicity, you can sit and listen [...]

When I wrote about a company called Bin N Gone and an appalling interview they did on Chris Evans’ Radio 2 show, I predicted they wouldn’t get on that show again.
Well the company is riding a lovely publicity wave at the moment, as it’s being discussed on Jeremy Vine’s show right now. It’s a great [...]

I’ve just sat and listened to the most painful interview on Radio 2’s Chris Evans show. A business called Bin and Gone was on there in the business slot, to promote its new private bin collection service.
The interview was horrendous - despite much encouragement from the interviewer Phillippa, the guy kept giving short closed answers [...]