News & Opinions

Recently I had the opportunity to travel to our Brussels office for insights into what’s new in the FH EMEA network. It was a pleasure to meet colleagues from other offices and put faces to names and it was also interesting to chat about our clients and see where we could help each other out.

In terms of the actual training, we learnt a lot about the company, how to hone our own skills as PR counsellors, and how to do this better in an increasingly online world. I took two main things away from this training, first, know how your online campaign is going to help your business objectives, and secondly, don’t be scared if you don’t get it right first time. This may sound simple but worth keeping in mind when in the throes of a big campaign.

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Many thanks to Isabel Dedring, London’s Deputy Mayor for Transport, for talking to a packed Monday morning Business Breakfast here at Fleishman-Hillard London. 

Isabel talked with huge enthusiasm about our capital city, its transport system and the Olympics and engaged in a well received Q&A and networking discussion with London businesses.

Above, Nick Williams, Head of Public Affairs, with Isabel Dedring.

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Many thanks to Nick Watt, Chief Political Correspondent at The Guardian for coming to Fleishman-Hillard London this morning for a Business Breakfast on the current political situation – guests enjoyed a thought provoking analysis on Cameron, the Coalition and Labour’s next challenges.

Next Monday, Isabel Dedring, London’s Deputy Mayor for Transport will be at Fleishman-Hillard London for a talk and Q&A from 0815 to 0930.  Please email events@fleishmaneurope.com to RSVP – strictly first come, first served as places are limited.

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The obvious answer to this one is – the sun. For those that came from London and cooler climes, the week so far has been beautiful, meaning that we’re all walking round in just suit jackets and taking every excuse to have a quick rest outside. People can be seen perched everywhere, taking a break from the stifling booths.

But what are the hot gadgets everyone is talking about?

Of course everyone is talking about quad core – with handset manufacturers investing in this technology to make computing-intensive activities like playing the latest video game on your phone faster and better quality. As a result, we’re seeing more and more manufacturers introducing handsets with big HD screens.

Another trend that is gaining ground is machine to machine (M2M) communications. This has been talked about for a while but it’s started to look like it might really take off. It might not sound exciting but if you could communicate with your car or turn on the heating via your phone, that would be pretty cool. Our client AT&T, in the Connected House, is showing off these smart thermostats, connected locks and many other practical deployments of M2M.

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Mobile World Congress has officially begun.  The first keynotes have been made, handsets are being launched and the coverage is already rolling in. Of course, no technology event is complete without technology failures and so accordingly we have been battling with malfunctioning Wi-Fi, BlackBerry smartphones that refuse to find a network and self-combusting adaptors. Despite this the first full day has been a success all round.

Sunday night we helped our client Huawei launch a new handset. The room was full to the brim, some people were watching it on a screen in another room because it was so packed, and yet more were queuing round the building, hoping to get in and have a peek. G, Chevi, Shelley and Francesca did an amazing job of marshalling the masses of journalists and ensuring the event went off without a hitch. Some industry sources have suggested that Huawei has come out on top this year, and we’d certainly like to think so.

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Influential Conservative blogger Tim Montgomerie has a weekly campaign, and this week he takes on House of Lords reform under the provocative headline “Nick Clegg may leave the Coalition if he doesn’t get an elected Lords”. Presaging this, last weekend saw threat and counter threat traded between Coalition colleagues over House of Commons redistricting, including Ming Campbell, Lord Astor (PM David Cameron’s stepfather-in-law), and LibDem gadfly Lord Oakeshott trading barbs with right-wing Conservative Philip Davies MP.

Is this a major threat to the Coalition? Or is it a combination of mid-term blues, with rent-a-quote soundings off from those who are disaffected, ambitious or both?

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Mobile World Congress – the biggest mobile event on the planet. For the uninitiated, the show is four days of frantic journalists, chaotic clients, breathless PRs, big launches and late nights; in other words, a normal trade show. However, what is impressive in Barcelona is the scale of the event – Mobile World Congress covers an area equivalent to seven football pitches, with more than eight enormous halls, 1,400 companies exhibiting this year and last year saw the largest ever attendance of 60,000 visitors.

This year, Fleishman-Hillard is sending a team of seven to showcase our clients and spread the word. The team consists of five technology geeks and two consumer lifestyle experts. As a group we’re all looking forward to the opening of the show on Monday with a mix of excitement and awareness of everything still to be done. We’ve asked the team what they’re specifically looking forward to this year  and this is what they said:

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Consigned to perennial opposition, the Liberal Democrats’ distinctively democratic processes, under which the Parliamentary party answers to party conference – rather than the other way around – lead to occasional rebuffs for the party leadership. But whilst this was good sport for political editors – harking back to a previous generation of Labour conferences – it was largely unnoticed by the populous at large. Indeed, in opposition, splits in the Liberal Democrats were less consequential than the rifts between the People’s Front of Judea and Judean People’s Front; wags could point out that thanks to Monty Python, the British public had at least heard of the Judean People’s Front.

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