"Taglines: The Cheesy Way to Express What Your Business Does"

There's a lot of hilarious stuff out there on the World Wide Web. My current favourite source of belly laughs is People of Walmart - but I digress, as that site is purely for recreational purposes.

On the odd occasion, you stumble across a hilarious site that wasn't posted in jest. I found an amusing post today that wasn't meant to be funny at all - UK Business Labs asked, well, UK businesses to post their company taglines. And boy have they delivered.

I have a strong aversion to company taglines, when BtoB firms try to come up with three-word descriptions of who they are. Taglines are cheesy and they over simplify your message. It's like the corporate equivalent of sticking political bumper stickers on your car. No one wants to see that while driving. And every time a corporate marketing department has attempted to come up with a tagline, it's the most excruciating "brainstorm" experience I've sat through. Why? Because no tagline works in the BtoB world. You're not Nike and you can't tell your customers to 'just do it' without getting them all confused as to what you're really on about.

So, trust me, ditch the taglines, say what your company does in the most straightforward way possible (E.g. Hatch PR is a PR firm for digital companies) and carry on doing the great business you do. Stop wracking your brain for cheeseball, roundabout ways of saying it. You just wind up sounding like a Hallmark card on corporate crack.

Recession '08-'09 Baby Boom - you heard it here first

In PR one of our jobs is to second guess media trends. We want to tip you off early on the Recession Baby Boom - because it's just a matter of time before you start hearing whispers in the mainstream press and PR campaigns start targeting the burgeoning baby products market.

Like all good media stories it may sound counter intuitive. People should have less money now, right? And we always talk about how expensive babies are. In fact, in the US it's a generally accepted fact that a baby currently costs its parents $250,000 from conception through to age 18. If you're the type of mom who accommodates her son well into his 30s, subsisting on your laundering abilities and meatloaf, your cost could soar well above that figure.

But, taking an extremely unscientific survey of friends, family, and Facebook contacts ('cause you gotta) there is something we have heard over and over again lately: "I'm pregnant." Why? Well, these declarations have come thick and fast a few months after we heard the same thing over and over again from female, working friends: "Since the economy is shitty right now, and I might get made redundant, we may as well just get pregnant. It's not like I'm going to get anywhere in my career in this climate."

So people started taking their frustrations on the poor economy out on more fruitful, fun, bedroom-focused, endeavours. And the babies are starting to come screaming into the world.

The first concrete evidence of the Recession Baby Boom? Leading baby and maternity retailer Mothercare released its earnings today - moving onto the FTSE 250 leaderboard and Q2 sales are up 7 per cent. The stock has risen 65 per cent since May.

You heard it here first. If your company can find a way to weave a Baby Boom message into its PR strategy over the next three to nine months you won't suffer for it.

Guardian gag order - we're officially at the point of no return

The Guardian gag order story of today has demonstrated better than any recent news event how digital media / social media / TWITTER has completely changed the game in how we consume media and the types of stories we react to.

A great blog post on The Media Blog sums up why quite nicely.

Bravo to The Guardian for quick, decisive action against a disgusting legal move on the part of the despicable Trafigura and a law firm which will rue the day they entered this motion - Carter-Ruck.

Rumour has it Newsnight will be covering the story tonight - we'll be tuning in.

Why we need to leave the Nobel committee (and Obama) alone

This week produced yet another public relations quagmire for President Obama as he became the surprise recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. He can't enjoy it, unfortunately, as people around the world are shouting that he won the award for rhetoric, not accomplishments; it was given far too early in his career; the fact that it's been bestowed upon him undermines the credibility of the award itself.

Why would the Nobel committee open itself up to such criticism? It's not like they wouldn't have seen this coming. They didn't bestow the award on Obama early in his career - they bestowed it really, REALLY early in his career.

They obviously want the award to become less reactionary, patting-ourselves-on-the-back type of Oscar-style exercise and more of an actionable, political aid for the world's most influential people who are working tirelessly to improve peace and prosperity for the world's citizens. They want to transform the nature of the award itself, throwing their weight behind individuals who are leading us towards greater peace. The Nobel can then give credo and additional influence to start conversations that wouldn't have been held, or to open doors that would have stayed shut, for people like Obama and future recipients who are still in the midst of their work. Effectively the award becomes a communications aid rather than an Oscar bestowed on retired greats who live on vineyards and ranches and spend their days sipping brandy.

In a world this messed up, with countless problems facing mankind, who can blame them? It's just this type of action-oriented, open communications approach, rather than introspective reviews of our accomplishments after they're done, that the world needs right now.

I suggest that we calm down and be grateful that the Nobel might help Obama achieve some of his lofty ambitions. Let's be honest - there isn't an award on this planet that isn't a PR invention, and inherently subjective by nature. The Nobel is granted on the opinions of a bunch of eccentric rich people in Oslo - it's never been any different. If they can start to make things happen rather than just being a reason to open a bottle of bubbly and donate a few million to charity, personally I think that's a good transition. Let's not blame Obama for being the first recipient of this nature.

And finally: if the Nobel wasn't granted on rhetoric, then Al Gore never would have gotten it for his undoubtedly incredible contribution to the fight against climate change. He has worked tirelessly to spread his message, so he definitely deserved his Nobel, but all the same, it's not like ice stopped melting in the Arctic Circle when An Inconvenient Truth came out. And that, my friends is an inconvenient truth.

I'm worth $1m, how 'bout you? Valuing web's latest thang

On the eve of Forbes' declaration that Faceback founder Mark Zuckerberg is worth $2 billion, investigative industry rag Silicon Alley Insider ponders whether MySpace is "now worthless" and whether it was even worth buying on the part of Rupert Murdoch. (He paid $580 million for it, which at the time was considered a steal. But that was back when people used the site ....for actual social networking rather than just to look up bands).

How quickly the tide comes in, and goes back out, in the internet world.

Let's consider the valuation of some of web's social networking trends, shall we? It's a fun game which a lot of industry sources like to play at - with no accepted formula and no right answer.

*Facebook - the social networking giant has been popular for awhile now, yet advertising revenues are still abysmal - the last valuation was published in May 2009 at $10 billion

*Twitter - arguably the web's latest 'thing' - currently valued at $1 billion - but no one knows if that figure is anywhere even close to accurate, since the company doesn't make any money and has no business model

*MySpace - currently valued at $500 million to $1.2 billion

*Friendster - remember them? they lost all their business to Facebook yet claim to have a handful of fans left in Asia - currently valued at $210 million

Again there is no right answer in this game, and perhaps this is what makes it so fun to watch. The only accepted truth is that once the site becomes unpopular, the valuation dips. Oftentimes this has no relation to the actual revenue the company is making. If only businesses in other sectors were valued on these vague, cloudy formulas! Just imagine a world where your bank was valued based on 'hype' and 'promise'!

Suggested reading: Ray Valdes at Gartner has posted an interesting and more educated viewpoint on how valuations happen and what they imply.