‘Ne’er shed a clout until May is out’ has never been truer than in 2021. When is it going to warm up a bit? In reality, May or hawthorn blossom has been out for a while, as spring seems to be about three weeks earlier than when I was a girl, and I have put away my winter coat before the end of the month, but still, it’s been very chilly.
I’ve been delighted to be working with some cultural clients this month, helping promote a very special contemporary sculpture which will be unveiled in Salisbury shortly and with Wiltshire Creative, which brings together Salisbury Playhouse, Salisbury Arts Centre and Salisbury International Arts Festival. It’s fantastic that they’re staging some outdoor theatre, dance and circus in Salisbury over the late May Bank Holiday weekend. It will be our first chance to see live performance for over a year.
The home front this month has been all about ‘mini’ exams as my teenagers complete formal assessments for their GCSEs and A Levels. Fingers crossed for results in August. I now face a long summer with two teenagers kicking around while I work from home. Wish me luck.
Media in a time of Covid
On 27 May, Broadcast magazine (which I used to edit) will unveil their TV awards in a virtual event. I was delighted to be part of the judging panel for the news and current affairs category and I helped longlist both that and the specialist factual category. I watched about 80 hours of TV all in all; some really great programmes, some not so great. Overall, I was impressed by the lengths TV crews and journalists had to go to in order to bring us the news and factual programming in a year like no other – a pandemic year. Kudos to all and perhaps that helps explain my insistent defence of journalism and the media.
The Bafta TV Awards will follow on Sunday 6 June.
With lockdown lifting, theatres and cinemas can reopen from 17 May. But the Chelsea Flower Show, another great marker of late spring, has been postponed from May until 21 September for the first time in its 108-year history. Another indication of just how unusual the past 15 months have been.
The Brit Awards on 11 May were used to test whether 4,000 people could safely gather at the O2 after a negative Covid test… I have fond (if blurry) memories of attending the Brits in 2000 and 2001 when they were still at Earl’s Court. This year looked like a blast for the key workers who made up the bulk of the audience.
At the end of the month, I’ll be attending PR360, PR Week’s annual event, running virtually for the second year. I ‘went’ to the virtual event last September from the comfort of my kitchen and it was great to measure the zeitgeist in the worlds of PR and marketing after, then, several months of lockdown. It was the first time I’d heard the now over-used word ‘pivot’ to describe doing things differently in a virus-hit world.
Journalism and branding
As for the month’s media news, you’ll have read that Jon Snow is to step down as a main anchor of Channel 4 News after 32 years. I interviewed Jon in 2008 for Broadcast magazine when he judged the One World Media awards. He was affable, if busy. My main memory is turning up at reception at ITN, which makes C4 News, only to be told Jon couldn’t see me because he was busy preparing for that night’s programme. I had just travelled up from Somerset where I lived at the time, so I made a bit of a fuss and was granted about 15 minutes. He was fabulous and it was all the time I needed to get 2,000 words when I later transcribed our chat.
I was intrigued by the news that Amazon is to open a hair salon – the thing is, there are plenty of people who don’t think twice about buying from Amazon. I wonder how long it will be before we say that every x pound spent in the UK is spent with Amazon, as we used to say that £1 of every £8 spent in the UK was spent with Tesco (I’ve no idea if this is still the case). It’s only the chattering classes who say they try to avoid Amazon with its dreams of world domination, uber rich boss Jeff Bezos, supposedly gruelling conditions for staff and questionable tax planning.
I have so many things to say about this story. How much I love CJ the press spokeswoman in The West Wing; how I’ve barely watched any of the Downing Street press briefings during the pandemic; what a colossal waste of £2.6m when the government was only offering key NHS workers a 1% pay rise. You might say the Guardian would take this tack, but facts are facts.
It’s interesting to note that new subs to Netflix are slowing as the so-called pandemic boom wears off.
I was alerted to this from another newsletter about the world of work increasingly accommodating women – more of this please.
Working culture
Finally, the FT reported on the way company benefits are changing as the workplace changes. Old style benefits such as gym memberships are going down; wellbeing benefits such as debt support, virtual classes and flexible hours are going up. Compare the news that KPMG is going to require staff to work in the office only two days a week.
Netflix apparently already offered unlimited holidays, even pre-pandemic. While my teacher friends will say they have to work in their holidays planning and marking pupils’ work, there’s no doubt that the number of weeks of school holiday in a year is a draw to a job in teaching. And when I think about it, unlimited holiday will be self-limiting.
As a self-employed person I like taking some time each school half term and holiday for ‘light duties’ – meetings and email, while leaving some down time from work. But I’m not going to take most weeks as holidays throughout the year or I won’t earn a living. So even unlimited holiday will be limited. How many people do you know who fail to take all their holiday in a given year, anyway? Plenty, I’m sure.
That’s quite enough for this month. As ever, if I can help you to raise your profile, jump on a call with me. I’d love to catch up with you.
Here’s my Calendly link: https://calendly.com/lucecannonpr/30min
Thanks for reading.
Lucy Rouse PR Blog 