Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Glass Half Full
A former drinks PR’s optimistic guide to life after redundancy
9 April 2009


Days since redundancy: about six months
Invoices issued last month: seven – a ShielComms record!
No. of Sky boxes installed: two
Hours spent watching Sky: about a half
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Just when it doesn’t seem possible to find any new foes for the pub industry, an unlikely candidate emerges in the form of Eurostar. Its latest press ad proposes two ways of spending £59, either a “Friday night down the same pub, again” or “an aperitif as the sun sets behind Sacre Coeur”.

As a PR, I am, of course, all for a bit of poetic licence, but this is surely stretching it beyond credibility? For starters, I can’t believe £59 will get you through le Chunnel on a Friday night, which is, unsurprisingly, peak travel time for the UK’s aperitif-seeking community. I’m also willing to bet several Euros that pre-dinner drinks in one of Europe’s travel hot spots won’t come cheap, either.

Whereas, £59 in my really quite posh local will buy you three bottles of very decent wine on any day of the week. Or 20 pints of Harvey’s Sussex Best. Or 15 large G+Ts. Frankly, I’d struggle to spend £59 in one evening and remember much about it the next morning. So come on, clever Eurostar copwriting guys, make it believable! And give pubs a break, we’ve already got plenty of legitimate competition, what with coffee shops and bowling alleys and internet shopping and wide screen telly and….

Talking of TV, I have finally surrendered to a long-running and relentless campaign by the junior Shiels and installed Sky. After the initial thrill of buying a big screen TV and waiting in twice for the Sky engineer - who was, incidentally, pretty hot and I really won’t mind if it all breaks down tomorrow - I’m left wondering, why? I’ve lost half the family members to daily repeats of ‘The Wire’ that run until about 2020, I think. I’ve also, sadly, lost those evenings where I waved them all off to watch the big match on someone else’s Sky set and then reclaimed the sofa for a viewing of ‘Mistresses’. Technology, I’ve found, always delivers less than it promises. Like the men who, no doubt, invented SkyPlus.

Readers of Glass Half Full will have noted that my posts have become infrequent to the point of absence over recent weeks. I’ve not been deluged with virtual fan mail, though several of my sadly-neglected friends have remarked, rather pointedly, that without the blog, they have no idea what I’m doing. But, I’ve missed the blog. The process of turning the week’s highs and lows into 500 pithy words was, in retrospect, cathartic, energising, and, strangely revelatory. Frequently, I found the words that appeared on the screen told me how I felt about something before I’d even acknowledged it myself. A bit like therapy, but without the fat cheque or judgemental counsellor.

Finally, I can’t let National Cask Ale Week pass without a word on beer – and women. This Wednesday was the first ever FemAle Day, and let’s hope it’s not the last. At The Rising Sun in Henley, part of the Brakspear estate, licensee Jude Bishop offered a free half of Brakspear Oxford Gold to every woman who came through the pub doors that day. Apparently, she served around a dozen women, which may not sound a huge number, but it’s nonetheless a dozen women who wouldn’t have drunk beer otherwise. Especially pleasing as, apparently, around 40% of women who try cask ale then make it a regular drink. That’s surely worth raising a glass to, any day of the year!

www.shielcomms.co.uk or http://twitter.com/rosshiel

Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Glass Half Full: Chapter 2
A former drinks PR’s optimistic guide to life after redundancy

No. of times BlackBerry left unchecked for five minutes: there were one or two, I think
Shoes purchased: none, honest
Probability of conctacts lunched this week giving me any work: slim, I’d say
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Reading the supportive posts to last week’s blog was a warming experience – and given the temperature in my too-expensive-to-heat home office, warmth is a good thing. Though for future reference, anyone asking whether I have a husband should also submit a recent photograph and pay slip.

Into Week 4 of my post-redundancy life, things are beginning to make sense. Like the direct relationship between hours spent shopping on-line, running errands and doing the crossword and the absence of any real work at the Shiel Communications nerve centre. Work displacement insinuates its way into your diary and good intentions, precisely because you can just about persuade yourself that it’s good use of time to go to the supermarket/dry cleaners/gym when they’re queue-free and catch up with work later. Which is, of course, b****cks and you’ll spend your evenings watching Little Dorritt (if you can locate it in the schedule) just like everyone who’s done a full day’s grind.

Life certainly has a ‘honeymoon-is-over’ feel about it now. I thought it was fair enough to take it easy for a couple of weeks after the job ended, but now I have to do some serious thinking about my next move. I think I’ve done well on the networking front, but, while it’s great to be invited to a press launch here or an industry dinner there, I’m starting to re-evaluate their worth as a way to win that elusive contract. It is of course good to get out of the house and meet people, but going to events takes time that I could be spending on a more hard-nosed drive for business. In the time it takes me to go to lunch in London, I could probably make 15 sales calls. Or complete my sadly neglected website. Or be really grown-up and write a business plan.

I know it’s not uncommon to have demands on your time, but, ironically, being unemployed seems to be adding to those time pressures. For one, the money will, of course, run out sooner or later (sooner, probably) and for another, I know that the longer you’re out of work, the longer you’ll stay out of work. It’ feels like it’s time to take proper stock of my options and stop being quite so optimistic.

That said, my words last week about referrals have proved prescient. No sooner had I posted them than the call came from a friend of an ex-colleague who’d been left in the lurch when her current PR went into early labour. I stepped into the breach, a bit like a cash buyer in a broken property chain. With, happily, a similar ability to negotiate on price.

So I’ve done a day’s paid work with a promise of more to follow. And it wasn’t just about replenishing the shoe fund, it also reminded me of how much I like doing PR and, importantly, made me more disciplined on the other days. You know, fully dressed way before lunchtime, only watching one Australian soap a day. It’s surely just a matter of time before such focus is rewarded.


Ros Shiel was public relations manager for Beautiful Beer, a campaign funded by the UK’s brewers and pub companies to improve the image of beer. She was made redundant last October after funding for the project was cut and is now working as a freelance PR consultant and copywriter. Ros lives in Horsham and spends her free time running round the park, writing blogs and drinking beer in as many local pubs as she can justify visiting in the name of research.

http://www.shielcomms.co.uk/
Glass Half Full: Chapter 7
A former drinks PR’s optimistic guide to life after redundancy

19 January 2009

Days since redundancy: three months
Best beer of the week: Harvey’s Sussex Best Bitter – a cheering drink on a wet and cold day in Sussex
Best business investment: fan heater for home office

I wasn’t surprised to hear on the radio earlier this week that 19th January is the worst day of the year. I didn’t catch how this sound bite was arrived at, but I’m guessing it’s a combination of the weeks to go before the next, much-needed pay cheque, the gloomy weather, the guilt over abandoned New Year’s Resolutions, the festive weight gain that refuses to shift… . Even an optimist can find precious little to be overly cheerful about in mid-January.

Despite this apparently nationwide gloom, the past week at Shiel Comms has been busy enough. Drafting a press release on the opening of The Lost Monkey Café, just round the corner from me, and sending invitations to local journalists kept me gainfully employed for a day or so and reminded me what it’s like to do proper PR for a client, rather than the unending self-promotion of recent months. The launch went well, thanks mainly to an appearance by Francis Maude to cut the ribbon. And it’s exciting to be involved at the start of a new business that looks like it might go somewhere.

In the same week, I passed my ‘three months since redundancy’ milestone. I’m not one for lengthy navel-gazing, but I did give some thought to what I’ve missed and not missed about my previous life. Obviously, the regular pay cheque is top of the list. But up there too are my ex-colleagues. That everyday interaction with other human beings - most of the people I’ve worked with have fallen into this category, though I’d want scientific proof on a few - is something you take for granted until you find yourself working from a converted bedroom with nothing but the radio for company between 8.00 and 5.00.

Sure, I’m spared the distractions of office life, and I don’t miss queuing for a lift, or fire drills on cold mornings. But I do miss having other bright and willing brains to pick at close quarters: PR is – at its best – a mixture of creativity and nuts-and-bolts pragmatism, and bouncing ideas off others has always seemed the best way to arrive at an inspired and yet workable plan.

I also miss being in London. Meeting a friend for a drink or catching a film after work now has to be subjected to a cost-benefit analysis against the £17 train fare and one hour-plus travel time needed to get me up to the big city. Spontaneous socialising, always a challenge given my part-time and unpaid job as cook and chauffeur to two children, is now close to impossible. Oh, and while I’m on the subject, note to my family: ‘working from home’ is materially different to being at home, available to run errands at your request and fitting a little bit of that PR thing I do around them.

Finally, and surprisingly, I quite miss my commute to London. Not the £3,000 season ticket, nor the – thankfully infrequent – delays. But the hour of enforced sitting down before getting to my desk was good planning time that I’m finding hard to reinstate in my new regime. And the homeward journey was also valuable time for reflection or reading. I’ve not managed a single novel since October, which is a real ‘missing’.

On balance though, there’s more to be grateful for than to regret about freelance life. I love the the fact that every day is different, and every week brings new opportunities. I love being able to look out of the window and decide it’s perfect weather for a jog round the park at lunchtime, and having the flexibility to work later in the evening to make up for it.

Most of all, I love feeling in control of my own destiny in a way that I haven’t for years. Of course the recession – are we allowed to call it that now? - is going to make finding clients harder, but not impossible, and if I end up without any, it’ll be largely my own fault for not getting out there and finding them. Which is both exhilarating and, frankly, a bit scary! But I’m looking forward to the next three months, whatever they bring.

Ros Shiel was public relations manager for Beautiful Beer, a campaign funded by the UK’s brewers and pub companies to improve the image of beer. She was made redundant last October after funding for the project was cut and is now working as a freelance PR consultant and copywriter. Ros lives in Horsham and spends her free time running round the park, writing blogs and drinking beer in as many local pubs as she can justify visiting in the name of research.

http://www.shielcomms.co.uk/

Thursday, December 11, 2008

Glass Half Full: Chapter 3
A former drinks PR's optimistic guide to life after redundancy
10 November 2008

Days since redundancy: one month (decided against commemorative drinks party/shopping expedition)
Bona fide new business leads: two (v exciting)
Ratio of business to personal mails/texts sent from BlackBerry: improving
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On the whole, events of the past week have reaffirmed my ‘half full’ world view. And that’s despite the very depressing news on the economy. Up to three million unemployed, and a fair few of them in the south east and London? These are surely the sort of figures we thought we’d never see again? However, there are still pubs trading out there, and brewers making beer, and some of them want PR. So this is no time to sit and weep.

I’ve attended a press launch and an industry dinner, handed out a few business cards, followed up on initial conversations and now have a couple of meetings in the diary. And if just one of these prospects turns into a piece of business, I might recoup my investment in a haircut, spray tan and manicure. I’m rapidly learning that high maintenance and low funds don’t go together.

It seems slightly odd to be spending entire days effectively networking. I wonder how I managed to do it as well as a full-time job, and conclude I probably wasn’t doing it very well. If I had, I would presumably have been helped seamlessly into the next role by a lovingly-fostered contact. A life lesson I’m learning rather late in life.

Spurred into action by the one-month milestone, I’ve written a business plan. Not one that would pass muster on Dragons’ Den, but putting objectives, deadlines and finances on paper was both a sobering and empowering exercise. I’ve also faced up to the fact that, much as I’ve loved working in the drinks industry for 20 years, if there’s no work for me in it at the moment , my skills are transferrable. Pet food, power tools and personal hygiene all beckon, and the money is the same, wherever it comes from. .

I also have a website – albeit just one page at the moment – which means that now, visitors will get an idea of what I can do for them, rather than the previous, sloppy ‘under construction’ sign. If you’re claiming to be a good communicator, you surely have to get your own communications right. I’m grateful to my designers, Radius, who built the site and created the Shiel Communications identity.

With limited money coming in, I’m taking a close look at what’s going out. It’s easy to rein in on some spending; for example, I don’t need any more handbags or lipsticks for a while. I’m wary of cutting back too much, too soon, though. One of the better pieces of advice I received was to “concentrate on doing the things you can earn money from, and pay others to do the rest.” Dabbling in web design, cleaning the house or redecorating the office all smack of work avoidance. . I need to avoid them and crack on with some PR. And get my work-avoiding teenagers to address and stamp the Christmas cards this year.

A tale of two pubs
I am cheered by a Friday evening in my local pub, The Black Jug in Horsham. West Sussex. It’s busy, buzzy and yet relaxed, as it has been every Friday night for the last decade. Proving that, when pubs can provide what customers want – in this case, unfailingly good food, drink and service – they will draw a crowd, credit-crunch or no. Licensee Ally Craig and his excellent team deserve to weather the recessionary storm ahead.

Sadly, the same can’t be said for the café-bar which recently turned away our party of four, despite having a number of empty tables, because their computerised booking system was down. My suggestion that they could book us in with a good old-fashioned pen and paper fell on deaf ears, and yet they were effectively reducing their takings for the night by around £2,500, by my calculation. In a different branch of the same chain a week later, service was so slow that customers were leaving before their meals arrived. Strikes me that what they’ve got wrong, and my local right, is staff training. Good training gives your team the confidence and flexibility to make sure the customers leave happy. You can bet I’ll go back to my local, but I won’t give the others a third chance to disappoint.

Ros Shiel was public relations manager for Beautiful Beer, a campaign funded by the UK’s brewers and pub companies to improve the image of beer. She was made redundant last October after funding for the project was cut and is now working as a freelance PR consultant and copywriter. Ros lives in Horsham and spends her free time running round the park, writing blogs and drinking beer in as many local pubs as she can justify visiting in the name of research.

http://www.shielcomms.co.uk/

Glass Half Full: Chapter 1
A former drinks PR’s optimistic guide to life after redundancy


3 November 2008

Days since made redundant: 14
% of redundancy pay-off spent on shoes, MAC lipsticks, Ocado deliveries..: scary
No. of mails/calls received on BlackBerry today: 8
% of said mails/calls from mates, not prospective clients: v high
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IF I had £1 for everyone who’s said in recent weeks, “one day, you’ll look back on this as a good thing” or “as one door closes, another opens”, my shoe fund would be looking a whole lot healthier than it does. While I’m sure the words are well-intended, if the person uttering them is still drawing a salary, you should be allowed to hit him. Quite hard. Or at least ask if he wants to swap places with you, the smug b*****d.

The other comment I keep hearing is “won’t you get distracted, working from home? All that daytime TV.” Er, no. Even the toe-curlingly awful prospect of trying to find work in the worst recession in living memory holds more appeal than 10 minutes in front of Lorraine Kelly. Though I’d make a case for catching The Jeremy Kyle Show now and again. Not only because JK is surprisingly hot, but the sheer screwed-up-ness of his guests’ lives will throw your own into cheering relief. Unless you actually are expecting triplets by your father-in-law…

But, putting aside the small matter of having no long-term income stream, there are upsides to my redundant status. Spending more time with my children, for example. And, seemingly, with the group of up to eight teenagers who occupy my living room most lunchtimes. Though slightly trying, this does give me a ready-made focus group of 16/17-year-olds who will probably answer anything for another go on the X-Box. All I need now is a client list of RTDs, condoms and Clearasil...

Where the long-term work is going to come from, I don’t yet know. But I do trust one of the pieces of advice I received, which is that the project you thought was ‘in the bag’ before you left your job will come to nought. Instead, you’ll get a call out of the blue from someone who knows someone who used to work with you, wondering if you could help them on a one-off job, not much of a budget... And that, mark my words, will be what keeps you in handbags and mini-breaks for the next five years.

Ros Shiel was public relations manager for Beautiful Beer, a campaign funded by the UK’s brewers and pub companies to improve the image of beer. She was made redundant last October after funding for the project was cut and is now working as a freelance PR consultant and copywriter. Ros lives in Horsham, Wet Sussex, and spends her free time running round the park, writing blogs and drinking beer in as many local pubs as she can justify visiting in the name of research.

http://www.shielcomms.co.uk/