Rangers Football Club is having a terrible time of it. It used to have a really easy time in the mainstream Scottish media but of late has been more and more under fire between a tax case and scrutiny of the new owner, Craig Whyte. And there’s crisis social media and PR lessons here for any businesses.

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The independent PR scene in Scotland has just had a welcome addition with the set up of CranComms, a bespoke agency set up by ex-Shelter PR supremo Christina Cran.

Now Christina has always worn her heart on her sleeve, making her not only one of Scotland’s most ethical PRs but one of the most honest and trustworthy and she’s taken that ethos to heart with her new venture, offering a freemium service to third-sector parties.

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Mince pie? I’m eating humble pie right now. Anyway, a quick PR Friday funny for you – and a lesson for some PRs too!

Contently has a client at the moment – the very funny and interesting Michael Howell, who recently brought out his debut technothriller novel The Christmas Virus and then, not long after making a digital version available for Kindle, iPad, iPhone and so on, sold the movie rights for a very healthy five-figure sum.

As an author myself, I know that’s one of the dreams so I was delighted to be able to help him spread his good news and success.

Off goes a press release with little comeback. Strange, thinks I. I know some people got it – they replied and we’ve set some stuff up – but others, that I would have called bankers, didn’t. It was doubly strange as the book’s co-lead is a feisty female journalist, which I thought gave it some more relevancy and appeal to the press (as well as being a journalistic stocking filler).

So I makes some phone calls – very unusual for me as I know how busy journalists are – and quite a few say they haven’t got it. Sends again, no joy.

And then one very kind soul – who is getting a bottle of whisky for their trouble – finds out what it is. Due to the phrase ‘The Christmas Virus’ being in the header and text, complete with links mentioning the same (as well as some extra bit.ly links) and my hosting/email coming from outwith the UK, many a journalist’s IT setup has seen this and went ‘no chance is that getting through’ and has done what good filtering software should and nuked it before the reporter ever saw it.

So the lessons are that sometimes phone calls are still very, very handy and that virus is not a handy word to have in a subject heading.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to make sure Mike’s next book doesn’t have .exe in the title… and buy a fax machine.

Scottish author and programmer Michael Howell has sold the movie and TV rights to his debut novel The Christmas Virus just one week after the Kindle/iPad version went on sale.

The technothriller shows a world taken to the brink of chaos after Islamic terrorists activate a virus in 95% of the world’s computers just before Christmas.

The rights have now been sold to film publicity company NoKidding Ltd for an undisclosed five-figure sum.
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Last December, we did the obligatory predictions for 2010 in social media and PR – but how did we do?

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Musa beats Gordon Ramsay to become first UK restaurant to offer Gannet

Artisan restaurant Musa is to offer controversial bird dish Gannet on its menu this week, becoming the first UK restaurant to do so.

Only 2000 baby gannets – known as gugas – are culled every year on Sula Sgeir island, 40km off the Butt of Lewis.

It is the only wild seabird allowed to be hunted under the 1981 Wildlife and Countryside Act, which forbids the killing of seabirds, but guga hunters have a special licence from the Scottish Government.

Musa in Aberdeen, Scotland (Twitter, Facebook) has secured a limited supply of the bird and intends to serve it up this Tuesday and Wednesday, October 19 and 20 from 5pm.

Manager Jimmy Elliot said: “This is exciting for us. Musa has always tried to offer the exotic and the unusual, so to get our hands on some gannet was fantastic and our chefs are looking forward to seeing what they can make with it.

“Gordon Ramsay’s moment in the F Word when he tried gannet is still spoken about until this day. Even as Gordon discovered, it’s lovely but hard to get as it is only meant to be killed and eaten on the island.

“But not everyone can get to Lewis to try it so we’re delighted we’ve been able to legally source some and offer it to our customers. And if it proves popular we’ll do our best to get more in.”

Gannet hit the headlines in 2005 when chef Gordon Ramsay travelled to the Isle of Lewis to try the dish for his F Word show (video here, 41 minutes in).

At the time he wrote in his blog: “To date it is not to be found on the menu in my restaurants. But maybe soon.”

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For further information please contact craig@contently-managed.com

John Hansell is the editor and publisher of Malt Advocate – go on, you can guess what that’s about – and he runs a fairly busy blog where the comments sections can have as much debate as the main posts. Anyway, this week he’s been talking about things which piss him off (his words not mine) and the points he’s raised so far are worth considering in the wider PR and social media space:

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Quick client announcement: if you are a journalist or blogger in Edinburgh during the Edinburgh Festival(s) and fancy eating free somewhere, then Illegal Jacks on Lothian Road will happily feed you for free in return for a review.

Full press release after the link. And yes, the offer is open to Edinburgh bloggers and press too.

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