Japanese Demolition – two styles not to try at home

I’m loving this bottom up demolition method in Japan

it certainly appears to be neater than this DIY approach

The Wookey Hole approach to PR (and why it’s better than a bucket of water – in the long run)

I’m not suggesting that the best way to promote your business is to go and sit in a cave (although it did work for the Wookey Witch, so maybe I should be) but rather I want to emphasise the value in drip drip dripping little pieces of news to your customers and the media.

The Wookey Hole approach doesn’t need a huge expensive launch or a multi-million pound contract or a massive publicity stunt, it just requires you to find stories that will be of some interest to someone. It might end up as a snippet in the business section of your local newspaper, or on page 19 of the monthly trade press, or you might get lucky and hit a slow news day and get a call from a journalist wanting to write a 2 page feature spread.

Of course, if you just do this the once then it’s not going to be very effective – in fact it would probably have the same sort of impact as dropping a solitary drop of water onto a limestone slab. But when repeated over and over again, those little drops start to build up and create something significant, that elusive thing called ‘media presence’.

Individually these little stories aren’t that vital, so it’s not that important whether they are given high priority in the media, you don’t have to spend that much money or that much time trying to get your message across. The key is to be consistent and to keep drip drip dripping the information.

The alternative is to take as many of those drips as you can muster, gather them all up in a bucket and to hurl them at the media in an attempt to make a real splash. It might work, and when it does then it is money and effort well spent, but the thing about news is that it’s not predictable and your big story, your ace in the hole might find itself spiked in favour of some scandal, or disaster, or unanticipated piece of legislation.

And when you’ve emptied the bucket – what then? If you are lucky enough to have a running tap of money and fabulous news then you can just fill the bucket up again and keep hurling it at the press: congratulations, you don’t have to settle for Wookey Hole, you’ve got Norway and the fjords. But back in the real world most of us can’t be coming up with big stories on a regular basis, so all we are left with is a damp slab that dries in the sun. I think this metaphor might be getting away from me now.

The point is that most of us, especially in the current economic climate only have a certain amount of time, money and effort available to use for marketing and media relations, so we need to use it wisely. And while it’s nice to think that all you need to do is get a story in the paper and the phone will ring off the hook, it rarely goes quite to plan like that, so we need to keep at it, keep drip drip dripping away and build a picture, carve out a name.

It’s worth it in the end, really it is.

First manslaughter conviction for quick hitch death

Sad, but not unexpected news comes in from the courts where Digger driver Michael Roys has been sentenced to a year in prison after pleading guilty to the manslaughter of a fellow worker in September 2007.

Alwyne Parkinson died from his injuries after the bucket from the excavator being driven by Michael Roys became detached and struck him. A subsequent investigation showed that the safety pin designed to keep the bucket in place had not been used, a worryingly frequent occurrence with the use of semi-automatic quick hitches. In fact this was the last in a spate of 4 deaths from such accidents in just 12 months, a statistic that has prompted the HSE to look into the standards that quick hitches are designed to and issue a safety alert to reduce the likelihood of further deaths.

In an industry that needs to be so focussed on health and safety, the simple act of not inserting the safety pin is simply not acceptable – a fact reflected in the sentence handed down. Hopefully this will be the first and last such conviction.

HSE Sector Information Minutes (SIM) on the safe use of quick hitch devices on excavators.