Campaigning on a single issue. . .

Seems to be something of a trend these days, no? 

As you’ll have seen below, a truly motley crew from the UK’s tech PR industry gathered in the pissing rain a couple of weeks ago to mull over whether a second stab at The Flackenhack Awards is worth the trouble.

The general consensus? Yes, of course it bloody is.

Not only was The Flackenhacks a mighty good night out, we must not forget the original motivation behind the organisation of an alternative awards ceremony for the tech PR industry: that the PRWeak Awards have become an poor quality, over-priced, irrelvant cash cow for Haymarket Publishing and the industry deserves something better, cheaper and less stuffy.

This remains the case. The PRWeak Awards - should you want a well-positioned table for 10 and haven’t booked by this Friday - will cost you £380 (plus VAT) per person. Without wine (and the wine ain’t cheap…).

Coming to last year’s Flackenhack Awards would’ve set you back £65. OK, so we didn’t sit you down for a three-course dinner, but there was a bit to nibble on and enough free booze to make sure you got hammered. And we didn’t bore you with an overly long awards ceremony (beautifully compered by Paul Wooding).And we had a decent DJ. And we gave 10% of ticket sales toByte Night (I don’t see Haymarket doing that). And the venue was close to the tube. And we had a big pink cock as a logo.

Sure, we made a small profit. It just about funded a taxi home (honestly). But that didn’t matter. It was a fucking good laugh and entirely worthwhile.

From our night down the pub we’ve asembled a crack team of people to help organise this year’s Flackenhacks. If you’re interested in helping, sponsoring or attending (when we get any details sorted we’ll let you know) you can email us at: theflackenhacks@gmail.com. You can follow The Flackenhacks on Twitter here and there’s a Facebook group here.

I’m hearing on the industry grapevine that a number of agency CEOs are really beginning to question the true value of the PRWeak Awards, if for no other reason than it represents dismal value for money.  Anyone out there willing to stand up and publicly boycott..?

[Cross-posted from TWL]

Flackenhack'd on a rainy night in Soho

Thanks to the 20-odd rather damp lunatics who joined us in the Dog & Duck last night.

Apart from surprising Mark Mellor in a cubicle in the men's loo, what did we achieve?

Well, fairly clearly, we're going to have to do this here Flackenhacks thing again in October. Which is a lovely prospect, even if we say so ourselves.

Paul Wooding is up for compering again. John Ozimek will be DJ once again. Dom Whitehurst & Co. will be helping out social media-wise.

There was some enthusiasm for a less "corporate" venue (fab though the Audi Forum was). When I mentioned it, people quite liked the idea of Secret Cinema's approach.

Patrick Smith suggested live voting using a clapometer (Hughie Green vintage, hopefully).

Presumably, we'll be voting for least favourite media outlet. . .so we'll have to call it something like an abuse-o-meter. (There's got to be a better name for it -- let us know what it is.)

Via email, Paul Wooding offers the idea of guests voting on non-PR categories by holding up cut-outs of The Flackenhacks logo. A show of pink cocks, as it were.

Patrick also suggested that we should do a Flackenhacked version of the Bilderberg Group in a country house hotel. (Is the world ready for this?)

The spectacularly altruistic Phil Muncaster suggested an award for hairstyle of the year. (Yeah, cheers, Phil.)

On ticket prices, we had suggestions ranging from £35 (battered sausage thrown in for free) to £65 (same as last year). TWL reckons price isn't an issue. But then, he would.

Most importantly. . . we're up and running. Our next job is to spend a few weeks talking with potential sponsors.

We'll report back at some point in the near future. Maybe another social will be required.

Next time, though, we promise to find somewhere with a bar and sufficient contiguous space for all of us on one floor. . .

Talk soon.