Calling all Flackenhacks: Soho Social, 9 July 2008

…TWL isn’t back.  But The Flackenhack Awards are.  Or at least that’s the plan.

Yep, after the storming success of last year’s awards we thought we’d have another go.  Well, Peter Kirwan of Fullrun did and he can’t do it on his own so he’s roped us in.

We thought that a good first step would be to convene a meeting to scope out the parameters of this year’s event.  Perhaps we could develop a framework within which to execute?  A face-to-face interaction would be our preferred strategy for achieving our initial objectives.

So we’re going down the pub to discuss.  Wednesday 9th July, the Dog & Duck on Bateman Street from about 7.00pm.  If you fancy sponsoring this year’s awards, or helping to organise them or just attending, then join us for a beer.  We’re interested in any thoughts on how it might be bigger and even better in 2008.

I’m afraid you’ll have to finance your own drinks unless you’re a prospective sponsor…or turn up with a trophy from last year’s awards (genuine mind…not a cheap copy.  If that were in any way possible).

 Over and out.

The video...

...can be seen here.

I would embed it, but I can't work out how.

Of course it's not the taking part...

...winning's all that matters. And here are those that matter from the other night.

Best result in the face of adversity - winner: Hugh MacLeod/Stormhoek/Microsoft
Come on, how much adversity do you want? A year-old cartoon...a bottle of South African plonk...stick one on the other and that's a story? Are you kidding? Oh, and not only that, but if you're anyone other than a Microsoft employee, you won't be able to get hold of a bottle. Still, it was good enough for the Financial Times to run half a page about it. I ask you.

Most valuable piece of coverage - winner: Omnifone for the launch of MusicStation
Rob Lewis - quondam co-founder of Silicon.com - and his chums chose to stay under the radar for four years. Then, on the eve of 3GSM, they unleashed a massive payload of coverage. The full story can be seen on Fullrun.

Fair cop award for the biggest fuck up - winner: Google...
...for its incredible exploding European Press Day in June. Eric Schmidt and the co-founders of You Tube flew in to speak. Then the air conditioning failed, the wi-fi stopped working and water starting leaking through the ceiling. To cap off a lovely day, Google pissed off the German hacks in attendance by giving them nothing to write up. Specifically, the company said that it would launch local language versions of You Tube in France, Spain, Holland and Poland -- but not Germany. That is bad.

Hack nominated tech PR agency of the year - winner: Sonus PR...
...not least for its beautifully orchestrated lobbying of tech hacks which resulted in loads of nominations from journos…all uncannily similar in their wording. Respect

Freelancer of the year - winner: Nikki Alvey
Described by one client as a 'PR terrier' Nikki was urged by our compere Paul Wooding 'not to piss up the lectern...'

Staff hack of the year - winner: Phil Muncaster, IT Week
Described by one voter as: “Probably the best journalist to have to call in the world. He’s always friendly and always honest, but politely so. If you want an opinion about a campaign before you embark upon it, he’ll give you his honest answer. Most of all, he’s up for beers – and not only at the expense of the client or agency. Top bloke.” Phil also won an impromptu award on the night for best haircut.

Freelance hack of the year - winner: Dan Ilett
“Friendly, approachable, willing to give advice - happy to work with you to build a story. Yet equally, still objective and insistent on 'proper' stories.” Enough said.

World's least communicative hack - winner: Jason Stamper, CBR
We're still waiting for confirmation that he actually exists. Jason, if you're reading this, we have a very cheap trophy waiting for you...

Consumer tech publication of the year - winner: Stuff
Couldn't be there to accept the award so sent a text: "sz cnt b there 2nite. Thx 4 award." Nice.

Business tech publication of the year - winner: ZDNet.co.uk
Also won the best acceptance speech award: "Thanks for this...and thanks to The Register and ITPro for being a bit shit."

The keen-eyed among you will have noticed that there weren't awards in the "Hack nominated tech PR person of the year" or the "Loveliest client of the year" categories. This is because we received absolutely no nominations in either. What a wonderfully positive world in which we all work...hacks hate PRs; PRs hate their clients.

The Flackenhacks: About the night before last. . .

OK. Now at least one hoity-toity sort has expressed concern that no one has blogged much about The Flackenhacks.

Melanie at Fake Plastic Noodle -- which deals among other things with "avant-garde PR" -- means that "either A) They were boring or B) Everyone drank so much they forgot what happened".

Avant-garde PR? I wouldn't know it if it hit me in the face.

As for yesterday, I took the day off. Well, mostly. Making up for lost time, here's my stuff:

Stephen Davies of WebITPR has kindly posted some pix here:

Among other things:

• Our spies tell us that the large contingent from Midnight narrowly avoided a ruck with a bunch of "gobby" lads on the train back home to Brighton. The boys had a lucky escape, we reckon.

• Acceptance speech of the night came from the otherwise mild-mannered Matt Loney, editorial director of ZDNet. Taking the gong for B2B site of the year after trouncing The Register and IT Week, Loney thanked his shortlisted rivals for "being so shit".

• We spied two Next Fifteen MDs -- Nick Giles of Text 100 and Grant Currie of Inferno -- bitching about cost pressures. Of course, this is what MDs do over beers. But it would appear that Microsoft's recent decision to cut 20% off its UK PR budget has left the bean counters at Next Fifteen jittery about the costs of Text's impending office relocation. . . Next stop IKEA, Nick. . .

• What goes on tour: Who was the agency fromage who slagged off a particular account manager in front of the cameras on the night? If Fullrun was TWL, we'd tell you. But we're not, so we won't. Anyhow, the boss in question did email us this morning sounding a bit concerned that we'd release this bit of video on to YouTube. . .

• Lost minds, lost property: Sonus did an Amy Winehouse and had their trophy mislaid, nicked, whatever. We're ordering a new one for them. They seem very keen. Which is nice.
  

• One half of TWL managed to mislay a laptop while stumbling around Mayfair trying to locate Daryl Willcox's private members' club in the wee hours. . .

• The Mystery Of The Porn Tree: OK, here's how it goes. On the night, Nicky Alvey, the freelancer, mentioned it to Andrew Smith of Object Marketing. Apparently, it will mean something to anyone who worked at Brodeur in the 1990s. . . We really need to know more about this, so c'mon guys, don't be shy.
  

• Kevin Withnall of Vanson Bourne has no recollection of spilling a glass of wine all over Giles Fraser of Brands2Life. And Tim Hoang of Rainier PR has no recollection of knocking a glass of champagne over Chris Long from the BBC. Which is a pity. Because Long apparently turned round and agreed to run the story they'd been discussing. . . In the words of Andrew Smith: "Barely 8pm and already people falling over -- marvelous!"

• Talking of which, the liveblogging didn’t work very well. The keyboards at the Audi Forum were weird demented German metallic things. Built for looking at, obviously. Which seems to have irritated Fiona Blamey of Prompt Communications a bit. . . Sorry Fiona: we'll get our act together next time round.
  

• We met up with Simon Corbett, late of Edelman and now running the UK branch of Blanc & Otus. Fresh-faced Corbett has a secret history as a dot.com entrepreneur. Sounds like it'll come in handy at Blanc & Otus. . . Someone else -- not Simon, obviously -- suggested that the outgoing Blanc & Otus MD Simon Glazer has been exiled to the PR equivalent of the Aleutian Islands. Ah yes; we think we should be told. . .

• The smokers' huddle outside in Piccadilly was a nightmare. You'd go out there, have a smoke, get ready to go in, only to be pinned up against the wall by a new arrival. The fetching Alexandra Pullen of Text 100 seemed to spend the entire night outside. . .

• . . . As did the wonderful Jessica Twentyman, who was not best pleased that Dan Ilett walked away with freelancer of the year. Putting on her best Judy Garland-on-medication voice, Twentyman was last heard bellowing "I own this town" down the full length of Piccadilly. . . Note to TWL: This was what stopped the traffic, not the big pink cock.

• Sir Big Wadd of Rainier reckons it was like the "Restaurant at the End of the Universe, where everyone gets reunited after a long absence". That's good, we think.

• Hotwire? Is it being sold? Who knows? Alexis Dalrymple of that parish wins our award for bullshitter of the night for his performance on this score. Whenever anyone asked him what was going on, Dalrymple raised his voice to 90Db, flapped his arms in wide circles and talked a load of bollocks. Superb.

• Someone emailed us today saying how taken they'd been with Jennifer Walker of Porter Novelli. Marriage was suggested. Not that we're an advocate of arranged unions or anything like that, but Jennifer, if you're interested, drop us a line. We'll put you in touch with the smitten lad. He's a good 'un.

• Moral guardian of the night: Nick Booth holding a bottle of Becks in one hand and a glass of red wine in the other, urgently telling me to quieten down the audience during the ceremony. At least, that seemed to be what he was saying. . .

• Mike Magee -- recently returned from a two-month sabbatical -- left early, excusing himself with the line that his wife had to be up early in the morning. Said Magee: "She works for the NHS, you know." Nice one, Mike. Tell us, though: exactly how much did you make from flogging The Inquirer to VNU?

• Big thanks to. . . our impeccable (and well-dressed) front-of-housers from Spark and Midnight: you were fantstically well-organised. Thanks also to TWL, DJ John Ozimek (from Liberty Communications) and compere Paul Wooding (of Weber Shandwick). We couldn't have done it without you.

• Thanks, too, to our sponsors, whose proud logos are lined up alongside this post. We hope it worked well for you. . .

• I've got a stack of people to call and enough breakfast, lunch and dinner invites to last six months . . . Meanwhile, everyone's assuming we'll do it again next year. Looks like we've got four sponsors lined up already. We still haven't got a clue about the size of this year's booze bill, though. . .

Brands2Life joins the party. . .

Breakfast at Chez Gerard in Victoria can be a bit hit-and-miss. But our Full English there with Giles Fraser the other morning brought forth another offer of financial support for The Flackenhacks.

Brands2Life has joined Edelman, Golin Harris and O Marketing as a Flackenhacks supporter. In crude terms, they're putting the equivalent behind the bar of their top per-hour consultancy rate. Not a shabby amount, I can tell you.

Thanks to Giles, Sarah and the folk at Brands2Life. See you on the night!

The shortlists...

OK, here's the moment that some of you might have been waiting for. Or not. It kind of depends on the category. Anyway, here are the shortlists for The Flackenhack Awards 2007. There are a couple of categories missing...we have our reasons. Further explanation on the big night itself.

If you've been nominated and, as yet, haven't arranged to attend the event, drop us a line at theworldsleading@yahoo.co.uk and we'll sort you out.

Best Result In The Face of Adversity
BT: For extremely shrewd handling of the emerging debate on network neutrality and broadband capacity limits
Edelman: For its successful launch of the dot.mobi domain on the day the FT ran a front page story with the headline: “Arrival of 'dotmobi' domain raises concerns’ and which in just over 400 words slated the company
Hugh MacLeod/Microsoft/Stormhoek: For sticking a year-old cartoon on a bottle of South African plonk that you can’t even buy and persuading the FT to devote half a sodding page of editorial to it

Most Valuable Piece Of Coverage
Omnifone: For the pre-3GSM launch of MusicStation
Context PR: For the three and a half minutes of work (backed by 15 years of experience, obviously) that he put in to arranging an interview between his client, SurfControl, and a Reuters hack, which resulted in more than 30 pieces of top quality coverage across the globe
Donald MacDonald: For the British-born Intel marketer's interview with hometown newspaper The Swindon Advertiser, which took place as his company planned huge job cuts in October 2006

The Fair Cop Award For Biggest Fuck Up
Brando: For its meaning of Easter cock-up for Somerfield
Google: For its incredible exploding European Press Day in June

The Hack Award For Tech PR Agency Of The Year
Edelman
Sonus
Midnight

The Flack Award For Staff Hack Of The Year
Phil Muncaster, IT Week
Rik Turner, Computerwire
Chris Green, IT Pro

The Flack Award For Freelance Hack Of The Year
Danny Bradbury
Ken Young
Dan Ilett
Miya Knights

Consumer Tech Publication Of The Year
Tech Digest
Guardian Technology
Stuff

Business Tech Publication Of The Year
The Register
ZDNet.co.uk
IT Week

Lastminute tickets: Get 'em here. . .

Need to pick a last minute ticket for The Flackenhacks?

Here is where to do it.