There are good lessons for any business from the debacle of the Terminal 5 opening at Heathrow Airport. British Airways’ reputation has suffered greatly in the past few years through baggage handlers’ strikes and other misfortunes which have turned BA from ‘The World’s Favourite Airline’ to one which many overseas visitors have vowed never to use again.

So T5 was a golden opportunity to redress the balance – a wonderful ly-designed building by Lord Rogers, high-tech check-in operation, automated in almost every department. But as everyone knows it all went horribly wrong.
Things do go wrong. That can, in some ways, be forgiven. What cannot be forgiven is the response. Any good public relations practitioner has in his or her armoury issues and crisis management. The key is always to try to prevent an issue becoming a crisis.

Staff at T5 had been trained for many weeks on the new systems, but it seems no-one had done any crisis planning. No-one had switched off the power to see how staff would handle not having the computer systems, or how to move the baggage. There was no plan B that could be brought swiftly into operation.

What is even worse BA apparently had no effective system in place to manage the resulting passenger and media mayhem. Another painful lesson for both British Airways and the British Airports Authority – and indeed for any business – is that when you have scores of journalists around and no real information coming from the company, they will look for other stories, hence the rash of tales about the ‘goings on’ of various members of staff which would otherwise have not attracted any attention.

It now seems to be emerging that staff training at T5 had not been as good as it should have been and what we are seeing is the price being paid. Staff have to be fully-trained, not just in the new and unfamiliar systems but also in what to do if things go wrong.

Whenever a business is organising an event, an opening, a conference or anything else, always work with the adage in mid that ‘what can go wrong will go wrong’, Make sure your staff are trained, rehearsed and confident. Make sure the systems work, and make sure you have a plan B if things go wrong. A plan C is not a bad thing to have, either!

If you have PR support, make sure you listen to their advice about issues management, and prepare with them that crisis management plan.
You should do this as a matter of course looking at all contingencies that may arise in the normal course of business – fire, flood, epidemic, terrorist attack. You my have worked out how your business keeps going, but have you worked out how to tell your customers?

Reputation is the most valuable asset a business has, and it will take a big effort over many years for BA to get its reputation back. Make sure your company’s reputation doesn’t face a similar problem.

Power is fully restored. In the end we were only without power for about four hours. The reason for the power cut was the replacement of a footbridge close to our offices, but despite some strong winds a skillful crane driver completed the job in a much shorter time than any of us could have hoped.

Clients and suppliers should note that we do not have any power on Wednesday March 12, 2008, and consequently have no computers or telephones at the office. Some of us will work away from base and may have limited access to emails, but the best way to contact us for this day is on our mobiles. The main ones are 07843 436526 for John, and 07879 404892 for Chris,

…is a great phrase which is, admittedly, overused but which encourages us to be creative and adventurous. However we came across this cartoon which shows that while us Dogs can think outside the box, cats never, ever, should.

As part of our corporate social repsonsibity we carry out pro bono work for two organisations - ProHelp, part of Business in the Community, and the Media Trust.

Under ProHelp we provide PR support to Ellie’s Haven, an excellent charity based in Looe in Cornwall which is aiming to build a non-medical holiday facility for children with life-threatening illnesses and their families.

Under the Media Trust we are proud to support the Mental Disability Advocacy Center, an international charity which works in Eastern Europe and Central Asia.

Any PR companies which may not have thought of doing this type of work are well advised to do so, and we would be happy to discuss with fellow professionals. PR students may also like to get involved with this type of support.

Have you noticed the growing tendency for the mispronunciation of the letter ‘H’? There are a lot of people who say haitch instead of aitch. This is the verbal equivalent of the misplaced apostrophe - and they crop up everywhere, with far too many businesses getting it wrong in marketing and publicity material, and on websites.

Had a call today from another PR company about the NLA and their demands on our industry for money for copying what the agency says is a newspaper’s ‘copyright’ material.

Now we take issue with this. Most of the things we cut for clients through our payperclips trading division is based on releases we have sent out in the first place, and that, NLA, is our copyright material.

In addition we send our clients the original cutting, so in fact our service generates a lot of newspaper sales, so why should we pay any more?

We would be interested to hear from other agencies about this issue.

It’s been a busy week in Plymouth. We have just celebrated Enterprise Week and the city’s business awards (for which we were nominated)and now we are about to celebrate Thanksgiving. Plymouth must be the only city in the UK which has such an extensive Thanksgiving programme,and this year our American guest of honour of the US Defence Attache Read Admiral Ronald Henderson.
For more information about Thanksgiving in Plymouth visit link to a website

Formula One star Lewis Hamilton is to move to Switzerland to excape the ‘excessive public and media attention’ he has been getting.

Whoever is advising Lewis should point out that the time to worry is when he isn’t getting any public and media attention. The attention is what goes with the territory of success and high earnings. If he feels that he can’t go out with his mates nowdays, just how is he going to achieve that in Switzerland, which is quite a way from his home town of Stevenage. Or perhaps his new mates all live as tax exiles now.

If he is moving in order to pay less tax, then he should say so. But don’t, Lewis, try to blame the people who are, ultimately, the ones who pay those wages that you want to keep more of.

As you will see elsewhere on this site we do have dogs, and they take up a fair amount of our spare time. John has two of the dogs - Mario and Luigi - which are a mix of Deerhound, Greyhound, Standard Poodle and Spinone. Chris has one dog - Maisie - a Labradoodle.
We are based on Dartmoor so the dogs get plenty of exercise. They love visitors and act as the PR Dogs Greetings Department when clients visit us.