Tuesday, 3 February 2009

Real Help or a Real Pain?


What's the last thing a business looking for help needs? Empty rhetoric.
Unfortunately, that's the one thing which isn't in short supply at the moment.
A couple of weeks back Gordon Brown and Peter Mandelson held a press conference outlining a variety of Government measures aimed at helping business through an economic nightmare.
I can't remember exactly what they were. I can remember the kindergarten-level slogan dreamed up by Government spin doctors and plastered all over the stage they appeared on: Real Help for Business.
The Prime Minister went on to pepper one of his Parliamentary speeches with this same phrase, much to the amusement of sketch writers who compared him to a scratched record.
Like a bad penny, this PR guff is now following me around.
A press release landed the other day from East Midlands Business Link which, in the process of repeating what the Government had said a couple of weeks ago, used the same vacuous slogan.
Is this supposed to strike a chord with companies anxious to separate the Real Help (that's capital R and capital H, by the way) from the fake?
Or is it a depressing example of Government allowing vital solutions to the worst economic crisis in a generation to be hijacked by a hackneyed presentational agenda?
In a crisis, sound advice is very important, and Business Link has access to a lot of it. The initiatives it is attempting to publicise are also extremely important.
But PR stunts and slogans? Not Real Help at all...