• Sermon preached on 28 September – Who do you think you are?

    Who do you think you are?

    In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

    “Hello, can you help me, this is ICM and we are conducting a telephone poll in connection with the recent referendum would you be willing to answer some questions.”

    And I said yes – and the questions were mostly about whether or not I’d found it easy to vote in the referendum (I had) and about whether or not I had any concerns about widespread fraud having taken place (I had no concerns at all).

    When I said I had no concerns, she asked me why? Why did I have no concerns?

    Well, I know people who were there, I said – people from both sides who were at the counts and who saw what took place. And I was involved myself.

    It took quite a long time to answer all the questions but it went fairly smoothly until the end when she said, “Can I ask you some questions about who you are?” I agreed to this and readily gave away my age and all kinds of other information that one doesn’t normally dare ask someone in polite conversation.

    “And can I ask you what job you do?”

    “Yes, no problem, I’m a priest.”

    “Thank you sir – oh, I need to ask you what kind of priest. (more…)

3 responses to “Bad PR”

  1. Sally Avatar
    Sally

    Afternoon Kevin

    Our apologies if the information that we sent you was not welcomed. Our intention is not to spam but speak directly to people who may be interested in the work Christian Aid are doing in various communities. As you have the Christian Aid banners on your site we were under the impression that you supported the initiative.
    We will ensure that you are not contacted again.

    1. kelvin Avatar

      Actually Sally, that’s to miss the point a bit.

      I do support Christian Aid. I don’t support Christian Aid using bad PR techniques. I’ll maybe blog a bit more about this.

      For starters, I don’t think that the text of what you sent me was at all appropriate. To address the Provost of an Anglican Cathedral (or, lets not be pompous, any Anglican priest) as though they will not have heard of Christian Aid is silly. It was not just style that you got wrong. It was substance too.

  2. kelvin Avatar

    Oh, and by the way, I don’t put Christian Aid banners on my site. Surely a PR agency engaging in an attempt to use social networking for a client like Christian Aid ought to understand the difference between me putting banner ads on my site and Google Ads, which are served up by google and which depend on the content of the text and the context (location etc) of the reader.

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