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Friday, March 30, 2007

PR round up of the week: the good, the bad and the ugly

The Good: The new lifestyle magazine called Bob - any publication named after me has to be brilliant.

The Bad: iSoft, the troubled software company, has more disastrous news. Its commercial director has been sacked over alleged financial irregularities. Steve Graham is the centre of a FSA inquiry into whether the company misled the stock market about its finances.

iSoft had used a gagging order to prevent The Guardian reporting the financial irregularities at the company in 2004. When The Guardian was allowed to write openly it revealed the goings on with gusto. I have never seen a provincial IT company on the front of national.

Be confrontational with the media and it will bite you back as any search of iSoft on the Guardian Unlimited will reveal.

The Ugly: Iran. Yes Iran is playing power politics as the issue of their nuclear program comes under the spotlight. Perhaps they hoped to take the propaganda initiative, but it has back fired spectacularly. Using forced apologies, changing stories (about where the boat was found) simply confirms the fears and lack of judgement many associate with the Iranian rulers.

2 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Not sure I'd characterise iSoft as 'provincial', given its large scale NHS contracts, 1300 staff and presence in 12 countries. That's not to say I want their PR gig either though. All the medical software in the world couldn't help you overcome that poison chalice.

6:47 AM

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Tom,

I agree "provincial" was not the right adjective.

I was thinking more of it as a Manchester based business and not as a global operation.

Even so I have never seen an IT company being attacked, as the Guardian did, on the front page of a national.

Not only are there the allegations of fraud but their own PR was appalling. Even the front page of their website ignored the situation as though everything was quite ordinary and everyday.

I will be putting up some Michael Moore videos to illustrate my point better.

Rob

9:44 AM

 

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