You can read the full story of how the agency and Hyundai thought it was a good idea to make light (even fun) of suicide and the PR response on Storify.

What’s most depressing is that, despite universal condemnation (except for in The Drum, right), the ad suits still tried to explain themselves.

In a (barely comprehensible) statement, reported on the BBC, Innocean said:

“The intention of the viral video was to employ hyperbole to dramatise a product advantage, culminating in a positive outcome.”

Which is ad speak for “shut up, you just don’t understand what we’re trying to do here.”

What is even worse, is that somewhere in Soho, right now, there is an ad person looking at the viral attention this ad got for the brand and wondering how they can make a name for themselves by doing the same.

Wankers.

Well, it’s not on my top 5 – below – more suggestions welcome!

1) The Specials – Ghost Town

Les Reid from the Coventry Evening Telegraph has written an excellent blog about Thatcher’s legacy in the Midlands and this song about the climate of fear and loathing in the nation’s cities during the 80s should be essential listening on the National Curriculum.

2) Simple Minds – Mandela Day

The Ballard of the Streets EP was the highlight of 80s Rock Activism if you ask me.

3) REM – Ignoreland

Rarely played live. Hidden on Automatic for the People (but still managed to chart in the US). This is pure anti-Reagan / anti-Bush vitriol.

4) Bruce Springsteen – Born in the USA

Anti-war. Pro-working class. And the best bit is that right-wing-ers think he is backing them. Listen to the pain in the song.

5) Japandroids – No Allegiance to the Queen

Is it a protest about money, capitalism, the record industry or the Monarchy? Is it even a political song? Judge for yourself. I don’t care. It’s a great song.

If you want something radically republican, try Pele’s Raid The Palace, but is a key part of a political song the reaction it causes as much as the lyrics themselves?

So if I can have ‘No Allegiance’, maybe Ding Dong is a great political song after all?

But for the best politcal album cover?

Bronski Beat – Age of Consent

I didn’t properly understand at the time, but for the 80s this was ground-breaking. It’s also a reason to listen to ‘Small Town Boy‘ again.

Welcome your suggestions for other tracks / covers. And, yes, I know there is no U2 or Billy Bragg here. That’s deliberate.

The concept is so blindingly simple it’s amazing it hasn’t been done before. Install app. Connect other social media accounts. It tells you what you were doing in social media on this day throughout history. Re-share your content with your networks.

All the Timehop team need to do now is also add on YouTube, LinkedIn and other networks and it will start to be a really powerful app.

And for PRs looking to improve media relations through social media, this simple app will give another burst to created content a year on.

While the stated objectives of a charity communications may be seemingly non-political (such as fundraising, reputation-building, public awareness raising or driving action) for each of these four communications objectives, taking an apolitical approach is nigh on impossible.

And it gave me a chance to re-use this rather splendid picture of an Electoral Commission anaorak from back when my old agency Band & Brown were working for them!

This time it’s due to this…

To say I’m immensely proud of what the team at the National Apprenticeship Service have achieved with the help of small(ish) agencies Claremont, Tribe, On Broadcast and Shackleton have achieved is an understatement.

The review of my blog posts is a little different this year (here is 2011‘s) as it also takes into account posts from the Claremont and CIPR blogs. Also summarised as a word cloud here, below are the top ten most read posts (in reverse order):

10) Launch of PR Apprenticeships. The very first post on this blog called for PR apprentices rather than graduates, so it was brilliant to be able to attend the launch of the Higher Apprenticeship in PR and then later in the year launch Claremont’s search for an apprentice.

9) The Olympics in headlines. The daily PR take on the Olympics got a fair bit of traffic, but this was one of the most popular posts with a nice infographic. As was…

8) Olympics PR highs and lows. The summary of the daily PR round up of the Olympics.

7) Social media gotchaism. Joining Claremont earlier in 2012 meant that blogging efforts were split with their site and e-newsletter. This post almost defended the vile Kay Burley.

6) PR from the edge of space. If the Olympics were the biggest PR story of the year, Red Bull’s Stratos was certainly the best. Here’s what the rest of us can learn from their success.

5) This is my country, mate. My favourite quote from the Games came from Mo Farah who riled against the ‘plastic Brits’ criticisms and casual racism of the right wing press.

4) Digital-disgruntalists. One twitter user even called this phrase her word of the day. And interest in the Claremont data on people using social media to complain came in from across government and private sectors.

3) Coventry City. It’s rare that the mighty Sky Blues make an appearance on the blog, but when they do a big PR fail (other than the ongoing SISU ownership debacle, powered by Weber Shandwick), there’s a reason to feature them.

2) Communications dinosaurs. There are people who think social media’s not very important in modern PR and communications. They are very wrong.

1) Tackling homophobia. Take one homophobic bar man. Start a social media campaign. Get a result. Blog about how the campaign worked too.

Here’s to more blogging on the CIPR and Claremont sites, as well as on here in 2013!

Of course, live twitter walls are a bad idea at the best of times, and this one (below) was no exception. Brings back memories of Starbucks’ attempts to ask Irish people to be proud of being British. Or offending the Argentines for apologising for using locally made products.

Not so much a social media crisis as a plain old PR fuck up.

Thanks to Liberal Consipiracy‘s Facebook page & the Times’ Kaya Burgess for the tip.

Novelist, chicken fancier and facelift aficionado.

There are a lot of words to describe Kay Burley, but regardless of what you make of her insensitive interview in Machynlleth, she is also another potential victim of ‘gotchaism’.

And Burley’s case demonstrates that technology and social media mean that anyone is now at risk from this highly contagious phenomenon – where content can be taken out of context.

‘Gotcha journalism’ used to be limited to headline coverage of a taken-out-of-context soundbite, or dismissed as the ramblings of Sarah Palin, but now it’s easy for anyone to cut up soundbites and turn them against the speaker.

From Obama’s “You didn’t build that” and Mitt Romney’s “Wawa gate” and “47 percent” to Nick Clegg’s “I’m Sorry” and the ever wonderful Cassette Boy, context is no longer in the hands of the content creator.

And the lesson for communicators? Don’t just think about what your message is, but how it can be taken out of context and what you’ll do when it happens…

This article first appeared on www.claremont.org.uk/blog

And today’s blanket front page coverage for the Paralympics (only the Express don’t fully lead with the Opening Ceremony) is a positive sign that the Games may help address negative stereotypes about disabled people.

But, there is a but.

In the battle of the Beijing Opening Ceremonies, 5.4m watched the Olympic ceremony, compared to 2.8m who watched the Paralympic ceremony. A ratio of 1.9 Olympic viewers for every Paralympic viewer. Or… 51% of Olympic viewers tuned in again to watch the Paralympic ceremony.

And last night’s figures show that this gap has grown.

26.9m watched the Olympic Opening Ceremony with just 10.89m watching last night’s event. 2.4 Olympic viewers for every Paralympic viewer. Or just 40% of Olympic viewers watched again last night.

The ridiculous decision to open the Games on a Wednesday (rather than a Friday) night won’t help. Nor will the negative press and social media chat throughout yesterday of the torch running late. But perhaps it also shows that the brilliant Channel 4 Superhumans’ campaign needs to rachet up another notch and that the Paralympics still has work to do to convince people to tune in?

For its first ever #HashOut ‘live discussion show’ it is inviting people to suggest musicians who deserve to be jailed like Pussy Riot have been in Russia.

If this is the standard of the first pre-planned debate, I hate to think what’s next, based on its lead headlines today…

A politician has called some rape legitimate. Which politician deserves to be ‘legitimately raped’?

Politician’s wife is jailed. Which politician’s wife would you like to jail?

Director jumps off bridge. Which film director should be next to jump?

There are ways of having sensible debate on Twitter and then there is Yahoo!’s way. It should be ashamed. And social media is letting it know…

H/T Claire Phipps for spotting this.

Update 21.08.12: After initially trying to defend the subject for the first HashOut (with deputy editor Chris Suellentrop trying to justify it based on one ‘funny’ tweet), Yahoo! News was silent on Twitter for 3 hours, before issuing this apology. For selected tweets check out this Storify collection.