Dynamic Business

This week Fleur Madden-Topley chats to Sherrie Storor as part of our Women in Business blog series. What makes Sherrie’s story so different? Read on…

Welcome to the first installment of Fleur Madden-Topley’s Women in Business blog series. This week Fleur interviews a successful 30-something HR guru and SME owner. Want to know all her secrets? Read on.

If you caught the ABC’s Paper Giants miniseries last night, on the launch of Cleo magazine into Australia, with Ita Buttrose at the helm, you will have been as impressed as I was.

Fleur Madden-Topley blogs about the Winklevoss twins Facebook court ruling and having business confidence.

“No one is employing these grubby, money hungry lookalikes, Harvard graduates or not.”

Hot on the heels of this week’s Pru Goward and Jackie O controversy, business owner Fleur Madden-Topley shares her forthright views on running a business vs. running a household. Just last week she and her husband were told they can adopt a baby from Korea following a three-year wait.

Journo turned PR boss Fleur Madden-Topley asks why in-house and agency PR professionals can’t work together for the good of their client and calls for an end to their battles.

It is true, for the last ten years I have been elusive about my age, when asked how old I am I have always politely said ‘ you should never ask a lady how old she is’.

What if you have no relationships with the media and you don’t have a PR agency representing you? A little secret tactic that if you do well could be the start of something wonderful, is the art of the creative press kit.

For as long as I have been in PR the debate has raged on should potential clients pay for pitches?

Social media has been awash with interesting comments since the political assignation of Kevin last week. It has been said 1000 times in the last seven days, but politics is a blood sport and what’s made it even bloodier is the part social media has played.

How many events have you been to that you want to kill yourself at? The speeches are boring, there is the standard drinks package, you dry retched on the hideous canapés, there is no entertainment, the gift bags have a heap of promotional collateral and the most decent thing in it is a branded pen or a stress ball?

Being a business owner can be quite isolating at times and being a business owner in Australia even more so. It has always been important to me that I measure Red PR’s success not only on our competitors in Australia, but around the world.

Anyone who still thinks social media is a fad is living in the dark ages and so is their business. It is proving its worth ten times over and engaged online communities are proving the best company endorsement money can’t buy.

What is the investment you will be making in your brand in 2010 to get ahead of your competitors and ensure your customers feel engaged with the right messages?

After seven years in a consultancy I have had some time to think about this and I am going out on a limb and say what you are not meant to say if you are in an agency – I think it is time someone developed a code of conduct on how clients should treat their agency and this is why.

So this is only my second blog for Dynamic Business Magazine and I am certainly not going to claim to be a rock star yet, but I am secretly hoping that in the coming months I will be the Bon Jovi of the DBM blogs.

We love doing travel PR and I love a good travel PR campaign, but the folks over at Tourism Afghanistan must be doing a red hot job if they can get Afghanistan into Gourmet Traveller, even if it is listed as a unique and unforgettable experience – unforgettable because you may not come back alive.