Not all a bunch of Bankers after all - the bank that knows its fruit, pastries and PR
I am going to pop my head above the parapet and go against public opinion, something that is difficult for us “love-me-love-me” PR types.
Return of the long lunch?
I love HSBC Bank. There, I said it, and for the cynics out there, no, they are not clients and nor have we ever done any work with them.
Last week I was one of a few business owners to be invited to a HSBC business seminar, aimed at them getting to know what pressures businesses currently face and where the banking giant could help.
HSBC is a classy outfit; I am talking fruit AND pastries at these kinds of breakfast events, but my love for them went through the roof once I heard what they had to say.
In short, they are very much open for business and pro-actively looking for small, innovative and tech-driven companies to engage with and lend money to, if the business plan all stacks up.
Anyway, this is not some leftie business mentor column, so enough of the business love and down to the PR side. Oh hang on, HSBC features here too.
Whilst I was at the forum, two of my colleagues were also at a CIPR (stand and salute) social media event where HSBC were talking about how they handled a crisis from a little while ago.
They were on-it to the extent that they were one of the first large corporate types to actually get praise about how they handled something going wrong. They plan properly, are all over every social network and being gushingly honest, give agencies like mine something to aspire to in terms of where we need to be.
So, HSBC I salute you; in PR terms, you complete me.
Getting back on brief about the odder end of the corporate PR world, at the weekend I bumped into an old marketing boss of mine from my Whitbread days. He has retired from head office duties and is living the dream with a bar in the heart of City-Land.
We got to gossiping about years gone by and I mentioned my brief dalliance with a career in corporate PR, we both laughed. He mentioned that in the few years that he has had the pub, frequented by City types, their spending has actually gone up instead of down as you and I would have expected.
Long lunches are back, crazy wine bills have returned and the good times are here again. For the bar owner, times are very good; they are closed by 9pm, as the City is then deserted, and after discussion with his regulars, the bar will be closing from Friday December 14th and not re-opening until Monday 7th January 2013.
In stark contrast to the grandeur of City life, I was picking through the bones of Comet bargains and chatting to the surprisingly chipper, soon to be out of work, store worker who told me something startling.
Apparently his wife and children situation means he will be better off on the dole than he would have been had he kept his job at Comet.
Surely this flies in the face of the Tory plan to get people back to work? Still, at least I got a tumble dryer on the cheap.