London Technology Public Relations agency | Social Media Strategy | B2B PR | Chameleon PR

To the uninitiated in the dark arts of communications campaigns watching Eddie and Patsy in Ab Fab would have you believe that PR in particular was all about swigging vast amounts of `stollybolly`* and talking nonsense.  Well, we’d argue that in tech PR neither of these statements is correct. Well perhaps one, actually, but one thing’s true for sure – we Reptiles are fond of a good Pub Quiz.

And there’s nothing gets our dander up more than a bit of extended question combat with our fellow flacks (that’s “PR people” for those that have found this post accidently). Last night Chameleon PR (accompanied by honoury pub quiz team ringer Chris Mcintyre of Business XL and M&A magazines) was to be found in London’s Covent Garden Grand Connaught Rooms along with 20-odd other PR consultancies at the PRCA’s Frontline annual fact fest.

Not content with not only knowing that Tiger Woods had been dropped as a PR vehicle by Accenture, AT&T, Gatorade, Gillette and Tag Heuer, but that Robbie William’s `Angels` is a modern favourite at both weddings and funerals, The Reptile XL Quiz Machine^TM quickly parked its tanks on a few agency lawns by blasting through solving a series of anagrams, dingbats and identifying supposedly famous faces through truly frightening familiarity with technology-lite subjects such as soap operas, glossy magazines and the X-Factor to be neck-and-neck in first place after the final round.  A tie-breaker ensued.  Trying to banish all thoughts of the performance of England footballers taking penalties in crucial championship matches, and blanking out the white wine fuelled cacophony, we stepped up to the plate and promptly buried the ball.

Shutters clicked, flashbulbs popped and the stewards fought the ensuing stage invasion by adoring fans⁺ and we were promptly rewarded with bling that could upstage Eddie’s Lacroix.  Yes, sparkly gold winners’ medals lovingly hand cast from premium plastic in the People’s Republic combined with a genuine silver effect engraved cup.  Having slept in our medals, the cup now occupies pride of place amongst the other gongs in the reception at Reptile Towers, EC3.

You too could have escaped with this priceless booty if you had correctly guessed the answer to `How long is the Suez canal?` It’s 101 miles and we got there first, so there. And who got the answer on our behalf?  None other than our battle-hardened ’58 vintage crisis communications guy, who parachuted into the fray and made damn sure he didn’t screw it up (unlike the ’56 debacle). Wholly appropriate in so many ways…

*a particularly potent combination of Stolichnaya vodka and Bollinger champagne, sweetie.

+ we might be exaggerating a bit here

Chameleon representatives at Byte Night not only ‘slept rough’ (save for the tea and coffee tent) on Friday night, and in doing so raised cash for Action for Children, but also performed admirably in the Byte Night quiz.

Battling against a fair proportion of the UK technology industry, and four other tech PR agencies, Chameleon PR – with the added intellectual might of Peter Judge (the Morris dancing editor of eWeek Europe) and Vas Constanti (of IT recruiter Marcus Donald Associates) – romped to second place.

A slightly disappointing first round was followed by a storming second round. Then, in a spontaneously rule-busting judgment worthy of Formula 1, the quiz was over, the third round abandoned. Which meant that in the overall scoring Chameleon PR came second. Had the third round taken place….

The team proudly weaved its way to the front to have medals put round our necks by Jenny Agutter (“from the Railway Children,” said the girls, “from Walkabout,” said the boys).

It was a proud moment for all concerned, especially Jenny Agutter who hadn’t met Chameleon PR before…

Once again, thank you to everyone who sponsored Chameleon PR’s participation.