This story in the Daily Telegraph was a very helpful example of when apparently bad news is actually good news. The story was about the re-branding of the Voluntary Euthanasia Society (or VES) as Dignity in Dying. This was one we needed to communicate so that people understood the name had changed and could accurately find the organisation again rather than thinking there were now two campaign organisations for end of life rights. A small word in the right ear and its not that hard to create a bit of a stir...

The unhappy genesis of this awful but accurate phrase is the stock in trade of many PRs especially in sensitive and controversial businesses (like the nuclear industry and GM Foods for example) where there is an abundance of bad news and a dearth of positive stories. (The trick with positive stories is that largely you have to make them, they don't fall off trees.)  This story was one I was asked to make go away but it had been receiving huge amounts of speculative news since the investigation began into Camelot's improper payments to winners. Through some subtle downplaying of the story in advance, a turn of nice timing, and an absence of colour, we managed to limit what could have been a leading national news story into a sparse collection of NIBs (news in brief). Not quite buried, perhaps, but certainly not eye catching. Just what the spin doctor ordered!

This piece shows a universal truth: that interesting statistics are an excellent medium for news stories. This one is fresh information about the rise in cases of British people with serious or terminal travelling overseas to have help to die. It was reported by the Independent. (Well, 700%...) If you don't have ready statistics, find them or create them! Statistics are a professional passion of mine, and many of my features on Writer's Block draw on original statistical research I've done.

At Dignity in Dying we tried to make the most of a non-existent advertising budget by deploying it when we had a campaign in the news for additional pick-up. This one featuring our campaigner with MS, Debbie Purdy from Bradford, was the only national advert we used in my two and a half years there (2004-2006).