TK Maxx is apparently the ‘most hated’ high street shop.  Every TK Maxx shopper that I’ve ever met displays a zeal for the brand that is bordering on the religious.   

This survey is sophistry in the extreme and should be taken with a generous pinch of salt.

The English wine industry is set to receive a major boost in the coming days as award-winning producer Chapel Down begins planting 72 acres of new vineyard. The land, on Bluebell Hill near Maidstone, will produce its first sparkling wine in time to toast the London Olympics in 2012.

Chapel Down plans to shower British medal triumphs with a home grown English sparkling wine to knock the socks off Champagne. Planting at the site begins this week, when Chapel Down’s viticulturist and vineyard manager, Craig Daly, will oversee the installation of 122,000 vines, which will be a share of pinot noir and chardonnay.

The expansion is part of Chapel Down’s effort to quench the insatiable thirst for English wine that sees consumers increasingly attuned to the quality and viability of the produce. Bluebell Hill encompasses a 116 acre plot on the North Downs from which Chapel Down forecasts reaping some 200,000 bottles of sparkling wine each year. The new land is ideal for growing high-quality sparkling wine similar in character to those produced only 250 miles away in Champagne.

The planting represents another step by the Kent producer in its attempt to emulate the classic bubbly and playing the French at their own game. Chapel Down will be planting exactly the same clones and root stocks used in the finest Champagne.

Daly will use GPS navigation to plant the vines, a technique he brought to Kent from his native New Zealand, where satellite tracking is commonplace in large scale vineyard planting. For Daly, the planting is a milestone in what has been a labour of love since he moved to Chapel Down from Central Otago twelve months ago.

“My first day in the new job was pretty unconventional”, he said. “I arrived at the winery, was given keys to a Landrover, an OS map of the North Downs and instructions to find land for a new vineyard.”

A year of soil analysis, drainage tests and negotiations later and Kent’s largest chalk vineyard is born. “English wine is at the start of a very exciting growth curve” Daly adds, conceding that some of the still wine Chapel Down produces is similar to that produced in New Zealand, another ‘cool climate’ wine producing region. “It plays to the growing taste for more fruit driven, lower alcohol, zesty, zingy wines,’” he said.

Chapel Down attributes the surge in its popularity partly to the emphasis now placed on provenance and locally sourced produce, but mainly to the exceptional quality and style of the wines. For those concerned about their carbon footprint and food miles, Chapel Down offers a greener option that also improves the agricultural landscape and economy of Kent.

Chapel Down is the country’s largest producer of English wine, with the new acreage bolstering their land portfolio to over 300 acres. Chapel Down wines are available through Waitrose, Marks & Spencer and Sainsbury’s stores, as well as niche retailers such as Selfridges and Fortnum & Mason. They are also stocked by some of the country’s finest restaurants, including Roast in Borough Market and much of Gordon Ramsay’s empire, in addition they are exported to top bars and restaurants in Japan and Hong Kong. 

FOR MORE INFORMATION AND IMAGES

Sophie Gregory, Van Communications – 020 7079 9222

ABOUT CHAPEL DOWN

Chapel Down is the country’s largest producer of English wines.

The Chapel Down Winery is based in Tenterden, Kent.

There are 25 acres of vineyard at the Chapel Down estate in Tenterden.

The company sources grapes from a further 180 acres over the South East region. Chapel Down produces approximately ½ million bottles of wine a year.

For more information, visit www.englishwinesgroup.co.uk

Three descendants of Sir Ernest Shackleton and his team are carrying out gruelling training in Greenland to prepare for an attempt to complete the explorer’s failed journey to the South Pole.  The modern adventurers will set out this October, exactly 100 years after the original expedition and following the same full 900-mile, 80-day route as their predecessors.  Shackleton’s crew were forced to turn back 97 miles from the Pole on 9 January 1909 in the face of howling icy blizzards and dwindling rations.

Shackleton set out on his 1908-09 Nimrod expedition to the Antarctic hoping to become the first person to reach the South Pole.  Although he failed, he travelled further south than anyone else had before, and was hailed a hero and knighted when he returned to the UK.  The 21st-century explorers are being led by Army Lt Col Henry Worsley, a descendant of Frank Worsley, Shackleton’s skipper on the Endurance, the ship used in a following Polar expedition in 1914. 

Mr Worsley travelled to Greenland on 15 April with fellow team members City worker Will Gow and shipping lawyer Henry Adams for a “full dress rehearsal” for the “main event”.  Mr Gow, 35, from Ashford, Kent, is related to Shackleton by marriage, and Mr Adams, 33, from Snape, near Woodbridge, Suffolk, is a great-grandson of Jameson Boyd-Adams, Shackleton’s number two on the unsuccessful expedition.

Mr Worsley, 47, from Hereford, says they chose Milne Land, an island just inside the Arctic circle, for their training because it mirrored the harsh conditions they would encounter at the Pole.  “It offers us the right temperatures we’re after and a bit of everything that will be thrown at us - it’s got a number of glaciers, a little ice cap and some sea ice,” he explained.

The adventurers are aiming to spend 16 days on the ice, dragging 250lb sledges 10-12 miles a day. Mr Worsley, says: “To average that is asking quite a lot - you are at the vagaries of the weather.The physical side we can do.  Like all these things, it will become a mental challenge as we progress.”

The three men will set out from the edge of the Ross Ice Shelf at exactly 10am on 29 October, as Shackleton and his team did a century earlier. They will be joined by another three descendants of their predecessors for the final push on the Pole, at the point where Shackleton gave up. Enduring -35C temperatures and 50mph headwinds, the team will attempt to keep to the pace set by the Antarctic pioneers, While they will have the benefits of modern equipment and navigational aids, they will not have the ponies and dogs that helped their forebears.  

The other members of the Matrix Shackleton Centenary Expedition are:

Patrick Bergel, 36, from London, Shackleton’s great-grandson, who works in advertising.

Tim Fright, 24, from Billingshurst, West Sussex, great-great-nephew of Frank Wild, the only explorer to accompany Shackleton on all his missions. He works as a PA to Cobra Beer founder Lord Bilimoria.

David Cornell, 38, from Andover, Hampshire, a City fund manager and another great-grandson of Boyd-Adams.

The expedition is being used to launch a £10 million Shackleton Foundation, which will fund projects that embody the adventurer’s spirit and hunger for “calculated risk”.

For more information visit http://www.shackletoncentenary.org

The idea of trialing the ‘world’s most expensive’ is a tried & tested PR route to generate editorial exposure.  Nobody really believes that these ‘trials’ - as they are always described - will last more than a few days or weeks, but they are the type of fun story that people like to report on and talk about.

However, what’s really incredible is that someone has convinced the editorial team at Marketing to report on this new initiative as a real hard news story - giving it a front page splash and leader comment too!  An amazing PR coup for whoever was behind the work.  Or did I miss the announcement about April Fools’ Day being moved to the 23rd of the month?

Now whilst there are elements of this ideal that permeate the industry, the reality was a valuable and educational learning curve. It was exactly what I wanted to get out of my internship. I have discovered that what we see and what we think we know of PR is actually only the tip of the iceberg.

There is much more to PR than meets the eye and my internship has allowed me to pull back the curtain and realise what a career in this area would entail. I have seen the evolution of ideas and the mechanics of how they are transformed and moulded into what the outside world knows of PR.

My Van adventure has been a richly diverse experience. I have participated in brainstorm sessions, conducted research, contacted national newspapers, launched the future of post and even met an A-list celebrity all in the space of two months!

As I leave the bright lights of the Big Smoke I find that I have unearthed a mystery as puzzling as the Bermuda triangle. I now understand what PR actually is. The veil has lifted and the penny has dropped. I would thoroughly recommend a placement at Van to any other intrepid adventurer who is searching for the answer to the eternal question…

…What exactly is PR?

Considering recent examples of the dark art of digital enhancement, “unrealistic” is perhaps too kind an adjective to describe the results.  A favourite case study often cited is the amusing disparity between the “before” (read: real) and “after” promotional images of famously flat chested and waifish actress Keira Knightly for the film King Arthur.  The poster image saw Knightly doctored to almost unrecognisable proportions, with a pert, inflated chest; full, windswept hair and a deep, flawless tan.  The end product bore so little resemblance to Knightly that one almost wondered why she was cast in the first place.

Another example of freakish digital enhancement saw GQ magazine devote a recent cover to American sweetheart Rachel Bilson. Her bikini clad body had been so cropped, nipped and scaled down that her head was thrown drastically out of proportion, creating an epic, elephantine head balanced atop a teeny doll-like body.

Painfully blatant computer generated images do call into question the credibility of the magazines and editors that publish them.  And they do promote fantasy notions of what famous people look like – but who said that we can’t laugh at the simulated, imaginary picture of someone who no longer looks human? Someone whose personal characteristics have been deleted, glossed over to create a standardised, acceptable look: whose freckles have been airbrushed, eyes enlarged, brows lifted, love handles lopped, thighs trimmed, legs lengthened, cheekbones heightened not by nature, but by computer software package?

Rather than spark feelings of inadequacy, can’t we raise a collectively cynical eyebrow to it all? Sophie Gregory, Van Communications

In trying to top ratings hit Strictly Come Dancing, ITV came up with Dancing On Ice. Now, in a brave move to increase the popularity of greyhound racing, punters in Britain will be able to watch Dogs on Ice.

The first “meeting” will be a one-off race at Wembley Arena in July, organised by Greyhound Derby sponsors Blue Square, with broadcasters bidding for the rights to screen the event live. 

There have been concerns that the new sport might be in some way cruel, although reports from trial runs, suggest that the dogs really love it. They have to wear special non-slip shoes, but there have still been occasions when one has slid into the crash barriers which ring the track. Organisers are talking to animal rights activists to get them on board before the big launch.

Exclusive betting on the sport is through BlueSquare.com, and early odds suggest that of the 36 dogs in contention to be among the six chosen for the big race, the odds-on favourite is likely to be a brindle called Prifir The Last.

A Greyhound Racing Association spokesman said: “It is great to see the dogs enjoying it. Some are better suited to the surface…probably more so than Greg Rusedski.”

M&S’s pledge was quickly followed by similar announcements from Debenhams and Woolworths.  Whilst the former received reams positive coverage, others have seen significantly diminished PR returns.  The implementation of a plastic bag policy by any retailer is to be applauded for the positive environmental ramifications it will surely have.  But companies must be aware that they cannot expect the level of coverage that M&S achieved simply by following suit.

The message to any business with green aspirations is clear: if you want to make a big PR impact with any CSR initiative make sure you’re first to pull it off.  Hannah Walsh, Van Communications