Check out this superb piece of filmmaking in its entirety below. Genius.

The fantastic fighting cock, aka Dude, led his ladies into battle when the fox managed to get into their coop late at night. Surprisingly, the feather-weight contest didn’t end in a slaughter of the chickens but the demise of the predator.

News of the fight broke when chicken owner Michelle Cordell, 43, went to collect eggs from her brood and found the dead fox lying in their midst.

‘I was so shocked. When I went to the chicken coup they were all fine but, when I went to the other side, the fox was lying there dead,’ she said.

Ms Cordell added that a little table in the corner of the coup, which the chickens perched on, had been knocked over and was lying next to the fox’s head.

‘It seems they kicked over the table and knocked the fox out, and then pecked it to death,’ she said.

‘It had little blood marks on its legs that looked like they had been pecked. It had not been dead long. The fox was not a cub but it was only a young one and Dude and Izzy are big birds.’

A fox killed one hen and another cockerel just before Christmas but Ms Cordell is certain the chickens saw off the latest attack.

She said: ‘I reared Dude from a little chick and he has become very protective over the others.’ Her verdict on the cockerel? ‘Now he is a murderer.’

Yes, another Metro story comes to Joe’s Blogg, this time in the form of raining fish!

Ms Christine Balmer’s family thought she was going mad when she told them what was happening.

‘I haven’t lost my marbles,’ she said. ‘Hundreds and hundreds of fish landed in the town. Locals were picking them up off the ground everywhere. ‘These fish were alive when they hit the ground,’ she added. ‘Thank God it didn’t rain crocodiles.’
The perch are common throughout northern Australia. That’s all very well, but the nearest river is 326 miles away from Lajamanu. It seems there is a natural explanation, albeit utterly unlikely. Meteorologists say conditions were perfect for a tornado in the region which could have sucked the fish up to 50,000-ft into the air from lakes hundreds of miles away.
‘Once they get up into the weather system they are pretty much frozen and after some time they are released,’ said Mark Kersemakers of the Australian Bureau of Meteorology.
It’s not the first time local people have reported strange things.
Les Dillon, 48, said: ‘In the early 1980s I was at the Alice Springs Tavern Hotel and when I walked out the door I saw all those little fish, fallen out of the sky.
‘Yes, I had a couple of beers, six, so none of my mates believed me. I’ve rung heaps of people to let them know I wasn’t drunk back then. It had really happened.’
‘I was really excited to see it had happened again, I rang heaps of people to let them know I had not been drunk back then, it had really happened.’

Identify the Type of Feedback

Straight Problems – Someone has an issue with your product or service and has laid out exactly what went wrong. This type of feedback is negative in the sense that it paints your business in a poor light, but it can be helpful in exposing real problems that need to be dealt with.

Constructive Criticism – Even more helpful is when the comment comes with a suggestion attached. Many customers — including some of your most loyal — will use social media to suggest ways in which you can improve your product or service. While this type of feedback may point out your flaws, and is thus negative, it can be extremely helpful to receive.

Merited Attack – While the attack itself may not be merited, the issue that catalyzed it does have merit in this type of negative feedback. Essentially, you or your company did something wrong, and someone is angry.

Trolling/Spam – The difference between trolling and a merited attack are that trolls have no valid reason for being angry at you. Also in this category are spammers, who will use a negative comment about your product or service (whether true or not) to promote a competing service.

Decide How to React

When dealing with Straight Problems, a response is almost certainly necessary. Whether that response is personal or a broad public-facing message depends on how widespread the problem is and how many people reported it. Regardless, if a real problem exists, steps should be taken to fix it and customers should be notified that those steps are being taken. Remember that there will be times when such criticism is the result of a perceived problem rather than an actual problem (e.g., someone who just doesn’t like the method by which you do something). Even this type of complaint should be given a response, if only to say, “Thanks for bringing it to our attention, but here’s why we do it that way.”

Similarly, Constructive Criticism also requires a response. Certainly there will be times when you won’t want to implement the suggestion given — probably most times you won’t — but you’ll build loyalty and trust by responding to criticism with a positive message. It is well worth the effort to thank those consumers who took the time to provide you with a suggestion or point out your product’s flaws.

Merited Attacks are a bit tougher to deal with, because they’re more likely to feel personal. You should always try to keep in mind that this type of feedback, as harsh as it may be, has a basis in a real problem. It is best to respond promptly and with a positive vibe (e.g., thank the commenter for the feedback and assure them that steps are being taken to correct the issue or mitigate their problem, such as offering a partial refund).

The final category is the only category of negative feedback that does not require a response. In fact, it is almost always best not to respond to Trolling or Spam. This type of feedback isn’t really feedback at all. It is designed either to bait you into an unnecessary and image-damaging fight, or to siphon off your customers using underhanded tactics. You should always ignore this variety of feedback, and when appropriate, remove it as soon as you spot it.

This cheeky meerkat appeared to have offended a rather prim giraffe after wandering into its enclosure. The tiny mammal bounded into the giraffe’s pen, sparking the curiosity of the larger beast. The pair inspected one another solemnly, with the meerkat stretching out a little paw and appearing to give the giraffe a kiss.

Going for it: The meerkat is dwarfed by the giraffe as it goes in for a kiss

But it seemed the giraffe was not that sort of giraffe – and the meerkat had pushed its luck too far.

It was forced to flee when the giraffe started kicking its hooves.

The remarkable confrontation was captured by 40-year-old photographer Alfonso Paz at Lisbon Zoo, Portugal.

He said: ‘Two meerkats escaped from their enclosure and were playing with each other along the road that led to the giraffes.

‘They were hiding here and there as they ran into the giraffes’ compound.

‘They found some large rocks and as soon as the first meerkat appeared standing up between the rocks, a young giraffe approach them.

‘I was fascinated as the giraffe and the meerkat just stared at each other for a few moments – I had never seen anything like it.

‘I didn’t even prepare the camera at first because I didn’t want to disturb what was happening.

‘But then the giraffe leaned over the meerkat and touched its head. Then they started playing with each other.

‘At one point the meerkat seemed to give the giraffe a little kiss on the cheek.’

Alfonso said that something then seemed to irritate the giraffe and it started kicking out at the meerkat.

He added: ‘All hell broke loose.

‘The giraffe seemed to be offended and started kicking in every direction and the other giraffes started running in every direction and jumping and kicking.

‘The meerkats seemed to enjoy the scene because they stayed for a while longer before going back to their compound.’

And if that wasn’t enough, here are some more stories to warm up your start to the weekend:

• Seoul Man steals 1,200 pairs of shoes
• World’s largest rodent pet is an internet star
• Cat with can on head somehow finds its way to pet rescue center

He may be just a few days old, but this unusually marked lamb is clearly one to be reckoned with.

Named Miyagi after fictional martial arts expert Mr  Miyagi from the Karate Kid films, he was born five days ago with a thick belt of black wool around his middle.

Farmer William Herbert said:

‘I’ve been farming for over 50 years but I’ve never seen anything like this before. Some lambs have a spot of discoloured wool, but it’s very unusual to see a  full thick stripe. It goes all the way around. It looks like I’ve gone out to him with a paint brush.

‘He’s one of a set of triplets but he won’t be treated any differently to his  brother and sister. They don’t have any markings on them – he’s the odd one out.’

Mr Herbert, who also keeps cows at Woodwell House Farm, Durham, said it’s not certain Miyagi will keep his black belt. He said:

‘Some sheep with slight discolouration lose it when they get older. This little one’s stripe feels more like hair than wool though.  We won’t know whether he’ll keep it until he starts to grow.’

Well I sure hope he does – Ive never had an excuse to travel north to Durham, but now I have a good excuse as any. Road trip anyone?

Thrill seeking horse riders are being offered a once in a life-time opportunity this August to trek through Iceland’s magnificent Snæfellsnes peninsula National Park and raise money for the Brooke, the UK’s leading charity for hardworking horses, donkeys and their owners overseas.

The six day trek will lead participants past snow capped mountains, steaming waterfalls, green valleys and the majestic Snæfellsjökull volcano. It culminates with a visit to the famous Blue Lagoon where riders can relax in the thermal pools. Riders will cover an average of 35km a day so this is perfect for those who are up for a challenge!

“The Brooke Icelandic Horse Trek is set to be a really exciting, unique challenge taking participants through some of the world’s most beautiful landscape. All you need is enthusiasm, confident horsemanship, a good level of fitness and a commitment to support the Brooke” says Gemma Laragy, Brooke’s Community Fundraising Manager.

By taking part you’ll be helping to improve the lives of hard working horses, donkeys and mules in some of the world’s poorest communities. Many of these animals toil for up to 12 hours a day in unbearable conditions. Through their mobile veterinary teams, the Brooke ensures these animals are healthy, happy and fit for work, thus maintaining the livelihoods of the millions of poor people who rely on them. And, by taking the time to educate and train owners on how to properly care for their animals – the Brooke continues to improve animal welfare throughout communities.

Spaces are limited and filling up fast so people are advised to sign up as soon as possible. The challenge runs from 14^th – 21^st August 2010. To sign up, you need to pay a registration fee of £250. Participants are then asked to raise a minimum amount in sponsorship.

For more information or to sign up, please visit www.thebrooke.org/iceland, contact the Brooke’s Fundraising Team on 020 7653 5812, or e-mail community@thebrooke.org.

All about… The Brooke

The Brooke is the UK’s leading overseas charity dedicated to alleviating the suffering of horses, donkeys and mules working in the poorest parts of the world, and improving the lives of the poor people who depend on them.

Millions of these animals toil in some of the world’s toughest environments, but much of their suffering is entirely preventable. Our network of mobile vet teams, field clinics and community animal health workers provide care and treatment in conjunction with education and training to promote good animal welfare practices. Our work inspired HRH The Duchess of Cornwall to become our President.

From humble beginnings in Cairo, the Brooke has grown into an international life saver, reaching 700,000 animals each year across 10 countries. For more information about the Brooke visit www.thebrooke.org

I have experienced first hand from working in PR, companies & brands fearing social media for various different reasons, but here are the top five con­cerns that Ayalet has heard from exec­u­tives and her responses to them:

1) They’re afraid they’ll lose con­trol of their brand and open them­selves up to neg­a­tive feed­back

When you open a busi­ness and start mar­ket­ing your ser­vices and expos­ing your brand to oth­ers, peo­ple will start talk­ing about your brand. And this is why you exposed them to your brand in the first place.

Peo­ple are going to be talk­ing about your brand no mat­ter what. The ques­tion is: Do you want to be a part of the dia­logue or do you want to just play ostrich and ignore what peo­ple are say­ing? If a per­son is dis­sat­is­fied with your ser­vices, do you pre­fer he opens up this dis­cus­sion in a “I hate <your brand>” group opened up by another hater or do you pre­fer that he come to your page and post the com­plaint there allow­ing you to respond appro­pri­ately and even per­haps win him back as a client?

Social media didn’t cre­ate the dis­sat­is­fied cus­tomer — it only allowed him a plat­form to express his frus­tra­tion. If you don’t give him the stage to speak, he will do it else­where and believe me, it will cause a great deal more dam­age to your brand if you’re not there to respond and open to criticism.

When we speak of social media, we speak of con­ver­sa­tional mar­ket­ing — lis­ten­ing before sell­ing, open­ing a dia­logue with the user and not just throw­ing a blink­ing ban­ner in his face. Brands need to make that switch in their heads and under­stand that social media is SOCIAL. Many con­ver­sa­tions will be pos­i­tive and you will have these nice mes­sages recorded for every­one to see pub­licly — your bosses, your investors, your cus­tomers and poten­tial customers:

Some con­ver­sa­tions may be neg­a­tive but these con­ver­sa­tions should be seen as wel­comed oppor­tu­ni­ties to gain back cus­tomers. If you uti­lize social media effec­tively and are alert to what peo­ple are say­ing about you online, then you can also respond in a timely and intel­li­gent man­ner. When you’re dazed and con­fused and too afraid to see what peo­ple may be say­ing about you, that’s when the con­ver­sa­tion can get out of con­trol and your brand­ing and posi­tion­ing can go out the win­dow. Com­pa­nies who under­stand social media know that by using social media they are increas­ing the num­ber of pos­i­tive responses to their brand and mak­ing sure to con­trol and decrease the neg­a­tive responses by show­ing peo­ple that they actu­ally care about what they have to say.

2) They don’t under­stand it

Com­pa­nies fear social media because they don’t under­stand what to do with it, what to talk about, who to turn to. They often time try to do it in-house with­out the appro­pri­ate guid­ance, fail mis­er­ably and then say that social media doesn’t work. Don’t hire your friend’s son who is very active on Face­book to do your mar­ket­ing strat­egy for you. Just like you wouldn’t fix your car in-house or do your PR in-house, nei­ther should you start doing social media on your own with­out hav­ing a social media guru at your side. And when I say guru, I mean some­one who has had a good track record in cre­at­ing suc­cess­ful social media cam­paigns for other com­pa­nies in the past. Once you have such a guide at your side and you begin to under­stand what social media is all about, then you will not be afraid of it any­more and you will start to rec­og­nize the infi­nite num­ber of amaz­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties that social media will open your brand to.

3) The effec­tive­ness of social media is hard to mea­sure

Because social media is still in its dia­pers, it took a lit­tle while for tools track­ing the ROI on social media cam­paigns to emerge, how­ever today we have a suite of dif­fer­ent tools that allow com­pa­nies to track even the most minute details in the effec­tive­ness of their social media cam­paigns. Tools like Google Ana­lyt­ics, which allow us to track the traf­fic com­ing into our site as well as where it’s com­ing from has existed for years. Google alerts which allow us to see the blog posts and other sites link­ing back to our site have also existed for a long time. And we are now see­ing an influx of ser­vices that not only allow you to eas­ily mon­i­tor what peo­ple are say­ing about your brand but also see who are the top influ­encers, opin­ion lead­ers in your indus­try and more. There are numer­ous ser­vices that allow you to see the top influ­encers on twit­ter such as: Twit­ter grader and twit­ter ana­lyt­ics ser­vices such as Twit­alyzer . Face­book also pro­vides its own insights to page admins and enables admins to view infor­ma­tion regard­ing the demo­graph­ics of their fans and also how many inter­ac­tions, com­ments, wall posts, etc. were found on the page. The more we learn about social media, the more tools we get to mea­sure it. Not only are our efforts in the social media realm mea­sur­able but social media cam­paigns also allow us to tar­get spe­cific cam­paigns to spe­cific niches like no other media today.

4) They’re afraid that employ­ees will be on Face­book and twit­ter chat­ting all day — Face­book today has around 350 mil­lion users. If Face­book was a nation, it would be the world’s third most pop­u­lous after China and India. Your employ­ees are there any­way. Why not uti­lize the fact that they are there to help your cause? When you need to spread the word on Face­book, why not enable your employ­ees to help you or when you finally open that fan page on Face­book, why not allow your employ­ees to become fans and encour­age them to take part in your social media activ­i­ties. Dell for exam­ple, who is well known for their great twit­ter strat­egy (a strat­egy which has earned them $6.5 mil­lion to date), has around 200 employ­ees work­ing its twit­ter account, respond­ing to people.

In addi­tion, not allow­ing your employ­ees to have access to the vast amount of infor­ma­tion that can be found on social net­works as well as not enabling them to use these net­works as research tools nor to net­work with peo­ple in the indus­try also puts your com­pany at a great dis­ad­van­tage to your com­peti­tors who do allow their employ­ees (and even encour­age them) to use social media tools.

5) Social media is costly — This last fear is not only some­thing that com­pa­nies should not fear but it is also not true. If you con­sider the mil­lions of peo­ple that you can reach using social media as opposed to the cost of buy­ing an ad on TV or buy­ing a ban­ner, you’ll see that social media is one of the most cost effi­cient ways of reach­ing your tar­get audi­ence today.

To any­one who still thinks social media is a fad, wake up. It’s not. Social media is here and it’s here to stay. If you took a look at the lat­est report that came out of Davos regard­ing social net­works, you’ll see that Face­book is now the sec­ond most pop­u­lar site on the inter­net after Google and that accord­ing to Nielsen since Feb­ru­ary 2009 peo­ple have been spend­ing more time on social-networking sites than on e-mail, and the lead is get­ting big­ger. The ques­tion for your brand is no longer whether to be there or not to be there. The ques­tion is when will you be there and the longer you keep your head in the ground, the more you’ll lose touch with what’s hap­pen­ing out there in the real world.

Great Ostrich pic credit: http://blog.karmona.com

Anyways, the reason for this post is because I heard some gossip through the grapevine  (I do work in PR after all) that I would like to share – not because I find it interestimg, but it would be interesting if what I have heard is right, and in reality the only people that win from this whole story is the tabloids…. and Max Cliffords pocket!

So here it goes, apparently the News of the World have won the bidding war to tell all on Vanessa Perroncel’s affair with John Terry &  the following will be revealed this Sunday:
Not only did Vanessa Peroncell sleep with John Terry behind his wife’s back, but also with Ashley Cole behind Cheryl.. hmmm Scandalous!

So there you have it folks, my first and last gossip post. No doubt I am way off the mark, but hey it would be interesting to see what happens!