1. TV/telephone/everything worth having

John Logie Baird was the first inventor to demonstrate a working TV. OK he wasn’t the only one working on this invention at the time but he was the first to actually make it work, so in British eyes that makes him the sole inventor.

Alexander Graham Bell was the second dour, bearded Scot to come up with a world-changing invention – the telephone. And as everyone knows, the internet wouldn’t have been possible in its early days without telephone lines, so that pretty much makes Bell the inventor of the internet as well. Phone, internet, TV; it’s pretty much the whole modern world.

PR score: 10/10

2. Braveheart/Highlander

Thanks to these two films, everyone outside of the UK thinks Scottish people are fit, tartan-clad fighting machines who wear nothing but skirts in sub-zero temperatures. We’re sure there are many Scottish people who object to this Hollywood stereotype, but if we were Scottish (and many at Porter Novelli are) we’d secretly quite like it.

PR score: 8/10

3. Ewan MacGregor’s speech in Trainspotting

Not the one at the beginning about choosing life, but the one where he lambasts the state of Scotland under hundreds of years of colonial rule. It brought Scottish pride to a new generation. OK, it’s also in a film about poverty and drug abuse, so it’s not a complete PR triumph, unless you’re into heroin chic.

PR score: 6/10

4. Taking over Australia and New Zealand

The Scots certainly made a big impression on Australia and New Zealand. Here’s a list of all the towns in Australia named after Scottish people/places (also New Zealand). Canada and the US have their fair share too. What does this mean in PR terms? It means people in these countries believe Scottish people were brave pioneers placing their stamp on the world, and indeed they were.

PR score: 9/10

6. Kilts/clans

The Scots have managed to make tartan their own, even though it’s thought the pattern apparently originated with Celtic people in Europe and Asia many centuries before. However, the aligning of tartan with the clans only happened in the mid-nineteenth century it seems. We’re not sure there are than many people who know this, so it’s a great PR story. And who doesn’t want to be part of a clan?

PR score: 8/10

7. Bannockburn/the Battle of Stirling Bridge

Back in mediaeval times the English and the Scots had a bit of a history of fighting each other, in case you didn’t know. On two occasions, held close to Scottish hearts, the Scots won pretty decisively. The reason why these battles are below Braveheart and Highlander in our list is that unfortunately more people know about films than about real history, especially history that was ‘ago’.

PR score: 5/10

8. Mary Queen of Scots

Mary Queen of Scots is definitely one of the more interesting royals out there. We’re going to ignore the fact she had a French mother and a French accent – she also married a king, possibly had her husband murdered, was forced to abdicate and then got shut up by Elizabeth for being too sexy and dangerous. Exciting though she may have been, she did get caught conspiring and was executed by an English queen and that’s a bit humiliating.

PR score: 4/10

9. Golf

A bit of a vote splitter this one. Golf is one of the most successful and lucrative sports in the world, but, you know, kind of boring and the clothes are just silly.

PR score: 4/10

10. The Scottish Enlightenment

Scotland was THE place to be if you were clever in the eighteenth century. Not only that, the Scots were big fans of reason, and pretty much drove the rest of the world into a period of progress. People of note: Robert Burns, David Hume, Adam Smith and Alexander Campbell. This should be the Scots’ greatest triumph, but as we mentioned before, people don’t really know that much about history any more.

PR score: 7/10

13. Malcolm Tucker

We have to include Malcolm Tucker because he’s the PR world’s favourite PR person. Oh how we wish we could be like him, but we just don’t have the accent. Or the wit.

PR score: 10/10

Honourable mentions: Billy Connolly, Hogmanay, the Edinburgh Fringe, whisky, Sean Connery, porridge, Lulu, Absolutely, the Bay City Rollers, Rab C Nesbitt

People used to thinking of Twitter as a middle class tool for celebs, journalists and PRs to tweet about networking meet ups might have been surprised this week to find out it’s also being used by New York gangs to set up fights, especially as the received wisdom was that Facebook and MySpace were for the kids, Twitter was for fans of Stephen Fry.

It’s possibly not such a surprise for those who regularly click on the trending topics and discover the conversations happening on a whole other, less PC Twitter. It’s been said before but it’s worth repeating: Twitter is a platform rather than a culture or a movement. In fact Twitter actively encourages the separation of its users into tribes through the ‘follow’ option and now, even more so through the new list option. People follow like-minded people and discover even more like-minded people through them. It’s self-reinforcing. The rest go by the wayside and the various tribes rarely get to talk to or know each other.

What this means for people in our industry trying to use Twitter as a branding exercise is that they need to really focus in order to open up the section of Twitter most relevant to them. This isn’t so much a question of identifying top influencers, but understanding the way the tribe works: what they talk about, what makes them laugh, what they hate etc.

A good example is the Meerkat from the Compare the Market ads, who recently won a Golden Twit for services to Twitter humour and brand building. The Meerkat tweets a few times a day, takes time to talk to followers and always has a consistent mildly satirical persona that appeals to British, net-savvy consumers, without compromising the brand already established through the ads.

This is one way of doing it. Reaching less open, easy-going audiences might be a different story. How you’d reach the gangs of New York is anyone’s guess.

It seems like a blink of an eye since it was announced that London would be hosting the 2012 Olympic and Paralympics Games, the first time in over six decades but we are now less than 1,000 days until the opening ceremony on 27th July 2012. Yet it still seems a little early for businesses to be thinking about the impact London 2012 will have on them.

Over the course of the Olympic and Paralympic Games, the UK will receive an estimated 9.2 million visitors. There will be 14,500 athletes from 205 countries, 21,000 media & broadcasters, 70,000 volunteers, 15,000 coaches & officials. There will be 34 Olympic competition venues across the country, including Glasgow, Manchester, Cardiff and Weymouth. There are also 639 training facilities, with only 96 in London, and there will be 30 live sites, or public screen areas, across the country. All of which means there will be many parts of the country that feel the impact of London 2012.

To help businesses prepare, Porter Novelli’s client BT, is working in partnership with Cisco to create a community where businesses can come together to discuss issues around London 2012, share their experiences,  plan their approach and spread best practice. In short, to become Business Ready. As well as helping UK businesses make the most of the opportunity, the overarching aim of the project is to create a legacy of business knowledge that can be passed on to Rio 2016 and beyond.

The community is currently based on Linkedin but will evolve during the run up to London 2012 along with the needs and desires of the group. We’re very excited to be part of the community and can’t wait to see how it develops over the coming weeks, months and years.