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By Mark Terry. UK Trade & Investment has signed up Hill & Knowlton to help establish east London as an answer to California’s Silicon Valley. The PR firm will support the Tech City Investment Organisation, a cluster of tech companies in the area, home to the 2012 Olympic Games.

By Steve Mullins. UK marketing budgets were revised down in 1Q12 for a second consecutive quarter in response to public sector spending cuts and rapidly rising cost pressures, according to the latest IPA/BDO Bellwether survey.

Companies’ confidence for the industries in which they operate has also dipped to a two-year low, reflecting an uncertain economic outlook following a -0.5% decline in GDP in the final three months of 2011.

By Simon Fuller. There’s a lot going on in London. If it’s not this month’s Windsor wedding, it’s next year’s Olympics, And beyond that, the city is rolling out new transport networks and cycle schemes. So, the time’s ripe for someone to tell the world just how great the city is.

By Maria Stadtmueller.The UK’s Chartered Institute of Public Relations has issued revised guidance on social media to include core principles, best practice and legal considerations for implementing campaigns.

“Honesty, openness and transparency are essential to any social media campaign,” Gemma Griffiths, md at the crowd and I, and member of CIPR social media panel.

By Maria Stadtmueller. Version 2.0 Communications has rolled out the latest version of The Briefing Room app for the iPhone and iPad. The PR and digital comms outfit says that, with The Briefing Room, it wants to create a single destination for marketing and PR professionals to stay current on emerging communications trends such as PR measurement, social media marketing and content marketing.

Half of all employees write about the company they work for on a social media website, such as Facebook and Twitter, according to a new UK survey conducted by Liz Lean PR/SocialTech. However, three quarters of them either do not know of, or have had no guidance from their employers regarding what they could or [...]

Every brand needs a mega artist as creative director. Last year, Polaroid signed up Lady Gaga to do the job. Now it’s Intel giving a ‘director of creative innovation’ post to Black Eyed Peas frontman will.i.am.

He will collaborate with Intel on creative and technology endeavours across a ‘compute continuum’ that may include such devices as laptops, smart phones and tablets. He is also already working on music expressly for Intel.

Polaroid and its creative director, Lady Gaga, have rolled out Polaroid Grey Label, an original line of products co-designed with the artist (who has a remit to ‘deliver products that enable creativity for all, celebrate artistry and make sharing instantaneous across the physical and digital’).

We bring you news, then, of the GL10 Instant Mobile Printer with Zink technology. And the GL30 Instant Digital Camera, aimed at tntroducing a new generation to the joy of instant photography.