And after the publicity?

I didn't watch Emma Harrison last night in "Who Knows Best". If you did, feel free to comment. The lack of any reviews in the press, apart from the Guardian's premature piece, shows that it raised little interest. Perhaps that means that the TV companies have exhausted this particular line of programming; the "it's easy to get a job if you really want one" line. But I bet there is more stuff in the pipeline that encourages this perception and bashes all "benefits scroungers".

What does all this exposure mean for A4e? Like the other big contractors, they have been encouraged to expect to inherit the new Work Programme contracts. Emma Harrison's expectations are summed up in a little piece in the Wellington Times: "Iain Duncan Smith's New Work Programme has been greeted as 'fantastic news' by Emma Harrison the chairman of A4e. A4e have £300 million of Government training contracts and controls 25% of the long-term unemployment budget for the Department of Work and Pensions." She praises the new direction: "The way it has been done in the past is with a myriad of programmes going on, it has been too much, too complicated and the cost of it has been too much. This Government has been brave enough to announce that there will be one programme and that programme will be individualised to every single person who comes on the programme." And: Mrs Harrison said that A4e was 'very happy' to work within the New Work Programme payment structure. "We are growing organically. We don't do acquisition. We are all owned by ourselves. We are very well placed to do this thing," she said." And finally: "We will export this worldwide."

The "framework" is expected to be announced in November; those big companies which will control the contracts under the Work Programme. We can assume that the procurement process will not be influenced by the amount of TV exposure a company has had. But when it comes to selling your services worldwide, it can only help.