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PR Briefs - News Items March 28, 2006

• Why, Brian…what a nice figure you have

  • Mike Krempasky does some sleuthing to figure out where The Strumpette's blog originates.

• The Lifecycle of a PR Blogger

  • Josh Hallett extends Min Jung Kim's Lifecycle of Bloggers to PR bloggers.

• Inbox Zero

  • Tips from 43 Folders on how to empty your Inbox.

• Blogging and PR Career Advancement

  • Joseph Thornley on the importance of understanding blogs, and his firm's approach to encourage employee blogging.

• Interview with Rick Klau, FeedBurner’s Vice President of Business Development

  • Andrea Weckerle talks with FeedBurner about adoption of new media.

• Partial Attention in Higher Education

  • Eric Schwartzman on the negative effect "partial attention" can have in classrooms.

• Not everyone cares enough to be engaged

  • John Wagner on the fact that not all customers want to become part of a viral marketing campaign, or other form of engagement with a company. Some people just want to buy the product and enjoy it.

• Social media is important, but its impact pales beside that of fragmentation

  • John Wagner points out that all the excitement about social media shouldn't distract people from the real challenge of dealing with increasing fragmentation of media channels and ways of reaching audiences.

• Add a Little Musical Quirk to your Marketing for Greater Retention

  • Colin McKay on Sonic Branding.

• Starting a Business Blog? Here Are a Few Questions You Need to Answer

  • Josh Hallett lists five things you should know about yourselves and the blogging landscape before starting a blog for an organization.

• Viral Marketing - 5 Questions For Sebastian Arciszewski, AdFight

  • OneDegree.ca asks Vancouver web guy Sebastian Arciszewski about his latest project, in which advertisers are pitted against each other in mock fights.

• Social bookmarking for the enterprise

  • Neville Hobson looks at Cogenz, a social bookmarking tool that can be used by organizations.

Tags: bookmarking, blogs, ads, advertising, branding, media, engagement, employees, efficiency

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Morale Boosters Don't always Cost Big Bucks

I saw this parking pass on a vehicle in the local mall parking lot. 

Additional cost to make a boring employee parking pass into a positive statement about working at Ipsco: $0.00.

(The "tubular" comment refers to the steel company's main business -- making steel pipes.)

Tags: Ipsco, signage, employees, design, morale, engagement

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Drive-by Blogging: My PR Blog Neighbours Are Revolting!

The appeal of snarky, bitchy blog posts is undeniable. And, quite frankly, reading blogs would be boring without some of the raw entertainment of celebrity-style journalism thrown in for good measure.

So I'm not entirely sure why I have such a negative reaction to the shoot-first-check-facts-later approach that has burbled into my RSS feed aggregator lately.

I think it's because I'm uncomfortable with the basic premise of gossip -- that someone else's pain is a source of entertainment. It's bad enough when a writer highlights some embarrassing or unwise moment in someone's life (I've done my own share of calling people out on mistakes when I spot them).  What's worse is when the writer manufactures a controversy, and hammers their target quickly and harshly. I call it Drive-by Blogging.

Gossip-mongering entered the often bland world of blogs about PR and business communications this weekend. A Gawker-style blog was started by someone who claims to be a woman, with a provocative I'm-naked-but-covering-my-breasts photo in the top banner without actually saying it's a photo of the author. "Her" first target is an obvious one - the top PR blogger Steve Rubel, and the agency that recently hired him with great fanfare. None of the "facts" in her post solid enough to prove or disprove, right down to the supposed office pool paying out on the exit date of Rubel from his new firm.

(Do I believe the author really exists by the name she gives, and that "she" really heard about an office pool as "she" describes? Nothing I've seen so far leads me to believe this was based on a real event. This could just as easily be one of those Penthouse Forum situations, where some nerdy guys write fake letters from women about their hot sexual encounters.)

A nasty little post, with lots of innuendo and references to male and female sexuality. The first post to the blog was accompanied by an e-mail campaign to many PR bloggers (myself included), leading to lots of enthusiasm expressed by the iconoclasts and traditional males of the bunch, and lots of traffic to the new site. Giddy does not begin to describe the response (see links below).

This comes hot on the heels of the lambasting by Allan Jenkins of a company that republishes others' blog entries for cell phone users, calling out a European blogger who appeared to be connected to the company.

Unlike attack-and-run artists, Allan sent an e-mail asking for clarification. After a fair bit of digging, Allan discovered the blogger in question wasn't involved in the company, and the company was more naive than devious. To his credit, Allan revised his post and published a follow-up describing what he'd discovered. But the post had already been published, complete with accusations of stealing content for commercial gain.

There are dozens of examples of nasty attacks on A-List bloggers like Robert Scoble, all of which no doubt serve the purpose of gaining the attacker some attention.

Despite evidence that this sort of behaviour is remarkably effective at attracting links, site traffic and buzz, I'm sticking to the Phil Gomes Golden Rule of PR Blogging.

Long-time PR blogger Phil wrote a new year's post promising to focus more on persuading people about effective communications and less on finger-pointing and superficial tricks of the Web 2.0 trade. Phil hasn't let this get in the way of his sense of humour, but I've noticed him being less fixated on the popularity of his blog. He's taking the high road, and I respect him for it, even if it comes at the expense of large spikes in site traffic he isn't getting from the salacious posts he isn't publishing.

I'm not adding to the link love that has already given the new Strumpette blog a big boost. If you want to find the original post, click on one of the links below, and you'll find the new blog easily enough.

Strumpette blog buzz: 

• How to Get Ahead, Andrea Weckerle;
• Bad Character Blog Falls Flat, Robert French;
• Amanda Chapel, Fishing for Comments, B.L. Ochman;
• New 'Naked Journal' on PR Business Doesn't Read On Message, John Wagner;
• Strumpette's First Post - 41 Comments and Counting, Scott Baradell;
• If that Is your Real Name, David Parmet;
• Naked PR, Neville Hobson.

(My headline is an obscure reference to the old joke about the courtier rushing up to the king and saying "Your majesty, the peasants are revolting!"  "They sure are," replies the king, "but you're no beauty yourself.")

Tags: strumpette, gossip, gawker, drive-by-blogging

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En Francais, a New PR Blog

European public relations guy Philippe Cherel kept his new blog semi-private for the first couple of months, while he learned about blogging and tried it out. An interesting approach.

His PR.ojetZ (Project Z) is mostly in French, but he includes links to translation tools. His eye for design and insights into communications are both worth checking out.

Link via Robert French.

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Stupid Language Alert: The Fortune 14

I've seen "Fortune 500", "Fortune 100", and even Fortune's "Global 500".  But when someone tries to describe a company as "a Fortune 14 organization," my stupid language meter goes off.

If the company is 14th on the Fortune 500 list, then just say so.

That's the same laziness of writing as when people use precise measures like "50%" when they actually mean "about half."

/ End of cranky rant about usage.

Contextual Ad Juxtapositions = Questionable Taste

A ferry sank off the British Columbia coast early this Wednesday morning. All passengers are accounted for, except a couple who apparently didn't make it off the vessel after it struck rocks and sank.

Thanks to Google Adsense's power of contextual advertising, the story in the Globe and Mail online edition this morning was accompanied by an ad for a Titanic model that "splits in 2 and really sinks!"

Now all we need are some Nazi memorabilia ads to accompany a feature on holocaust survivors, and we have proof that contextual ads can be really tasteless.  (Of course, the Titanic ad was tasteless even before it was positioned next to the story of a modern maritime disaster.)

Looks like someone at Google or the Globe noticed the questionable juxtaposition. By evening, the Titanic ad is nowhere to be seen. Some Globe stories.

Tags: ads, advertising, googleads, tacky, bad taste

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An Incredible Business Opportunity from a Nice Dutch Lady

After years of receiving dubious e-mails from various government figures, relatives of royalty, and lawyers with lofty connections in Nigeria, I've received a legitimate business offer from a very nice woman in the Netherlands.

It seems Maryann Jacob recently discovered a metal box with $15 million in U.S. currency, and wants my help in stealing it from a customer of the security company that she works for.

Normally I wouldn't want to get involved in something like this, but it appears Maryann hasn't been happy in her job, and wants to pursue life as a public figure. Sounds like a legitimate reason to me.

Maryann has asked me to keep this confidential, until we can get our hands on the money. I'm asking you, my blog readers, to keep this under your hats. Once I have succeeded in this "risk-free" endavour and have my 40% share, I'll make an announcement about where the party is going to be. It promises to be quite a blow-out!

If you receive a similar e-mail from Ms. Jacob, please delete it, or report it to the authorities. I'm already providing assistance freeing up the money, so there is no need for you to pursue the matter. Besides, it's quite possible that you might be motivated by greed to help out this disgruntled employee. My motives are much purer.

For similar "offers", see the Crimes of Persuasion site.

Tags: scams, humour, nigeria, 419scams, fraud

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Big Surprise: People Who Share Tunes also Pay for Music

A Canadian Recording Industry Association report tells us what common sense has told us all along - people who take the time to download and share music files are also likely to buy music. Copyright lawyer and e-freedom advocate Michael Geist analyses the report. Unlike other research reports mentioned by CRIA, this one includes full details about the questions asked, and the answers received.  It paints a much more balanced picture than the usual fear-mongering stats claiming musicians will never make money again.

Says Geist:

"In summary, CRIA's own research now concludes that P2P downloading constitutes less than one-third of the music on downloaders' computers, that P2P users frequently try music on P2P services before they buy, that the largest P2P downloader demographic is also the largest music buying demographic, and that reduced purchasing has little to do with the availability of music on P2P services.  I've argued many of these same things, but now you don't have to take my word for it; you can take it from the record labels themselves."

What the report doesn't mention is that many music fans have been actively boycotting music companies for years because of their failure to embrace online distribution of music. I suspect if the music companies had been in the vanguard  (instead of being dragged kicking and screaming into online music distribution), their sales would have stayed steady or increased, despite file sharing.

Tags: CRIA, music, filesharing, downloading, sales, research

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PR Briefs - News Items March 16, 2006

News items from my del.icio.us shared bookmarking account.

• PR in the Age of Consumer Control

  • Kevin Dugan on the use of social media to manage public relations.

• The State of the News Media 2006

  • The project for Excellence in Journalism releases its 2006 report on the state of the industry in the U.S.

• Getting my interactive kettle online

  • Neville Hobson looks at the potential for consumer products to become much more user-friendly by becoming more automated and more interactive with a person's technology.

• Welcome to the World of Karl Marx

  • Allan Jenkins covers a presentation at the Don't Stop Innovation Conference by Arie de Geus, describing the traits of companies that have lasted centuries.

• Institutional Power Declining, Forrester Says

  • Steve Rubel on the Forrester Research report on the changing landscape of business and brands.

• Overwhelmed with pitches, Dave, say it isn’t so!

  • Robert Scoble makes an impassioned case for remembering the human factor in blogging.

• Nice guys finish last - Personal Branding - Branson vs Trump

  • Derek Leverington looks at the peronal branding of Virgin boss Richard Branson and Donald Trump.

• Talk Digger: find, follow and join discussions evolving on the Internet

  • Tool that combines the results from various search engines, showing links from web sites to the URL you key in.

Tags: internet, brands, branding, pitches, talkdigger, search, web2.0, innovation, journalism, news

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Deconstructing the Blog Posting

Ike Pigott's parody of a style guide for creating blog posts is a brilliant bit of understated humour.

His template is worth checking out, including the comments, which maintain the mock-style-guide tone of Pigott's piece.  Here's a sample:

Quote lifted from another PR blogger, accompanied by an animated .gif that I cleverly assembled using Microsoft Paint, IrfanView, and unFreez — all because I am too cheappoor to buy software. Preference given to quotes from A-listers, on the off chance that my TrackBack link will drive traffic to my blog.

Tags: a-list, bloggers, AtP2, Ike Pigott, parody

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