Mutually Inclusive PR

PR Briefs - News Items November 3, 2006

Battle for Net Neutrality Comes to Canada - CBC - The telco money grab moves north.
Abundance, and Five Years of Blogging - Ross Mayfield   
The Playmaker's Standard | The Strategy of Influence - Tool to help communicators map out the tricks being used against you, and the strategies you can use in return. Based on the book (which, surprisingly, is for sale.) Link via Andy Lark.
SlideShare - A site for finding and sharing PowerPoint presentations. Sort of a YouTube for PowerPoints. Link via Andy Lark.
Episode II: Revenge of the Portal - Steve Rubel - A personalized start page made up mostly of content from RSS feeds allows people to customize their start page experience. Now, companies are adding this as a way of keeping visitors happy.
Sometimes, the simplest communications are the most powerful - John Wagner - A personal message, delivered simply and with sincerity, can be more effective than a bunch of scripted, planned activities.
BarCampSaskatoon - Notes from the unconference Oct. 28 in Saskatoon.
Wal-Mart says PR firm quit following flap over TV ad - MarketWatch
Does the Internet Suck? Evans vs. Maich - Mark Evans debates Maclean's cover story writer Steve Maich.

PR Briefs - News Items October 21, 2006

1. Edelman, PR Ethics and Social Media - the Next Steps- Steve Rubel - Info on Edelman PR's response to controversy about its fake blog tactics on behalf of Wal-Mart.
2. Edelman Admits to Two More Flogs - Shel Holtz - Richard Edelman acknowledges that his PR agency has been involved in two more fake blogs.
3. What Is Edelman Doing? - Richard Edelman reports on what his PR firm is doing to ensure more openness and transparency around social media efforts and word of mouth marketing.
4. PR people, start using your common sense when it comes to disclosure - John Wagner   A review of the disclosure in the Wal-Mart / Working Families for Wal-Mart situation. Wagner suggests more disclosure would help reputations without negatively affecting the ability for PR people to be involved in helping organizations tell their stories
5. Managing Client Expectations: Your Public Relations Firm Must Operate in the Open - Dan Keeney   The PRSA calls for companies and their PR firms to disclose sponsorship of organizations, and avoid fake grassroots campaigns. So let's stop talking about breaches of etiquette, and talk about lapses in ethics.
6. 10 Signs of Life from the News Release - Kevin Dugan   A wrap-up of recent activity in the news release distribution business, and innovations in social media news releases.
7. How to support the troops and not necessarily the war - Rob Cottingham   Voicing opposition to political and military decisions doesn't necessarily mean you have disrespect for the soldiers who risk their lives.
8. Gesundheit, iPod - Rob Cottingham   Apple forgets to apologize after shipping iPods with a virus.

PR Briefs - News Items October 12, 2006

1. Right On, Nikon - Joe Jaffe - Sometimes a company puts its faith in the creativity and talent of its customers, and it pays off. Nikon gave cameras to some Flickr bloggers, and created ads based on the results. Smart move.
2. Three Weeks into the Alpha Course - Darren Barefoot - Reality blogging? Darren Barefoot joins an Alpha course at a local church to learn about Christianity, and gives his response after the first three weeks.  Will he last the full 10 weeks? You have to subscribe to find out.
3. IABC Presentation on Technology in the Online Environment - Andrea Weckerle - Report on a session by Katie Paine and James Irwin.

Tags: photography, nikon, nikond80, communications, iabc, alpha course, christianity, flickr

PR Briefs - News Items October 10, 2006

• Bloggers: How To Approach Companies - Mike Manuel - Some suggestions for bloggers who want something from a company.
• Will S**ttsburgh Forgive Sienna ? - Scott Baradell - Why screw around with words when a straightforward apology would do the trick?
• SNCR Symposium & Awards Gala in 3 Weeks - Elizabeth Allbrycht invites social media and new communications folks to a symposium in Boston Nov. 1-2. Put on by the Society for New Communications Research.
• Newspapers 2.0 - Doc Searls - Ten tips for newspaper publishers on how to get with the live web and avoid extinction.

PR Briefs - News Items October 2, 2006

• Spoiled Rotten (Apple) - Joseph Jaffe - The big question is, why do people let Apple get away with such consumer-unfriendly behaviour?
• Avoiding Tradmarkicide: Ziplock Bags and Apple’s iPod - Kami Huyse - The Apple trademark legal battle that's shaping up, and the challenge of protecting a trademark from becoming a generic term.
• PR Pro says NO to Skin Whitener Cosmetics - what is SK-II to do? - Pierce Mattie - Toxic products and promotion.
• Guess what? Press releases have never been exclusively for the press - David Meerman Scott - The argument against viewing a news release as something written just for journalists.
• Everybody Has the Right to Be Depressed - Scott Baradell - Depression can hit celebrities and the wealthy, the popular and the beautiful. Scott B. takes the media to task for attacking famous people who struggle with depression.
• The Social Bookmarking Faceoff - A good comparison of the various social bookmarking sites. Link via Brian Solis - The Social Bookmarking Faceoff and its Effects on PR.
• If you encrypt, are you guilty? U.S. Customs peaking into your digital life - Tris Hussey - A look at the issue of customs officers wanting to view sensitive, confidential info on your laptop or other device.
• The Future of Television, Revision3 Launches - Thomas Hawk - Digg launches a video service.
• Sharing the PR Podcast Lurrrrve - Paull Young - A quick look at several PR podcasts.
• Where are the Public Relations Firms? - John Andrews - Johnon.com asks why the fresh goods companies aren't doing any proactive public relations in response to the spinach e-coli food scare.
• I'm back to celebrate OneWebDay - Dave Traynor -  wonders if we're any further ahead in our workload and quality of life after all these advances in information.
• Social Media Communciations - A downloadable e-book. 
• Ingenious Reporting Using del.icio.us - David Jones notes a Toronto journalist who encourages people to send her del.icio.us links of things she should check out.
• Why RSS is important to marketers - Paul Gillin posts results of a survey of bloggers.
• Heather Mallick Column at CBC.ca - After quitting her column at the Globe and Mail over editing choices, Heather Mallick lands at CBC.ca with a column.

Tags: china, apple, trademarks, depression, del.icio.us, video, encryption, security, rss, social+media

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PR Briefs - News Items September 24, 2006

• Changing Clients into Better Ones - Julie Rusciolelli - The head of a Toronto PR agency has advice on how clients can play their role better. Link via David Jones.
• PRSA to Members: Please Be Ethical, Hypothetically Speaking - Steven Silvers - The PRSA urges its members to expose unethical practices, while it bends over backwards to avoid mentioning any particular examples.
• Resources And Wrap-Up! - Leo Bottary - Hill and Knowlton's Leo Bottary offers tips for people getting started in public relations on how to provide good service to customers.
• Wanna See What "The Media Pitch 2.0" Looks Like? - Todd Defren - PR Squared blog points to a new beta version of a service that could be used to help reporters with story suggestions.
• Phildelphia Launches Soundabout Tours - Shel Holtz - Audio tours of Philadelphia neighbourhoods that can be taken virtually, through Google Maps API, or with a portable MP3 player while wandering the actual neighbourhood.
• Screaming Users Considered Good - Dan Russell - On the Creating Passionate Users blog, a discussion about how negative feedback can be much more useful than bland reassurances, if your goal is to design something that's truly useful. Link via McToonish.
• Defining Success Metrics for Corporate Blogs - Bill Sweetman - On the One Degree blog, Bill Sweetman lists the metrics of success for a corporate blog.
• What Kind of Genius Are You? - Daniel Pink in Wired - A researcher identifies two kinds of creative genius.
• Red Cross Guerrilla - Miel Van Opstal - The Canadian Red Cross tries a geurilla marketing campaign for learning first aid.
• On Crisis Communications and “What if We Didn’t Own the Company?”  and Up and Running - Freshbooks on crisis communications, following a major service disruption.
• Canadian Council of Public Relations Firms to represent interests of PR consulting firms - Joseph Thornley - PR firms in Canada have created an association to help them share common concerns, share knowledge, and identify issues for joint action. The group is looking for firms with billings of $1 million a year and up.
• Finally, Somebody Ranks Brand Monitoring Services - Mike Manuel - A comparison of brand monitoring services.
• Suing for Product Placements, May Be the new PR - Pierce Mattie PR - A lawsuit against US Weekly seems to suggest that publications owe coverage to brands, and can be held liable if they stop providing the brand profile in their publications, etc.
• Are all PR People Clueless Telemarketing/spamming Drones? - Dan York - A blogger/podcaster's frustration with clueless PR spam and pitches sent to him, regardless of the narrow focus in the VOIP industry that he covers.
  
  Tags: communications, consulting, product placement, crisis, feedback, guerilla marketing, ethics, branding

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PR Briefs - News Items September 15, 2006

Found this week:

• News Junkie: Become One. In PR, It Is Required Behaviour - Robert French
• Facebook's "Privacy Trainwreck": Exposure, Invasion, and Drama - Dana Boyd
• Political & Government Blog Cases wanted - Shel Israel
• Searchmob - John Battelle
• Should Fair Use Apply to Your Family Portraits? - Thomas Hawk
• About Gen-P (or "Jimbo lays the smacks down on Dale Hoiberg") - Jason Calacanis
• Forget about Web 2.0 Cool. What's Useful - Mark Evans
• Important discussion about depression in IT. - Tris Hussey
• About dot com — not a bad idea - John Andrews
• Endemol's get-rich-quick scheme - Chris Edwards

Tags: copyright, fair use, search, facebook, privacy, blogs, depression, wikipedia, media, news

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PR Briefs - News Items September 4, 2006

Where are Canadian Corporate Blogs? - Mark Evans - Tech blogger Mark Evans asks why Canadian companies are so slow to adopt corporate blogs. Check the comments.

The ego of a CEO: Noble Narcissist? - Ian Griffin - CEOs need to have big egos, as long as that doesn't get in the way of the way they communicate on behalf of the company.

PR Misses the Mark while Advertising Achieves - Gregory Mackenzie-Forbes interviews himself for this news release / article about the different roles of advertising and public relations.

Away With Words: Getting It Wrong about Web Writing - The client who didn't want to pay for a large web writing project, and instead hoped to cobble together a poorly written website. By Nancy Friedman.

My Visit to Scrapblog - Shel Israel on Scrapblog, a new social media product.

Using E-mail to Fire Staff: RadioShack’s Big Mistake - Scott Cytron on IABC Cafe comments on the Radio Shack layoffs that were communicated by e-mail.

Tags: corporate blogs, business, blogs, ceos, communications, advertising, marketing, writing, clients, consulting, social media

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PR Briefs - News Items August 27, 2006

• Word of Mouth Is not Created, Word of Mouth Is Co-created - An independent film director asks Gaping Void's Hugh MacLeod how to generate buzz for the film. He offers six seps to make bloggers smarter advocates for the film.
• Social Media Optimization - Todd Deffren notes that many companies still don't have the basics of Web 1.0 right, but that doesn't have to stop them from using Web 2.0 tools as a way to kickstart their web presence into high gear.
• Photoshop, It’s not about You. It’s about Me - Rob Cottingham discovers Snipshot, a web-based photo tool that lets you pull images from webites and edit them.
• Wanna Be Respected by Executives? Talk Less and Listen More - John Wagner suggests active listening, rather than showing off about what you know, as the best way to deal with clients and/or executives.
• How to Get People Talking about your Product - Software developer Eric Sink talks about how designing products that are perfect for a target group is a prerequisite to word of mouth marketing. Link via Scoble.
• Why Picasa Images Are Indexed Higher in Google Image Search than Flickr - Thomas Hawk takes a look at how the search engines look for images, and why photos on some sites show up better than the same photos on other sites.
• River's Edge - Doc Searls stands up for the River of News idea, that involves making the web readable via portable devices, like cellphones.
• Imagining a CBC-Free Canada - Darren Barefoot attempts to get some discussion going about what Canada would be like without the CBC, and runs into polarized silence. The web doesn't encourage real debate, he says.
• Invasive Radio Advertising on Its Way. Bring It - Tod Maffin suggests that one-to-one advertising isn't that far away on satellite radio.
• Could Industry Analysts Survive Total Transparency? - Todd Deffren would like to see someone push back against the analysts, who weild a lot of power without necessarily earning their credibility.
  
  Tags: marketing, film, word of mouth, social media, web2.0, photoshop, mobile, cbc, debate, blogs

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PR Briefs - News Items July 21, 2006

1. Building the Yes-And Web: “First thing we do, is Kill (some of) the Comments”

    

   Britt Blaser (no name on his blog, so I'm guessing) has a proposal for making comments on blogs better connected with the content they refer to, and a suggestion that bloggers and blog developers build on what's already been done, rather than always tearing down what others are doing. Oh, and he suggest moderating or otherwise demoting comments that don't contribute to the conversation.

2. Oh, the Comments! Responses to Blaser's proposal.

3. Lying and Transparency

    

   Jim Horton published another white paper, this one on the use of half-truths to appear truthful.

4. Too Extreme?

    

   Pete Shinbach's response to Jim Horton's think piece about transparency and lies.

5. I Tube, You Tube, We Tube

    

   Pete Himmler on the buzz about social media and PR.

6. Racing Card

    

   Steve Gillmor provides a quick look at the top dogs in technology commentary, and what strengths and weaknesses they have.

7. Learn about WordPress

    

   Neville Hobson points to some WordPress learning resources.

8. Before You Brand, Check the URL

    

   On Scott Baradell's blog. Ha! The www.gotahoe.com URL that I mocked last year made it to the Fark list of Worst URLs.

9. The next Web is the human Web

    

   Robert Scoble on the need to present a human face on websites, blogs, etc.