Chick Filleted
As if the Atlanta-based chicken chain hasn’t endured its share of public condemnation for management’s much-publicized anti-gay stance, today we learn — in Gizmodo of all places — about an apparent effort by a PR person, posing as a Facebook fan, to e̶n̶g̶a̶g̶e̶ astroturf the real reason why Jim Henson pulled its toys from the […]
Trusted Reviews?
Influential veteran tech journalist John Dvorak took Amazon (and the PR profession) to task in a PC Mag piece posted yesterday that asked “Are Amazon Reviews Corrupt?” His beef lies in the system through which so-called third-party reviewers are incentivized to share their so-called unbiased opinions. Dvorak cited a study in which a Cornell professor […]
Someone’s Astroturfing Demand Media
The following two emails independently crossed my desktop this past week: Hello Peter!Kate here, and we’ve found an interesting infographic that I think you might enjoy. If you haven’t heard already, Demand Media has been in the news a lot lately. But just exactly why were they? Well, to enlighten you, or to recap all […]
Conventional PR and The Constitution
When the Bush appointees to the U.S. Supreme Court prevailed in a recent ruling that equated corporations to citizens when it comes to spending on political campaigns, the whole left side (and many in the middle) of the political spectrum cried foul. The nation’s Constitutional scholars and political pundits publicly decried Citizens United. Some some […]
Trusting Anonymity
One of my sons is an elite high school athlete. I recently noticed an unsupported negative comment about his play on one of the popular discussion boards for his sport. I decided to analyze this anonymous person’s posting history, and determined that it emanated from a father of a player on a rival team. It […]
Publicity for Roach Motels
I enjoyed reading New York Times travel writer Joe Sharkey’s interview with TripAdvisor.com CEO Stephen Kaufer in which Kaufer defends the integrity of the just-published, crowd-sourced “2010 Dirtiest Hotels†list. In the piece “A List No Hotel Wants to Be On,” Kaufer states the obvious: “…if you’re a hotel on that list, it is not […]
Deceptive PR Practices
That pink sheet for New York’s media cognascenti — The New York Observer — yesterday published an internal New York Times email sent from standards editor Phil Corbett to the newsroom. In it Corbett points out the “pitfalls” of quoting “consultants” whose financial ties to a story are murky. He writes: “This is not a […]
PR, Integrity and Yelp
<!– The logos depicted in this widget are the property of the respective corporations listed. –> I just installed the mobile app of Yelp on my new Blackberry Tour. What’s great about Yelp is the quantity of its crowd-sourced reviews, which, theoretically, allows for much greater accuracy about the subjects being scrutinizing. There’s nothing like […]
Just Another Astroturfing Campaign
While on family holiday this past week, escaping just ahead of an expected brush with Bob, I took notice of the latest revelation about Beltway-based Bonner & Associates. Actually, my buddy Geoff Livingston tipped me off via a tweet that linked to a Grist.org piece outing the “grassroots” specialist firm. Before I go there, I’m […]
Non-Kosher PR
Following PR Newser’s befuddling profile of the proprietor of the self-proclaimed “fastest-growing” PR firm in America, why is this blogger not surprised by today’s Gawker item titled “Scheme To Blame Intern For PR Fraud Unravels.” In it, the snarky blog outs the firm for its scheme, on behalf of its newest client, to introduce a […]
