I know. I know. I’m dating myself. But I remember Marketwatch’s Silicon Valley columnist Bambi Francisco when she was a talent booker in New York for Lou Dobbs‘ “CNN Moneyline.” Now she finds herself in a journalistic sticky wicket, exacerbated ironically by a piece in the flagship publication of her employer. The issue concerns Ms. […]
BL points to a Pepsi promotion wherein consumers are invited to go online to design a can of Pepsi. Cool idea, and certainly part of a larger trend. BL notes, however, that Jones Soda has been letting people do this since 2000. Since I never heard of Jones Soda, I’ll let it fizzle. This Sunday’s
From Dennis Rice, Disney’s senior vice president for publicity: “When (a senior Disney publicist) forwarded the ashes story to me, I thought, ‘How are we going to spin this?’” Dennis, smart move pulling Keith Richards from the “Pirates” publicity tour (for obvious reasons), but I sure wish you had given some more thought to your
Back in the day, I was working with a bona fide Google competitor. Yes, people, for a brief (very brief) moment of Google’s existence, the Mountain View company did not reign supreme (and we’re not talking Alta Vista or Lycos). Cambridge, MA-based search engine Northern Light produced the same quality, if not better organic results
Google’s Voluminous Appetite Read More »
It was good seeing Council of PR Firms prexy Kathy Cripps at the PR Week Awards dinner last month. For the uninitiated, the Council is the trade association for the PR agency business. As such, it tends to tend to the pedestrian needs of that still-flourishing piece of PR’dom. While not every agency belongs, those
The last time we checked in with Ms. Lohan, it concerned her unintelligible electronic eulogy for Robert Altman relayed via PDA to her publicist while teetotaling in Tinseltown. With its April issue, the folks at GQ are giving us another variation of that theme with a Blackberry interview that reached a high enough threshold (in
Georgia Off My Mind Read More »
So the New York Times finally picked up on what’s been the talk of the PR blogosphere over the last week — the now-famous leaked (5000+ word!) agency briefing memo about Wired magazine’s Fred Vogelstein. (Maybe there is some validity to the notion that blogging begets MSM?) There’s not much more I can add to
In the previous post, we touched on a few of the tools in the modern PR practitioner’s toolbox. We didn’t, however, consider western “civilization’s” obsession with the more puerile elements of popular culture. (Think Donald Trump, Lindsay Lohan and American Idol.) Sure, some enterprises benefit by having a 24/7 response mechanism in place to counter
Sex, War and Religion Read More »
Which of the following offers the most cutting edge PR tactics? A large multi-national public relations agency A large corporate communications department A small, specialized digital PR firm (if there are any) A non-governmental organization A political campaign The U.S. government The government of Iran It’s hard to say. After all, a number of the
Martin Heller today shared his underwhelming impressions of his first experience visiting Second Life. Under the headline, “PR in Second Life? Are They Kidding?,” his musings appear on the website of IDG’s soon-to-be Web-only Infoworld Magazine. Here are a few snippets from the tech-savvy reporter: “It still wasn’t a wonderful experience. ” “My avatar was
