Tough week. Had to miss the second day of the McGraw-Hill Media Summit, but received a nice letter from one Victor Harwood, president of Digital Hollywood, producer of the confab for five years now.
While I didn’t post on it in this space, I did burn up my Twitter account with day one’s ruminations and prognostications by Disney CEO Bob Iger who was interviewed with aplomb by Business Week Asst. ME John Byrne.
I then had to choose between the panel on social media and the one featuring ABC News’ David Westin, USA Today‘s Kinsey Wilson, Atlanta J-C‘s Julia Wallace, CNN’s Jon Klein, and Porfolio.com’s (and former Timesman) Howell Raines. I opted for the latter, since social media is on the rise and this panel is anything but.
Raines was the most quotable, followed by Westin. I also enjoyed Jon Klein talking about Jeff Toobin’s take on Spitzer…live on CNN from Maui via SKYPE! Here’s Howell:
“Newspapers were blindsided by a tsunami they’ve been watching for 20 years…” or “the newspaper model is broken”…or “the Washington Post expects to realize $100 million in revenue from its website this year.”
And David:
…“lots of news is a commodity…ABC can’t win covering the bridge collapse, but we can win on a story like the Foley scandal”…or “technology doesn’t change people. People still want high quality trustworthy credible info. They just don’t want us to tell them what they want”…or”…surely death for us is to simply say this is a plebiscite, and we should give them exactly what they want.”
Yesterday, I also missed reading Business Week‘s primary competitor where, today, I stumbled on a blog post titled, “How to Get Killer PR,” posted by Kelly Spors. In it, she sings the praises of a small New York company that sells chocolate-covered cacao beans whose founder has achieved media ubiquity in recent months.
“I called Ms. Endline and asked how she’s managed to generate so much media buzz for her five-employee company. (She has bagged more than 20 mentions in magazines and several TV appearances in the past few years.) Sweetriot, she says, retains a PR firm called Think PR to help follow up with journalists she meets, devise PR strategy, and craft the message. Yet, she estimates that nearly half of the coverage comes from the company’s own efforts.”
Well, it was nice she gave her agency at least partial credit. Jumping over to her agency’s website, which required Flash, I clicked to the first place I usually do when scoping out another agency — the client list. Well, I may be old (i.e., a prime candidate for the male version of the Dove Real Beauty campaign), but this long stylish tail of a list contained just a handful of names that I recognized.
No matter. That’s the beauty of our business. PR can work for almost anything — chocolate covered cacao beans included!