Author: Angelo Fernando

Tennis as war: amazing creative idea!

/ Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

Sports as a war metaphor is the ultimate cliche, right? If you’re a creative director, and you want to do another war-themed ad using a sport, you might pick the tougher events –boxing, football etc. Archery, and javelin, even.

But tennis? This is the game where the worst thing the baddies do is fling their rackets, and utter obsceneties at the unpire. Think again. Playstation2 has created an unforgettable commercial, a TBWA Madrid effort, where the ‘gentleman’s game’ is played on a battlefield that could belong to any WW2 movie set –with some Saving Private Ryan groans and special efx. Shot in B&W, with only the balls in green, the action is funny and riveting. Funny, because thw warriors wear shorts, and white shirts for godness sake.

This is one commercial that makes you wish you owned a TiVo –to watch over and over again, which is rare for commercials these days. See it here.

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‘Ethics Month’ declared for PR

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There are more than 20,000 PR practitioners registered with the PRSA (Public Relations Society of America) and probably thousands of independent professionals. So it comes at a good time to observe "Ethics Month" in September.

Chapters are urged to "focus on our obligation to practice solid ethical public relations,” said David C. Rickey, who is chair of the Society’s Board of Ethics and Professional Standards.

PRSA is even making available an ‘ethics kit’ to chapters.

Speaking of ethics, check the PRSA’s guidelines for the use of VNR’s (Video News Releases.)

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Bloggers on the side of the ‘law’

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"So we decided to take matters into our own hands.”

You know there has been a shift in how information is distributed and consumed when a group of people say that have created a ‘feed’ for a government run outfit. That the group happens to be 3 bloggers, isn’t a surprise. One is a patent attorney, one writes on intellectual property law, and one runs an intellectual property ‘weblawg.’ Check them out here:

The govt. office in question is the US Patent and Trademark Office. Calling the site ‘woefully antiquated,’ the group created an RSS feed. Check the story here.

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Could Wikipedia list fake news?

/ Angelo Fernando / 1 Comment

WikipediaMatt Foster is a journalist, broadcaster and student of corporate communications. His work for an MsC in England involves looking at how the Net influences corporate communications, a field I have been also writing about for some time.

His latest post on his blog Citizen Spin is an eye-opener about how tricky it gets when big business uses fake blogs and fake web sites to promote itself. The case he points to is a BBC game, Jamie Kane that is supported by fake web sites, including a Wikipedia entry. The latter, however, is now being reviewed for deletion by Wikipedia users, but interestingly, some have suggested keeping the original fictional entry, by marking it as ‘advertising’ and ‘fiction.’ One voter, asking to keep the entry, puts it this way:

When suitably marked as "fictional : accuracy disputed", and re-written to explain the fictional use, this (a) shows how fast, intelligently and effectively Wikipedia can respond to such silly marketing tricks and remain on higher ground, by simply exposing the truth rather than getting caught up in silly games. Also, (b) it largely destroys (or at least, can be written to counter) the viral marketing goals, if that is indeed why it was created.

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Could Wikipedia list fake news?

/ Angelo Fernando / 1 Comment

WikipediaMatt Foster is a journalist, broadcaster and student of corporate communications. His work for an MsC in England involves looking at how the Net influences corporate communications, a field I have been also writing about for some time.

His latest post on his blog Citizen Spin is an eye-opener about how dangerous it gets when big business uses fake blogs and fake web sites to promote itself. The case he points to is a BBC game, Jamie Kane that is supported by fake web sites, including a Wikipedia entry. The latter, however, is now being reviewed for deletion by Wikipedia users, but interestingly, some have suggested keeping the original fictional entry, by marking it as ‘advertising’ and ‘fiction.’ One voter, asking to keep the entry, puts it this way:

When suitably marked as "fictional : accuracy disputed", and re-written to explain the fictional use, this (a) shows how fast, intelligently and effectively Wikipedia can respond to such silly marketing tricks and remain on higher ground, by simply exposing the truth rather than getting caught up in silly games. Also, (b) it largely destroys (or at least, can be written to counter) the viral marketing goals, if that is indeed why it was created.

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Hope for Haley campaign gains momentum

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Haley Knutsen, the 9-year-old girl from Arizona, suffering from leukemia, is now in San Diego awaiting a liver transplant. The Arizona Republic ran a story today about her progress.

I featured the Hope For Haley campaign month ago, and have been asked if there is an alternative way to contribute. So far the only mechanism is via PayPal. As a PayPal user I have not had any problems. Even non PayPal users may use the service, with a credit card.

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Peter Jennings’ Legacy

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PeterHard to imagine that Peter Jennings is not going to be around us anymore. In the media world, anchors or ‘talking heads’ are often known for their camera personality, confidence, charm etc. Peter was more than this, to be sure. Unlike the way most anchors move in from a journalism beat to anchor position, Peter (who started life as a correspondent) once gave up the anchor chair for a foreign correspondent’s job, just to get a better grasp at journalism.

Among his many legacies, he left us communicators with the message that we should never stop learning. Colleagues have described him as a curious fellow, interested in any subject on earth. He also had a tremendous respect for his audience. On Wednesday night, on ABC’s special feature on his life, a colleague recounted how no one could ever tell him that ‘the audience would not be interested in this.’ He made sure his program (which interestingly is still branded as ‘World News Tonight With Peter Jennings’) made people interested in the topics his team covered.

See: Jenning’s interviews here, and full coverage here.

On a personal note, I used to tell this story how, in the eighties, long before I had any inclination that I would move over to the U.S., I used to ride my bicycle to the American Center in Colombo, every Sunday afternoon, to catch a week’s worth of ‘ABC News With Peter Jennings.’ To me Peter was everything that America stood for, and what journalism ought to be. Only much later did I learn that he was not even a U.S. citizen –until very recently.

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TV plus children equals brain damage

/ Angelo Fernando / 1 Comment

Every year without fail, a study turns up about how TV impacts children, sending ripples that only go so far as a nice 6′ O clock news byte. This one, is about the negative influence on a child’s ability to learn, read and TVs correlation to low academic skills.

It has always stupified me why people even study this area. Do we still need proof? Any educator wil tell you as much. Heck, anyone with an ounce of common sense will tell you that most of what might be deemed ‘useful’ on TV can be found in books, or out in the garden. Sidebar: The average child spends more time watching TV than in school. So says the Univ. of Michigan.

Anyway, the report this week is about 3 studies. One study (from New Zealand’s University of Otago) was done with children between the ages of 5 and 15. Another from the University of Washington on young children and reading comprehension. The other is from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg school in Stanford, California.

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