Public Relations

Publicity stunt or graffiti?

/ Angelo Fernando / 1 Comment

Sometimes art and ‘stunt’ exchange marker pens. Or in this case, aerosol cans.

Bansky, the British graffiti artist (who placed an inflatable doll of a Guantanamo Bay prisoner at a Disney theme park last year) is promoting his art on the famous security wall between Bethlehem and Jerusalem, with images like this.

This stunt is timed with the move to bring tourists back to Bethlehem.

Bansky had a sound bite that beats anything the city could do to draw visitors concerned about their safety.

“If it is safe enough for a bunch of sissy artists then it’s safe enough for anyone,” he said.

Quotes for the week ending 1 Dec, 2007

/ Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

” ‘Buy American’ and ‘Long Tail’ are just so last year; marketers are all about good old-fashioned customer satisfaction and retention.”

Advertising Age story on Seth Godin being picked as the top business guru, over Steve Jobs and Malcolm Gladwell.

“GoDaddy will go ahead with Super Bowl ad.”

Article in Arizona Republic stating that the domain name registrar will once again air a risque ad during the Super Bowl, a tactic it has done for two years now.

“Inventing a way to charge people for free stuff? Now that’s what I call a technological breakthrough.”

Technology reviewer Brian Collins, writing in The Sunday Times, UK, about Amazon’s e-book reader, Kindle, that charges users $14.99 a month to read newspapers, and 0.99 cents a month to read blogs on the device.

“The chilling effect on expensive e-commerce would frost keyboards across America.”

Stephen Crocker, Federal magistrate, in a June ruling against the subpoena for Amazon.com records on a mail and wire fraud case. Reported this week on CNN.com. The court docs were unsealed last week.

“Journalists and PR people have to hold each other responsible.”

Barry Kluger, former VP of Communications for Prodigy Inc. and senior exec at MTV, at a lecture at Arizona State University.

Unexpected Axe effect –on Unilever

/ Angelo Fernando / 2 Comments

There’s one side effect about not being entirely sincere about your marketing. You could get called out, ranted about, and exposed. Or you could get body slammed as in having someone create a mashup.

The latest is one guy’s take on the hypocrisy of attacking the ‘beauty industry’ by Dove Soap (if you’ve not seen the brilliant Unilever Dove commercial, stop now, and watch this) and the same company promoting radically sexed-up behavior for Axe.

The creator of the mashup is, um, an ad guy (a strategic planner) who has cleverly replaced the fast cuts depicting the beauty industry in the original commercial, with girls gone wildish cuts from Axe commercials.

Axe has been consistently positioned (as in the example, left) as a fantasy spray for men. See the funny but envelope-pushing long-form video about people with “unchecked libidos” and you’ll know.

Unilever must have factored this in to its marketing, knowing full well what it was entering when it attacked the beauty category defined by liposuction, botox, cosmetic surgery and all manner of dietary fads. They’ve pushed the pedal to the metal for some PR, and they’re getting a bit of consumer-generated whiplash.

PR needs to do its own PR

/ Angelo Fernando / 1 Comment

George Simpson, a columnist for Media Post’s Marketing Daily added this to the PR debate, with some harsh words.

“Show me a child who says “I want to grow up and spend 15 hours a day writing meaningless press releases, begging for placement and swallowing my pride with arrogant writers”–and I will show you a child the school authorities should keep away from m-rated video games, listening to Metallica, or obtaining a gun permit.”

Never mind that Simpson cites stats such as this: 90% of B2B reporters use news releases as sources for their stories.

Chris Anderson’s post has somehow become a polarizing event, with the PR haters on one side of the spectrum taking hugs whacks at much more than clueless practitioners spamming journalists. (Someone commented that Anderson has no right to be offended. WIRED mag has been spamming him for years!)

Amazingly, the PR industry response has been weak. PRSA has published results of a study that very impressively states how journalists largely depend on PR for their stories –the source that Simpson uses. But while it has responded to other issues such as the recent fake news conference held by FEMA, the PRSA has not issued a statement on the Anderson problem. It’s been left to PR practitioners to stand up for what PR is really about.

How long must we wait?

The Wisdom of the Wikipedians

/ Angelo Fernando / 1 Comment

Corporate communication and brand management in a Web 2.0 world is not a skill set that has been taught in schools.

The audience for your well thought out brand communication will form their own takeaways, no matter how stringently you manage your communication guide.

I am not trying to be provocative. It’s a reality I run into regularly when I conduct surveys for customer loyalty projects, or do brand audits before a campaign.

So, to address this topic (shameless self promo warning here) I wrote an article on this in my tech/marketing column for the latest issue of CW Magazine. It’s titled “The wisdom of the Wikipedians.” But it’s not just about Wikipedia.

If you’re not an IABC member, you won’t be able to read the article online, so here’s a PDF.

Will PR and the media call a truce?

/ Angelo Fernando / 1 Comment

The dust won’t settle for awhile since WIRED Editor Chris Anderson announced last week he was “banning” lazy PR people who pitched him with irrelevant stories. First strike and they’re history.

The discussion has got interesting. Here’s one, where Brian Solis asks if PR and media could sign a peace accord of sorts. He says:

I promise to fix this problem among those with whom I work with and can reach. I will also work with others whose voices are trusted among PR practitioners and their peers within the communities in which they seek guidance.

All he asks is that Anderson remove the list of names from his blog so as not to give the offenders a public shaming.

Anderson, however, is unapologetic:

Many people wrote to apologize, promising to reform their ways, and asked to be taken off the list. I’ve written to all of them to thank them for their commitment to change, but I’m not going to undo history.

Solis then brings up another uncomfortable topic –unethical cut-and-paste reporters. But outing them is not necessary, he says.

Terrific post, Brian.

What’s your company’s public face?

/ Angelo Fernando / 1 Comment

I heard a comment by Sarah Wurrey at Custom Scoop (who btw writes a good blog) the other day that resonated with me because of a company I have been talking to.

“It’s easy to forget in the days when anyone can broadcast every moment of their life, that the official spokesperson is not the only public face of a company.”

Time was when the “public face” -at least the physical or tangible one– was the corporate tower, the web site, the PR department, the CEO. What companies need is more than a corporate facial, but an injection in reputation management basics.

Who manages your reputation from within? If the focus is on manages, then yes, it’s the internal folks usually assigned to the job, the PR department, and the marketing department. But it’s becoming painfully obvious that employees define/articulate the true reputation of the organization.

We’ve all worked at companies where the press release goes out and the employees literally laugh at the language that describes the product –or the CEO. What do you think they talk about when they go out to lunch or meet their neighbors over the weekend? Certainly not in the boilerplate language that hit PRNewswire.

As for the external brand and media handlers, I tend to be biased, and believe they can be a lot more realistic and objective. They don’t have to put on a happy face every time the boss walks by, so they can give him/her a better reading of the reputation out there.

Strumpette’s underbelly exposed. Now what?

/ Angelo Fernando / 2 Comments

Some in the PR industry have predicted that Amanda Chapel, who exited the scene recently as a blogger using the handle “Strumpette,” may indeed surface under a new guise.

Robert French’s expose of Chapel gave several others an opening to reveal the same ugly side of a PR blogger they experienced. One called her a front for a Libelous Troll Brigade. Another, an avatar. French simply calls Chapel “it.”

Indeed the approach it took – a blog that called itself “A Naked Journal of the PR Business” — drew many in, with vituperous attacks both online and off. The Washington Post had some theories too. I was one of its lesser targets, with comments to a post here, that went from mild insults to name calling. When I threw in question to see if its comments were really serious, the response was telling –dismissing Chris Anderson’s Long Tail theory a bunch of hooey, etc.

To be sure, Strumpette was an half-brained experiment. Many others, just like last year’s Lonely Girl, have tried to massage the blogosphere and the social media eco-system to see what happens. Jeff Jarvis suggested it could have been a book proposal badly done, or someone slighted by a loss of clients.

Moving on. This brings to the surface once again an issue that’s uncomfortable for some: anonymous blogs and ghost blogging– a topic that’s been debated over and over again by PR folk for more than a year. Let’s see how this evolves.

Social Media Press Release becomes major tracking tool

/ Angelo Fernando / 1 Comment

From time to time I have been covering the development and adoption of the Social Media Press Release. A lot has happened since Todd Defren of SHIFT Communications came up with a great wish-we-thought-that-up-first idea.

But unless you dig deep into the press releases of companies you’d never know who’s using it. I found this one at Ford Motor company, using the SMPR template for its Ford Focus.

It’s got all the (standard) elements of a press release and more. Much, much more. The links, attachments, visuals and navigation give it the feel of a micro-site. They integrate well with the company site (for those concerned about branding), enrich the social experience (to Flickr photos, and the YouTube video on brand ambassadors) and add entry points for feedback and conversation. This is especially valuable for journalists looking beyond the happy CEO statement, to check the pulse of the market.

You could bet all these internal and external links, and commentary gets tracked by their SEO agency, PR agency, and ad agency giving the marketing folk a daily or even hourly reading of who’s looking at what.

Stealth PR from infant formula manufacturers exposed

/ Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

Some PR agencies will never learn. There have been plenty of cases where ‘flogs’ (fake blogs) have shown up, only to be traced back to PR agencies attempting ‘stealth PR.’ (Google Edelmen + Walmart and see.)

The latest one is for a group calling itself Babyfeedingchoice.org exposed by the Center for Media and Democracy as the front of the Infant Formula Council.

The site is very well done. It has areas such as “Moms and the media” with great quotes for lazy journalists wanting to get the other side of the story –people offended by seeing a mom breastfeeding an infant– and Resources with links to other similar sites. Looks very credible, until you dig around, and compare it to the saga of the fake Walmart blog.