Jay Carney: Please Kiss the Blarney Stone! By Susan M. Tellem, Partner,Tellem Grody PR, Inc. According to tradition (and Wikipedia, of course), kissing the Blarney Stone endows the kisser with the gift of the gab and great eloquence. No matter which side of the aisle you're on, you have to feel mighty sorry for Jay Carney, White House Press Secretary. He looks like a man who needs a beer and a vacation in Hawaii.Carney hasn't been able to cobble together a credible response to ...

	Influencing Others: Top-Down Leadership Approach By Jeff Gitterman, CEO, Gitterman & Associates Wealth Management, LLC As an employer, my interest is in creating long term changes that hopefully lead to better moral and ethical decisions from both me and my employees. With this in mind, I've generally found that there are two ways to go about influencing people. The first is to affect them through fear and manipulation tactics or by offering them some kind of positive reward.

	News Releases Have Different Value During TAOTSE --The Age of the Search Engine By Scott Sobel, MA Media Psychology No doubt it is just this side of useless and a waste of money to spray out a pro forma news release to a mass audience. Our agency does use news releases all of the time to great advantage, however, but we do not use them necessarily in ways they were used before TAOTSE --" The Age of the Search Engine ...

	12 Insights on the Emotional Marketing Revolution From Seth Godin By Susan Young, Get in Front Communications, Inc. Want to learn from one of the best social media marketers and business leaders? Seth Godin has shared his thoughts on social media marketing, creativity, and business relationships. He was the guest on a webinar organized by Vocus, a provider of cloud marketing software. Godin says the Energy, ...

	Advice for Developers from a Designer By Paul Pierson, Partner & Design Director, Carbone Smolan Agency There is quite a big difference between web design and web development. Understanding this difference is a matter of asking yourself one question: Would you rather hang a picture of a television in your living room or have a real TV to look at?Unless you're a fan of spending money on useless or non-functional goods, you'd clearly rather look at an actual TV. This is the difference ...

	Online Video Ad Market to Double by 2017 Guest Post By Chris Bolman, Founder of ZoomTilt, for the Latergy Social Video Channel A recent report from e-marketer indicates blistering growth in online video advertising over the next 5 years. Driven by a proliferation of ad networks, demand-side-platforms and scalable, social video production solution-providers, e-marketer sees online video ad spending nearly doubling in only four years ...

	4 Best Practices Brands Should Implement, Now That Twitter is a Yahoo News Source By Victoria Harres,VP, Audience Development & Social Media, PR Newswire, for the Agile Engagement Channel Last month a single 61 character tweet (12 words as a matter of fact) caused the S&P 500 to drop $136 Billion in mere minutes. It boggles the mind and makes one try to find some sense in it. What does it mean? Well, it certainly proved ...

	Colgate-Palmolive Releases 2012 Sustainability Report and Progess on Sustainability Strategy For the Corporate Social Responsibility Channel Colgate-Palmolive released its 2012 Sustainability Report titled, Giving the World Reasons to Smile. This annual report details Colgate's long-standing commitments, achievements and challenges to sustainability and social ...

	Email Marketing Tip #47: Dig In! For the Effective Email Marketing Channel The email marketing resources out there are endless! From Twitter to LinkedIn groups to in-person events, there are many people just like you talking about email marketing. So what exactly is this week's tip? Dig in! Not only are other email marketers discussing timely, relevant topics, but so are email service providers and ...

	Critical Minute: The Bad Boys of PR For the Critical Now Channel With more than 25 seasons and nearly 900 episodes since its first airing in 1989, the TV show Cops has earned a varied reputation across global culture.

	VIP Invitation to the CommPRO Community: B2B Mobile Leadership Forum (NYC) For the Agile Engagement Channel By now we understand the trends with mobile. Almost all business decision makers have smart phones and most of them identify their phone as their primary business communication tool. Tablets are increasingly the device of choice to consume content for business leaders. Mobile traffic is growing at an ...

	Bill Allows Tougher Penalties in Social Media Based Mob Attacks Chicago Tribune Illinois Governor Pat Quinn signed into law Saturday legislation that calls for stiffer penalties on people who text or use social media to organize mob attacks.Social media has made it easier for groups of people to orchestrate violent crimes throughout the city, including those releated to gang activity and some recent problems along the Magnificent Mile shopping district in downtown Chicago, legislators said.

	'Doctor Who' Returning for Season 8 Hollywood Reporter The Doctor is returning. BBC announced Saturday on its official blog that Doctor Who will return for an eighth season just as the current run of episodes wrapped up ahead of the 50th anniversary special airing Nov. 23. The announcement also revealed that Doctor Who executive producer Steven Moffat is "already plotting a brand new run of adventures for the Doctor." Brian Minchin will join Moffat as executive producer.

	EU Ridiculed For Banning Olive Oil Jugs From Restaurants The Guardian UK EU bureaucrats have been ridiculed for shifting their focus from fighting the eurozone's debt crisis to impose strict rules on how restaurants serve olive oil.From 1 January eateries will be banned from serving oil to diners in small glass jugs or dipping bowls and forced instead to use pre-sealed, non-refillable bottles that must be disposed of when empty.The European commission said the move was designed to improve hygiene and reassure diners that olive oil in restaurants had not been diluted.

	We'll Remain Unimpressed With Domino's DVDs That Smell Like Pizza Until We Can Eat Them Consumerist What's the point of a DVD that smells and looks kind of like pizza once it's "heated up" in a player? If it's just to get us hungry and thinking about pizza, that is a cruel, cruel marketing trick. Take a note, Domino's Brazil - don't bring your pizza invention around these parts until you've created a DVD we can watch and then consume with our mouths.The pizza chain is touting its new "smellvertising" campaign ...

	Bitcoin Boosters Rally to Assure Congress of Currency's Worth PC World Washington's biggest problem when it comes to Bitcoin may just be that policymakers on the Hill don't know enough about it, yet. That was the general consensus of a panel of legal experts speaking Saturday at a Silicon Valley conference devoted to the nascent digital currency.

	Microsoft Gets Ready To Launch The Next XBox As Console Gaming Goes Down The Tubes Business Insider Microsoft Corp is set to make a splash this week with the eagerly awaited unveiling of its new Xbox game console, eight years after the last version, as it seeks a larger share of the $65 billion a year global computer gaming industry.But the small device faces some big competition from the PlayStation 4 by Sony Corp and the Wii U by Nintendo Co Ltd in a shifting market.

	Eric Schmidt Defends Google's Tax Affairs Following Commons Criticism The Guardian UK Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt has defended his company's financial affairs after a Commons committee branded the internet giant devious and unethical for sheltering its multibillion-pound profits from UK taxes. Writing in the Observer, Schmidt said his company's accounts were complicated but complied with international taxation treaties that allowed it to pay most of its tax in the United States.Schmidt said that he understood why Google's apparent sidestepping on UK taxation had generated controversy and called for a reform of international tax law.

	Yahoo Board Agrees to Buy Tumblr for $1 Billion CNBC.com Yahoo's board has agreed to buy Tumblr, the popular blogging service, for about $1.1 billion in cash, a person with knowledge of the agreement said on Sunday.The deal, sealed at a meeting of Yahoo's board, is expected to be announced as soon as Monday, said the person, who was not authorized to speak ahead of the announcement.The acquisition is the biggest yet under Yahoo's chief executive, Marissa Mayer, as she attempts to reinvent the once-embattled Web pioneer's fortunes.

	Is Wal-Mart in Trouble? Slate No company likes to admit problems, but last week's quarterly earnings report from Wal-Mart featured a remarkable amount of excuse-making, even by corporate standards. The company surprised analysts by reporting a 1.4 percent quarterly decline in comparable-store sales across the United States. In other words, Wal-Mart's American stores sold less stuff this past quarter than the quarter before. Wal-Mart blamed this drop on essentially everything under the sun except people not wanting to shop at their stores: "A delay in income tax refund checks, challenging weather conditions, less grocery inflation than expected, and the payroll tax increase" were all said to have created "considerable headwinds" for America's No. 1 retailer.

	5 Tech Stocks You Should Have Bought Instead of Facebook Time Magazine Facebook‘s intensely hyped initial public offering one year ago today was supposed to be a triumphant moment for Silicon Valley and Wall Street. After years of buildup and a valuation that had ballooned to $100 billion, ordinary investors would finally get the chance to own a slice of the hottest tech company on the planet. In the weeks leading up to the IPO, many tech experts - including some of the most prominent venture capitalists in the country - repeatedly insisted that once public, Facebook's stock price would soar beyond the $38 per share offering price.

	One Year After IPO, Facebook Employees Give CEO High Marks, Downgrade Top Management sfgate.com One year after taking the company public, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg's approval ratings among employees went up, although ratings for other top executives dipped slightly, according to jobs and careers site Glassdoor.Overall, Facebook employees gave a "very satisfied" rating on what it was like to work at the company Menlo Park company, according to Glassdoor. The ratings actually increased slightly after the IPO, from a 4.6 to a 4.7 (on a five-point scale with "1″ being "very dissatisfied and "5″ being "very dissatisfied").

	Who Needs Real Marketing Campaigns When You Have Social Media? Policy Mic There's no question that the wave of the future, for any enterprise, is through the socio-techno divide. In March of this year, Justin Timberlake's The 20/20 Experience sold 980,000 copies in just the first week of sales alone. Much of it was done through commercials, television appearances, and select performances. However, much of it was also done through the social media realm, like Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter. You would see not just song links and performances.

	Kidzania, a Theme Park for Work, Gears Up for U.S. Debut in 2015 Ad Age Digital Next The concept behind Kidzania -- essentially a theme park that's about work -- is growing like a weed abroad, with 12 existing locations and openings scheduled this year in Kuwait City, Cairo, Sao Paulo, Mumbai and Istanbul. The first U.S. location is due in 2015 in a city to be determined, and it's up to Cammie Dunaway, U.S. president and global CMO, to explain the concept to American children and their parents.

	Microsoft Slams Google in Nasty, Internal Parody Of Chrome Ad Marketing Land You're not supposed to see this video. Unless you work at Microsoft.It's a fake Chrome ad that's part of Microsoft's ongoing "Scroogled" campaign against Google, but it was supposed to remain internal.It appeared first on a blog called iCosmoGeek and has now been picked up by the Los Angeles Times. The Times says it has confirmation from Microsoft that the video was made for internal purposes.

	'Best Jobs In The World' Finalists Announced As Interest In Australia Peaks International Business Times Eighteen people are one step closer to securing the "Best Jobs In the World." Tourism Australia's wildly successful marketing campaign, which offers six dream jobs throughout the continent, is in its last stages, and the 18 finalists will have to demonstrate in person in Australia this June that they're fit for the work."After six weeks, 620,000 applications by 333,000 individuals from 196 countries, 46,000 video entries and thousands of supporting references from some of the most famous celebrities in the world, we are down to the final 18," boasted Andrew McEvoy, managing director of Tourism Australia.

	Social Networking is Serious Business and Your Klout Counts The National Remember back when online social networking was just for fun? You know, the days when everyone wrote their Facebook status updates in the third person: "David is ... writing an article about social networking". Back then, LinkedIn was just a website that had somehow got hold of your email address and decided to email you several hundred times a week. As for Twitter, Google+ and Pinterest: not even on our radar (or those of their creators, most likely).

	Major League Baseball's First Social Media Lounge: White Sox to Debut #SoxSocial Lounge Crain's Chicago Business The Chicago White Sox will open a new "social media lounge" today behind Section 154 down the left-field line to play off of their second social media-themed game this season.The #SoxSocial Lounge will feature seating, multiple televisions streaming White Sox social media content and showing the game, cellphone charging stations and other amenities aimed at allowing fans to better "connect with the team."

	Weather.com Develops Real-Time Data Ad Targeting Mediapost Weather.com has begun using audience segmentation data from Lotame to develop real-time ad targeting services based on weather conditions, time and interests for companies like Home Depot, Toyota, Disney and others. The platform relies on the potential of weather data as a powerful predictor of consumer purchase intent.

	ComScore Wins Clients for Online-Ad Rating System The Wall Street Journal The battle between companies measuring the reach of online ads is heating up.Ad-buying giants Starcom MediaVest Group and ZenithOptimedia said they have signed on to use comScore Inc.'s SCOR +3.85% online advertising ratings system, dealing a blow to TV ratings leader Nielsen, NLSN +0.80% which offers advertisers a comparable service. The ad-buying firms, both of which are owned by Publicis Groupe SA, PUB.FR +0.62% had been testing both services for some time.

	Goodby, Silverstein Brings the Funny for YouTube's First-Ever Comedy Week ADWEEK To hype its inaugural Comedy Week, which began Sunday night at 8 p.m. ET, YouTube turned to an ad agency known for generating its share of laughs: Goodby, Silverstein & Partners. The San Francisco-based shop's New York office whipped up a load of ads (many of them :15s) that have been airing in recent weeks starring the Comedy Week's actors and comedians. Check out a whole bunch of those spots below. (At the bottom is a longer promo with Arnold Schwartzenegger, which YouTube produced in-house, but we have to include because it's awkwardly hilarious.)

	Twitter: The (Career) Carnage Continues Bizcommunity Ex-spokesperson for the Hawks McIntosh Polela is the latest to be felled in a spate of twitter-induced career suicides (or at least setbacks), demonstrating that the balance between communicating quickly and communicating carefully can be difficult for communicators.Twitter is an excellent way for communicators to build their personal brand, communicate with their clients, beneficiaries and electorate. No communicator, PR or spokesperson can afford to ignore the power of the medium.

	Free The Press Campaign Trying To Raise $660 Million To Buy Tribune Co. Huffington Post The folks at The Other 98% really, really don't want to see the Koch brothers to buy the Tribune Company.The non-profit organization has launched a fundraising campaign on Indiegogo to make a bid for the publishing company, which owns the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times among other newspapers. The goal? Six hundred and sixty million dollars, to counter potential bids from billionaires Rupert Murdoch and Charles and David Koch. "Corporate media is ruining the integrity of news," the organization wrote on the campaign's Indiegogo page. "Winning the Tribune Company back might just start moving the tide in a different direction. Consider this an experiment that could have an enormous positive ripple effect for democracy."

	NewsRight Dismantles, Transfers Brand to Moreover ABC NewsRight, an organization created to turn unauthorized publishers of newspaper content on the Internet into licensed customers, said it is disbanding and transferring its operations to Moreover Technologies, which monitors how Moreover's clients are portrayed in the media.NewsRight said that Moreover will get the NewsRight brand and will offer new contracts to the organization's current customers.Moreover is working with BurrellesLuce, another media monitoring company, to expand NewsRight's licensing efforts, NewsRight said.

	Inaugural Sports PR Summit To Take Place At MLB Fan Cave Forbes There is apparently a lack of candid conversations between senior public relations people, media members and athletes. However, it is evident that there is a cure on the horizon. It comes in the form of the first-ever "Sports PR Summit" to be held on Wednesday, May 22 at the Major League Baseball Fan Cave in New York City.The plan is to bring together senior level PR executives from across the professional and college sports landscape for panel discussions, idea exchanges and networking.

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