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Playing Chicken with a Positioning Strategy: Stress-Busting Tips for PR Professionals
For Public Relations… By Adele Cehrs, Founder, Epic PR Group
Tight deadlines, demanding clients, investigative journalists and now online brand bashers, it’s no wonder PR is deemed one of the most stressful careers, according to an annual study conducted by CareerCast. This cut-throat and competitive field keeps stress at high-levels on a daily basis. So how do you handle that stress? We asked Dr. Stephen Forssell, professor of psychology at George Washington University to weigh-in (his tips are at the bottom of this article).
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What Would Mad Men’s Peggy Olson Do? 12 Tips for Finding a Job in PR
For Public Relations… By Mary Ellen Miller, MarketingMel
If you’re a recent college graduate looking for a job in marketing, public relations or advertising, ask yourself, “What would Peggy Olson do?” If you follow the Mad Men TV series you’ll know that Peggy is Don Draper’s former secretary-turned-copywriter. Her character is based on the real-life Jane Maas, a pioneer copywriter at Ogilvy & Mather in the 1960′s, and author of Mad Women: The Other Side of Life on Madison Avenue in the 60′s and Beyond.
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Planning for Success: Five Steps for Finding a Great Branding Agency
For .Biz Builder Magazine… By Natalie Perkins, President, Clean Design, Inc.
When considering branding or rebranding for your company, whether it is for a product, service or part or all of your organization, you first must recognize that the process is much more than just designing a logo, as some people assume. A logo is simply the visual representation of your brand. A brand exists in the mind of the target and encompasses all aspects, from your tagline to your staff to your physical space.
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There Is an “I” in Team: What Can Olympic Teams Teach Business Leaders?
For .Biz Builder Magazine… By Mark de Rond, Ph.D.,
Over the next few weeks, the world’s brawniest athletes will lock horns in pursuit of sport’s biggest prize: an Olympic title. The world’s number one Taekwondo star, Aaron Cook, won’t be one of them. Controversially, he was passed over in favor of world number 59, Lutalo Muhammed, in only the latest of a series of high-profile selection disputes in the Great Britain camp.
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Does Branded Content Have a Place in User Generated Long-Tail Video?
By Mike McGrath of RealExtream Media for the Social Video Channel
Brand advertisers spend over 50 billion dollars on traditional media every year, yet we as consumers spend less time watching TV and more time watching each other and ourselves. The widespread growth of mobile and social media technologies like YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and SocialCam`is enabling us to evolve beyond mere content consumers into a world where everyone is now a content creator.
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Email Marketing Tip #11: Test, Test, Test!
By WhatCounts for the Effective Email Marketing Channel
Take advantage of the A/B split testing feature that your ESP provides. A/B split testing allows you to test the effectiveness of an email by sending two separate versions of the same email campaign to a small test group. You can test based on different factors including: subject lines, date/time, creative designs, or landing pages. OPTIMIZE YOUR EMAILS THROUGH A/B SPLIT TESTING. Marketing through email is critical in enhancing your relationship with customers while encouraging customer loyalty and repeat business.
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Free Tuesday Google+ Hangout: Grow Your Email Marketing ROI
Champions of IMC… Free Event hosted by Chris Penn, WhatCounts
The marketing world is ablaze with people, books, companies, and events all helping you to understand your marketing ROI. What few address, however, are the ways in which you can improve your ROI. Join Chris Penn as he takes you through a one hour presentation that examines email marketing ROI and provides concrete, immediately usable ideas for boosting your email marketing ROI.
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Free Friday Google+ Hangout: The Evolution of SEO – How Social Media Optimization Can Impact The Bottom Line
Champions of IMC… Free Event hosted by ZOG Digital
SESSION OVERVIEW: We will explore the increasingly important role social media is having on search. We also challenge a popular myth among many in the industry that SEO is “dying”. Quite the contrary, it’s evolving and more important than ever. In this webinar you will learn about social media optimization (SMO), today’s newest marketing requirement, how it will impact your SEO, and learn actionable tips you can implement today to improve your brand awareness & search results.
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PR Pros on the Go: Romney Hires PR Vet To Bite Back on Bain Attacks
ABC
The Romney campaign is hiring a corporate public relations specialist to help guide their response to questions about the candidate’s time in the private sector with Bain Capital, Buzzfeed’s Ben Smith reports. Michele Davis, currently with the D.C.-based Brunswick Group, has a long and colorful resume Democrats are sure to seize on if and when she begins to publicly defend Romney’s work in private equity. Critics have already begun to ask why it was necessary to hire anyone–let alone one of the country’s most respected P.R. people–to push back against attacks Romney aides insist have done nothing to hurt their cause. “I think it’s very odd and unlikely to solve their problem,” said one Beltway Republican. Romney spokeswoman Andrea Saul has not responded to a request for comment on the hire …
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Handling PR: The Debate on Chick-fil-A
The Atlanta Journal Constitution
The controversy over Chick-fil-A President Dan Cathy’s remarks about gay marriage has caused the usually publicity-friendly Atlanta chain to retreat almost completely from the public. Instead of challenging the back-and-forth on Cathy’s stand against gay unions, the company posted a statement on its Facebook page in late July and stopped talking. “The Chick-fil-A culture and service tradition in our restaurants is to treat every person with honor, dignity and respect – regardless of their belief, race, creed, sexual orientation or gender,” the statement read. Leaders in crisis communication are mixed on the strategy. Supporters of the company’s media shutdown noted Americans’ notoriously short attention spans and the likelihood that today’s drama will quickly be forgotten tomorrow. Chick-fil-A’s calculation, they say, is to stay quiet and resist adding fuel to the fire. “The smart thing for them to do is to let it die,” said Ken Bernhardt, a professor of marketing at Georgia State University …
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Olympic Athletes Rebel Against Social-Media Rules
Ad Age Digital Next
Olympic athletes are using Twitter to coordinate an online rebellion against the International Olympic Committee’s rules on social media, claiming that restrictions on advertising are ultimately affecting their performance by obstructing sponsor relationships. In order to protect sponsorship dollars, the IOC’s Social Media, Blogging and Internet Guidelines’ Rule 40 limits athletes competing in the Olympic Games from appearing in advertising during and shortly before the games in order to help prevent ambush marketing. U.S. track and field athletes are leading the campaign against Rule 40, using the hashtag #WeDemandChange. ESPN reporter Darren Rovell argued, “The IOC argues Rule 40 protects the investment of those who sponsor the games. It does. It also shows no regard for the athletes.” …
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HP, Ford and Sony Top Social Mentions List of Brands
ClickZ
Global Fortune 100 companies were mentioned a total of 10,400,132 times online during a month-long period, with most of those mentions happening on Twitter. Each company was mentioned an average of 55,970 times on Twitter, yet 18 percent still don’t have accounts to monitor and interact with mentions, according to the third annual Burson-Marsteller Global Social Media Check-Up. Since 2011, the number of corporate account followers on social channels has increased dramatically. On Facebook, the average number of Likes per company Page rose 275 percent, to 152,646. Corporate Twitter accounts saw their followers increase threefold, from 5,076 in 2011 to 14,709. Seventy-nine percent of those corporate Twitter accounts are doing it right, attempting to engage users with retweets and @ mentions. Over on Facebook, 74 percent of companies have a presence. Ninety-three percent of corporate Pages studied are updated weekly, but only 70 percent are responding to comments on their wall or posts. On average, there are 6,101 people talking about each brand. The companies with the most social mentions globally are: HP, Ford, Sony, AT&T, Samsung …
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SEC Seeks More Investor Protections for U.S. Municipal Bond Market
Reuters
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission said in a report on Tuesday it would seek legislation to improve disclosure in the $3.7 trillion U.S. municipal bond market, which has largely escaped the same level of regulation as other U.S. capital markets. The SEC’s report, which was two years in the making, focuses on improving disclosures by states, cities and other debt issuers and on increasing investor protection. The report was put together because of investor concerns about protection and access to timely information in the municipal market, said SEC Commissioner Elisse Walter. There are more than a million different bonds outstanding and individual investors held 75 percent of that debt at the start of 2012. Various laws have limited the SEC’s ability to oversee states and local issuers, leading to a hodgepodge of accounting techniques and financial disclosures available to investors weighing whether to purchase their debt …
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Payroll Gains Exceeding Forecasts Signal Sustained U.S. Growth
Bloomberg
Employers in the U.S. added more workers than forecast in July, easing concern the three-year expansion is faltering. Bigger payroll gains may be necessary to reduce an unemployment rate that climbed to a five-month high. Employment increased by 163,000 last month, helped by a pickup at automakers and health-care providers, after a revised 64,000 June advance, Labor Department data showed yesterday in Washington. The median estimate of 89 economists surveyed by Bloomberg called for a rise of 100,000. The jobless rate, based on a separate survey of households, climbed to 8.3 percent. Stocks rallied, sending the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index to the highest level since May, as the jobs data countered recent reports showing a contraction in manufacturing and cooler consumer demand. An unemployment rate that has been stuck above 8 percent since February 2009 is one reason why the Federal Reserve this week said it is prepared to take new steps if needed to boost the economy …
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Digital PR Tools: Buzz About Social Media Use During Summer Games More Than Triple That of Other Topics; Twitter Dominates
Marketwire
Marketwire began monitoring social media discussions leading up to the London 2012 Summer Olympics in mid-July and created a Summer Games Dashboard to track three major themes as the Games progress: social media and communications, transportation and infrastructure, and security. The number of tweets related to social media and communications has been on a steady climb since July 26, but it tripled between July 29 and July 31. The chief cause of that spike was that users were angry at Twitter for banishing Guy Adams, a UK foreign correspondent who posted a message on the social network criticizing NBC’s decision to broadcast the game’s opening ceremony with a time delay. Between July 26 and August 1 there were 429,465 social mentions about social media and communications on blogs, forums, news sites and Twitter combined. “I’m amazed at the amount of controversy that spreads through Twitter,” said Sheldon Levine, Marketwire Community Manager. “Not only is the whole world watching this historic event, but everyone is connected through a single hashtag. It truly illustrates the enormous power of social media.” …
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PR Apologies: Kristen Stewart’s Apology One of Many Questionable PR Moves In Tinseltown
Huffington Post
When Kristen Stewart issued an apology for cheating on boyfriend Robert Pattinson with her “Snow White and the Huntsman” director, Rupert Sanders, not everyone found the candor of her mea culpa refreshing. “The only thing more stupid than being famous and cheating in public is admitting it and issuing a public apology,” one publicist told The Huffington Post, noting that “Everyone in Hollywood is asking why she confessed to this so fast.” “This was career suicide,” one weekly magazine editor told HuffPost. “If Kristen thought the statement would get ahead of the story and suck the oxygen out of the fire, she is wrong. She just poured gas on the fire.” How the events of the past week will affect Stewart’s career remains to be seen, but one thing’s for sure. She’s not the first–and won’t be the last–to make a controversial PR move. Plenty of stars have stumbled when it comes to downplaying a scandal, coping with bad press or simply making a smooth apology …
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Presidential TV Ad Spending Focused on 9 States
sfgate.com
If television ad spending is any guide, the White House race will come down to nine states that have absorbed an eye-popping $350 million in commercials so far. Colorado, Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Florida, the largest and most diverse of these highly contested states, are where the ad dollars have been concentrated, and that’s been consistent this election season. They account for 120 of the 270 electoral votes a presidential candidate needs to win. Barack Obama carried all nine states in 2008 when he beat Republican John McCain, but polling and the ad crush indicate all are highly competitive this time. While the rest of the country is virtually ad-free, the Obama and Mitt Romney campaigns, along with a host of mostly Republican-leaning independent groups, are going at it in those really competitive states. Voters in just 67 of the country’s 210 media markets are confronted by campaign ads on local stations, according to the Kantar/Campaign Media Analysis Group, which tracks campaign advertising …
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Nielsen: Ad Spending Worldwide on the Rise
BtoB Magazine
Global spending on advertising rose across most media types in the first quarter, with digital advertising seeing the largest boost, according to a report from Nielsen Co. According to Nielsen’s “Global AdView Pulse,” worldwide ad expenditures were up 3.1% overall in the first quarter compared with the same period last year. Radio advertising was up 7.9%, and newspaper ad expenditures were 3.1% higher. Magazine advertising declined 1.4%. Advertisers spent 12.1% more on Internet advertising globally, with the Middle East and Africa (up 35.2%) and Latin America (up 31.8%) outstripping the average. In North America, outdoor advertising expenditures increased 4.4%, TV advertising grew 4.0% and radio was up 2.6%. Magazine advertising was down 5.3%, while newspaper ad spending fell 2.1% …
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