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The Value of Press Clippings: A Common Myth Dispelled (FAQs and Infographic)
Public Relations…By Todd Murphy, Vice President, Universal Information Services
Would you measure the value of a car based on the size of engine alone? Would you gauge the quality of a restaurant based only on the cocktails they serve? For the thinking majority, and in my opinion, the answer would be “No.”
Recently, changes within the news monitoring industry have prompted some to question the value of the individual mediums that news tracking services monitor. With only a couple of us now tracking all media and providing true measurement of those results, my unique perspective may provide you with some value within this question… or it may not. One can’t always be right.
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Is a Yahoo Resume Scandal in Your Future? 10 Ways Employers Can Catch Resume Lies
The Hiring Hub…By Marie Raperto
The press is STILL writing about the ouster of Yahoo’s former CEO Scott Thomson due to an “error” on his resume (here’s a recap from CNN). And the effects of his departure still reverberate through the company and in the world of high-tech as the company seeks his replacement. As late as Friday, in fact, online video site Hulu said its CEO, Jason Kilar, “has declined to be considered for the position of chief executive officer at Internet giant Yahoo Inc. (YHOO),” according to this item on NASDAQ.
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The Value of Independence: The 5 Myths of Giant PR Firms
Public Relations… By John J. Seng, Founder and CEO, Spectrum; and Louise Pollock, Founder and President, Pollock Communications
In the spirit of Independence Day, we recently found ourselves reflecting on what independence means, but from our perspectives as PR agency owners. Fifteen plus years ago, we each took leaps of faith, leaving the halls of PR conglomerate employers and starting our own niche public relations firms, Spectrum Science Communications and Pollock Communications. Now as top health/science and food communications agencies, we are proud of what we’ve built over the years…
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2012 Olympic Games: What’s Your Favorite Olympic Advertising Video?
Advertising… By CommPRO.biz
As we count down to the opening ceremony of the London Summer Games, Olympic sponsors are turning up the heat online, on air, plastering billboards and filling the pages of newspapers and magazines around the globe. The road to London started with this video: “The Official London 2012 Olympics Film.’Sport At Heart.” The CommPRO.biz team selected some of our favorite videos promoting the upcoming Games. Our selections are based upon YouTube views, UPI.com (“London Olympics 2012: Best Olympics commercials,” Storify.com (“Social Media’s Top 5 London 2012 Olympic Commercials”) and other sites.
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Should Companies Refocus Community Efforts from Philanthropy to Pro Bono Services?
By Amanda MacArthur, VP, CDC Development Solutions, for CSRwire
Skills-based volunteering is on the rise. In 2011, four times as many companies sent employees to volunteer professional skills in countries such as Ghana, India and Nigeria compared to just six years ago according to the CDC’s 2012 International Corporate Volunteer Benchmarking Survey. Volunteers – and their employers – often call the experience life changing. NGOs, nonprofits, government agencies and other organizations say expertise in areas such as technology, supply chain management and marketing allows them to advance in ways they otherwise never could.
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Email Marketing Tip #8: Test New Approaches, But Keep Branding Consistent
By What Counts for the Effective Email Marketing Channel
Stay consistent when it comes to branding. Not only will your email be recognized in a crowded inbox, recipients also prefer and appreciate a familiar look so they know where each element of an email can be found. Design consistency across all of your marketing materials, sites and published materials ensures that your email marketing strategy is part of an overall integrated marketing plan.
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Barclays Hires Tony Blair’s Media Advisor for Help in PR Disaster
Dow Jones Newswires
Barclays, seeking to mend its tattered reputation in the wake of the Libor-fixing scandal, has turned to a former spin doctor to Tony Blair and PR advisor to the government of Kazakhstan. Tim Allan, who set up his own PR firm eleven years ago, enters in the midst of what many see as a PR disaster. The Independent reported Friday that Allan had been hired on a “corporate reputation” brief and is now advising Barclays on how to handle the fallout from Liborgate. The bank was fined a record $450m earlier this week. Allan cut his teeth in PR as a media adviser to Tony Blair, spending six years alongside the former Prime Minister on his ascent to that role. Allen rose to Deputy Press Secretary at 10 Downing Street when Blair came into power. He then moved to broadcaster BSkyB as director of corporate communications during the launch of digital television in the UK …
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WikiLeaks: NYC PR Firm Tried to Buff Syria’s Image after Crackdown
The Los Angeles Times
A New York-based public relations firm tried to help the Syrian government “brand” its reforms last year as media reported its crackdown on protesters, according to an email released Friday by WikiLeaks.
The firm, Brown Lloyd James, had earlier helped arrange a rosy profile of Syrian first lady Asma Assad in Vogue magazine that praised her as “the freshest and most magnetic of first ladies.” It had been paid $5,000 a month for that work, according to a Foreign Agents Registration Act document.
Months later, in a memo last May to one of her aides, the firm advised Syria that it needed to buff up its image abroad as decidedly unflattering stories of mass arrests and alleged killings spread in the press. The public relations firm said Syria suffered from “an imbalance in its communications approach” that had failed to reassure the Syrian people and outsiders that it was genuinely pursuing reform …
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PR Spotlight: JetBlue PR Exec Says Social Media Is “Canary in the Coal Mine”
Crain’s New York Business
For Morgan Johnston, his first day on the job at JetBlue Airways’ corporate communications department presented an opportunity to reinvent the position.
It was Valentine’s Day 2007, when an ice storm left –passengers stranded for 10 hours on the tarmac at JFK. Thrown straight into the recovery efforts, Mr. Johnston pitched YouTube as a way for the airline to communicate directly with its customers.
Now, as manager of corporate communications, the 34-year-old has dealt with a number of PR nightmares – from the infamous flight attendant who made a dramatic exit by emergency slide, beer in hand, to a pilot who had a breakdown on board and a resulting 10-passenger lawsuit – via the Internet. “Social media is our canary in the coal mine,” said Mr. Johnston, a Vermont native and self-proclaimed tech nerd.
Twitter has become his company’s site of choice. By drawing more than 1.6 million followers – compared with American Airlines’ 300,000 …
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Apple Snaps to Attention in Fixing App Crash Epidemic
Mobile Marketing Watch
Apple says it has resolved a problem that caused recently updated apps to crash when launched.
On Thursday, MMW reported that due to a nagging encryption glitch, scores of freshly updated iOS apps have begun crashing Thursday in a widespread development that has confounded and frustrated many iOS device owners.
By Friday, Apple confirmed the problem and said that the issue wasn’t widespread. According to CNET, Apple was telling developers that “should customers report problems with an app crashing, they could contact Apple directly to determine if the cause was an issue with the app or the App Store itself.” …
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Marketing Expert Who Helped Start Seventeen Dies in NYC at 92
Washington Post
A pioneering marketing executive who helped start Seventeen magazine in 1944 has died at age 92.
Estelle Ellis Rubinstein died July 1 at her home in Manhattan after battling lung cancer. Her son, Ellis Rubinstein, has confirmed her death. After working for Popular Science and other magazines, Rubinstein helped Seventeen’s founding editor-in-chief, Helen Valentine, to publish the magazine.
The two later launched Charm, a magazine that positioned working women as a separate market segment. Charm was incorporated into Glamour magazine.
Rubinstein conducted early market research studies that established working women and teenage girls as distinct markets. She and her husband, Sam, later started a creative marketing firm called Business Image …
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What to Watch Monday: Investors Brace for Shaky U.S. Earnings Season
Chicago Tribune
Earnings season begins on Monday with U.S. companies facing a litany of issues that could make second-quarter reports look dismal.
Corporate outlooks are at their most negative in nearly four years and companies that have already reported have shown lackluster growth. Nearly two dozen S&P firms have already cited Europe’s woes – which seem to be worsening – as a concern. In addition, more than 85 members of the Standard & Poor’s 500 lowered expectations in the last several weeks and the quarter’s expected earnings growth of 5.8 percent is entirely due to Apple Inc and a big earnings gain for Bank of America Corp due to a mortgage settlement last year.
The majority of S&P 500 results will be in the next four weeks, beginning with aluminum company Alcoa Inc , due to report following Monday’s close.
The primary worry is whether the effect from Europe, along with the emerging slowdown in China, has been factored in to analyst estimates, which are down sharply since April …
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Employers Get More From U.S. Workers as Jobs Gain Lags Forecast
Bloomberg
Companies in the U.S. are relying on existing workers and temporary employees instead of hiring, helping to explain why payrolls grew less than forecast in June.
The average workweek rose for the first time since February and temporary staffing climbed for a third consecutive month, according to Labor Department figures issued in Washington yesterday. The report also showed payrolls advanced by 80,000 workers, less than the median estimate in a Bloomberg News survey of economists, and the jobless rate held at 8.2 percent. The median estimate of 84 economists surveyed by Bloomberg projected a 100,000 gain in payrolls. Forecasts ranged from increases of 35,000 to 165,000. The May advance in employment was revised to 77,000 from a previously reported 69,000.
The lack of a pickup in hiring fueled concern the world’s largest economy was slowing, pushing stocks down …
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Crisis Communications: Cisco Rethinks “Cloud” Service After Outcry
Wired
Cisco has adjusted its approach to a “cloud service” that ties into its home routers, responding to an outcry from customers.
With a blog post, the company now says that it will change the settings on two of its home wireless routers – the EA4500 and the EA2700 – so that they no longer default to the company’s Cloud Connect service, a way for customers to manage their routers over the net.
Last month, the company updated embedded software on the two routers so that users were automatically shuttled to Cloud Connect – as opposed to local software – when they tried to manage the devices. Some users objected because the tool’s terms of service seemed to step on not only their privacy, but their right to look at porn on the internet.
This little tempest in a teacup was a nice metaphor for Cisco’s efforts to stay relevant in the age of cloud computing …
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Is Yahoo’s PR Nightmare Finally Over? Company Said to Settle on CEO Two Months after May Scott Thompson Fiasco
MarketWatch
After a big scandal took down both the CEO and the Board of Directors at Yahoo in May, the company finally seems to be getting back on the right path, reports Vator TV. On Friday, Jason Kilar, chief executive of Hulu, “graciously declined to be considered” for the position of CEO of Yahoo. The AllThingsD blog reported Thursday that Kilar was one of two main contenders to be the next permanent CEO at the Web portal. The other main contender was interim CEO Ross Levinsohn. Over the weekend, it was reported by Reuters that Levinsohn would, indeed, assume the CEO mantle at the embattled former Internet giant …
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Microsoft Loss Reflects Web Display Ad World’s Woes
Reuters
Microsoft Corp shelled out a record $6.3 billion for aQuantive in 2007 at the height of a race with Google Inc and Yahoo Inc to clinch the top spot in Internet display advertising, betting on what many thought was a red-hot business.
The writedown of almost all of that deal’s value, announced this week, shows how misguided those expectations were, and how brutal the once-thriving business of selling banner ads on websites has become.
The main culprit is an explosion of advertising space offered by Facebook Inc and other websites that is outpacing steady demand. But automated online exchanges, smarter search advertising and a growing skepticism about the effectiveness of jamming ads in people’s faces have also conspired to slash prices and suck profits out of the business.
“The inventory or amount of ad spots grew so fast, it outgrew demand,” said Dave Morgan, an industry veteran and entrepreneur. “That brought pricing down massively.” …
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New Tablet Use Report Has Good News for Advertisers
Examiner
More Americans are buying tablets, using tablets, and researching and buying products based on advertising they’ve seen on their tablet screens, says a July 4 brief from the Center for Media Research. This creates new opportunities for online advertisers.
That’s the conclusion of a nationally representative online survey of 2,540 people conducted by the Online Publishers Association in partnership with research firm Frank N. Magid Associates. Last year, 12% of the online population owned or used a tablet regularly. This year, tablet adoption is up to 31% (74 million). By next June, it’s expected to be 47%, or 117 million tablet users. The best news for advertisers: Nearly half the users (47%) who buy newspaper and magazine apps said they find tablet advertising eye-catching and hard to ignore, 41% find it relevant, 40% unique and interesting. In addition, 37% said they found the advertising motivated them to buy products and 35% to research them …
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