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PR Pariah? Congressman Akin and the GOP’s Message Can Survive with Damage Control
Public Affairs… By David Johnson, CEO, Strategic Vision
In politics, there are always public relations professionals doing damage control and trying to spin a negative story until it goes away. Some politicians can make a gaffe and walk away to fight another day (Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton). Others make a slip of the tongue and are finished (Rick Perry and Christine O’Donnell). Right now, we are witnessing another politician thrash about and see if he can handle damage control – Missouri Congressman Todd Akin, the Republican Senate candidate.
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PR and Ad Agency Life: Why Clients Ask Stupid Questions – and How to Avoid Them
Public Relations… By Rodger Roeser, President, The Eisen Agency
There’s no such thing as a stupid question, right? Well, there is. They also say the customer is always right. I want to know who “they” are, because frankly they are wrong, and it’s hurting businesses – particularly those in the agency world. If you work for a PR or advertising agency, read this article so you can nod your head and maybe laugh, but if you work with a firm (i.e.: you’re the client, or thinking of becoming one), read this and save yourself and your agency some headaches.
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Taming the Social Media Management Monster
Social Media Zone… By Vicki @Smartwoman Flaugher
When it comes to taming the social media management monster, you had better bring a big stick. It’s so easy to lose yourself in the jungle of fun called Twitter, Facebook, and beyond – I mean, seriously, who has not been sucked into Youtube? All of us have! Fascination is fine and all, but if you’re using social for work, you’d better keep focused. You only have so many hours, and you have deadlines, project commitments, and meetings.
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Is Content Marketing a New Public Relations Discipline?
By Sarah Skerik, VP, PR Newswire for the Agile Engagement Channel
Is content marketing really PR? The immediate answer is “No,” but after a moment’s reflection, that answer may start to inch toward “Maybe.” The practice of public relations is about influencing public opinion and guarding reputation. Content marketing is focused ultimately on outcomes like lead generation and sales. In terms of the old marketing funnel describing the different stages in the buying cycle (awareness, consideration, preference, choice) construct, PR is arguably more “upper funnel,” because it builds awareness and reputation.
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By WhatCounts for the Effective Email Marketing Channel
Free Webinar: Find and Grow Your Social Media ROI (eduWeb conference session)
Social media ROI is often called murky, intangible, or irrelevant. Nothing could be further from the truth. Join speaker, author, and social media veteran practitioner Christopher S. Penn as he leads you from concept to implementation for your social media marketing ROI efforts. You’ll learn how to put together an effective dashboard using free tools like Google Analytics and develop an understanding of where your marketing efforts are falling short. This 45 minute webinar is on-demand, so you can download it and watch it at your convenience.
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Video + A Memo to Executives: What Brands Need to do to Avoid Sending Us to Mars
By Liz Gorman, SVP, Cone Communications for CSRwire and the Corporate Social Responsibility Channel
The world is crowded. Global population reached the 7 billion mark in 2011, and is expected to reach 8 billion by 2030. At a minimum, each person needs food, fresh water, shelter, clothing, health care and some form of energy just to survive. But most of us consume much more than these necessities and well beyond what we need. That’s where the problem begins. In its 2012 Living Planet Report, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) informs us that today we are using 50 percent more resources than the planet can provide.
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Busy Giving PR a Bad Name: Sports PR Is a Dirty Business
PRNewser
Deadspin ran an fascinating interactive Q&A session with “Anonymous PR Guy,” a representative working the wild world of sports who already wrote a couple of telling posts about why lying is part of his job description and the frankly weird relationship between pro athletes and the many, many women who like to chase them for some unknown reason. We found a few telling takeaways hidden between lots and lots of boring questions about Lebron James: – Anonymous doesn’t believe that “ALL PR is good PR,” and he coaches his clients to answer questions with inoffensive, “vanilla” statements rather than try to call attention to themselves. – He claims that he has arranged sex for clients more times than he’s had sex himself – he also claims that “90% of major pro sports players cheat” on their spouses. – He says he’s been called to bail clients out of jail “5-6 times.” …
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Robert Pattinson, Post Kristen Stewart, Now Besieged by PR firms
NY Daily News
The actor joked to Jon Stewart, “I’m cheap and I didn’t hire a publicist.” Now heavyweights like 42 West and Sunshine Sachs are begging for meetings with the “Twilight” star … After running a press gantlet over the devastating cheating scandal involving his girlfriend and stepping out in public with his fly down, Robert Pattinson desperately needs a publicist. The 26-year-old actor even joked to Jon Stewart on “The Daily Show” last week that he needed to hire one in the media frenzy over Kristen Stewart’s tryst with her married “Snow White and the Huntsman” director. After those comments, big-name firms like 42 West and Sunshine Sachs are battling it out for the chance to represent the actor, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Pattinson’s manager has reportedly been hit with a large volume of phone calls and e-mails from companies requesting meetings with the 26-year-old. But despite publicly acknowledging his lack of representation, Pattinson has no desire to hire a publicist just yet …
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Allstate Names New Marketing Chief
Crain’s Chicago Business
Allstate Corp. named a veteran of Ally Financial Inc. and Bank of America Corp. as its chief marketing officer, a crucial role as the auto insurance industry’s advertising war shows no sign of letting up. Sanjay Gupta, most recently chief marketer for Ally Financial, the former auto lending arm of General Motors Co., will start Sept. 1 as Allstate executive vice president and chief marketing officer. He succeeds Mark LaNeve, who left Allstate in February after launching the insurer’s acclaimed “Mayhem” ad campaign, featuring actor Dean Winters as the comical embodiment of all that can go wrong and why a reliable insurer is worth paying more for. Mr. Gupta will report to Allstate CEO Tom Wilson. “His successful experience in branded consumer financial services, data analytics and electronic commerce will support increased customer loyalty, innovative product offerings and profitable growth in all of our businesses,” Mr. Wilson said in a release …
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Video Marketing: Facebook Beats Yahoo to Become Second Top Video Site
Marketing Profs
Facebook overtook Yahoo as the second most popular website for online video viewing in July 2012, attracting some 53.0 million unique viewers during the month, compared with 48.7 million for Yahoo, according to data from the comScore Video Metrix service. Yahoo users, however, watched more videos during the month, and spent more time doing so: Yahoo users watched 625.1 million videos in July, compared with 327.8 million for Facebook users. Yahoo users consumed an average of 70.4 minutes of video content during the month, compared with 21.7 minutes for Facebook users. Even so, Google Sites, driven primarily by video viewing at YouTube, maintained a comfortable first-place lead in July, attracting 157.0 million unique viewers. Google Sites also had the highest average engagement among the Top 10 properties. In total, more than 184 million US Internet users watched nearly 36.9 billion video content views during the month, with Google Sites generating the highest number at 19.6 billion, followed by AOL with 665 million …
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SEC Narrowly Approves Reporting Rules on Resource Extraction
The Wall Street Journal
The SEC adopted on Wednesday long-awaited rules on two controversial provisions of the Dodd-Frank financial reform package that target energy firms and companies that use so-called conflict minerals. The two provisions, sections 1502 and 1504, are intended to curb corruption and promote transparency among companies involved in resource extraction as well as prevent violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo. But they have generated a combative debate between the business community and good governance groups over the scope and nature of the rules. The Commission narrowly approved rules for section 1502 in a 3-2 vote, with Commissioners Daniel Gallagher and Troy Paredes dissenting. It also approved rules for section 1504 in a narrow 2-1 vote, with Chairman Mary Schapiro and Paredes recusing themselves. Section 1502, the so-called “conflict minerals provision,” requires companies to examine their supply chains to determine and disclose if their products contain minerals from the DRC or surrounding countries …
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Compliance News: SEC Whistleblower Program Starting to Pay Off
The Los Angeles Times
For the last year, whistle-blowers deep inside corporate America have been dishing dirt on their employers under a SEC program that could give them a cut of multimillion-dollar penalties won by financial regulators. A new bounty program has been an intelligence boon to the securities industry regulator, which has struggled to redeem itself after failing to stop Bernard Madoff’s epic Ponzi scheme and rein in Wall Street before the 2008 financial crisis. Motivated by cash and the chance to rat out wrongdoers, tipsters are dropping more than names. Whistle-blowers and their attorneys are turning over boxes of documents, copies of emails and even audio recordings of alleged fraud or illegal overseas bribery. In the program’s first year, 2,870 tips–or about eight a day–rolled in as of Aug. 12. And on Tuesday, one of them finally led to the agency’s first payout: $50,000 to an informant who alerted regulators to an investment fraud …
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Jon Banner Joins PepsiCo’s Global Communications Team from ABC News as SVP, Global Strategy and Planning
Sacramento Bee
PepsiCo, Inc. (NYSE: PEP) announced today that Jon Banner has been named senior vice president, global strategy and planning. Banner will be a senior member of PepsiCo’s global communications team responsible for synchronizing, coordinating and planning the company’s communications efforts worldwide and partnering with PepsiCo’s business units to support key business priorities. Banner has extensive corporate media strategy and planning experience, has been a pioneer in the digital media space, and has a strong financial and business management background, all of which will be central to his new role at PepsiCo. Banner joins PepsiCo from ABC News where he spent more than two decades and earned 15 Emmy Awards. Among other roles at the organization, he most recently served as senior executive producer of division-wide initiatives. He led the rebranding of ABC’s news division, and in that effort oversaw several teams including marketing, network research and promotion. Banner also helped lead the financial restructuring of ABC’s entire news division, and worked to innovate business practices across all programs and platforms of ABC …
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Media Training: Rihanna’s Oprah Interview Draws Both Praise And Criticism From PR Experts
Huffington Post
A tearful Rihanna told Oprah Winfrey Monday that she and ex Chris Brown are “still close” and “will always love each other” following the 2009 attack that included punching, biting and choking. Now, after the candid interview, domestic violence organizations and fans have blasted the singer for “normalizing” domestic abuse. Amy Rosenblum, who runs media training company Media Masters, had a more complex reaction, but also thought the interview was a good idea. “As a media trainer I also tell my clients to be honest. The public is not stupid and know when you are not telling the truth,” she says. “Rihanna is not the first person to still love someone who did something terrible. Doing the interview with Oprah was the right choice. Rather than being a 3 to 4 minute interview on a show, Oprah had the time and resources to put what happened into context. Rihanna has opened up a conversation about domestic violence. It was a great interview.” …
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Number Of Video Ads Viewed Dipped In July; YouTube Gains Ad Market Share
Mediapost
Have the dog days of summer gotten online video ads down? ComScore’s monthly report on online video viewing and advertising revealed that the number of video ads viewed in July dropped to 9.6 billion — down from 11 billion in June, and the lowest amount of ads viewed since April. The dip is likely due to seasonal viewing fluctuations more than marketplace health. July is prime vacation time, which often pushes down video consumption. Also, sites like Hulu served less ads, probably as a result of less first-run premium shows in July on that site with many TV shows in summer repeats. Even so, we’ll want to keep a close watch on the next few sets of monthly numbers to determine whether this dip becomes a trend. Good news came from Google-owned YouTube, which didn’t suffer any summer blues. It delivered 1.5 billion ads in July, up from 1.4 billion in June and May, and 1.3 billion in April. The world’s biggest video site continues to gain market share when it comes to ads, evidence that YouTube’s efforts to invest in higher-quality content to lure marketers is starting to pay off. One caveat, however — the site still has a long way to go in terms of boosting the number of ads seen relative to video views, but that’s because so much of the content on YouTube isn’t brand-appropriate for a variety of reasons …
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Mitt Romney, Karl Rove-Created Group Use Same Digital Ad Firm
Huffington Post
American Crossroads, the Karl Rove-linked super PAC expected to spend big to fight President Obama’s reelection, started dropping serious cash online this summer. Since July, American Crossroads has spent over $1 million on digital ads opposing Obama. And, as the group boosts its digital ad spend, its choice of digital media buying firm could raise eyebrows. Crossroads has worked with Targeted Victory for over a year, and as far back as last spring the conservative organization had expected to increase its online ad budget for 2012. But Targeted Victory also handles digital ad buys for Mitt Romney’s campaign. It’s not the first time the same vendor has worked with a candidate campaign and an advocacy group backing the candidate. However, campaigns are required to keep a distance from outside groups backing them. According to Federal Election Commission regulations, when candidates employ the same vendor as a outside group, they are prohibited from coordinating …
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Cronkite
Richard Edelman – 6 A.M.
Public Relations
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