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Presidential Debate and the Media
Media Relations…By Suzanne Spurgeon, Founder, Women Media Pros
An estimated 60 million Americans were expected to watch the first Presidential debate between President Barack Obama and Governor Mitt Romney. And now we’re all debating the debate. Was there a clear-cut winner? A CNN/ORC telephone poll gives it to Romney by a landslide. I think later polling will be more divided. From Fox News to ABC to CNN, many political commentators are giving Governor Romney high marks-some saying it was his best debate ever, and he did a lot of debating through the GOP primary season.
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Business Ethics: Don’t Close Your Hand on the Canary
Corporate Communications…By: W.T. “Bill” McKibben, Senior Counsel, The Great Lakes Group
Suddenly it’s October, and we are into the fourth and last quarter of 2012. This point in time gives us pause to examine why we are here; a time to remember that we are the canaries in the coal mine. Our job is to sniff out and head off the slightest hint of anything that might damage the reputation of our organization or our client. The trick is earning a place of trust that gives us access to thinking and planning at the highest level. We need a place at the right hand of the CEO; a place where we can nip off reputation damage in the bud.
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Lessons for Communications Pros from the Campaign Trail
Gene Marbach At Large
A little more than a month to go before we Americans take to the polls to decide who will lead the country for the next four years. Presidential campaigns provide many great lessons for communications pros in terms of what works and what doesn’t. This one is no exception. Let’s take a look at some of the doings of our politicos: Sitting on a lead. The polls have President Obama ahead in the race. During the recent United Nations confab, the President was criticized for not scheduling meetings with world leaders. Such “unstructured” events could lead to “off-the-cuff” statements that might result in unwanted negative headlines…
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Key to Proving PR Value and Building the Business Case for PR (Today–Free, Google+ Hangout On Air Event)
In The Green Room With Mark Weiner
JOIN US: TODAY, October 4th, 2 pm ET, for “Setting Quantifiable Objectives: The Key to Proving PR Value and Building the Business Case for PR” SESSION OVERVIEW While the most straightforward measure for proving public relations success is often “meet or beat measurable objectives,” setting quantifiable objectives is one of PR’s most vexing challenges. As you move towards 2013 planning, research can help you determine what you can do to uncover efficiencies, determine optimal budget and structure your plans for success.
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PRSA 2012 International Conference Preview: Robert Flaherty, APR–Podcast
For the PRSA International Conference Channel
Conference co-chair Rob Flaherty, APR recently sat down with Martin Waxman of Inside PR and discussed the PRSA 2012 International Conference. Flaherty talked about his role, and how he and fellow co-chairs Jack Martin, Global Chairman & CEO, Hill+Knowlton Strategies and Janet Tyler, APR, Co-CEO & Founder, Airfoil Public Relations, worked on planning the conference. He said it took a lot of bright and intelligent people to bring together such a strong line-up for 2012. Flaherty also mentioned that there is an exciting panel lined up for the presentation…
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JetBlue Uses America’s Hatred of Politicians for Publicity Stunt; Offers to Ship Disgruntled Voters Overseas
Village Voice
How’s this for a PR stunt: you know that obnoxious friend of yours (or perhaps your overly Conservative mother — hi mom!) who always says that, “if (insert politicians name here) wins the election, I’m moving to Canada?” Well, Queens-based JetBlue airlines wants to make that happen — but they want to take disgruntled voters to locales a bit more exotic than our frigid neighbor to the North. Just in time to seize some of the political buzz surrounding Wednesday’s presidential debate, the airline has announced its “election protection” contest, where winners (or losers?) will receive a free flight to their choice of more than 20 countries if their pick in this year’s presidential election loses.
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Big Data ‘Buzz’: A New Roadmap for Government (and Business)
Forbes
TechAmerica Foundation’s Big Data Commission released today its long-awaited report, “Demystifying Big Data: A Practical Guide to Transforming the Business of Government.” It offers a comprehensive roadmap for the use of Big Data by the Federal government and a set of policy recommendations and practical steps agencies can take to get started on Big Data initiatives. Bill Perlowitz, Vice-Chair of the Commission and vice president and chief technology officer at Wyle said this about the significance of the report: “It heralds the understanding that data is as important to the U.S. economy as agricultural products and capital goods, and provides the industry-tested roadmap to improve Government performance while stimulating billions of dollars of economic activity.”
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Twitter: Huge Mobile Use Makes Us Ideal for Real-time Marketing
CNET
Sixty percent of Twitter users access the microblogging platform on mobile devices, and there are more than 400 million tweets per day, Twitter said today. And promoted tweets have an engagement rate of between 1 percent and 3 percent. Just a couple of hours after Twitter unveiled a new feature for big brands that will allow them to embed surveys in tweets, at a session called “Building a real-time brand” At Advertising Week in New York, Twitter President of Revenue Adam Bain and sales marketing chief Shane Steele shared statistics and anecdotes demonstrating that the service is an ideal place for brands to achieve better and more efficient advertising and marketing results than on just about any other platform.
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How to Stem the Tide of Junk Mail
Huffington Post
Here’s more than you ever wanted to know about junk mail: Each year, according to Catalog Choice, direct mail creates 10 billion pounds of solid waste in the U.S. alone and costs local communities more than $1 billion in collection and disposal expenses — not to mention putting you at greater risk for identity theft if you don’t shred personalized mailings before tossing. So how can you stop the flood of junk mail you receive? You could try moving or changing your name, but as you’ve probably noticed, a lot of what’s delivered to your mailbox is addressed to “Occupant.” In fact, the U.S. Postal Service relies heavily on such deliveries, which now outnumber first-class postage mailings.
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HootSuite, Webtrends Team Up to Measure Social ROI
Marketing VOX
HootSuite Enterprise is now integrated with Webtrends to provide marketers with a detailed view of social media ROI. “Analytics is a core tenet of HootSuite’s enterprise social media management system, and the HootSuite – Webtrends integration adds even more value for our Enterprise clients,” claims HootSuite. If it works, it will come as welcome news to social media marketers. Marketers in a September Awareness survey said that measuring ROI was the top social media marketing challenge, cited by 57% respondents. The leading difficulties in measuring social media ROI are that it is hard to tie social media to actual business results (54%); it is hard to analyze unstructured social media data (also 54%); and it is hard to integrate disparate social media data resources (50%), all of which this integration purports to solve.
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Do Earning Really Tell Which Way the Market is Headed?
NASDAQ
Houdini often used misdirection to help him become one of the most famous magicians in history. He would focus the audience’s attention on an illusion, so they wouldn’t notice what he did to complete his magic trick. Today, the media and financial professionals use similar misdirection when trying to explain the stock market’s movements. They focus your attention on earnings and other illusions of today’s market when the real driver of price is completely different. At the end of July, I wrote an article titled, “Why are Stocks Rallying? A Look Beneath the Hood” outlying what really was driving the market. In that article I raised the concern that making investment decisions based on earnings was likely to leave you disappointed as earnings were not driving stock prices.
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Best Buy Founder Richard Schulze Gets Richer as $11 Billion Buyout Moves Forward
Forbes
Richard Schulze, the founder of Best Buy who stepped down from the company’s board earlier this year, got richer Wednesday on news that his proposed buyout of the electronics retailer is progressing. Shares closed at 17.76, up nearly 5% from the prior day, pushing Schulze’s personal net worth up $53 million. Schulze and a group of a private equity firms—among them Apollo Global Management, Cerberus Capital Management, TPG Capital, and Leonard Green & Partners are conducting due diligence on Best Buy, my colleague Abram Brown wrote earlier Wednesday. And Schulze’s buyout price could top $11 billion (previous reports had pegged a potential buyout at around $8 billion).
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Study: Corporate Social Responsibility Engagements with U.S. Public Firms Yield Excess Return of 4.4 Percent
PR Newswire
Using 10 years of privately compiled data, three leading academics have tied positive market performance to corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities at major publicly traded U.S. companies. Their research has netted them the Moskowitz Prize for Socially Responsible Investing, the only global prize recognizing outstanding quantitative research in the field of sustainable, responsible, impact (SRI) investing. Pietra Rivoli, deputy dean and professor, McDonough School of Business at Georgetown University and a longtime Moskowitz judge, presented the 2012 Moskowitz prize to the winners last night at the 23rd SRI Conference. The prize-winners are: Elroy Dimson, emeritus professor of finance, London Business School; Oguzhan Karakas, assistant professor, Carroll School of Management, Boston College; and Xi Li, assistant professor, Fox School of Business, Temple University. Dimson, Karakas, and Li examined highly intensive shareholder engagements on environmental, social, and governance issues from 1999 to 2009. Their findings suggest that CSR activism creates shareholder value, consistent but in a different scale compared with traditional shareholder activism or hedge fund activism.
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Apple Still Lags in Defining a Social Purpose
Environmental Leader
Recently, it was announced that Apple‘s stock market value had neared $625 billion, making it the most valuable company ever. The headlines made me re-consider an article I wrote for Forbes last August called Where is Apple’s Social Purpose? Declaring that Apple didn’t have a social purpose wasn’t very popular and the post generated some harsh comments. “Write an irritating piece you know nothing about and stick an ‘Apple’ in it for clicks,” commented one Forbes reader. “Try Google or Samsung or Ford and see what happens.” In light of the recent news, I wondered if my point of view was still valid.
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Is Internet Radio About to Get Rocked?
Digital Trends
Internet radio has revolutionized the way many tech-savvy consumers listen to music. Whether it’s a personalized radio station from Pandora, playlists pulled down from Spotify, friends’ recommendations “scrobbled” through Last.fm, or tapping into any of the myriad other sources for online music, Internet radio has become a way of life for many people. However, just as Internet radio seems to have finally developed as a mainstream business, things look to be shaking up. The entire industry appears poised for another showdown in Congress over music royalty rates, and everybody is worried about Apple getting into the business – although the notoriously secretive company hasn’t said anything one way or another. Is the fledgling industry in danger, or just in for a shakeup?
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Advertisers to FTC: We’re Not Going Back on ‘Do Not Track’
ADWEEK
Advertisers are dismissing charges that they are somehow backing off their commitment made last February to honor a uniform browser feature that would give consumers the choice to opt-out of ad tracking on the Internet. The accusation was reported by The Wall Street Journal Tuesday, which quoted FTC chairman Jon Leibowitz that advertisers were exploiting a loophole in the definition of “Do Not Track” to allow tracking for market research and product development. But nothing could be further from the truth, shot back Stu Ingis, a partner with Venable, who represents the Digital Advertising Alliance.
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Facebook Goes on the Ad Attack: Spots Work ‘Just Like TV’ But Privacy Fears May Hit New Initiatives
The Drum
Facebook, bedeviled by worries about the effectiveness of advertising on its network and determined to to make its mark as a mega-succesful marketing medium, has launched a positivity blitz at Advertising Week in New York. In a TV interview and before 550 marketers, Facebook’s chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg insisted that Facebook social ads drive offline store sales in the traditional branding sense – just like TV.
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