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NFL’s PR Nightmare
Public Relations…By David E. Johnson, CEO, Strategic Vision, LLC
If anyone can sympathize with Mitt Romney’s public relations woes it is the National Football League. The NFL’s PR nightmare is taking a toll. One of America’s favorite past times and traditions has become a symbol of corporate greed and intransigence to many fans. Even now a week after a botched call by a temp referee in the Seattle Seahawks/Green Bay Packers game (that was upheld by the league) that caused a fan outcry and backlash, the NFL is dealing with a severely damaged brand and image. Even rapidly reaching an agreement with the referee’s union to stem the fan outage and end the lockout has done nothing to stop the damage.
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Thinking for a Living?
Marketing…Steve Kayser’s interview with author Joey Reiman
When was the last time you stopped, turned off everything around you- your mobile phone, iPad, computer, TV, radio and everything else in this hyper-connected, hyper-distracted world – and took the time to just … think? Can you remember? I can’t. I’m always on – 25 x 7. HOW MUCH THOROUGH THINKING IS THOUGHT? Last year 107 trillion emails were sent. Each day two-billion tweets are twooted (I know that’s not a word, but I like the neologism connotation) and one-billion pieces of content are posted on Facebook. Not to mention that 7,000 comments per second are posted on Facebook. That’s a lot of “doing” but most of it is “reactive.”
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The Key to Proving PR Value and Building the Business Case for PR : Free, Google+ Hangout On Air
In the Green Room with Mark Weiner, CEO, PRIME Research
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. It all begins with knowing what you want to accomplish.
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MasterCard Extends PR Review to Asia-Pacific
The Holmes Report
SINGAPORE–MasterCard is reviewing its Asia-Pacific public relations assignment for the first time in more than 12 years. The process puts incumbent firm Weber Shandwick on alert. The agency is also currently defending its share of the US business, as revealed by the Holmes Report earlier this year. Weber Shandwick also handles MasterCard business in Europe.
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Yanukovych: PR Firms and Nice Suits Hide Authoritarian Intentions
The Los Angeles Times
KIEV, Ukraine – Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych is the model of a new kind of power-grabbing authoritarian. Gone is the preening, bullying fascist in a comical military costume, like Hitler or Mussolini. Mao’s jacket and Fidel Castro’s combat fatigues are out of fashion. Today, it is all business. Today, Stalin would be wearing Hugo Boss or Brooks Brothers, his mustache would be shaved off and he, like Yanukovych, would look like any chief executive flying business class. The pogrom and the putsch have given way to PR. Yanukovych has hired lobbyists and public relations teams to help him project a progressive image while he quietly squeezes the press and rejiggers election laws to guarantee his party permanent rule.
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PR Needed–1 Billion Facebook Users On Earth: Are We There Yet?
Forbes
Back in June 2010, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said 1 billion users on Facebook is “almost a guarantee that it will happen.” Fast forward two years and Facebook revealed it has more than 955 million monthly active users, as of end of June 2012. There is much anticipation for Facebook to breach the 1 billion users mark. Earlier this year, a prediction saying the social networking giant would reach 1 billion users in August 2012 has garnered plenty of attention.
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Facebook Tries to Wean Marketers Off Clicks
Brandchannel
Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg is busy pitching Wall Street and Madison Avenue on FB advertising, calling it “incredibly effective” in her first post-IPO interviews. She’s not the only Facebook exec defending the efficacy of ad campaigns using the social graph, even as the FTC raises privacy concerns about FB’s new partnership with Datalogix for ad metrics, and social ad skeptic GM challenged the site’s analytics. With its stock down 43% since its May IPO, new initiatives to increase revenue including mobile ads and now the Datalogix union are attempts by the social behemoth to wean marketers off clicks, which is the key metric pitched by Google. Instead, Facebook is focusing not on the click-through rate (CTR) but on the number of times a user sees an ad (and whether the campaign has reached its target audience) as more effective metrics to track in marketing.
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Google Plus Popular Among Marketers
Opposing Views
It is for sure that Facebook Inc. (NASDAQ:FB) is the largest social networking site across the globe, however a study has revealed that Google+ is famous among people who use it for search engine marketing and search engine optimization. Earlier this month Google+ announced that over 400 million people are using the service out of which 100 million are active users which use their account at least once a month. According to a research, about 54.9 percent of online marketers named Google+ as one of the top five social networking sites used for the purpose of marketing. Facebook is leading with 87.7 percent and Twitter with 82.7 percent. However, if we compare the percentage of respondents that have a Google+ business profile and of those having a Facebook business page, the results are not so different. Google+ has 63.8% respondents just behind Facebook’s 75.8%.
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Retail Investors Warm to Alternative Investments
The Globe and Mail
Faced with volatile markets and retirement savings gaps, retail investors are turning to a sector that was once the preserve of institutions. Alternative investments such as hedge funds, commodities and infrastructure plays are growing popular among retail managers who are seeking out better returns and a wider range of opportunities for their clients, says a new report by consultants McKinsey & Co. Fueling the move is the disillusionment with the investing industry’s emphasis on relative returns – how well a fund does compared to a benchmark. If the market as a whole goes down 10 per cent, a fund that loses 5 per cent has strong relative returns, but still loses money for investors. Investors now want absolute returns– profit regardless of how the market performs. Alternative investments hold out the promise of achieving that.
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New York Sues JPMorgan Over Mortgages
CNN Money
New York attorney general Eric Schneiderman has filed suit against JPMorgan over the creation and sale of mortgage-backed securities during the housing bubble, alleging that bankers from the now-JPMorgan-owned Bear Stearns perpetrated “a systemic fraud on thousands of investors.” JPMorgan acquired Bear Stearns in 2008 at a steep discount in a deal backed by the government. At the time, regulators were attempting to prevent ailing Bear from touching off a panic on Wall Street. JPMorgan, however, later came under scrutiny from lawmakers for its role in a deal that many believed represented a bailout for a Wall Street firm that deserved to fail.
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The Big Four Accounting Firms: Shape Shifters
CFO Magazine
It is hardly news that the “Big Four” accounting firms get bigger nearly every year. But where they are growing says a lot about how they will look like in a decade, and the prospects worry some regulators and lawmakers. On September 19th Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu was the first to report revenues for its 2012 fiscal year, crowing of 8.6% growth, to $31.3 billion. Ernst & Young, PwC and KPMG will soon report their revenues (as private firms the Big Four choose not to report profits). For all four, Asia is a bright region. Deloitte’s revenue in Asia grew by 16.3% in dollar terms, faster than anywhere else. This was despite long-running worries about dodgy audits of Chinese companies by Western firms. American and Chinese regulators have been rowing over whether America’s accounting watchdog may inspect Deloitte Shanghai’s work. The two sides recently announced that American regulators could visit and observe, but not perform their own inspections.
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Finding the Balance Between CSR and PR: Edelman Celebrates 60 Years
Forbes
When a PR and marketing firm publishes a corporate citizenship report, you’re likely to view the results – and the commitments – with a pinch of salt. After all, they’re traditional masters of spin. Right? Wrong, says John Edelman, the namesake PR agency’s managing director for global engagement and corporate responsibility. Here’s how Edelman’s press release describes the firm’s commitment to corporate citizenship: “Some call it corporate social responsibility. Others call it sustainability. For Edelman, global citizenship resonates most as a term describing the larger responsibility business has to society. The firm recognizes its place in the world as global citizens, local offices and individuals.”
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Time to Abolish Peer Grouping in Determining Executive Pay?
Corporate Counsel
In the ongoing debate over the size of executive compensation packages, a key determinant of CEO pay has become increasingly controversial: peer grouping-the process by which boards of directors set the CEO’s salary by benchmarking it against those at other companies. What, then, if boards were to (almost) abolish peer grouping altogether? That’s the argument in a new study by Charles Elson, director of the Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance at the University of Delaware, and Craig Ferrere, a fellow at the center. “Simply put, peer group comparisons and median targeting are central parts of today’s √¢‚ǨÀúmega-pay machine.’ Any executive compensation reform must start there,” they write in “Executive Superstars, Peer Groups and Over-Compensation-Cause, Effect and Solution”. Elson and Ferrere’s critique comes on the heels of a contentious proxy season as far as peer groups are concerned. On one side, shareholders have been critical of the peers that boards choose …
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Digital Marketers Use Advertising Week to Blast Microsoft Over Do Not Track
Ad Age Digital Next
Microsoft is using Advertising Week as a venue to unveil an array of services built on Windows 8, including new ad formats designed right into the operating system. But some of the nation’s biggest advertisers are using the opportunity to blast Microsoft for the latest version of Internet Explorer, which will ship with Do Not Track as a default setting, a move they believe damages the online ad ecosystem. In an open letter to CEO Steve Ballmer, General Counsel Bradley Smith and Chief Research & Strategy Officer Craig Mundie, the world’s biggest advertisers let Microsoft know that if it follows through on its promise to make do-not-track the default setting on IE, that it will “drastically damage the online experience by reducing the internet content and offerings that such advertising supports.”
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Nielsen Online Campaign Ratings Debuts
Radio and Television Business Report
ESPN, Facebook, GroupM, Hulu and Unilever among first users: Nielsen announced a major step forward for cross-platform advertising measurement. According to the latest Nielsen Cross-Platform Report, in addition to watching 34-plus hours of TV per week, the average American spends nearly five hours online on the computer. More than half of Americans now watch video online, with online viewing increasing average weekly video consumption to roughly 35 hours. So, leveraging the Media Rating Council-accredited Nielsen Online Campaign Ratings and proprietary national TV panel, Nielsen Cross-Platform Campaign Ratings (unveiled 10/1) delivers the true reach of video advertising across screens.
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Advertising Spending to Rise in 2013
Daily Finance
Advertising research firm ZenithOptimedia forecasts 2013 ad spending will grow by 4.6% in 2013, from an estimated $501.54 billion this year to $524.7 billion. Nearly 30% of the growth will come from the United States, with developing markets to expand by 8% in 2013. The research firm also reckons that ad spending in Western Europe will rise slightly in 2013 after contracting this year. The forecast for global growth in 2012 has been lowered from 4.3% to 3.8% due to cuts in eurozone ad spending. The company expects a contraction of 3.1% this year compared to spending in 2011.
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