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‘The Newsroom’ and the Presidential Debates – Part 2: Raddatz Wins Best Moderator
Public Relations…By Leslie Gottlieb
Now that we have seen 4 televised Presidential and Vice Presidential debates, we can pick the winner. Not between President Obama and Governor Romney, but the winner of the best moderator contest. That prize goes to ABC’s Martha Raddatz. Why? Because I think she came the closest to the concept that the HBO hit series “The Newsroom” set for a new type of Presidential debate. As I stated in the earlier post, I believe the role of the moderator in a televised political debate should be to arbitrate, push back, clarify and illuminate the candidates’ positions and facts for the audience. The role should not be passive. It should be engaged.
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Presidential Debate No. 3: The War at the Shore? Nah…
Gene Marbach At Large
Close doesn’t begin to describe the Presidential race. The race has been likened to a “knife fight in a phone booth” (wish that analogy was mine; however, I don’t know who to credit with it). However, if you were expecting “High Noon,” “The Gunfight at the O.K. Coral” or even a shootout with water pistols for the third and final Presidential debate, you were disappointed… Let’s take a look at some of the aspects of last night’s debate that may be of interest to those of us in the communications business: …
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Protecting Your Brand in Uncertain Times
Marketing…By Ann Middleman, ADM Marketing & Research Consulting
In this volatile and uncertain economic environment, companies are taking a hard look at their expenditures. Sadly, marketing is often the first function on the chopping block. I say “sadly” because that is the worst thing a company can cut in uncertain times. There may be more cost effective ways to implement marketing strategies, but cutting back on reaching out to their audiences (whether business or consumer) diminishes a company’s brand(s), and a brand is a measurable and valuable asset.
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Social Media & The Presidential Election
By Andrew Meranus, Vice President, New Business Development & Agency Relations, PR Newswire, for the Agile Engagement Channel
With only a few hours to go before the second presidential debate, a session at the 2012 PRSA International Conference titled “Social Media in the Presidential Election: Its Impact, What We Can Learn” offered timely and interesting insight. The panel was comprised of: Joe Garofoli, national political reporter, San Francisco Chronicle and David Almacy, senior vice president, digital strategies, Edelman PR …
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Is Your Organization Prepared to Respond to Crisis in the Digital Age?–Google+ Hangout On Air Event
In The Green Room With Priya Ramesh, Managing Director, Social media, CRT/tanaka
Welcome to this online conversation about how to “Identify a Social Media Crisis Response Strategy for 2013″ Crisis can strike an organization at any time and with social media, it takes less than 24-hrs for a simple tweet to go viral and turn into headline news. Do you have a crisis plan that outlines who, what, when and how to respond to customers, media and the public attacking your brand online?
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Secrets of World Class CEO Communicators: The Ten Key Techniques–Free Webinar
In The Green Room With Virgil Scudder, President, Virgil Scudder & Associates
SESSION OVERVIEW This webinar will provide the necessary tools and techniques you need to communicate your message to your target audiences—from shareholder meetings to media interviews to handling crises. KEY TAKEAWAYS You will learn: Keys to successful shareholder communication …
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Apple Set to Unwrap Mini-iPad to Take on Amazon, Google
Reuters
Apple Inc is expected to make its biggest product move today since debuting the iPad two years ago, launching a smaller, cheaper tablet into a market staked out by Amazon.com Inc and Google Inc. Apple hopes to beat back their charge onto its home turf of consumer electronics hardware, while safeguarding its lead in the larger 10-inch tablet space that even deep-pocketed rivals like Samsung Electronics have found tough to penetrate. Amazon’s Kindle and Google’s Nexus 7 have grabbed a chunk of the lower end of the tablet market and proved demand for a pocket-sized slate exists, helping force Apple into a space it has avoided and at times derided, analysts say.
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Former Goldman Exec’s ‘Tell-All’ Book May be the Best PR Coup in History for Goldman Sachs
Business Insider
Well, the world was on the edge of its seat. Finally, this week, with the publication of former Goldman exec Greg Smith’s “tell-all” book about Goldman Sachs, the world was going to learn what really went on inside the global money factory that everyone loves to hate. For example, some people surmised, the world might learn about: The opulent lounges and conference rooms in which Dr. Evil-like Goldman execs concocted the swindles designed to part suckers (clients) from their money. The stories of grotesque Caligulan excess: Piles of $100 bills set on fire at parties for the amusement of guests, maybe, or nightly coke-and-sex fests in the boardrooms, or pinatas shaped like clients stuffed with money hanging from the trading floor ceilings. Spectacular details about the screwing and fleecing of clients and the gigantic bonuses that are then awarded for such spectacularly profitable behavior. The tales of how a handful of brave, honest executives tried to do the right thing and were therefore summarily demoted or dismissed.
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Reputation Management Crisis: Lance Armstrong Stripped of Tour Titles, ‘Deserves to be Forgotten’
The Los Angeles Times
Cycling’s governing body Monday accepted the findings of a U.S. Anti-Doping Agency report about an elaborate doping program involving Lance Armstrong and stripped the famed athlete of his seven Tour de France titles and banned him from competition for life. International Cycling Union (UCI) President Pat McQuaid said in Geneva he was “sickened” by the USDA findings, adding, “Lance Armstrong has no place in cycling…. He deserves to be forgotten.” USADA sent 1,000-plus pages to UCI, including a report from 26 witnesses, including 11 former Armstrong teammates, who alleged Armstrong and his teams used steroids, the blood-booster EPO, blood transfusions and testosterone in a sophisticated doping scheme during his Tour de France title run.
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More Marketers Invite Themselves to Thanksgiving Dinner
Ad Age Digital Next
Consumers will be served a heaping helping of shopping opportunities with their turkey this Thanksgiving, once a day reserved for family, food and football. More bricks-and-mortar stores than ever are expected to be open for business on Thanksgiving, and email-marketing firm Responsys said 80% of major retailers will send messages on the holiday this year, up from just 45% in 2009. “Prior to 2010 this was a family day — everything was closed,” said Chad White, research director at Responsys. “But what retailers discovered after biting the bullet was there is a lot of demand for shopping on Thanksgiving Day.” Mr. White even predicted that online sales on Thanksgiving Day could surpass those of Black Friday in the next three years. According to ComScore, online sales jumped 18% on Thanksgiving Day to $479 million, while online sales were up 26% to $816 million on Black Friday.
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Salesforce Expands Marketing Cloud Capabilities
ClickZ
Enterprise software company Salesforce.com has expanded the capabilities of Marketing Cloud, its new marketing software, by adding a host of data analytics features designed to help companies better understand the flood of tweets, posts and other social media data related to their brand. Salesforce has incorporated analytics from the following companies into its software: Bitext, Calais, Caterva, Clarabridge Link, EpiAnalytics, Kanjoya, Klout, Kred, LeadSift, Lexalytics, LinguaSys, Lymbix, Metavana, OpenAmplify, PeekAnalytics, Rapleaf, Solariat, Soshio, The SelfService Company and Trendspottr. Customers will be able to pick and choose which features they want to incorporate into their own marketing platform and can access them from a common dashboard. “Customers are asking for deeper insight on their social media data,” said Rob Begg, VP marketing for Marketing Cloud, a Facebook inspired enterprise marketing application that Salesforce launched last month.
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Email Timing Crucial for Success: Well-Timed Emails Can Affect a Variety of Brand Goals
emarketer
As email marketing strategies grow in sophistication, with marketers looking to target specific members or portions of their lists based on recent actions or personalized offers, timing is proving itself key to stepping above the inbox clutter and boosting several brand goals. U.S. marketers told StrongMail in September that being able to ensure emails arrived during a specific time window increased engagement and their overall ability to run certain kinds of promotions that depended on timing. One-third said it also led to increased revenues, and just 9.2% claimed no benefits from being able to control email timing.
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Yahoo Quarterly Profit Beats Expectations, Street Awaits Mayer Plan
Reuters
Yahoo Inc’s quarterly earnings beat expectations, but Wall Street remains keen to hear new CEO Marissa Mayer outline her plan for reviving the struggling Web company’s revenue growth. Mayer, a former Google Inc executive who took charge at Yahoo in July, is expected to make her first public remarks about her vision for Yahoo during the company’s conference call with analysts later on Monday. Yahoo shares were up about 3 percent at $16.23 in after hours trading on Monday. “We know they’ve done a bunch of house cleaning,” said Pivotal Research analyst Brian Wieser. “Everyone’s focused on what’s in the call; what’s the orientation of the management team for the long term. The company has reset and any color they give on the call is paramount.” Excluding a $2.8 billion gain related to the sale of Alibaba Group shares, Yahoo said it earned $177 million in income from operations and adjusted net earnings of 35 cents per share in the third quarter.
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China’s Factories Losing Pricing Power in Earnings Threat
Bloomberg
Chinese factories are losing pricing power in the worst wholesale-cost deflation since 2009, signaling corporate earnings may deteriorate further and putting a damper on global inflation pressures. Steelmaker China Oriental Group Co. (581) says falling prices are wiping out profits, while Yunnan Copper Industry Co. (000878) cited the declines for a third-quarter loss. The producer price index (SHCOMP) fell 3.6 percent in September from a year earlier and may stay negative until the second half of 2013 without large stimulus, according to Mizuho Securities Asia Ltd. With the U.S. reporting the longest stretch in three years that Chinese imports have gone without a price increase, the trend also gives policy makers around the world more room for easing to support faltering global growth. Sluggish earnings growth may prompt the government to reduce corporate taxes to aid earnings and help boost spending after China’s expansion slowed for a seventh quarter.
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Top Morgan Stanley Advisers Depart
Chicago Tribune
More than $6.5 billion in client assets managed at Morgan Stanley’s U.S. brokerage may be walking out the door after two top-ranked private wealth advisers left the firm in California. Rebecca Rothstein and Palmer Murray, who departed separately this month, mark the latest defections of major rainmakers from Morgan Stanley Wealth Management, the brokerage partially owned by Citigroup. The firm has been the target of rival firms hoping to win over advisers frustrated with technology glitches and cultural clashes resulting from the merger, according to industry recruiters and advisers interviewed by Reuters. While movement of advisers in the brokerage industry is natural, very rarely do multiple advisers managing billions of dollars each in client assets leave a firm within the span of two weeks, industry experts say.
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Wal-Mart Stores Hit by Lawsuit That Alleges it Broke Overtime Laws With Temp Agency
Washington Post
Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is being slapped with a lawsuit that claims that the world’s largest retailer and its staffing agencies broke federal minimum wage and overtime laws by requiring temporary workers to appear early for work, stay late to complete work and work through lunches and breaks without compensation. According to the proposed class action suit that was filed Monday in the U.S. District Court of Illinois Eastern Division, Labor Ready and QPS, two of the staffing agencies that the discounter used in the Chicago area, failed to provide workers assigned to the Wal-Mart stores with required employment information. The suit also claims that Wal-Mart itself failed to keep accurate records of workers’ time. That has made it difficult for workers to make claims that they were not paid by the temporary agencies for all hours worked.
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Why Has Corporate Social Responsibility Stalled?
Forbes
CSR has come a long way in a very short time. But while CSR remains a high priority, social performance has been lackluster and corporate leaders want to know how to increase the value of their investments in this area. In this context, it’s no surprise that Fast Forward is the theme of Business for Social Responsibility’s 20th Annual Conference that takes place in New York this week. I had the opportunity to speak with Aron Cramer, President and CEO of BSR, about some of the challenges and opportunities that corporations face in this area. Here’s an edited summary of a long conversation I had with Aron about the state of CSR today: …
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TargetSpot Releases Industry’s First Report on Attitudes Towards Digital Audio Advertising
All Access
TargetSpot has released the results of its “Attitudes Towards Digital Audio Advertising” study. Conducted by Parks Associates, this report unveils key new insights about what drives response and engagement in Digital Audio advertising. Key findings include the importance of perceived value to the listener, proper targeting and customized messaging in order to maximize impact. The study writes, “Digital audio listeners already derive additional value from their listening experience through the interactive elements that the medium provides. The same expectation applies to Digital Audio advertising: the majority of listeners don’t mind ads if they think they will receive something in return. 59% of digital audio listeners like to get coupons, special offers or discounts; 55% don’t mind ads as long as they have free access to favorite stations, and 37 % are willing to ‘like’ an ad in order to receive discounts or special promotions for the product/service.”
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Did The Daily Beast Eat Newsweek?
Ad Age Digital Next
The shutdown of the venerable print edition of Newsweek is yet another step in the long, inexorable march of all things print to digital — a familiar storyline. Except when it’s not. Many pundits will proclaim Newsweek as simply the latest in an inevitable parade of former print publications crossing over to digital-only form — following PC Magazine, Gourmet and Smart Money, to name a few. But the newsweekly faced a specific set of challenges, not the least of which came from within its own organization. “Newsweek is unique in that it was already damaged goods; it’s not the canary in the coalmine,” said Sid Holt, former managing editor of Rolling Stone and CEO of the American Society of Magazine Editors. In fact, for Newsweek, the past decade has been all about a decline in subscribers, down to 1.5 million from 3.1 million in 2007, and a falloff in advertising.
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Adobe Online Ad Report: Google CPCs Decline 10% As Facebook Brand Engagement Surges 896%; iOS’ Conversion Rates ~2X Android’s
TechCrunch
The latest Adobe Digital Index report into online advertising for Q3 underscores the twin challenges facing Google’s ad business: mobile and social. While search advertising maintained steady growth in the U.S., U.K. and Germany, the report notes that a rise in traffic across mobile devices shifted search spending onto tablets and smartphones, thereby decreasing cost per click rates – especially for Google. Google CPCs decreased by 10 percent year over year, according to the report (mobile clicks command less expensive CPCs). The report notes that conversion rates by mobile operating system are becoming increasingly important due to continued growth in mobile search traffic – and underlines another pain point for Google:
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