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International Investors: An Overlooked Opportunity?
Investor Relations…By Gene Marbach
Let’s see… Your annual investor relations itinerary typically consists of appearances at a number of brokerage-sponsored conferences and perhaps some sell-side supported road shows to Boston, Chicago, New York and other towns. You might hit other cities such as Minneapolis, Denver and Milwaukee. You might even schedule an analyst day… What about international markets such as London, Frankfurt, Edinburgh? Are they on your itinerary?
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PR/Communications Job Search–10 Tips for Writing a Winning Cover Letter
The Hiring Hub…By Marie Raperto, President, CIM Search
In today’s competitive job market, a business professional – especially for someone searching for a PR/communications job – a strong cover letter is a MUST. The cover letter is your first impression. It’s got to be strong. You’ve got to apply your professional skills on yourself. Step back and focus on the cover letter. Avoid the cover letter pitfalls: Cover letters are the big question when you are answering a job ad. Many people read them, many don’t.
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PR for Effective Audience Targeting
Public Relations…By David Johnson, CEO, Strategic Vision, LLC
In public relations, one of the first lessons we learn is that to deliver real results for our clients (and their bottom lines), we need to take ourselves out of the equation. The second lesson is how to convince our clients they have to do the same thing. Why? Because in most cases, neither we nor our client contacts are representative of the audience they need to reach. It’s a challenging proposition. Business owners are rightfully very passionate about their companies.
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How MasterCard Tracks and Analyzes the Internet with Real-Time Monitoring: Social Media Showcase
By PRIME Research for the PR ROI Channel
INTERVIEW WITH ANDREW BOWINS, SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT FOR CORPORATE AND EXTERNAL COMMUNICATIONS AT MASTERCARD WORLDWIDE – Editor’s note: You can catch Andrew Bowins presentation about the MasterCard Conversation Suite on November 12, 2012 at 1 p.m. at the IABC/PRIME Research Strategic Commnication and Measurement Conference at the Yale Club in New York City. To register for the conference, visit www.iabc.com/education/cm
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PRSSA Community Service Initiative 2012– UCSF Children’s Hospital
By Brian Price, PRSSA 2012-13 Vice President of Chapter Development, for the PRSA International Conference Channel
More than 1,000 college students spread coast to coast are gathering in San Francisco for the Public Relations Student Society of America 2012 National Conference. As part of the Conference, an annual community service initiative takes place. This year PRSSA members are making homemade cards to lift the spirits of pediatric and adult patients at University of California, San Francisco Benioff Children’s Hospital and Medical Center.
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2012 Holiday Email Marketing Guide: Free White Paper
By WhatCounts for the Effective Email Marketing Channel
It’s that time of year – the holiday email marketing push is on. WhatCounts is all about helping you find and grow your email marketing ROI. We recently looked at our system-wide email marketing data from Q4 2011 and pored over 343 million email messages to see if there were any useful insights we could offer to help you through the 2012 holiday season, and we were quite surprised at what we found. We’ve taken our findings and compiled them into our new 2012 Holiday Email Marketing Guide. Some of the things you’ll learn:
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PRSA Keynote Speaker Preview – June Cotte, Ph.D.
For the PRSA International Conference Channel
Inside PR and PRSA present the PRSA 2012 International Conference series. Martin Waxman, APR interviews International Conference keynote speaker June Cotte, Ph.D, associate professor at the Richard Ivey School of Business in London, Ontario and the school’s George and Mary Turnbull Fellow. Cotte studies consumer behavioral and purchase attitudes, also the subject of her presentation, ‘When Will Consumers Pay to Be Good.’ Cotte and her colleagues conduct research on socially conscious consumption including recent experiments where consumers are…
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American ‘Fail’ Lines–Where’s the PR Plan?
Slate
The good news for American Airlines is that it’s prepared to announce that by Saturday none of its 757s will have seats that come loose during flight. The bad news, obviously, is that as of last Thursday, American had to cancel 50 flights because 48 of their planes couldn’t be flown safely. The problem, it says, is that spilled sodas blocked the locking pins used on some of the seats, a flaw that can be corrected by using a different mechanism. The deeper problem for American is that seats coasting around the cabin in flight isn’t even the biggest problem it’s wrestling with this fall. American is bankrupt, and the bankruptcy proceeding-while designed to restore the airline to health-has ignited a multifront civil war pitting executives against their own employees. Things are so bad for American that the hilarious Sept. 29 New York Times op-ed by novelist Gary Shteyngart about his nightmarish experience on a trans-Atlantic American flight actually understated the case. Everyone who flies has an airline horror story or two to tell, but this fall American is demonstrably worse than the competition.
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Mike Huckabee: Media Ignoring Gas Prices
Politico
Mike Huckabee on Monday slammed the media for being “quiet” on soaring gas prices, saying that the subject was covered heavily under President George W. Bush while President Barack Obama is getting a free pass. “When George Bush was president, we heard about gas prices every time,” the former GOP presidential candidate said on Fox News’s “Fox & Friends.” “And they would take cameras to the pumps and have someone almost tearfully explaining that they were paying almost two dollars and fifty cents a gallon. It’s amazing how quiet the media has been when gas prices are double what they were when President Obama took office. They’re the highest in the country’s history.”
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PR ‘Spin’ Control?: Battle of the Presidential Polls
MSNBC
Pew poll puts Romney ahead with one month to election. To learn more about the poll ‘battle’, click the “Read More” to watch Martin Bashir’s discussion with the Guardian’s Ana Marie Cox and the Chicago Tribune’s Clarence Thomas. They discuss the mixed polling from Gallup and Pew Research that alternately place President Obama and Mitt Romney in the lead – and whether this means that “Romney’s strategy of deception is working. “
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The Great Social Media Marketing Debate
IT Web
It’s difficult these days to turn the corner without tripping over a social media maven, rock star or guru. Given the propensity for claiming these self-appointed and aggrandising monikers, how do you know your Jedi is ‘one with the Force’, and isn’t using mind tricks to lead you down the Dark path? “Unfortunately, in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king,” quips Mike Berry, an international marketing specialist and lead adjunct professor on The Master of Digital Marketing degree at Hult International Business School, in London. “The jury is still out on social media as a marketing platform; these are still early days in social media, and some experts have doubts over the long-term value. It’s not surprising, then, that even big companies don’t know how to spend their social media budgets.” If this is the view of a marketing expert with decades’ of experience in the field, what chance do non-Jedi business executives have of forging a path in social media?
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Tech Marketing Budget Growth Slows in Uncertain Economy, Study Reveals
BtoB Magazine
Challenged by a still-uncertain economy, technology companies are increasing their marketing budgets by a cautious 1.7% this year, according to the “2012 CMO Tech Marketing Benchmark Study” from International Data Corp. IDC’s 10th annual forecast, released to clients Sept. 25, was based on a survey of 91 senior marketers at technology companies, conducted between May and August. The marketers who participated in the survey work at tech companies with an average revenue of $7.5 billion. “Marketers continue to try to get the funding they need in a slow-growth industry against a backdrop of uncertainty,” …
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Angry Birds Star Wars and the Evolution of the App Market
BGR
Rovio has picked up the pace of its game launches – Angry Birds Star Wars is the third major Rovio title to debut in seven months. And unlike most of its rivals, Rovio is not focused on maximizing game revenue. It’s after merchandising opportunities. Three years ago, most app vendors had a simple goal: maximize the download number of apps priced at $1 or $2. In 2011, the number of free apps soared as some companies figured out that giving away apps and then luring consumers into paying for in-app purchases can generate more revenue. As a result, 80% of the ten top-grossing iPhone apps in America are now free – and 85% of the Top Twenty. Top-grossing games like Rage of Bahamut offer a wide spectrum of in-app purchases ranging from $0.99 to $99.99.
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Symantec: Russian Criminals Sell Web ‘Proxy’ With Backdoors
CNET
A black hat Russian operation has served malware to hundreds of thousands of users a year who thought they were signing up for a paid proxy service, Symantec said today. The security company said in a blog post that it has linked the malware to a cluster of Russian Web sites — including one called Proxybox.name — that claim to provide proxy access, VPN services, and antivirus scanning. Proxybox.name requires users to download what it calls “functional, simple, and convenient” proxy software. Vikram Thakur, principal manager at Symantec Security Response, told CNET this afternoon that: …
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5 Stocks To Be Careful With Going Into Earnings
Seeking Alpha
Yes, earnings season is upon us. We get to see how companies are really doing, not counting on central banks to print more money, or governments to throw more stimulus at us to get markets to rally. We’re looking at revenues, earnings, forecasts, and true company health. For those that have read my articles over time, you know that each quarter I do a segment called “stocks to be careful with going into earnings.” Originally, the segment was focused on stocks to not be long through earnings. The segment has evolved, adding stocks to not be short through earnings, along with possible trades for these names when they report. I also will include stocks to just plain avoid at certain times. But there is one important point, or disclaimer, I must make. Just because I say be careful with a stock going into earnings, doesn’t necessarily mean that longs (and shorts potentially as well) should exit their positions before earnings. It simply means that there are certain items you need to think about before deciding on what position to hold (or not) going into the report.
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Stocks Fall Before Earnings as Euro, Commodities Retreat
BusinessWeek
Stocks (SPX), commodities and the euro fell as concern about U.S. corporate profits grew and European finance ministers met to discuss the region’s debt crisis. The yen rose and Chinese shares slid as the World Bank forecast slowing growth in East Asia. The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index lost 0.3 percent to 1,455.88 at 4 p.m. in New York and the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell from an almost five-year high. The euro weakened against 12 of 16 major peers and the yen gained versus all 16, while the rand dropped to the lowest since April 2009. China’s yuan touched the highest level since 1993, while the Shanghai Composite Index (SHCOMP) slipped on the first trading day after a week’s holiday. Zinc, gasoline and silver led commodities lower.
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Corporate Social Responsibility: Are We There Yet?
Non Profit Quarterly
Stories from the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) are getting great circulation in corporate social responsibility circles, including the recently concluded Social Capital Markets (SOCAP) conference in San Francisco. President Clinton’s philanthropic initiatives have embraced markets and businesses and, consequently, the people who were given the dais at the CGI conference get an added measure of notice and respect in mainstream circles. Social capitalists imagine a corporate world where the return motivations of capitalists change through experience, education, self-regulation, and a different mix of motivations and incentives that would make them more socially responsible. Scott Medintz covered the CGI panel discussion that examined how to deal with the fact that “the profit motive is sometimes at odds with the broader interests of society at large.” Such language underemphasizes that many of the world’s problems-try the recent economic crisis-were created by profit-seeking, profit-maximizing entities. “Can Companies Be Good and Do Well?” Medintz’s headline asks. It’s not a new question but the answer-that “private enterprises…must be parts of the solutions” to social and economic problems-has, according to Medintz, garnered agreement to the extent of “something approaching unanimity.”
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Employee Recognition: 5 Keys from Taj Hotels Resorts
Forbes
Employee recognition-making people feel appreciated-is one of the key activators of employee engagement. In fact, in my book Employee Engagement 2.0 I show how recognition is a top three creator of Workplace Superheroes, along with the drivers Growth and Trust. Many best practices for recognition can be gleaned from a company that many in the west are unfamiliar with, Taj Hotels Resorts and Palaces, which operates 93 luxury hotels across India and 16 other hotels in other parts of the world. Even with so many locations, and over 13,000 employees, the Taj still continues to deliver unprecedented levels of service to its guests. An interesting article in Harvard Business Review, The Ordinary Heroes of the Taj, links the Taj’s employee service training to their heroic performance during more than one terrorist incident. Although linking service and rewards practices to performance during crisis seems a bit specious, the article does give a glimpse of just how Taj Hotels makes their employees feel appreciated.
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Digital Place-based Media Revenue Growth Rate was Six Times That of Total Measured Ad Spending for First Half of 2012
Herald Online
The Digital Place-based Advertising Association (DPAA) announced today that the growth rate for the industry sector was six times that of total measured ad spending, according to data from Miller, Kaplan, Arase and Kantar Media. Miller, Kaplan, Arase reported that digital place-based (DPb) media grew by 11.8% from Jan-June 2012 over the same period last year, while Kantar Media data revealed that total measured media for the same period increased by 1.9%. “The growth in the sector continues apace with strong momentum,” said Susan Danaher, president & CEO, DPAA. “In 2011, PQ Media reported that DPb as a sector grew 13.2% versus the prior year.
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YouTube Doubles Down on Content Experiment With 60 More ‘Channels’
Ad Age Digital Next
Those first 100 YouTube Originals? Those were just a start. In March, YouTube global head of content Robert Kyncl told us to expect more investment; today, Google has announced that 60 more original channels are coming, backed by a fresh $200 million investment by YouTube. Unlike the first 100, the new round is focused more on foreign TV formats and properties, but it also includes some additional channels from current partners such as Vice and Everyday Health. The new round of investment is another vote of confidence in the strategy led by Mr. Kyncl, who said 25 of the first 100 originals now average 1 million views a week. That’s small by YouTube and certainly by TV standards, but a decent start for brand-new properties on a dial as crowded as YouTube, where thousands of “channels” and series compete for attention.
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