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NBA Whiners and Winners: PR Lessons from Dwight Howard’s “Indecision”
Public Relations… By Chris Navalta, Senior Account Executive, Graham & Associates
The year-plus-long drama that was the Dwight Howard “Indecision” was a headache for everyone involved – including Howard himself. Superstar players such as Dwight Howard are considered one-man institutions. But unlike actual institutions, doing PR for NBA players is more challenging because players only answer to themselves when managing their brand. Dwight was 23 years old when he reached his first NBA Finals in 2009, a remarkable feat for a player that young.
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Death by PowerPoint? All Presentations Would Benefit from Higher Communication Standards
Corporate Communications… By Eric Bergman, BPA, ABC, APR, MC, Author, “Five Steps to Conquer ‘Death by PowerPoint’”
According to some estimates, between thirty and forty million PowerPoint presentations are created each day. But, of those millions of presentations, how many are effective? How many provide value by, as a bare minimum, making good use of the audience’s time?
These are interesting questions that need to be asked more often, especially by public relations and communication professionals.
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Shouldn’t They Know Better? Former Deloitte Partner Pleads Guilty to Insider Trading
IR Therefore I Am… By Gene Marbach, SVP, Makovsky+Co.
The SEC recently announced Thomas P. Flanagan, a former Deloitte and Touche LLP partner, pleaded guilty to one count of criminal securities fraud for engaging in insider trading after he obtained material, nonpublic information about several Deloitte clients. Flanagan, 64, of Chicago, used that information himself and shared it with a relative to make illegal trading profits. The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Illinois filed criminal charges against Flanagan on July 11, 2012 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois.
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Brand & Marketing: Is Your Sustainability Message…Well…Boring?
By Guy Champniss for CSRwire for the Corporate Social Responsibility Channel
I am not sure the dots are being connected. In fact, I think there are more dots being added (rather than lines between them) – and they’re being added farther and farther apart. I’m talking about the link between sustainability and CSR, and the marketing and brand teams. At a structural level, new research by GlobeScan and BSR highlights how little contact brand and marketing teams have with the CSR and sustainability folks in large businesses.
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PR Crisis: Flo Suddenly a Problem for Progressive in Its Social-Media Crisis
ADWEEK
Progressive Insurance is surely longing for the days when the Internet’s most pressing question about its spokeswoman Flo was whether she is hot or not. Matt Fisher’s devastating Tumblr post about the death of his sister, a Progressive customer, in a car accident – and his claim, though the company denies it, that it defended her killer in court in an effort not to pay out the benefit on her policy – have left Flo completely out of her depth. It’s true of any bright, bubbly mascot when its owner does something insidious. They suddenly look clownish and insipid. (Had Geico been the offending party, the gecko would be swiftly fed through the lizard grinder.) And it’s worse with Flo, who was already seen by many, with her too-happy demeanor and plastic sheen, as somewhat creepy. Progressive understands Flo is now a liability, at least for now, though the company was way too slow to replace her avatar with the corporate logo on its main Twitter account – leaving Flo to smile maddeningly as she robo-spammed canned responses at people who had read Fisher’s story and were horrified ….
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Fleishman-Hillard Appoints Betsy Neville Senior Partner and Co-Chair of National Corporate Reputation Practice
MarketWatch
Fleishman-Hillard International Communications has added significant firepower to its corporate reputation practice and senior leadership team with the appointment of Betsy Neville as senior partner and co-chair of the firm’s national corporate reputation practice. Neville joins Marjorie Benzkofer as co-chair of the corporate reputation team. The two will collaborate on all aspects of practice development, management and client service. Neville will be based in New York and report to Robert Dowling, president of the firm’s East region. Neville joins Fleishman-Hillard from FTI Consulting, where she was senior managing director and corporate communications practice leader for the Americas. Previously, Neville was general manager of the Chicago office of Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide and operated her own firm, the Neville Group …
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Google Gives Email Marketing Campaigns a Boost
Business 2 Community
It was announced last week that as a pilot scheme Google will be adding related messages in Gmail accounts to the search results. Now you may think that this isn’t overly impressive for a company that has some of the sharpest minds on the planet working for them but it is and here is why. For years marketers have been insisting that the best way to support a business online is to “build a list”. Building a list means capturing the name and email address of users by offering a free giveaway, delivering that freebie offer and then marketing to those individuals through a well structured and thought out email marketing campaign. One of the setbacks with this system is that once your email has been sent, if the reader misses that email or doesn’t open it then you have missed out on influencing that buyer’s decision and that email will never be seen again. Now with Google’s new search feature, when a Gmail user requests a search on Google they are presented with a box in the top right of the screen, if you expand the box you get all Gmail results in your inbox that relate to your search criteria. This means that your email has another opportunity to get acted upon …
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Mobile Advertising to Triple by 2016 Says Yankee Group
Mobile Marketing Watch
Add another reputable study to the pile of optimistic reports heralding a huge future for the growth of mobile advertising. On Tuesday, Yankee Group published “Mobile Advertising Forecast 2012: Marketing Steps Through the Looking-Glass,” which showcases how and why mobile advertising is finally hitting its stride. The firm estimates that global mobile advertising revenue will expand by three and a half times its present level by 2016. Mobile advertising is exploding in new geographies, the report reads, pointing to so-called “high-growth markets” like Brazil, India and China as places that will drive the increase. Yankee Group identifies mobility as the primary catalyst for disruptive change, and advertising is a prime example,” said Jason Armitage, Yankee Group principal analyst and author of the report. “Marketers approached this platform initially as an extension of online, but that approach is no longer sustainable for a platform topping 6 billion subscriptions …
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SEC Was Looking at Knight in Midst of Errant Trade
Fox Business
The SEC was in the middle of an examination of Knight Capital’s risk-management systems just as the firm’s now-infamous trading error sparked a massive loss that nearly sunk the trading house, the FOX Business Network has learned. The previously undisclosed news that the SEC had already begun to look at Knight’s risk management procedures — and could have pointed out its possible shortcoming before the trading error — adds a new twist to the unfolding story. The examination involved Knight’s compliance with the SEC’s relatively new “Market Access” rule, implemented in the wake of the so-called flash crash of 2010, where the Dow Jones Industrial Average in a matter of minutes fell around 1,000 points, only to recover much of those losses soon after …
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IROs on the Go: Novatek Hires Former Rosneft Investor Relations Head Palivoda
Bloomberg
OAO Novatek, Russia’s second-largest natural-gas producer, hired Alexander Palivoda, the former head of investor relations at state-run oil producer OAO Rosneft. (ROSN) We have hired a new IR person,” Mark Gyetvay, Novatek chief financial officer, said on a conference call. “His starting day was today.” Rosneft’s press service wasn’t available for comment when contacted by Bloomberg News …
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CSR News: Can We Really Trust Today’s Businesses?
BusinessWeek
Companies that behave well cannot always be trusted–at least not until you know more about their corporate culture. Some set up elaborate websites to showcase their ethics and broader commitments to society and the environment. Others participate in the UN Global Compact, publish sustainability reports, implement complex and detailed sustainability scorecards or adopt far-reaching mission statements. Most are undertaking numerous corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives including carbon, energy and water management and community involvement. So, why not trust them? Well, actions alone are simply not enough. In times of economic crisis these initiatives are often dropped or cut back; a sign of fickle commitment. There is also a major lack of understanding by the companies regarding the true impact of their “socially responsible” activities on themselves and on others. Indeed, often they mindlessly follow the latest sustainability trends simply because others do as well. As a result, plenty of these initiatives soon fail …
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Contest Is Still King: How Traditional PR Is Like HBO’s “True Blood”
Business 2 Community
Today, there are two types of PR and then there’s a whole bunch of stuff in between: 1. Proactive public relations, which has an inbound marketing strategy at its core and includes a strong content creation program and social media strategy including news releases, timely story pitches and media alerts for media-friendly events. 2. Reactive public relations, which includes managing your reputation and responding to what’s being said about you, your medical practice (or any type of business for that matter) and your specialty across the internet and in the real world. Why your business needs to be proactive: – 84% of all marketers agree that building consumer trust will become marketing’s primary objective in the near future. – More than 92% of buyers regularly check reviews online before making a purchase or service decision. Similarly, a recent study by Hubspot says that businesses that practice inbound marketing (where customers find you and CONTENT IS KING) increase leads an average of 4.2 times within a few months …
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Study to Focus on Political Advertising and Latinos
CNN.com
Latinos are being targeted by both campaigns for their vote this November, but are the candidates targeting them in the most effective way? The United States Hispanic Chamber of Commerce and the Kantar Media/Campaign Media and Analysis Group launched a project on Tuesday, ‘Speak Our Language: Spanish Political Media,’ to “seek to ensure that political candidates prioritize Spanish language political campaign advertising in a manner that is proportionate to how critical the Hispanic vote is to so many races across the country during the cycle.” The new project will “track and analyze Spanish language ad spending through the election.” They also plan to point out political organizations that ignore Spanish media outlets. Palomarez highlighted that Latinos consume Spanish language television, radio, print, and online outlets, as oppose to English networks …
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Rebranding News: Domino’s Revamping Stores, Drops ‘Pizza’ From Logo
Ad Age Digital Next
In a move that signals changing consumer behavior, Domino’s is revamping its logo and its stores to appeal more to the increasing number of consumers picking up their pizzas. Russell Weiner, Domino’s chief marketing officer, said that Domino’s pick-up business has been increasing in recent years, now accounting for about 30% or its sales. Just a few years ago, he said, 80% to 90% of the chain’s business was delivery. And since so many more costumers are opting for pick-up, “we want to be a place that people feel comfortable in,” said Mr. Weiner. Domino’s stores “are not the most welcoming.” He added that the store and logo redesign are the next step in the chain’s ongoing effort to revamp its business …
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