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GM’s CMO Out: Don’t Blame the Sponsorship
Marketing… By Andy Abramson, Comunicano
Some say ousted GM CMO Joe Ewanick departed over the difference in price paid by GM for a seven year, $559 million dollar sponsorship of fabled UK football (soccer) team, Manchester United, that compared the USA based global automaker’s spend to that of global insurance and benefits underwriter, AON. But that comparison may not be exactly fair as sponsorship benefits, terms and finances are more than about simply a logo across the chest of some of a sport’s most heralded players and team.
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Revisiting the Chick-fil-A and Chapstick Incidents: The Ethics of Transparency and Authenticity in Social Media
Marketing… By Ric Dragon, CEO, Dragon Search Marketing
After eight members of the Chicago White Sox baseball team were found guilty of throwing the 1919 World Series, Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis banned them from professional baseball for life. Landis went further and exacted the same punishment for two other players only implicated in the scandal. It was Landis’s mission to clean-up baseball – to renew the public’s confidence and trust in America’s favorite game. He was repairing the image of the game.
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First Steroids, Now Insider Trading: New Charges in Insider Trading Case Include Former CEO and Professional Baseball Player
IR Therefore I Am… By Gene Marbach, SVP, Makovsky+Co.
The SEC recently announced a second round of charges in an insider trading case involving former professional baseball players and the former top executive at a California-based medical eye products company that was the subject of the illegal trading. The SEC brought initial charges in the case last year, accusing former professional baseball player Doug DeCinces and three others of insider trading on confidential information ahead of an acquisition of Advanced Medical Optics Inc.
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Lesson From Miley Cyrus: PR Can Get Hairy
By Critical Mention for the Critical Now Channel
The Critical Mention team has been busy demonstrating our new AllMedia platform to harried PR pros desperate for relief from the news alert overload that’s been eating into their August beach time. The ability of AllMedia to make sense of incredibly high volumes of content became very clear last Monday when Miley Cyrus had a bad hair day. We had been tracking issues relating to the American Cancer Society when all of a sudden there was a big red spike indicating negative-toned stories in social. Coverage on TV, news sites and other channels remained constant, but the social platforms had exploded with comments about the new pixie hair style being sported by the 19-year-old.
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White Paper: “The Dawn of Agile Engagement”
By PR Newswire for the Agile Engagement Channel
In an era of constant, multimedia content streaming back and forth between brands and their audiences, PR and marketing professionals must be constantly listening, creating, curating, targeting, distributing and engaging in order to truly resonate with these audiences and rise above a cluttered landscape. We call this emerging real-time communications phenomenon agile engagement.
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4 Reasons Why Transparency Remains a Dirty Word in Business
By CSRwire for the Corporate Social Responsibility Channel
Whether it is the Saad and Gosaibi case shrouded in layers upon layers of useless and expensive secrecy or the real numbers of health and safety accidents, countries in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) are not particularly well known for prioritizing transparency. Even though more and more companies are striving to be open about their practices as governments take steps to push them in the right direction, public disclosure is still seen as an unnecessary and cumbersome practice among corporate corridors.
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How We Connect: Retail Internet Marketing
By ZOG Digital for the Digital Visibility Channel
Each industry has unique digital marketing needs; and within each industry we see common problems, and the digital marketing solutions to correct them. The following slides address common disconnects, or problems in the eTail industry, as well as the internet marketing solutions that help solve common industry ailments. What other problems does your retail brand struggle with?
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Content Is PR’s Future: Fleishman Hillard and GMR Marketing Acquire Content Company
New York Times
Fleishman Hillard, a public relations company, and GMR Marketing announced on Tuesday that they have acquired Amos Content Group to create a new joint venture called Freshwire. Freshwire will be tasked with creating editorial-like content for brands, including videos, blogs, slideshows and more. “Its almost axiomatic today that every company needs to be a media company,” said Dave Senay, the president and chief executive of Fleishman Hillard. The acquisition of Amos is estimated to have cost between $5 and $10 million. Fleishman Hillard and GMR Marketing are both part of the Omnicom Group. The Amos Content Group was created in 2009 with a staff made up largely of freelance writers, editors, photographers and producers who produced content for Web sites, social media and traditional media. Shawn Amos, CEO of Amos Content Group, will stay on as chief exec of Freshwire. “The way to create PR in this day and age is to create content that’s relevant to the consumer,” Mr. Amos said …
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Top PR Man Tied to Troubled Fundraiser
PRNewser
Staten Island State Representative Michael Grimm has a big PR problem on his hands – and it’s threatening to extend to some well-known faces within the industry itself. The big news: On Friday, federal authorities arrested Israeli national Ofer Biton, who happens to be one of Grimm’s top fundraisers, and charged him with immigration fraud. Biton was a top aide to Upper East Side rabbi Yoshiyahu Yosef Pinto until 2010, and investigators “have been investigating the possibility” that he was responsible for the disappearance of up to $6 million originally belonging to members of Pinto’s yeshiva. Biton solicited a good deal of cash from this crowd in support of State Rep. Grimm, and the rabbi’s followers believe that he also pocketed millions of dollars meant to go to politicians and related charities. Biton has even been accused of leaking negative stories about Pinto to reporters and then using the bad press to blackmail him into hiring a professional representative. The big PR name in this sundry tale is that of Ronn Torossian …
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Apple And Samsung Bring Their Marketing Strategies to Court
TechCrunch
Apple and Samsung presented their closing arguments yesterday in one of the biggest U.S. tech trials in history. As the ball heads over to the jury’s court, it has become painfully obvious over this past month just how complex this case is. The case involves more than a dozen different patents, more than 30 allegedly infringing devices, claims of all shapes and sizes (utility, design, trade dress, and standards essentials), and that’s just the beginning. Both sides are arguing their cases (and defending themselves) concurrently, and each have done their part to either submerge evidence or slip some to the press, all the while infuriating federal judge Lucy Koh. Yet the nine relatively non-tech savvy jurors, including a social worker, an unemployed video-game enthusiast, and an electrical engineer, will decide the fate of the two of the biggest electronics makers in the world. It’s a lot of information to take in, and more importantly, understand, even for the most technical among us …
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Verizon Source May Have Leaked New iPhone Release Date
Mobile Marketing Watch
The hottest rumor in mobile today is that Apple may release it’s new 6th generation iPhone to retail stores and carrier partners during the third week of September. A trusted source speaking with Tech Crunch indicates that Verizon has begun restricting employee vacations during the release date time-frame in question. The next iPhone, whether it’s called the iPhone 5 or simply the new iPhone, will almost certainly be available in stores (with lines wrapping around the back of them) starting Friday, September 21. Based on the rumor floating around the blogosphere today, the carrier is prohibiting employee vacation days between September 21 and September 30th. As of this writing, current plans–according to sources in the Apple supply chain–call for Apple to formally unveil the iPhone 5 on or around September 12th …
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SEC Issues First Dodd-Frank Whistleblower Award
The Wall Street Journal
The SEC has issued the first award under a new whistleblower bounty program created by the Dodd-Frank Act. The award, for an informant who helped the SEC stop a multimillion-dollar fraud, was nearly $50,000. It represents 30% of the amount collected in an enforcement action, the maximum allowed under the law. “The whistleblower program is already becoming a success,” said Mary L. Schapiro, the SEC chairman, in a statement. “We’re seeing high-quality tips that are saving our investigators substantial time and resources.” Under the SEC bounty program, an informant can collect between 10% and 30% of a sanction of more than $1 million ordered by a court. The informant’s assistance in this case, the SEC said, led to a court ordering more than $1 million in sanctions, of which about $150,000 has thus far been collected …
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Economy: Reinhart Says Failing Fed Should Commit to Stimulus
Bloomberg
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke should assure investors next week that “he’ll do whatever it takes” to stimulate the slowing economy, said Vincent Reinhart, chief U.S. economist at Morgan Stanley. Bernanke should use his Aug. 31 speech at the Fed symposium in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, to expand his commitment to providing additional accommodation if needed because the central bank is falling short of its mission, Reinhart said in an interview on “Bloomberg Surveillance” with Tom Keene and Sara Eisen. “The Federal Reserve should provide a conditional commitment that says as long as it is short of its goals it is willing to expand its balance sheet,” Reinhart, a former head of the Fed board’s Division of Monetary Affairs, said today. “What you want to be is conditional, you want to be able to say as long as the economy is not performing relative to what the Congress told you to do, you’ll continue to act.” …
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Muck Rack’s New Landing Pages for Journalists Put PR Spam On Notice
Fast Company
Muck Rack, among the go-to sites for PR and journalism professionals, is unveiling a new way for journalists to customize their pages that aims to keep misguided PR pitches at bay. But will reporters use it? Media conversation-tracking website Muck Rack launched a new service yesterday: portfolio profile pages for journalists. The new pages are a big improvement over the old profile pages, which reporters had little control over and were most useful as a tweet archive. The new pages give reporters and editors the ability to curate their clips in one place, list awards, link to all their social media accounts, and stave off overly persistent PR people by listing the topics they do and don’t cover. Muck Rack’s Gregory Galant, a proponent of the “Slow PR” movement, says the site is “trying to reduce the amount of spam journalists receive and give PR pros more intelligence on who to pitch (and who not to pitch) a story to.” The new profile pages are pretty easy to update, though they could use some improvements. When a reporter adds a URL to their portfolio, Muck Rack’s tool automatically pulls in metadata like the headline, the first few paragraphs, and the image–though it sometimes chooses the wrong image …
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PR Newswire’s Meranus Is 2012 “Content Marketer of the Year” Finalist
MarketWatch
Rachel Meranus, PR Newswire’s Vice President of Marketing and Communications, was named one of Content Marketing Institute’s 2012 Orange Awards finalists for ‘Content Marketer of the Year.’ Meranus, who is one of five finalists in the ‘Leader’ category, is responsible for leading all of the marketing and communications initiatives at PR Newswire, which provides innovative multimedia and workflow solutions that enable communication professionals to leverage content to actively engage their audiences. The Content Marketing Orange Awards are the only awards program that recognizes individuals and companies that are dedicated to the practice of content marketing. This year’s awards garnered more than 600 total submissions from around the globe and judging was conducted by CMI staff, Chief Content Officer magazine editors, and CMI partner brand leaders. Finalists will be honored and winners announced at a gala event on September 6, 2012, as a conclusion to CMI’s Content Marketing World conference …
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Trends to Watch: Gannett Buys Social-Advertising Firm BLiNQ Media
CBS
Media company Gannett Co. said Tuesday that it has bought BLiNQ Media LLC, a company that helps businesses advertise on social networks such as Facebook. The companies did not disclose the financial terms of the deal. Like other newspaper publishers, Gannett has been trying to boost revenue from digital products. Gannett CEO Gracia Martore said that adding BLiNQ to its Digital Marketing Services division will offer businesses “a one-stop shop for all marketing needs.” Gannett, which owns USA Today and other newspapers and television stations, is based in McLean, Va. BLiNQ is based in New York and has a major office in Atlanta …
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Facebook Ad Startup Nanigans Grabs Ex-Yahoo Exec Grabowski
TechCrunch
Yahoo has been losing a lot of steam to Facebook in the advertising game, and now it’s lost one of its execs to it, too. Nanigans, the Facebook advertising company, is today announcing the appointment of a new COO, Marc Grabowski, a nine-year veteran of Yahoo and one of the first to depart after Marissa Mayer took over the CEO job. The move is an interesting one, given that Yahoo has put a lot of emphasis on the display element of its advertising business, while Nanigans is more of an ad tech company, working in the still-emerging area of social media performance advertising, analysing and optimizing data about usage and viewers to drive installs, registrations, purchases and other engagement metrics. Nanigans says current traffic its ads are around 2 billion Facebook Ad impressions daily. This appointment could be a sign of Nanigans going for more traditional formats – or Grabowski finally getting to flex some more tech/product muscle …
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