Month: January 2003

Welcome to a new week. To kick off, here’s a professional dilemma.

You work in an agency, you have a long standing client, very run-of-the-mill, a relatively small business but profitable business. They’ve been a happy client for a long time – and you’re happy to have them as a client.

However, one day all hell breaks loose. The owners are arrested on child pornography charges. As their PR consultant they turn to you for support. PR support. You find out the charges are correct, your client is guilty. Do you persevere or do you walk away?

What do you do? This mirrors a recent case where the PR in question did defend their client in the court of public perception, I’m don’t think I would.

What about you?

This is according to the Patrick Marketing Group’s study on Marketers’ Outlook for 2003.

Based on responses from 400 marketers across a wide range of industries during December, the study finds that:
1) Generating leads is the #1 priority for Marketing in 2003
2) The biggest trend affecting Marketing is lower budgets (closely followed by Internet Marketing)
3) The major Marketing-related challenge is the poor economy
4) And responsdents feel PR is the most effective tool for branding (closely followed by print advertising)

What are your biggest challenges for 2003? Let me know…

MarketingSherpa interviews the new Editor-in-Chief at Inc Magazine John Koten who has some interesting views on what makes a good press room and some tips on pitching stories to Inc.

Some firms are getting a benefit from the downturn. According to the Denver Business Journal, the harsh economic climate has forced local companies to move their PR and Advertising accounts from firms in Chicago, Los Angeles and New York to local firms who can provide better value and better service through proximity.

“People no longer have as much time as they had before because they have smaller budgets,” Jane Dvorak CEO of the Denver-based JKD and Co. Inc. public relations firm said. “The reality is that things can almost always be done locally. It’s just a matter of time and cost.”

It’s been a bad couple of months for political PR people caught giving and taking bribes. In Bridgeport Connecticut, Leonard Grimaldi, a public relations consultant testified that he has provided Mayor Jospeh P. Ganim with “cash, fine wines, expensive clothing, meals at upscale restaurants, massages and fitness equipment” and in return Ganim would push contracts to Gimaldi’s clients.

Meanwhile over the past few months in Ireland, former government PR, Frank Dunlop has been testifying how he handed over cash in return for favorable planning applications.

Not good, not good at all…

Brendan O’Neill has an excellent piece on Spiked about how blogs are not going to change the face of journalism. It’s a well written piece and makes very valid points.

I don’t believe that blogs will change the entire media business, they are rather another piece of the jig-saw – not the whole picture…. Blogs are another line in our to-do lists…so to speak.

Having said that, certain blogs provide widspread exposure to online users and they need to be monitored and targeted by practitioners. Interesting to see that Jupiter Research now has blogs from its analysts online.

Thanks to Richard Bailey for the link to an interesting article in the Financial Times about how journalists have got on after jumping ship to the world of PR… of course it hasn’t all been plain sailing…

Phil Gomes is back among us… The Inlumient weblog has a link to a Publicity Primer

It’s clear that the Internet is maturing (thank God). In the aftermath of the hyped dot.bomb ‘entrepreneurs’ and their over the top visions of a world where no one gets dressed, but instead just surfs from their bedroom we have a global infrastructure which is currently connecting over 500 million users.

Now it’s all settled down, how is the Internet affecting journalism? Well just as radio didn’t kill print and TV didn’t kill radio, Internet is taking it’s place alongside the other traditional media outlets – but with a difference. The Internet is allowing journalists to become more interactive.

Without doubt Dan Gillmor at the San Jose Mercury News is the leading thinker on how the Internet is changing his profession. His latest installment “Here comes we media” is published in this month’s Columbia Journalism Review.

Have a read and have a think as to how PR fits in this new media landscape.

We all know that there is very little free PR-related content on the Web (yes I know I’m cheap) as many of the best sources have moved to a subscription model – and good luck to them.

So it’s great to find a regular rich source of PR opinions (sic).

Mediamap the online media database firm, through their ExpertPR site consistently publish well-written PR opinions pieces every month. And this month is no exception.

First up, the folks at Birnbach communications provide some predictions for 2003 across a wide range of areas including the economy, security, healthcare and the media amongst others

The guys at RLM PR provide a wry view of the off-beat news during 2002. My favorite quote from their article is from a spokesperson at Nintendo:
�Computer games don’t affect kids; I mean if Pac-Man affected us as kids, we’d all be running around in darkened rooms, munching magic pills and listening to repetitive electronic music.�

Meanwhile, Claudia Sawyer takes a look at what happened to the newspaper business in 2002 – not a pleasant sight!

Sue Duris at M4 communications gives some tips on building successful media relations plans

And finally, Mediamap include a very interesting range of views on 2002 and a host of predictions on what’s going to happen to PR in 2003 from some of your PR brethren.

In the spirit of not asking what your industry can do for you, etc. etc. why not get in touch with Mediamap and offer some of your own opinions – you know you want to!

Research from Grady College at the University of Georgia suggests that the common assumption that PR people are better paid than their media brethern may be misplaced.

Their study looks at what graduates are doing, how happy they are with their career choice and also graphs the salaries of 2001 graduates across PR, Television, daily newspapers, magazines etc.

Warning: If like me you remember back to how much you started on, this survey might upset you 🙂