Day: May 16, 2003

The New York Times has an article on how George W. Bush’s handlers are promoting his presidency.

The UK Observer looks at how corporate speak can be counter productive. They use this quote by way of illustration: “The solutions uniquely offered us the integrated planning, robust supply chain optimisation and execution capabilities needed to support our store level, integrated planning and replenishment initiative.” Thanks to the wonders of the Internet we can reveal that the offending party is none other than Manugistics in a press release last February 🙂

A new biotech magazine, the Acumen Journal of Sciences, has been created by some of the Red Herring alumni. Jason Pontin, former editor of Red Herring is heading up the new magazine.  His aim: “I don’t ever want to create a magazine that becomes so dependent on advertising and rising circulation, like the Red Herring was.”

Kudos to Biz360 a software company that offers data analytics to PR professionals, and their PR firm Spark PR. They have managed to secure a gushing article in Business 2.0.

In related news, I had read somewhere that ECCO, a global network of PR firms has announced an initiative for new PR measurement techniques, but there’s nothing on their website.

Johnny Angel, the West coast editor of the ever excellent Technology Marketing has linked to PR Opinions. He starts out pondering the nature of blog link referral, so in the true spirit of link referral, I’m returning the favor. He posts that “Murphy seeks to defend the plight of the poor misunderstood PR person. And you know what? They are misunderstood.” Amen to that.

When I try and explain to the uninitiated how PR in different industries can often be a different profession with different requirements, people don’t understand.  But I have found a great illustration of the differences.

Working in the murky depths of business-to-business PR in the Technology industry, I will probably never have to deal with my CEO getting upset about the size of his head! I don’t want to tempt fate, but I doubt it will be an issue.

Spare a thought for Steven Huvane, Jennifer Aniston’s publicist who according to Media Life is fighting the good fight with Redbook magazine.  The magazine has printed Aniston on it’s cover and Huvane claims that the photo has been doctored and Aniston is questioning whether the body parts in question are her’s at all.

The magazine admits to changing the color of her shirt and lengthening her hair, but that’s all.

You know feature tracking isn’t that bad after all.

Flush from the furore around Microsoft’s iLoo problems, another technology company is having real reputation problems.  But in this case these problems could be terminal.

SCO (the company formerly known as Caldera) has recently been doing it’s very best to alienate itself from every software vendor bar Microsoft.

First off, the company initiated a lawsuit against IBM. Now they are threatening to sue anyone selling, developing or using Linux, the popular open-source operating system. 

Whatever the merits of SCO’s case, and many observers think it’s dubious to say the least, one thing is clear.  SCO’s unilateral action against the industry is seriously damaging their reputation.

Based on how SCO is handling this issue, it would appear that are listening to  their legal team’s advice and not taking the counsel of their Public Relations folks.

Even if SCO were to win these cases, do they think it will help their future customer acquisition plans?

The software industry has a problem with any corporation that is perceived to be acting in a heavy handed manner, and SCO, by threatening the world at large is being as heavy handed as possible.

Regardless of the merits of their case, from a PR perspective they are harming no one but themselves.

I’ll leave the last words to Dan Gillmor…. “It’s amazing to watch the speed with which SCO is turning itself into the most hated company in the technology business. The company’s claims that its “proprietary” property has been stolen are, on their face, questionable. But the way SCO is now threatening all Linux users goes far beyond any reasonable approach to the supposed problem.”

RELATED LINKS: Computerworld | Information Week | The Register | Linux Journal