In what is becoming something of a common industry practice, another unauthorized press release hit the wires.
Hill & Knowlton erroneously sent out a press release announcing a financial transaction by their client NextWave Telecom on August 1. H&K were right on it and had a follow-up statement out the same day.
The approved release hit the wires last week.
Richard Bailey the UK’s PR blogging impressario and now full-time lecturer has kicked off a new PR blog for Leeds Metropolitan University.
Up2Speed has an interesting post asking who the new media influencers are. In particular who the major technology influencers are.
I think weblogs are creating a new generation of influencers, but at the risk of sounding pass�I think existing media influencers continue to be vital. I would look at the new bloggers as an addition to your existing list, not a replacement. Good writing and innovative thinking is unique, it doesn’t depend on the medium.
OK, OK, I know I said I’d leave Lizzie Grubman alone. But where there’s good content, slow Summer news flow and a post to be filled, well sometimes you have to relent.
Now clearly Lizzie Grubman is good at what she does, otherwise she wouldn’t have a successful thriving bi-coastal PR agency. That’s a fact gentle reader. I don’t know anything about society or fashion PR, so I can’t critique her work. But she knows her stuff.
I posted previously how Lizzie was booked to give a three hour talk on PR. For $49 that had to be a gimme for anyone in NYC.
However while she may be a successful PR, it seems she missed the point about what attendees paying good money for a session on “an expert in-depth look at what is takes to launch and maintain a sucessful PR career” would be looking for. Seminars usually involve skills and knowledge transfer. You pay money to hear an expert and learn. Errrr, not in a seminar with Lizzie apparently. You don’t even get her side of the SUV incident, don’t mind tips on launching a new restaurant. Her response to any specific PR questions was: “I’m not giving away my secrets unless you hire me.”
Salon’s Lynn Harris has a very entertaining review of Lizzie’s seminar.
Meanwhile, Sheryl McCarthy, writing for Newsday, bemoans the amount of press inches (and pixels) Lizzie is getting. Not only is she still successfully running her PR firm, but she’s now landed a radio job at WNEW-FM.
Sheryl finishes with this:
“Let’s all remember the Lizzie Grubman story every time we’re tempted to lecture some young minority kids about accepting affirmative action – because they will feel so much better about themselves if they achieve success based on their own hard work and merit. It seems one can either do it the hard way, or if one is fortunate enough to be born rich – and not have to work too hard – one can do it the Lizzie Grubman way.”
As we begin to pitch more blogs the differences between them and our traditional media mix becomes more apparent. I’ve started to see PR pitch critiques appearing, where bloggers analyse pitches they’ve been sent.
Now of course this is a double edge sword. On the one hand, by seeing the feedback these pitches get you can hone your own skills, however on the other hand what if it’s you pitch they critique?
Connors Communications pitched Aaron Bailey over at 601am on behalf of Vonage. Here’s the critique.
I think the takeaway here is that anything you put in an e-mail is in the public domain (that’s always been the case of course), make sure it’s well written and relevant and finally think about the media. Weblogs are about online content, in other words, links!
Meanwhile Anne Holland discusses a PR pitch she got on behalf of Patrick Spain, CEO of Alacritude to discuss “how stupid his new competitors are”. I kid you not. The PR people even provided a quote in case Anne didn’t have time to interview him. Ahem.
Murphy's Law 