Month: January 2004

 Jeremy Pepper shares his views on what’s in store for PR in 2004.

 Colin McKay has some interesting thoughts on the issues surrounding the BSE (and SARS) crisis (and its similarities to Jaws – the film 🙂

“The first death is swift, savage and out of the blue. Public officials blame it on a fluke. They predict a speedy and inexpensive resolution. When more deaths occur, the officials shift to denial and damage control. They’re concerned about bad publicity, how it will hurt tourism and trade. The menace suddenly halts and the officials rejoice: “Everything will soon be back to normal,” they say. Then the deaths start happening again … “

 Elizabeth Albrycht points to an interesting story on how the US Navy is looking at blogs as a real-time collaborative tool for teams in different locations (and different organizations).

 I’ve been reading the B2B Lead Generation blog for quite some time and it is an interesting read for anyone concerned with the business of delivering quality leads for the salesforce.

 Trevor Cook believes that employee communications should be at the top of every PR person’s priorities for 2004.

“Employee communications often get the most desultory treatment in organisations falling well behind customer, media, investor and government relations in terms of strategic focus and resources. Yet a strong case can be made for putting employees at the top of our priorities.”

 

 The Portland Business Journal has an interesting story looking at the PR challenges facing the US Beef Industry following the Mad Cow scare.

Crisis communications in action.

 Meanwhile, Dave Jung over at the B2Blog is the star turn on a nice introductory feature on blogs at the Grand Rapids Press.

(I’m still catching up, normal service should resume tomorrow!)

I am still struggling to catch up on last week’s events, however here are a few things that have caught my eye…

 Silicon Valley PR pioneer Fred Hoar passed away last week.  Jeremy Pepper has a touching personal post on Fred’s passing and in other sad news, Richard Bailey points out that UK PR pro Esther Kaposi also passed away last week.

 The New Yorker profiles Gene Weber, an eighty-eight year old PR man still going strong.

 Some tips on how to work with a PR firm…..

 

Hello.  Well PR Opinions is back online after some much required rest.

A new year but some of the same old issues keep coming back.

While I was away, Towers Perrin, a (take a deep breath) global professional services firm that helps organizations around the world improve their performance through effective people, risk and financial management, published an interesting study that found that only 51% of employees believed that their employers generally tell the truth.

Now as we all know, good communication starts at home (ahem) and it looks like there are a whole range of issues there.

“These results reveal a worrisome employer-employee dynamic that should be a wake-up call to any senior executive or leader who will need to communicate with employees in 2004,” said Mark Schumann, Towers Perrin principal and leader of the firm’s HR Services business communication consulting practice. 

Thanks to Joanne for the link.

PR Opinions will be on hiatus recovering from the Season’s festivities until January 12, 2004.

 

The new and widely covered US Can-Spam Act, which has been designed to address unsolicited commercial e-mail (though I haven’t noticed any drop off so far) is now in place.

So how does this affect PR communications?

Well, sending press releases via e-mail could be contrued as commercial e-mail, even though it’s not advertising per se. (Disclaimer: The following advice doesn’t include any legal input, you should consult your legal counsel for the full implications of the legislation) It’s probably best to understand the new requirements and where applicable amend your e-mail processes.

At the very least any “mass” PR e-mails should provide:

1. A physical company address for your company (agency or in-house)
2. A clear, working opt-out option to enable journalists to unsubscribe from subsequent e-mails
3. The e-mail should be sent from an individual with a working e-mail address not an alias.

Secondary issues include:

1. Process any opt-out requests within ten days of receipt
2. Include a denotation such as “PR” in the subject line of your message which clearly highlights the nature of your e-mail
3. Don’t use misleading subject line descripitions

The Can-Spam Act shouldn’t impact PR professionals who are using e-mail responsibly, but it makes sense to be careful and where possible adhere to its guidelines.

Welcome to 2004.  Here’s the final part of my review of 2003…

September

 We take a look at what you need to know about Blog Relations

 It seems that bad PR doesn’t necessarily stop a company’s ability to grow a profitable business – just look at Exxon.

 Alastair Campbell steps down.

 What do you need to know about selecting a PR Firm?

 Here are some tips on writing for the Web

  PR Measurement is always a topic fraught with tension. Here are some resources on measurement.

 During 2003 it became apparent that legal expertise was becoming as important for a job in PR as good writing skills. The RIAA are a great example of this dark new art.

  We provided a few guidelines for posting PR information online.

 After only a few months away Red Herring re-appeared online in September.

 Another disturbing trend appearing in September, this time among corporate spokespeople, was MetaTagging

  There are very few PR bloggers from large PR agencies and as a result PR blogs do tend to have an anti-big PR bias. The downturn has created a fantastic diversity of small PR shops and that trend is here to stay.  But Big agencies aren’t going anywhere IMHO.  They’ll remain relevant and profitable alongside the start-ups.

 

October

 With election results coming in thick and fast, political observers were asking is political journalism becoming less influential?

 Harvard’s Nieman Foundation for Journalism provided a fascinating look at the intersection of blogging and journalism and we also looked at business blogging.

 Following on from the Nieman Foundation’s report, a blogging conference, Bloggercon, took a detailed look at the same issue with some interesting discussions from journalists across a whole array of fields.

 In some good news for the PR agency world, Fleishman-Hillard was named as one of the hundred best places for working moms.

 We looked at how good PR can’t fix a bad product, with bad services.

 Meanwhile RLM PR argued that there is no need for boutique agencies – we disagree.

 In the first of many blog-related research reports, Perseus Development Corporation estimated there were about 4.12 million blogs online – however 2.31 million of these blogs had been abandoned – that’s a long winded way of saying there are in fact 1.81 million active blogs.

 What are the trends affecting online communications? We attempted to provide some answers.

 Also Nokia seems to be one of the leaders in innovating with alternative marketing channels. In this case they targeted blogs for the launch of their 3650 phone.

 Vocus released research that found that 92% of journalists use corporate press rooms for their stories, unfortunately they still don’t find what they are looking for…

 The Media Center at the American Press Institute published a paper entitled “We Media” which looked at how journalism is being affected by new Internet technologies.

 “Of the many horrifically destructive technologies of the 20th century, arguably the most dangerous of all is public relations. So when you hear this new stealth story coming at you, you’ll know you’re being framed. You’ll know someone is trying to have public relations with you.” – Alternet.org

 “I have a dirty little secret. I like PR people. OK, I don’t like all of them, but I must admit that a lot of publicists have helped me in my quest to speak to the right person, set up an interview, give me background info. This might sound strange to fellow journalists (or may secretly ring true), but a few of my best story ideas came from flacks.” – Mark Glaser at the Online Journalism Review

 

November

 November saw an interesting discussion on the role of PR People in a media interview. Meanwhile, contrary to the advice from some practitioners, PR Opinions advises practitioners to treat freelancers with respect.

 Marketing in Europe continues to cause difficulties, we took a look at why we don’t expect that to change anytime soon.

 There was a lot of discussion surrounding Industry analysts – particularly in the technology sector – in November.

 PR Bloggers Richard Bailey, Stuart Bruce and Elizabeth Albrycht provided some valuable advice to PR students.

 Meanwhile Phil Gomes tried out a media pitch via his RSS feed with some interesting results.

 The UK Guardian looked at some reasons why the media need PR – though it’s a contentious issue! CNN looked at business blogging.

 Tom Mangan evaulated the Marraige of journalism and blogs

 While in the UK, the IPR released a 78-page report entitled “Unlocking the Potential of Public Relations: Developing Good Practice”. The report surveyed 812 professionals. In the US, a survey found that US PR agencies were better meeting clients’ needs in 2003 and PR Week found that Technology PR is on the way back.

 Business 2.0 undertook an analysis of the effectiveness of the PR launch for the Handsrping Treo 600.

December

 Reuters took an interesting look at the age-old strategy of hiding bad news.

 MediaMap was acquired by Bacon’s.

 PR Opinions provided an overview of RSS and PR and outlined why we believe that technology will never replace face to face communication.

 More research on Blog Relations appeared.  The findings included that over 70% of bloggers were open to PR pitches.

 Australia’s The Age newspaper followed up the British Medical Journal’s article earlier in the year with a critical look at PR practices in the healthcare market

 Donald Rumsfeld won the annual “Foot in the Mouth” award with this entry:
“Reports that say that something hasn’t happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns � the ones we don’t know we don’t know.”

Since I posted that entry, I have had loads of e-mail from people who believe that it was an unfair award and that in fact it was a fantastic piece of oratory.  I think the award stands..