Day: February 2, 2004

I have spent a lot of time today clearing out my Qurb folder of Spam.  Nothing new there. It’s the same every morning.

I probably get around 400 spam messages overnight, every night.

With that volume of spam, I have to rely on the subject line to decide whether to hit the delete button or not. E-mails that have blank subjects or have subjects such as “Hi”, “Hello”, “Information for you” etc. are deleted.

There have been a number of e-mails that I’ve deleted recently from friends because of the subject line.  I’m sure this is the same for everyone.

This subject line descision making underlines the importance of thinking clearly about the subject of your e-mail. If your e-mail looks like spam it’ll be deleted. It’s worth taking half a minute to think about that when you’re sending an important e-mail to a new contact.

According to the Senate Office of Public Records there were over 25,000 lobbyists in 2003 up from 21,000 the year before.

The Washington Post takes a look at how the lobbying business is growing and why its presence, in such large numbers, in Washington D.C. makes it the PR capital of the United States….

An internal memo from the head of public affairs and marketing for the Health Insurance Commission in Australia has told staff to ensure they are not seen or photographed cutting a cake with the health organization’s logo on it, to avoid potential captions such as: “Putting the knife into medicare”.

The memo reads: “If you are organising an event for a local member, please ensure that he/she does not put a ‘knife into Medicare’ by cutting a cake. . . take it away (out the back) after the candles are blown out (if you want candles) and cut it up . . . away from any cameras.”

Stories like this help me remember why I’m happy (most of the time) that I work in tech PR….

 

One of the more popular PR stories doing the rounds in the past few days has been the launch of a PR campaign in Minneapolis to curb (ahem) public urination. I am not taking the p… OK I’ll avoid the obvious.

“Among the poster slogans they are considering is “Go before you go,” aimed at tavern customers who relieve themselves in public.”

Thanks to Trevor Cook.