Day: October 15, 2004

How far would you go to protect your brand? Can you censure a customer for their use of your product?

Jim Horton has an interesting example.

BMW have sent a cease-and-desist letter to a porno search engine which displays (amongst other things) photographs of an adult nature which include BMW cars. The site is dismissing BMW’s claims…

“As far as we know, we haven’t done anything wrong. Our search engine is a navigational aid. We provide a way for our users to locate galleries as quickly and conveniently as possible. If we give in to BMW’s claim, other search engines will have a problem as well.” according to Chief Marketing Mike Schwalbach.” 

If you can’t find a blog that covers a particular area that you’re interested in, then start one.

Rick Charles has done just that with his new blog: The Buttonwood Tree which will focus on Investor Relations and Financial PR. 

Craig Silverman has created a new blog that tracks newspaper corrections!

Footnote:

Thanks for Kevin Dugan for the link.

The nature and techniques of Public Relations have changed a lot over the past few years. These changes have impacted every area of the profession from internal communications to community relations, investor relations and of course the most high profile practice area, Media Relations.

Whisper it very softly, but we’re not just talking about blogs, we’re talking about e-mail, instant messaging, changing audience behaviors etc.  The one common element is that all PR pros need to be aware of these changes and how they impact their outreach programs.

On the media relations front, ClickZ’s Executive Editor Rebecca Lieb has a piece on the changes in the media relations area and of course the one constant, troublesome PR people!

On a related note, Rebecca’s colleague, Pamela Parker recently took part in a PRSA online seminar on blogging (with Steve Rubel), her presentation [PowerPoint] covers how blogs impact traditional journalism.  It’s available online and is worth a read.

Like most people, the number of documents and e-mails I deal with grows on a daily basis. 

Trying to manage those documents and find the information hidden in them quickly becomes a major challenge. Well relief may be at hand…

Google have announced the first beta of its desktop search engine.  It’s only just been released so it’s too early to review it, but its worth a look at the very least!

Google searches on your computer – sounds like heaven!

You can download it here.