Category: General

Did we get any coverage? Search me…
There’s nothing like a stuttering economy to encourage chat about bringing PR in-house. Though as an aside I’m intrigued that people immediately believe it’s cheaper, sorry more cost-effective to build in-house teams, even though quite often it’s not cheaper.

As budgets tighten, all over the web conversations spring up about how to do PR and PR research on the cheap. The most popular ‘tip’ I’ve seen recently on e-mail lists and web sites is:
“Hey dump those monitoring firms and subscription services, Google’s news search engine is all you need.”

Pardon? Have any of these folks used it? It’s a 1 out of 100 for accuracy, reach and depth. Try it out. Unless your client/employer is regularly on the news pages of the AP, Wall Street Journal and USA Today this search engine is not for you (yeah sure your client is top of the news every day…sure 🙂

In fact, people who can’t afford clipping services are typically small and private. If you rely on the Google news search engine you may get depressed.

So what’s a solution? Well it’s not perfect, it’s not guaranteed to track every hit, but waaaay better than Google News Search are free consolidated search products like Copernic (or shell out $40 for the more detailed version) and manually tracking your key targets. Though in my opinion paying for a clipping service (online or offline) may be a better, more productive use of your time….

There is some money for online content…
According to the Online Publishers Association more than 12.4 million people have stumped up hard earned cash for online content, a rise of 56% over Q1 2001.

The leading revenue generator is Real Networks followed by the Wall Street Journal Online. On the downside the top 100 websites account for 97% of all revenue. You can read the full report here (Adobe Acrobat required).

No negative vibes man…..
Interesting post from Phil Gomes on a story by Douglas Rushkoff in the Guardian about how his editors at the New York Times refused to publish his negative analysis on the AOL-Time Warner merger at the time because he clearly didn’t know what he was talking about! He who laughs last…

Now I am going to kick you one more time…Apple Redux
Further to the post on how Apple is alienating its own (should that be eating?) by coming down hard on rumor sites etc., their copyright attorney’s have been busy again this time in France.

Sony: Money can’t buy you …. good staff
There are times when you read something and your brain informs you that your eyes are misleading you. So you read it again and still your brain rejects it.

These incidents are usually provoked by moments of such stupidity that it’s really hard to fathom what is going on and what the perpetrators were thinking.

What am I talking about? Two words: Sony Electronics.

The New York Times as you may have read has refused to accept ads from Sony that attempt to blue the line between advertising and editorial content.

Effectively Sony has put together the age-old Advetorial rubbish and tried to place them in editorial pages with little or no identification that they are in fact ads.

OK let’s take a little breather here. Does this strike anyone as innovative? breaking new ground? opening up the frontiers of marketing?

No, I didn’t think so. This is a cheap marketing activity that has happily filled the un-read pages of newspapers and magazines around the world since mass circulation started. It’s space filling and magazine ad reps have happily took people’s money from it for years. From an advertisers perspective it’s admitting that ‘editorial’ coverage has value.

None of what I have written is rocket science to any of you. I would never recommend advetorial for a client or employer because it’s only a space filler and to be honest I don’t personally believe it has much value.

But, let us hear what Sony’s Consumer ‘Marketing’ Officer, T. Scott Edwards, has to say:
“We’re breaking paradigms here. We consider ourselves a content provider — we are buying the space.”

What? Excuse me. What is this guy on? Buying ‘Advetorials’ and ‘Commercial Features’ is (ahem) “breaking paradigms”? Who talks like that? Oh I know marketing management at large companies who have lost their tenuous grasp on reality.

Is ‘T’ really trying to tell us that paying for advetorial and trying to sneak it into editorial content is the brave new frontier?

Of course it doesn’t stop with ‘T’, oh no, his ad agency is right behind him.

Let’s listen to what they, Universal McCann, have to say for a moment:
“We’re trying to blur the line between the adveritising and editorial boundary.”

Oh my lord (I am trying to reduce my use of expletives).

Well I’d would like to publicly praise the New York Times for their standards, and show these Sony ‘marketing’ people that they need to stop drinking the ‘Kool Aid’.

To end, not everyone of course agrees with the NYT’s stand, there are, as there always are, people only too happy to get their hands on some filthy lucre to help make their quarter, and hang the consequences.

Jack Haire, sales muppet executive extrordinaire is quoted as rallying his executives at Time and AOL for a plan to distribute Sony’s content. Well done Jack, never let standards get in the way of a dollar.
[Comments]

The Fall of Advertising….Yeah Right
A new book from self-styled marketing guru Al Ries is titled “The Fall of Advertising and the Rise of PR”. In the book, he states that PR is going to replace advertising as the primary ‘branding’ tool and that advertising will be relegated to defending existing brands. [Ad Age have a great article on the book here]

NOTE: I had, based on reading two reviews of this book, published some opinions on what I believed was wrong with the premise of the book. However I have removed those opinions pending a first-hand opportunity to read the book in full when it’s published next month!

Flash Hall of Shame #14….Cane Communications [Special Award Winner]
So I am trying out Mozilla the open source Internet browser. It’s clean and fast but I haven’t yet allowed the Flash virus to install its Mozilla plug-in. Anyhow I go to Cane Communication’s (a UK PR company) website and it tells me that I MUST install the Flash 6 plug-in to get into their site. Now this is a PR company, probably looking for clients, trying to impress journalists and you can’t get into the site without Flash. Now obviously this is the same for any completely Flash-built sute, but to add further insult to injury on the ‘no flash detected’ page, there’s no contact details, no alternative HTML information. Excellent strategy. Excellent communicators.

Some interesting online reading….
Catching up on some PR reading since my break I came across a very interesting article in O’Dwyers PR Daily by New York Post columnist John Crudele. The piece details how Pre-Paid Legal Services reacted to a negative piece he wrote about the company. I’d take John to task on his fifth point but it’s a very interesting read.

If you’re interested in some personal thoughts and insights into the world of technology and technology related PR and marketing, you could do worse than stop by SIPR and have a browse through Shel Israel’s It Seems to Me (ISM) columns.

Finally, CornerBarPR’s Brenda Clevenger has published the first part of a two-part piece on on-line PR. If the whole ‘on-line PR’ thing is still a little foreign it’s not a bad introduction.

Seeing the other point of view….
As PR practitioners we’re all told to think about our work from the audience’s point of view. I came across a book review on PR Watch that provides a really interesting take on activists’ views of PR activity. It’s a review of Denise Deegan’s book ‘Managing Activism”.

PR 101: Anything Apple can do, Oracle can do better….

You might remember that in August last year Oracle Corporation took the brave decision to take their PR back in-house after a very successful eight year relationship with Applied Commuications.

Most high tech firms rely heavily on external PR agencies, so this move was certainly an interesting departure – particularly given the size of the PR brief.

Last week PR Week ran a story entitled “Oracle Completes Global PR Revamp”. A notable achievement in itself, but then I noticed towards the end of the story, James Finn, VP of worldwide corporate communications at Oracle was paraphrased as follows:
“Finn said the company has been dismayed with some of the recent media coverage it has gotten, which he said is unfairly negative. He said Oracle would not be as keen to work with reporters who take a one-sided view of the company.”

Now I am sure this is a mistake, because if Oracle’s VP of coporate communications actually believes that only briefing favorable media is the best way forward, Oracle could be heading into very choppy waters. Let’s hope for his sake it’s a mis-quote.

What do you think?