Category: General

Thomas Mucha has written an interesting article on the collaborative marketing efforts around the Firefox browser.

“Here’s a neat marketing idea: Lock 40,000 people in a room. Combine their brainpower, divergent backgrounds, various skills, and colorfully disparate ideas. Then sit back and let this passionate collective spread your product across planet Earth.”

Oh and if you haven’t already downloaded Firefox, I recommend you do so right now.

Footnote:

• If includes a glowing endorsement of SparkPR’s efforts. Hurrah! It’s Friday and someone has written something nice about PR!
• Business 2.0 also have a feature on “How to Blog Effectively”

Merriam-Webster’s “Word of the Day” e-mail is always a welcome distraction.  Today’s entry is particularly interesting (for me):

donnybrook DAH-nee-brook noun

*1 : free-for-all, brawl

2 : a usually public quarrel or dispute

Did you know?

The Donnybrook Fair was an annual event held in Donnybrook – then a suburb of Dublin, Ireland — from the 13th to the 19th centuries. The fair was legendary for the vast quantities of liquor consumed there, for the number of hasty marriages performed during the week following it, and, most of all, for the frequent brawls that erupted throughout it. Eventually, the fair’s reputation for tumult was its undoing. From the 1790s on there were campaigns against the drunken brawl the fair had become. The event was abolished in 1855, but not before its name had become a generic term for a free-for-all.

Why is this interesting? Well Donnybrook is where I work and spend a lot of time.  Unfortunately it isn’t anywhere as interesting as it was in the past….

For the past while Fleishman-Hillard has been fighting allegations over their dealings with the city of Los Angeles, mostly behind closed doors.

On Wednesday, Richard S. Kline, regional president of Fleishman-Hillard wrote a formal response to these allegations in the Los Angeles Daily News.

“In the 58-year history of Fleishman-Hillard, we have never experienced allegations remotely like those facing us today in Los Angeles…….Fleishman-Hillard is a firm of high ethical standards. We would never knowingly tolerate improper behavior and we will not attempt to avoid our responsibilities in this case. But the DWP had good reasons to seek experienced outside counsel and our firm provided a great deal of value in the six years we worked for the department.”

 Elizabeth Albrycht is looking for people join her to share their thoughts on how communication is changing for a blog-based event taking place in January.

“I have written a lot about how I think communications is changing, and others have as well.  But this information is currently fragmented, anecdotal and spread all over the place.  What I decided I wanted to do was to synthesize this information with theories from communications studies, media ecology, philosophy and science and technology studies, and come up with a new model that people can use, test, improve, etc.”

 Also Kevin Dugan has an interesting post on how companies are using blog for market intelligence.

As you have no doubt already heard Microsoft has launched the beta of it’s new Spaces service. Mike Manuel takes a look at the launch from a PR perspective.

Although RSS will probably play a larger role in the future in how we discover and share information, E-mail remains a vital part of our communications toolbox.

I found a couple of interesting e-mail posts over the past couple of days:

 Andy Lark shares some of his e-mail rules.

“Or, like it has for many, email has become like an arcade game in which we win by shooting the bastards down as they flood our inbox.”

 Amy Gahran shares some advice on how to be smart about communicating with the media via e-mail and also makes some recommendations on good e-mail list software.

“The plague of spam is having disastrous effects on legitimate e-mail distribution lists. Most people � especially journalists � receive such a high volume of spam that they routinely overlook, delete, or filter out many legitimate messages, including mail from opt-in lists.”

Some more e-mail related content:

• Can E-mail Survive? – PC Magazine
• (E-mail) Caught in the Crossfire – Inc. Magazine
• The dog ate my e-mail – PR Opinions blog
• Avoiding an E-mail crisis – e21 Corp.
• Why technology will never replace face-to-face communication – PR Opinions blog
• The E-mail Paradox: Bane and Boon for Journalists’ Productivity – Online Journalism Review
• E-mail Etiquette (again) – PR Opinions blog
• E-mail: Your subject line defines your success and failure – PR Opinions blog

The Internet is a dynamic medium.  Therein lies one of the fundamental challenges for Public Relations.  If you are responsible for comunicating with your audience online, then you have to have a solid understanding of how and where people find information.

Forget the over-hyped “Internet time” mantra, the real online PR challenge is changing behavior.

For example, search engines are now probably the #1 point of departure for people looking for information.  Therefore, it makes sense that PR people should have a strong understanding of search engines and how search engine ranking works.

Of course that understanding won’t necessarily help you to work with all of your audience.

A report just released by Internet research firm, Hitwise has found that Internet users who research travel online are increasingly going directly to travel websites than going through search engines.

Does did mean that search engines are less important for travel companies? 

Not really, they still drive large volumes of traffic, but it does highlight an interesting trend. 

As your industry’s Internet audience matures, their behavior changes. People who are early in the purchase process may use search engines, while more educated customers may use a combination of magazines, search engines and blogs.

In effect the Internet is encouraging greater segmentation of audiences and their behavior. 

Now there’s a challenge….

 Jim Horton has posted a full case study on a political campaign undertaken by  California’s Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) District to secure tax-based funding for any earthquake-related repairs.

 Richard Edelman discusses the importance of ethical behavior and outlines four suggested ethical pillars:

First, we should not take on any client in the way that a lawyer can claim that every client deserves representation. We are not working in a court of law….

Second, we need to be utterly transparent in our work methods….

Third, we should demand a seat at the decision making table and not simply accept the role of mouthpiece for legal counsel….

Fourth, our billing methods should provide the same incentives to client and agency….

 The Globe and Mail reports that CIBC is facing some significant PR challenges as it has emerged they’ve been erroneously faxing customer information to a scrap dealer…

 Interested in how the media may change in the future? Andy Lark links to an interesting potential verion of the future of media.

 It looks like a potential merger between UK PR group Chime Communications and Incepta won’t be happening after all.

 Askdd.com, the self-styled PR agony uncle site created by former vice chairman of Edelman David Davis, has reported that it has handled 3,000 PR-related questions since the site was set up two years ago….

Shel and Octavio have posted some interesting comments on my post last Friday regarding ‘blogvetorials’.

It’s definetely a grey area, but agreeing a “blog code of ethics” and then implementing it, would be probably impossible.

I think you have to put your trust in people who read blogs.  People are intelligent.  If a blogger is promoting products for cash, I’m fairly sure readers will spot it.  Maybe not immediately but certainly over time.

The Internet provides a fairly democratic environment. If your blog is credible, has interesting or useful content and is providing honest opinions then there’s a good chance you’ll get a readership – whatever the size.

As Octavio points out, you have once shot at credibility.  Should you lose it, then it’s gone.  That’s a very dangerous threat for any blogger tempted to plug products for payment.

On the other hand, Google has shown us that as long as advertisements are clearly flagged as such, then audiences/users have no problem with them.

So, if you want to make your first million from blogging (you probably need help) then by all means include advertising on your blog, and mark it for what it is.  You may find that the real cost of breaking your readers’ trust is far more expensive than any short-term revenue.

Shel Holtz reports that Marqui has done a deal with fifteen bloggers to insert mentions of Marqui’s “hosted communications management services” into their blogs.

“The bloggers will get $800 a month to mention Marqui with a link once a week in their blogs and post its emblem on a page. They’ll get an additional $50 per qualified sales lead they send to Marqui….But transparency and integrity are the order of the day, King said. Information about Marqui’s “Blogosphere Program” is posted on its corporate Web site, and bloggers are urged — but not required — to disclose the relationship.”

I think it should be easy enough to spot if any marketing bloggers are in this program.  I think it would be quite hard to subtly post an entry on “hosted communications management services” 🙂

On a more serious note, as long as the mentions are flagged as advertising, I don’ t have a problem with this.  Just as in the physical world where advetorials are highlighted, as long as these blogads are highlighted and the blogger is up front with their readership I don’t see why this should pose a problem. Of course if they’re not up front that’s a different matter….