Murphy's Law

Interesting refferals….  

From time to time I check how you are coming to PR Opinions and sometimes the findings can be most interesting.  By far the single most popular search term that refers to this blog is “Shepardson Stern + Kaminsky”.

That story about the leaked internal memo, which originally came from the Holmes Report continues to run and run. It is an interesting case study in how information propogates online.  Although you might get an immediate online traffic spike for news, more controversial or interesting issues seem to have a life of their own through word of mouth.

In the case of the agency above, given the queries are mostly from Google, I am assuming that people were chatting at the water cooler and then going and finding out more.

So although the Internet is immediate and speed is a characteristic, the fact that it is the world’s largest archive means that any story can have a longer shelf life than at first expected.  In this case it’s bad news for SS+K.

Of course by mentioning the story again I am shamlessly promoting PR Opinions, let’s just say it’s an experiment 🙂

PR Opinions this week….  

Has been quiet as I’ve been out on the road – not literally of course 🙂 Normal service will resume shortly.

Online PR getting better all the time…..  

According to a story in Journalism.co.uk, the media are finding that PR websites are better serving their needs than they were two years ago.

The research, from Web usability guru Jakob Nielsen, reports that journalists now get answers for 73% of their needs as opposed to 68% two years ago.

Furthermore, 82% of news rooms now provide contacts details compared with 55% in 2001.

A summary of Nielsen’s 2001 and 2003 studies are available online.  

What PR and a good breakfast have in common….. 

According to the authors of a new book on Public Relations (Full Frontal PR), doing PR well is as easy as finding a good bagel in Los Angeles. (Now, does that mean it’s easy or difficult? 🙂

The book has been written by Richard Laermer and Michael Prichinello of RLM PR and has been generally well received (I haven’t had a chance to read it).

If you want to find out more about Laermer’s PR philosophy check out an interview he did with eMarketer.

There’s a great quote from the interview which I agree with wholeheartedly:

“The last part is having passion about what you do. If you’re an entrepreneur, they are passionate because it’s their lives. I went into another meeting where I spoke, and this woman raised her hand and said, “We’re salespeople. Can’t we fake passion?” My response was, “No. You can fake interest, but you can’t fake passion.”

Passion is addictive and contagious, unfortunately you can’t bottle it. I think we’ve all been in meetings with the economics teacher from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. Awful.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day….   

Playing ball….   

The challenge of managing the PR surrouding the youngest GM in Major League baseball (not to mention at one of the highest profile clubs) is an interesting read in the Boston Globe….

“If you try to control image, you’re going to drive yourself crazy. Far better to have good people that you don’t need to control. Just go with it. Public relations is easy if you have good people to go with it.”

“We’re safer here than in the U.S”….    

A Wall Street Journal article which looks at the difficulties in doing PR for the Middle East right now, includes an unfortunate turn of phrase from one of the PR practitioners interviewed for the piece:

“To be honest, we’re safer here than in the U.S.,” she says. “Nobody is going to bomb their own.”

Indeed….  the comment doesn’t really encourage you to travel there does it?

IDC launches new service for IT marketing…. 

It’s very quiet out there today.  The only interesting bit of news I’ve come across is from industry analyst firm IDC, who, according to Technology Marketing magazine have launched a new service aimed at marketing executives.  The service will gather marketing performance data from around the industry and create benchmarks which can be used in measuring marketing programs.  More information is here 

PR in war, the Google brand and PR in local government…. 

Wonder what’s it’s like doing PR on the front lines?  A story in the KnoxNews looks at how  Lt. Linda Rojas handles 600 reporters in Kuwait.

If you’d like to try your hand at it, why not have a look at CNN’s student assigment: “Develop a public relations strategy for Mr. Bush or his opponents”.

Interesting article by Monica Horten from UK marketing firm Pragnetix on how Google has built a brand without using the tools traditional associated with brand building.

Baltimore are turning to professional PR help in improving how the city government delivers PR programs.

Ethical treatment of PR professionals…..    

Given that our profession regularly suffers from the sub-standard work and ethics of a very small minority of shady “practitioners”, a strong professional code of ethics is vital.

So the news that the Global Alliance for Public Relations and Communication Management (Global Alliance), which represents national public relations associations around the globe, has announced that member organizations have agreed to standardize on a professional code of ethics by the end of 2005 is great news.

Here is the proposed wording.

This new work on ethics will supplement existing national codes and the existing international code of ethics known as the Code of Athens.