Murphy's Law

PR Blog Content… 

While I was away last week there was a lot of interesting content from the growing community of PR bloggers.

Richard Bailey who always has a lot of excellent content has taken up a lecturing post in the UK.  On his blog he includes a synopsis of one of his lectures which looks at the Internet’s affect on PR and specifically Google’s increasing role as the Internet information gatekeeper. Recommended reading.

Kevin Dugan discusses a USA Today article which purports to educate investors on how to shield their investments from scandals.  One of the “tips” is how the CEO of  said company parks his car.  I kid you not.

Meanwhile Phil Gomes’ firm G2B Group has released the February issue of their newsletter, TapeOut.

My brand is bigger than your brand…

First up, Interbrand (watch out for pop-ups and other irritating design effects) the UK brand agency has done a study on the most popular Internet brands.  According to 1,315 respondents, Google tops the poll with fifteen percent, followed by Apple on fourteen percent, Coke, Starbucks and Ikea.

Harris Interactive has released the results of their 2002 Corporate Reputation Survey and in a year of corporate scandals it makes interesting reading.  The top ten US companies according to the study are: Johnson & Johnson, Harley Davidson (New Entry), Coca Cola, UPS (Up from 15th last year), General Mills (New Entry), Maytag (Up from 9th), Eastman Kodak (New Entry), Home Depot (Up from 19th), Dell (Up from 13th) and 3M (Down from 5th). 

High profile fallers from last year’s study include Fedex, Microsoft, Intel, Disney, General Electric, Hewlett Packard an IBM. 

The full listing is here.

How PR can change behaviour…

Pressbox covers a recent announcement of a new PR article from Robert  A. Kelly covering why Public Relations is a “power tool” for the 21st century.  It primarily deals with how PR can change behaviors, you can read the full article here.

“Fortunately for all concerned, that success will spring from the fundamental premise of public relations: people act on their own perception of the facts, and those perceptions lead to behaviors about which something can be done.”

Sometimes discretion really is better part of valor�.

 

The UK�s Register is taking Symantec�s �PR bunnies� to task over their claims (in a press release) that their products found the recent �Slammer� virus before it hit systems around the world.

It turns out their claims are less clear cut than they would like.  Calls to Symantec�s UK PR reps were stonewalled with the Registered referred directly back to the original press release�.

Update: February 20, 2003 – Symantec respond

Search + Weblog = Googleblog?…

A week is a long time.  There’s loads to catch up on and as you’ve probably already heard Google has bought Pyra, the company behind  Blogger, arguably the world’s leading provider of weblogs with over a million bloggers on its books.  Dan Gillmor broke the news. There will be a lot of analysis of this news in the coming days…

Deborah Branscum has (as usual) some great opinions on the Google acquistion and also covers an interesting farewell memo from David Stutz to his Microsoft colleagues on his departure from the company.

[Interesting that at the time of writing there is still no press release from Google on the acquisition on their website.]

PR Opinions Hiatus…. 

PR Opinions will be on a well earned break until Monday, February 17th 2003 when normal service will be resumed

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Remember the boy scouts….  

One thing we all know about the Internet is that it provides a research resource beyond anything  previously available.  This has serious implications for communicators in all fields.  If you want to appear credible, you must be sure of your sources.  Any innaccuracies will be quickly tackled on line.

The discovery that a significant amount of the UK’s dossier on Iraq came from a tweleve year old dissertation prepared by a college student, probably doesn’t inspire a lot of confidence in the rest of the document.

Further proof (if it were needed) that on the Internet you should always be prepared. More here.

It must be newsletter week…..

No sooner had I finished my entry yesterday than a whole host of other newsletters arrived. One tip for anyone sending out these newsletters, make sure that you have a version available on your website. It’ll help your weblinks and it will also mean readers can use their browser rather than their e-mail client.

Vocus have published an article on PR and measurement of course you’d never guess from the article that they sell PR software that helps with measurement.  [I sent an information request to Vocus via their website about a month ago and I still haven’t had a reply or an acknowledgement – I hope they start using their own software soon!]

MediaMap’s monthly treasure trove is also out this week.  There’s a story on keeping a company’s news momentum going, there’s a primer on dealing with the media and and finally and article from a provider of online surveys on how online surveys can produce good PR (ahem)

Worldwide weblogs….

Over the past eight months we’ve had a lot of feedback on this weblog from countries such as USA, Canada, Ireland, UK, Australia and South Africa. Now we have another country to add – Iran.

Hossein Emami hails from Tehran in Iran and has his own award winning PR weblog  dealing with topics such as e-PR, journalism and the media. Hossein points out that there are now four PR blogs in Iran (which by my count makes them only second to the USA!).

Hossein has also created a corporate blog for his employer, the EDBI Bank.

Another example of an Iranian blog is Prof. Y. Shokrkhah who lectures on communications and journalism.

So you see the PR blogging phenomenon is a distinctly global matter!

PR promotions…

There are an increasing number of well put together newsletters for PR (and related) agencies on their specific business areas.  Fellow blogger Phil Gomes’ firm  G2B Group and Ketchum immediately spring to mind.  But there are others.

We’ve mentioned the Knowledge Capital Group before.  They produce a very informative newsletter on ‘Analyst Relations‘ every month.  It includes interesting and useful content. They sometimes push the AR agenda a little too hard but overall it’s a well crafted newsletter that a lot of effort has been put into. This month’s includes an interview with the CEO at AMR, a profile of Yankee Group and much more.

[As an aside, one interesting news story they have is that Gartner has changed the head of Vendor Relations.  Amen to that. I have never dealt with a more difficult process for setting up appointments in my life. KCG don’t agree with me but… have you any problems with Gartner’s vendor relations function or is it just me?]

PR firm, Environics’ newsletter also arrived overnight.  They’ve an interesting review of 2002 from a Tech PR point of view and a review of the now ubiquitous “The Fall of Advertising and the Rise of PR”. There’s also some case studies and a look at how a local link can help when pitching your wares in Canada.