Category: Other

New PR knowledge portal

One of the weirdest things about being in PR and having a blog, is to be on the receiving end of a PR pitch. I get emails now and then from PR people who want me to blog about a new book or a service. It is actually very rewarding for someone like me who make a living out of pitching others, to see what it feels like to get a pitch that is not personalized, misspelled or with a Word-file with “track changes” still in it (see Tom Murphy’s comment on that pitch).

Up till now I haven’t really found any of the pitches to be worth commenting on but today I got an email from John Gerstner about the launch of a new knowledge portal for communications, PR and marketing professionals called Communitelligence.com. It could actually be worth checking out in the near future. And I won’t even say a word about how he sent me a press release today that was out on PRweb.com on October 8…

Closet iPod user

What happens when the rebel becomes market leader? Author Seth Godin‘s reaction to the success of the iPod is that he has become a “closet iPod user”. He doesn’t use the white earbuds because he doesn’t want to be recognized as an iPod owner.

“Apple is at a critical fork in the road when it comes to the iPod,” said ad man Drew Neisser. “You can already begin to see the initial iPod pioneers, who embraced the value of individuality, shunning the storm of homogeneity that’s growing with each new purchase.”

Godin tells a story about a friend who got a pair of black earbuds.

“He gets on the subway, being very independent and a maverick, which is what New Yorkers like to do, and he sees another guy across the car wearing black headphones. And this guy pulls out an iPod to adjust the volume. My friend catches himself giving this guy the look, the I’ve-got-an-iPod-too wink. It proves people like it when they find other people like them. People who don’t like being part of the main tribe still like being part of a smaller tribe.”

Wired has the complete story.

Rise in demand for journalists

ILO, the International Labour Organisation, will discuss a report called The Future of Work and Quality in the Information Society next week in Geneva. The report shows how new information technology has created more jobs globally in the media sector and that the demand for journalists will continue to be strong.

There is an interesting paragraph in the report about journalism and the impact of blogs.

Ultimately, the new media channels have in many ways turned primary sources and ordinary people into de facto journalists themselves, perhaps reducing the previous monopoly that journalists used to have in producing public information. However, they are also giving a greater voice to all of those people who feel, for one reason or another, and some of them justifiably, that the media do not reflect their views, while every month new electronic information sources appear also in some of the poorest, least developed nations where increasingly skilled news men and women are leaping with alacrity over several stages of technological development to exploit the new platforms. Meanwhile, weblogs have grown exponentially in importance, allowing readers of online newspapers and other web sites to see the original sources behind the news – a somewhat troublesome development for many media organizations and some public authorities. In addition, message boards and readers’ comments on Internet stories have become a discussion group in their own right. “Disintermediation” allows Internet users to go straight to the source of what they want. Has this diminished or improved the quality and availability of information and opinion? If the mass media were previously involved in one-way communication, disseminating the world-view of those that controlled it, that is no longer so, and communication can now be more truly interactive.

If it is “troublesome” for media organizations that weblogs make it possible for readers to see original sources behind the news, what does that tell us about how media operates today? It can only be a positive thing that transparency increases and media will find a way to adapt to this new world order.

More in Svenska Dagbladet (in Swedish). Full report (pdf).

Buzzword alert – Podcasting

You’ve just learned about blogs and wikis. Now you need to know the latest buzzword – podcasting, the process of sending audio content directly to an iPod or other MP3 player. Googling “podcasting” got 15-20 hits a month ago. On October 8 it gave you 13,000 hits. Today, one week later you get 66,000 hits. Now that’s what I call a buzzword.

Steve Rubel has a good roundup for PR people. Wired also published a story about it last week.

Apparently Joshua Kinberg of Bikes Against Bush-fame is working on a video blog aggregator over at Vipodder.org. Stay tuned.

“Elite designers against IKEA” – an IKEA hoax

Swedish furniture giant IKEA is the target of this campaign from “Elite designers against IKEA” who portray IKEA as the source of all evil design. The designer Van den Puup writes:

“We design profound and beautiful furniture for those with wealth and taste. Which is why IKEA makes us furious livid and angry. Do their designs live, breathe and growl? Are they born from tears of pain? Do they gently touch the bottom of the human soul? Pah! Of course not, no more than weeds can attract a bee. The big blue place is odious, its affordable design is sickeningly shallow and we loathe it even more than we loathe football. Please join us in our unqualified hatred.”

Or at least that is what we are supposed to believe. From what I can tell, this seems to be a marketing stunt by IKEA’s Danish advertising agency Robert/Boisen & Like Minded. The domain elitedesigners.org is registered by Michael Robert at Robert/Boisen & Like Minded and on the ad agency’s own web site, IKEA is listed as one of the clients. The agency has launched other web sites for IKEA, like IKEA-fans.dk with an amateurish look, complete with rotating gifs and dreadful design to look as non-corporate as possible.

Clever and fun you guys. Maybe this will start some buzz about IKEA. I’ve done my part.

UPDATE: It seems that this is part of an ad campaign in the UK with three tv commercials and print ads on the theme “At home with Van den Puup”. Seems like a cool campaign, but since web sites have global reach we who don’t see the rest of the campaign might not get the message.