Category: PR

Don’t be rude to a journalist with a blog

PR practitioners mess up now and then, as everybody else. Problem is that when you are rude to a journalist who has a personal blog, it becomes public knowledge.

Freelance writer Simone Paddock had an unpleasant encounter with a PR rep from the Sisters Rodeo Association. The whole story was out on her blog yesterday.

Lesson learned. Of course you should not treat reporters badly, but if you pick one who has a personal blog, chances are the damages increase exponentially.

Link via Utterlyboring.com.

The Online PR Week: July 12-16, 2004

A group of PR Bloggers is organising an online PR week to be held in July. The purpose of the week is to focus on some key issues and attract attention to the emerging role of PR bloggers in developing and spreading knowledge about public relations. Often decried as a secretive profession we want to share our knowledge with everyone and encourage a better understanding of the contribution we make to our societies.

Trevor Cook, who publishes the Corporate Engagement blog from Australia, is the mastermind behind a week of PR debate being hosted by twenty PR bloggers around the globe.

I will be participating if I can get the logistics to work. I will be offline during the first part of the week.

Program: Draft as of May 26 (more info on the New PR Wiki)

MONDAY 12 JULY – PR in the Age of Participatory Journalism

Steve Rubel (Micro-Persuasion) interviewing Jay Rosen, Chair, NYU Department of Journalism, author of the Pressthink weblog (confirmed)

Trevor Cook (Corporate Engagement)

Ryan May (Minnesota Public Relations Blog)

TUESDAY 13 JULY – Corporate Blogging

Jeremy Wright (Ensight)

Trudy Schuett (WOLves) How Business, Governments and Non-profits can use blogs to communicate with the public

Roland Tanglao (Streamline)

Hans Kullin (Media Culpa)

Todd Sattersten (A Penny For…) and (800-CEO-READ Blog.)

Wayne Hurlbert (Blog Business World)

WEDNESDAY 14 JULY – Making PR Work: Creativity and Strategy

Elizabeth Albrycht (CorporatePR) – Corporate PR – Practical strategies

Alice Marshall (Technoflak) – Media relations issues – including pitching small businesses to editors

Bernard Goldbach (Irish Eyes) – Promoting client messages through blogs

Mike Manuel (Media Guerrilla) – Micro media measurement

Angelo Fernando (Hoi Polloi) – Impact of blogs on PR and Marcomms

Anthony V Parcero, (eKetchum Digital Media Group) – Developing interactive PR strategies

THURSDAY 15 JULY – Crisis Management

Jim Horton (Online PR)

Kevin Dugan (Strategic PR) – On the Martha Stewart case

Colin McKay (Canuckflack)

Steve Rubel (Micro-Persuasion) interviewing Dan Gillmor of the San Jose Mercury News and author of the forthcoming book We the Media

FRIDAY 16 JULY – The State of the PR Profession

Richard Bailey (PR Studies)

Robb Hecht (PR Machine)

Tom Murphy (PR Opinions)

Philip Young (Mediations) – Ethics in PR

Jacko’s wacko PR rep

This is an entertaining piece about Michael Jackson’s spokeswoman Raymone K. Bain, who sent out a press release stating that Jackson is not dead.

A prominent Hollywood publicist regards Bain’s prolific output with shock and awe.

“When you have a client who is clearly three sandwiches short of a picnic, you need to protect him with grace and dignity,” this publicist told me. “And a press release that announces to the world that your client is not dead certainly reinforces the notion that he’s a total nutbar.”

Link via PR Fuel.

First corporate blog post to find its way into mainstream media

Today might be a small landmark in the short history of Swedish corporate blogging. This has to be the first example in Sweden, where a post in a corporate blog finds its way into mainstream media (both entries in Swedish only, but see my comment in a recent post). Anders Kempe and Anders Lindberg at PR agency JKL comments on the state of Swedish media, and it got picked up by the political chief editor of Svenska Dagbladet (large Swedish daily).

Congrats to Billy McCormac (who I will have the pleasure of meeting on Wednesday, in real life…) of JKL who is one of the driving forces behind their pioneering corporate blog.

When lobbyists become regulators

President Bush has installed more than 100 top officials who were once lobbyists, attorneys or spokespeople for the industries they oversee, according to an article in the Denver Post.

In at least 20 cases, those former industry advocates have helped their agencies write, shape or push for policy shifts that benefit their former industries. They knew which changes to make because they had pushed for them as industry advocates.