Two Swedish Eyes on Media and Public Relations
Ford recently purchased ad space on 400 blogs, such as Gothamist, via the BlogAds network. Henry Copeland of BlogAds is so excited over the initative that he sent an email to the owners of all the 400 blogs calling this the first “Cluetrain ad”, a reference to the Cluetrain Manifesto. See the ad and the email at Jalopnik. [Via Micropersuasion.]
Tags: advertising, blogads, Ford, reklam. Ping.
Researcher points us to a new cool site that presents mashups of ads. Ad Mashup presents advertisments that are slightly altered to give them a new meaning.
Tags: advertising, mashups, ads, reklam. Ping.
The Swedish team at the European Athletics Championships’ in Gothenburg has an official blog, equipped with YouTube videos and everything. The blog is written by both PR people and the athletes.
Isn’t it appalling how Olof Brundin at Aftonbladet refuses to apologize for calling Microsoft’s PR rep a “press muppet”? N24 asks Brundin:
N24: “Initially Aftonbladet was very skeptical that the interview didn’t happen and for example you called Microsoft’s Norwegian Press Officer a press muppet. Will you apologize?”
– What I said was that some press people in Oslo don’t decide what is written in Aftonbladet, then the words got a life of their own.
Umm, no, that’s not what you said. The label press muppet was used to discredit the PR rep.
“What the press muppet at Microsoft in Norway said, he must answer for. We have been in contact with Bjørn and the interview happened the way he describes it.”
And in Dagens Nyheter:
“[Benkow] confirms that it all went down as he wrote in the article. If some press muppet in Oslo says anything else then it is his word against the other, and I can only relate to what the reporter have told me as long as Bill Gates himself doesn’t call and says otherwise.”
In addition, Resumé asks Brundin:
Resumé: Was it suitable to use the words press muppet?
– It was an unguarded word that got a life of its own. This story has gotten so serious consequences and millions of readers have been fooled. I won’t rewind the tape and comment on a quote that’s been taken out of context.
Yes, things do get a life of their own nowadays. It’s called an online PR crisis.
Overall Aftonbladet has handled the Benkow case without any clear strategy. It’s not easy for a paper to guard themselves against a journalist that fakes an interview, so the guilt would not really be on Aftonbladet’s side. I don’t hear anyone chastising Mann, who apologized immediately after comments from Microsoft. So by early on betting on the wrong horse, by being so hard-necked and disrespectful to the the people that got phony quotes published, the paper put itself in a really bad position PR wise. On top of that they now refuse to take back the hard words and the apology wasn’t exactly overwhelmingly enthusiastic. And now the tabloid handles the PR issue “tabloid style” which means that they portray themselves as the victim and investigate if they can sue the journalist. Since Benkow claimed he faked the stories because of a weak economic situation and bad health, Aftonbladet hardly scores any points of sympathy. Time to call a PR agency?
(Bonus comment: the Swedish paper that used the word mock (“håna”) most times during 2006 is — drumroll please –, Aftonbladet (257 times), followed by Expressen (129) and Dagens Nyheter (73).)
Tags: media, pressmupp, Aftonbladet. Ping.
More on GatesGate, the Norwegian journalist Bjørn Benkow now admits that he faked interviews with Bill Gates, Oprah Winfrey and Michael Schumacher “to pay the rent”.
A related matter is the doctored Reuters photo from Beirut. Notice the tone and lenght of the article where Aftonbladet reports about the photoshopped photo and Reuters apology, compared to the short statement where they commented on the fake Gates interview in Aftonbladet.
Aftonbladet discredits the photographer further. Compare Aftonbladet’s comment below with the one from Reuters:
Aftonbladet: “The freelance photographer who sold the photo has previously attracted attention for selling photos of dead children in Lebanon.”
Reuters: “He was among several photographers from the main international news agencies whose images of a dead child being held up by a rescuer in the village of Qana, south Lebanon, after an Israeli air strike on July 30 have been challenged by blogs critical of the mainstream media’s coverage of the Middle East conflict.
Reuters and other news organizations reviewed those images and have all rejected allegations that the photographs were staged.”
Oh, and the next person who claims that blogs don’t influence mainstream media, is grounded:
“Reuters withdrew the doctored image on Sunday and replaced it with the unaltered photograph after several news blogs said it had been manipulated using Photoshop software to show more smoke.”
Very meta. Australian police have been called in to investigate a series of leaks coming from ACT (I guess this is the Australian Capital Territory?) public servants. And in an internal memo, a chief executive of the ACT’s public service threatened his staff with jail if they leak confidential information to the media, reports The Sydney Morning Herald. But the internal memo about leaking leaked to the media. How ironic.