Two Swedish Eyes on Media and Public Relations
Here are the top ten referring blogs during Q1 2005. Thanks for driving traffic to my blog, everyone.
1. BoingBoing
2. AdLand
3. Strategic Public Relations
4. Sigge Eklund
5. Nya ordlekar
6. Bisonblog
7. Håkan Jacobson
8. Stefan Geens
9. Mitt liv som poulärkultursjunkie
10. Editorsweblog
Swedish publication Internetworld has finally launched a blog of their own. There are some small bugs to fix though since comments do not work yet.
I read with great interest the story about the Swedish Olympic Committee (SOK) that sent some angry lawyers after a pizza place that advertised for Olympic pizza (OS-pizza, OS being short for the Olympic Games in Swedish). SOK have been quick to file complaints with businesses that use “OS” in advertising, but I wonder if SOK really have all the trademark rights they claim.
Turns out that the SOK have registered the trademark “OS” in the following classes in Sweden: 6, 9, 14, 16, 18, 20, 24, 25, 28, 30, 32, 37, 41, 42. The observant trademark specialist will notice that class 43 is missing. Class 43 includes “serving food and beverages”. (Utskänkning av mat och dryck; kortvarigt boende). They could possibly argue that a pizza would fall under class 30 (provisions, for example made from corn). Anyone out there that could enlighten us?
Worth noting is that the following companies also have registered “OS” as a trademark in Sweden in some form:
– OGAWA SEIKI KABUSHIKI KAISHA (national)
– OSRAM Gesellschaft mit beschränkter Haftung (EU)
– The Secretary of State for the Environment t/a Ordnance Survey (EU)
– Organisation für die Sicherheit von Schleifwerkzeugen e.V. (oSa) (EU)
Here’s another example from the US, that includes four (!) olympic rings, very creative.
Update: The ad was from the US, not the UK.
Tags: advertising, public relations, IOC, olympics, trademarks.
Quote of the day, Richard Edelman to media: “You’re not God anymore”. Edelman talks in the New York Observer about the rise of the PR industry and the relationship between business and media in a blog-enabled world.
“It used to be I would schmooze you and I was your flack,” said Mr. Edelman, whose firm netted about $260 million in 2005. “Today, if we want to get a message into the public’s conversation, we just make a post on a blog. If The Wall Street Journal goes after a client, we don’t have to accept that anymore. Let’s post the documents we gave The Journal; let’s show the interviews the newspaper decided not to show.”
Related: Jeff Jarvis hopes for the “death of the gatekeeper” (also PR professionals in the role as gatekeepers).
Tags: edelman, pr, public relations.
Free daily Metro will launch 26 new local web sites, one for each municipality in the Stockholm region. 50-60 volunteers will be recruited to write short articles and take photos from their area. Sakari Pitkänen, editor-in-chief at Metro, expects to fill the void from larger Stockholm-based newspapers that are not reporting from the suburbs.
The “citizen reporters” will get paid depending on how high in the hierarchy an article will make it, the highest level being the “dead-tree version” of Metro.
Pitkänen tells Dagens Media that the new reporters will get a crash course in journalism and that he is not afraid of the quality because he hopes the collective will monitor itself.
The project will start recruiting next week and launch in the beginning of May.
Tags: metro, citizen journalism, ohmynews.
Torbjörn Bergmark is blogger of the week at the Swedish daily Västerbottens-Kuriren. But in the middle of his blogging he went missing and he is nowhere to be found. However, there’s no need to worry. Bergmark is the editor in chief of VK and he left to an unknown destination to celebrate his 60th birthday. Now the editorial staff turns to the readers in a plea for help. Has anybody seen our blogger?