Here’s an odd version of personal branding. “Peter K – former journalist” wants me to buy his books. Apparently you can build a career on having once been a journalist. File under “has-been positioning”.
Category: PR
Take off for Global PR Blog Week 2.0
Global PR Blog Week 2.0 started today and the fact that I declined to participate this year is absolutely not a reason not to tune in (I just couldn’t find the time to write a longer piece this year). This is the event where the creme of the crop of PR bloggers share their knowledge and expertise about the intersection of public relations and new technology like blogs and wikis. A wide range of topics will be covered during the five day event. Tune in, read, learn and comment.
Winning bid crashes London 2012 website
Congrats to London for getting the 2012 Olympic Games. I guess I will have to schedule some meetings at our London office around that time…
Apparently the Brits were not prepared (enough) to win, because the website has crashed, probably due to an enormous amount of traffic.
The Swedish Language Council dilutes the Jeep brand
The Swedish Language Council call themselves “the official language cultivation body of Sweden” and it has “no legal powers but fulfil their task through recommendations”. That means that whatever use of the Swedish language the Council recommends, most official bodies and media will conform to it. However, one of the Council’s recommendations on how to use the Swedish language is very unlucky, namely the translation of SUV to Swedish, which is translated to stadsjeep, or “city jeep”.
One could argue that it infringes on a company’s immaterial assets, in a way that might degenerate the Jeep brand name. I’ve been posting about this before, without much reaction.
On the Council’s website there is a FAQ section which contain the very question on how to translate SUV.
In Swedish:
Fråga:
Hur skriver man biltypen SUV så att alla förstår vad som menas?
Svar:
Skriv stadsjeep.
SUV av eng. Sport Utility Vehicle är onödigt att införa.
In English:
Question:
How do you write the type of car called SUV so that everyone will understand what you mean?
Answer:
Write stadsjeep/city jeep.
SUV from English Sport Utility Vehicle is unnecessary to introduce.
I think they are wrong for two reasons. First, regarding the word “stad” (city). A survey by Bil Sweden showed that SUV’s are predominantly not bought by people in the city, so the term city jeep makes little sense. Second, Jeep is a registered trademark by DaimlerChrysler and it can’t simultaneously be a registered trademark, and a generic term in the same product category.
Recently some Swedish media have started to use the term suv (pl. suvar) which is more appropriate. I could learn to use that term and hopefully the Swedish Language Council could reconsider before SUV Expo in Täby in april when a lot of media will report about “suvar”.
Firefox New York Times ad – a first in community marketing?
In what can only be categorized as a milestone in “community marketing” or “citizen marketing”, Spread Firefox, the volunteer organization promoting the adoption of Firefox web browser, today placed a two page ad in the New York Times with the names of the people who helped finance the launch of Firefox. 
From the press release:
The Mozilla Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to preserving choice and promoting innovation on the Internet, today announced that it has placed a two-page ad in the December 16th edition of the New York Times. The ad, coordinated by Spread Firefox, features the names of the thousands of people worldwide who contributed to the Mozilla Foundation’s fundraising campaign to support last month’s highly successful launch of the open source Mozilla Firefox 1.0 web browser.
Consumers are now not only creating their own media via blogs. Now they help create advertising too. The homemade iPod ad is another current example. MoveOn ads yet another from earlier this year.
Wired writes: School teacher George Masters has the marketing world abuzz with a homemade ad for Apple Computer’s iPod that is rapidly “going viral.” To some experts, Masters’ ad heralds the future of advertising. Homemade ads will play a big part in marketing, just like blogging is shaking up the news.
In Sweden we sadly do the opposite and fake it. Food chain Coop is currently running a campaign with TV commercials that are produced by Coop’s own members. Or so it looks. In reality they are not. The members in the ads are actors, although not professional ones, but they have been casted and are not the ones who came up with the idea for the commercials.
Link via Micro Persuasion.
Spinning around
Precis, The Association of Public Relations Consultancies in Sweden, are hosting an event tonight that I am going to attend. The event is called Spinn 2004 and during the evening Precis will hand out awards for best marketing PR in 8 categories. The name Spinn upset people at agency Spinn Action Marketing AB, who thought Precis should have managed to give their competition a name that had not been taken by an agency.
I have another problem with the word “spin”. It doesn’t have very positive connotations to it and I am surprised that the PR industry really wants to be associated with spin or to be recognized as spin doctors.
Some negative definitions of the word spin:
> twist and turn so as to give an intended interpretation; “The President’s spokesmen had to spin the story to make it less embarrasing”
> make up a story; “spin a yarn”
The name was coined by Citigate Gramma.