Category: PR

Lobbyist of the year

Ann-Therése Enarsson, secretary-general for A Non Smoking Generation was named Lobbyist of the Year 2004 at an award ceremony on Wednesday night for her passionate work that resulted in a new law which bans smoking in Swedish restaurants. The new law will come into effect on June 1, 2005.

On Thursday, the Swedish journalist awards were presented. Winners were:

Story teller of the year:

Susen Schultz, Svenska Dagbladet, News and feature graphics

Innovator of the year:

Marcos Hellberg, Jonas Franksson and Olle Palmlöf, SVT Väst, “CP-Magasinet”

Revelation of the year:

Katarina Karlsson, Norrbottens-Kuriren, About how Slovakian workers were used by SSAB, forcing them to work under dangerous conditions and for low wages.

Lukas Bonnier’s Grand Journalist Prize:

Kerstin Brunnberg, Swedish Radio

…and now that bloggers more or less officially have gotten the status as influcencers of public opinion, who will take the initiative to name “Blogger of the Year”?

Vdlkomna

Technology… is a queer thing. It brings you great gifts with one hand, and it stabs you in the back with the other. ~C.P. Snow, New York Times, 15 March 1971

Advances in technology has made it simple to communicate with thousands of people at the push of a button. Email newsletters cost close to nothing to produce and send to a number of clients and prospects. But the greater the opportunities, the greater the risks. If you are for example a PR agency – an expert in communications – you need to check that your email newsletter works across different types of platforms and browsers. In Sweden we have three letters (å,ä,ö) that sometimes gets you into trouble, like in this newsletter from a Swedish PR-agency (the three letters above are replaced by others, turning the whole text into gibberish).

The growth of astroturfing

You thought that fake grass can’t grow, think again. Astroturfing seems to be a popular campaign method from both democrats and republicans this fall, and a successful method as well. Here is an example that even shows how many letters that have been sent to certain newspapers. As if sending 121 close to identical letters to the editors at San Jose Mercury News would make any (positive) difference. Haven’t these people heard about Dan Gillmor? Of course it didn’t take him long to debunk this initiative.

The flood of fake grassroots letters to media forced Barbara Curtin, opinion editor of the StatesmanJournal, to voice her concerns, urging readers to use their own words.

“You might have just one chance to write an election-season letter. Make it count.”

Question is at what point an astroturf campaign becomes counterproductive.

George Bush goes astroturfing

Astroturfing – faking grassroots movements – is not a new phenomenon. PR flacks and spin doctors have been using it for years. But with increasing transparency from blogs and media watchdogs, these campaigns can now be more easily discovered than before. This week Daily Kos revealed an astroturf initiative from the George W Bush campaign, which has found its way into at least 60 newspapers.

(Link via Poynter Online.)

Silly linking policy another PR flop for Athens 2004

The people who dreamed up the Athens 2004 linking policy have become the laughing stock of the entire internet, to the extent that the topic is no 3 at Daypop’s Top 40 list of the most popular (or in this case ridiculed) topics on the net.

As an example: In order to place a link embedded in copy interested parties should:

a) Use the term ATHENS 2004 only, and no other term as the text referent

b) Not associate the link with any image, esp. the ATHENS 2004 Emblem (see paragraph below)

c) Send a request letter to the Internet Department stating:

-Short description of site

-Reason for linking

-Unique URL containing the link (if no unique URL than just the main URL)

-Publishing period

Contact point (e-mail address)

The control/command attitude of the Olympic organization does not work in a blog-enabled world and the whole idea of controlling how people link to your site is just counterproductive and bad PR. Rick E. Bruner summarizes:

Apparently the folks behind Athens 2004, the offical site for the current Olympics, still use AOL or have only read about the Internet in airline magazines.