Two Swedish Eyes on Media and Public Relations
Media Culpa’s PR Flop of the Day Award goes to FILA, the international wrestling federation, for naming Swedish female wrestler and bronze medalist Sofia Mattsson the most good-looking wrestler during the Europan Championship 2007 in Sofia (!), Bulgaria. We thought they were just wrestlers, not participants in beauty pageants.
Kudos to Sofia and Patrik Jansson, the Swedish national team manager, who refused to accept the “Miss Europe” award.
Microsoft today communicates a report from European Interactive Advertising Association (EIAA) about how social networks, blogs and video sites are the driving forces behind the next generation of internet usage. How is this promoted? Through an old fashioned press release. It is of course possible that this story is also communicated through other channels, but no blogs are linking to this press release yet (search via Technorati and Knuff). Stories like this one should of course be given to bloggers like me (and not via a press release please). Instead, I have to settle for press releases with headlines like these:
DHL sees advantages with a differentiated kilometre tax for heavy vehicles
DHL ser fördelar med en differentierad kilometerskatt för tunga fordon
Healthy fast food ready for break through
Nyttig fast food står inför genombrott
Unity for freedom
Enighet för frihet
World leader in HR in new co-operation with Jönköpings Södra
Världsetta inom HR i nytt samarbete med Jönköpings Södra
Star Wars robot in your own living room
Star Wars-robot i ditt eget vardagsrum
Kläppen attracts sun worshipers and people celebrating Easter
Kläppen lockar soldyrkare och påskfirare
I can go on and on with mindnumbingly boring press releases about topics that have absolutely nothing to do with what I am blogging about. It is quite obvious that Swedish PR professionals have a lot to learn about blogger relations. Contact me if you want a crash course 🙂
Tags: blog relations, public relations, PR, bloggar. Ping.
Today I’m throwing you a smorgasbord of things to dig deeper into. Here goes:
Stathydro? Norskoil? Noroil?
In Norway there is a heated debate about the name of the new oil and gas giant that is the result of the mega merger between Norsk Hydro and Statoil. Branding experts claim that it will cost between 2.7 and 3.6 billion kroner to change name and that the brand Statoil is worth between 2.5 and 5 billion kroner.
Tech blogs in, conservative blogs out
Bloggers Blog compare the top 10 blogs at Technorati on Jan 1, 2006 and Jan 1. 2007. Via Kristine Lowe.
Busting myths about social media
PR agency Ketchum and the University of Southern California’s Annenberg Strategic Public Relations Center have produced a report called “Media Myths & Realities, 2006 Media Usage Survey”. Among other things the survey deflates five myths about social media:
-Blogs dominate.
-Social networking sites are just for kids.
-Young adults don’t read the newspaper.
-Word of mouth cannot be managed.
-The company Web site is the best way to communicate.
Big ad, big love
The business man who paid 11,000 kronor (1,600 USD) for a large personal ad in Borås Tidning, has got replies from women from all over Sweden. Question is if any of them want to move to Borås… (More here in English).
Top 100 web 2.0 sites
Web 2.0 Magazine lists the top 100 web 2.0 sites in categories such as Video (#1 is YouTube), Music (last.fm), Chat (Meebo), Images & Photos (Flickr), Blogs (Blogger), Bookmarking (Digg), VOIP (Jajah) and a few others.
New free Swedish daily
Xtra Helsingborg is the name of Helsingborgs Dablad’s free daily. It will become the second freesheet in the city when distribution starts in about a month. Metro is already present. Circulation: Monday-Friday, 20,000 copies. Via Researcher.
Tags: social media, web 2.0, newspapers, Statoil, branding, advertising, reklam, webb 2.0. Ping.
One in two PR executives are not doing their job properly. A survey of more than 1100 PR executives from agencies and corporations in the US and UK reveal that 49% of respondents don’t even monitor blogs. Furthermore it says that:
“63% have not adapted their communications strategy to include proactive outreach to blogs, message boards, and other forms of digital mediums.”
Blogs are fairly easy to monitor and there are a number of free tools available. Next things to watch are wikis, social networking sites, Second Life, YouTube etc that need to be on PR executives’ radar.
In the aftermath of the Working Families for Wal-Mart debacle, there has been a lot of talk about WOMMA’s code of ethics for online communications. Now PR Week writes (subscr. req.) that “Dell is becoming the largest company ever to formally adopt the Word of Mouth Marketing Association’s (WOMMA’s) code of ethics for online and blog communications”.
And while we are on the Wal-Mart topic, the bad luck for Edelman doesn’t seem to come to an end. Via For Immediate Release podcast #190 I hear that when Edelman set up the organisation Working Families for Wal-Mart they didn’t register the domain with the same name. The organisation’s website can be found at www.forwalmart.com. The most logical domain, www.workingfamiliesforwalmart.com, was instead kidnapped by an anti-Wal-Mart organisation that launched a pretty good parody site. Particulary worth noting is how all the smiling faces in the original are replaced by sad ones in the parody.
Via the India PR Blog I notice that the press release supposedly turned 100-years-old on October 28.
“On October 28, 1906, at least 50 people lost their lives when a three-car train of the Pennsylvania Railroad’s newly equipped electric service jumped a trestle at Atlantic City, NJ, and plunged into the Thoroughfare creek.
That afternoon, Ivy Lee, who some consider to be the father of modern PR, created the first press release. The Pennsylvania Railroad was one of his clients. Following the accident, Lee not only convinced the railroad to distribute a public statement, he also convinced them to provide a special train to get reporters to the scene of the accident.”
About time then that this communications channel evolved a bit. The PR agency SHIFT Communications initiated a discussion around the development of a “social media press release” this summer. The thought was that the press release should be re-designed to fit the new social media/web 2.0 environment. I am sure we will continue to see interesting developments regarding press releases and other PR tactics. For PR practitioners, these are exiting times.