The German players can’t blog during the World Cup in Germany next summer, according to Aftonbladet. The German Football Federation stops the players from writing blogs or contributing to media articles because their focus should be on the game.
Hill & Knowlton’s PO box [no longer] used in suspicious campaign
Marcus writes that a webpage called Sheriffbilen (the Sheriff’s car) promotes a sticker in the form of the license plate belonging to Peter Eriksson, spokesperson for the Swedish Green Party. The web page is a protest against Eriksson’s role in the launch of a road toll and congestion charging scheme in Stockholm, due to start in January. As a member of the Swedish Parliament, Eriksson is excluded from paying the toll and the web page encourages people to order a free sticker and put it on their own license plate (it doesn’t spell it out, but what other reason is there?), something that is of course illegal. There is a disclaimer on the site that the sticker cannot be used on a license plate (duh!).
The person behind the site seems to be a former PR consultant, the otherwise brilliant lobbyist Martin Borgs. To order a sticker you are supposed to send a stamped envelope to Martin Borgs, Box 15411, 104 65 Stockholm. This is the PO box of the PR agency Hill & Knowlton in Sweden, Borgs’ previous employer. Hill & Knowlton is a member of the WPP Group, one of the world’s largest communications services companies which is listed on Nasdaq and the London Stock Exchange. If we put the “Sheriff site” in that perspective, it is highly inappropriate for a listed company to let it’s post box be used in acts that border on encouragement of criminal behavior. To be honest, I don’t think Hill & Knowlton are aware of this site.
Hat tip to Urban Lindstedt.
Update: After reading my post, H&K; asked Borgs to stop using the PO box for this campaign and the site has now been updated with a new address. Clearly, Hill & Knowlton had nothing to do with the site.
Metro to open in 17 new cities
The Swedish free daily newspaper Metro will start distribution in 17 new cities in Sweden, according to an article in Svenska Dagbladet. Kalmar, Växjö, Halmstad, Umeå, Luleå and Sundsvall are some of the candidates. Metro have declined to comment on the information.
Metro announced today that its global daily readership is up 22% to 18.5 million readers. Metro now has 59 editions in 19 countries.
Top concerns about corporate blogging
Peppercom has done a survey on corporate blogs that says ghostwriting and commercialization are the most common mistakes corporations make when blogging.
The key findings show that:
– 72% of PR and marketing professionals cite the creation of artificial, overly promotional corporate blogs as the principal mistake that companies make when attempting to blog.
– In addition, 50% cite “obvious ghostwriting” as another significant blunder that they have witnessed with corporate blogs.
– 50% also cite companies that just “blog for blog’s sake” as a problem that they have seen.
On the positive side, the survey showed that:
– Most respondents (62%) agree that the blogosphere is an appropriate venue for corporations to communicate with stakeholders.
– 80% of respondents feel that a corporate blog can help improve the dialogue between a company and its stakeholders, customers, and employees.
– 79% feel that a corporate blog helps position the company / chief blogger as a thought leader.
Link via Communication Overtones.
Technorati tags: corporate blogging, PR, Public Relations.
RSS ads outperform similar web ads
RSS marketing company Pheedo has published some interesting findings regarding the effectiveness of advertising in RSS feeds. It seems that standalone ad placement (ads as separate blog posts) get higher click-through rates than embedded ads (ads within a blog post). Pheedo says that a standalone RSS ad generates, on average, a 7.99% click-through rate compared to 0.85% for an embedded RSS ad.
Other findings are that:
– ads placed in every other feed post get the highest click-through
– Tuesday, Monday and Saturday have emerged as the days with the highest CTR while Thursday and Friday show the lowest percentage
Technorati tags: advertising, RSS.
Best blog in Norway
VamPus Verden is the very first winner of Norway’s Gullbloggen (The golden blog), reports Undercurrent. Gullbloggen is the award for the best Norwegian blog.