Extreme Blog Makeover

Tweet

I like Scoble's new home. No, not Fast Company, but the extreme homepage makeover that the FC's web design team created for Scobelizer. It's nicely organized, pleasant to look at, and has many of the cool apps, widgets and communities that Scoble loves to extol through his multitudinous channels:

"More and more of my time has been spent on places like Qik, Twitter, Google Reader, Seesmic, Upcoming, Flickr, YouTube, and commenting on other people’s blogs. In this redesign, done by a team at FastCompany’s offices in New York, we’ve featured many of those in my navigation bar too."

Yet, it's really about Scoble the man, the myth, the legend... And what's wrong with that in an era when personal branding reigns supreme? It's also about gathering the reins of one's impossibly disparate digital existence. Even Jason, who knows a thing or two about personal branding (as one of the more prolific Tweeters), took notice:

JasonCalacanis ohhh.... scoble got a (new) design for his blog... fancy! http://tinyurl.com/5l4lch

Of course, Scoble's buddy Arrington to whose home he's headed tonight to catch Iron Man, had to go picayune by insinuating a sell-out with the re-design.

TechCrunch scoble's on his way to my house right now to drive up to iron man with me. wonder if he's read http://snurl.com/26j90 yet. awkward. :-)

Yes, folks, there's an advertising window on the new and improved Scobleizer and it's filled with an ad for my favorite external hard drive maker - Seagate. I'm cool with that, as long as the edit copy doesn't start to wax on Seagate's many virtues.

Scoble seems smitten with the (social life-simplifying) widget FriendFeed, his latest tweeted favorite, next to Minggl, of course. Now if only the digital diviners could just do a better job translating it all for MainStreet consumption, then we'd be getting somewhere. Right, Ty? Now move that bus!

GTA IV - The Perfect PR Storm

Tweet

For the uninitiated, the title of this post happens to be the biggest story in the video gaming industry so far this year. The long-awaited release of Take-Two Interactive's fabulously violent franchise "Grand Theft Auto IV" may not surpass Microsoft's release of Halo 3, but many predict it will come close.

The timing, reviews, and controversy surrounding tonight's midnight debut of GTA IV combust for the perfect PR storm, and potentially boffo sales.

First, Take-Two, the company, had pretty much hit the skids two years ago. Retailers pulled from the shelves the previous version of GTA for objectionable content, and the firm itself suffered a healthy does of financial impropriety leading to a management sweep. On top of that, the leading player in the biz, Electronic Arts (think Madden and Woods), just came in with an unsolicited takeover bid, which Take-Two thus far has fended off.

Company CEO Strauss Zelnick, hardly a shrinking violet, believes the bigger the GTA IV reception, the bigger the payout for his company (and for him) from EA. Meanwhile, the game itself must out race the anti-violence crowd to ensure it doesn't incur the wrath of regulators as did its predecessor.

One especially vitriolic detractor allegedly pulled the Jewish mother card as a means to toggle up pressure on Zelnick to do the right thing:

"Your son last week was reported to have said the following about Grand Theft Auto IV," the letter allegedly began. "'We've already received numerous reviews, and to a one, they are perfect scores. My mom couldn't write better reviews...' Taking your son's thought, I would encourage you either to play this game or have an adroit video gamer play it for you. Some of the latter gamers are on death row, so try to find one out in the civilian population who hasn't killed someone yet."

I'm no fan of violent video games, as my review of Halo 3 demonstrates. Still, the queues and reviews for tonight's release are in full throttle, which will invariably translate to turbo-charged media coverage and big sales. Mr. Zelnick is en route to extracting from EA his price, and a much needed road trip.

Disney's Peter Pan Syndrome

Tweet

Didn't Britney (at left) start out on the Mickey Mouse Club? Well, we all know what happens when puberty, and the lurid lure of modern celebrity kicks in.

At the age of 15, Miley Cyrus's handlers apparently believed the time was ripe for their charge to re-calibrate her image from a squeeky clean object of adoration for millions of tweens, and proceed directly to adulthood a la Natalie Portman or, God forbid, Lindsay Lohan. The Times reports on the conundrum here. Even Daniel Radcliffe, aka Harry Potter, couldn't stay young forever.

Some numbnut reasoned that Hanna Montana could skip those wholesome teen years (is that an oxymoron?), and by doing so, damn Disney's dream to keep its single biggest franchise mileyed in perpetual childhood.

And what better way to do accomplish this than by posing for the queen of all lensers in the glam glossy read by all the glitterati? (Hint: it was this queen who made that Queen bristle with the protocol-breaking suggestion to have her remove her crown.)

For Ms. Cyrus's fans (and the parents thereof), asking the Queen to remiove her crown pales in comparison to having Annie Leibovitz photograph their Hanna topless sheeted only in "satin."

Now the backpeddling begins:

Ms. Cyrus had a different view in a prepared statement released on Sunday: “I took part in a photo shoot that was supposed to be ‘artistic’ and now, seeing the photographs and reading the story, I feel so embarrassed. I never intended for any of this to happen and I apologize to my fans who I care so deeply about.”

Vanity Fair, the glam glossy cited above, must be in PR heaven this morning. They're getting a media bump (not unlike Penthouse when it announced its intention to sign Elliot Spitzer's hooker for a photo shoot).

Beth Kseniak, a spokeswoman for both Vanity Fair magazine and Ms. Leibovitz said, “Miley’s parents and/or minders were on the set all day. Since the photo was taken digitally, they saw it on the shoot and everyone thought it was a beautiful and natural portrait of Miley.”

The Disney Channel's Gary Marsh sums it in Vanity Fair's sibling publication Portfolio this way:

"For Miley Cyrus to be a 'good girl' is now a business decision for her. Parents have invested in her a godliness. If she violates that trust, she won’t get it back."

"Fame, I Want to Live Forever" isn't the mantra it used to be, is it? Still, here's a piece of advice for Ms. Cyrus's PR reps: don't let the chroniclers of celebrity culture control your client's communications campaign. Their motivations frequently misalign with yours.

A Links Course

Tweet

I'm frustrated. My Technorati "authority" has dropped in recent weeks. This, in spite of regularly posting some reasonably readable content, and recently receiving link love from some high profile A-listers.

In a fit of paranoia, I imagine the authority's algorithm keepers continue to hold a grudge against me for a previous post suggesting the site's in its twilight. Who knows.

My authority number has gone from about 125 to 108, which translates from a 50,000 to 75,000 rank among all bloggers. (I rationalize my place at the end of the long tail by telling friends that even at 75,000, The Flack remains in the top .016 percent of all bloggers.) So why does my Feedburner chicklet register a record 600+/- daily visitors?

As my eminently Clickable friend Max Kalehoff points out in his post today: it's not enough to post compelling content. You need to get people to link to it. Actually, this wasn't the primary point of Max's post. Instead, he laid down the gauntlet by demanding that journalists of any stripe include a hyper-link to the information sources cited in their stories. As Max more deftly puts it:

"We [the PR pro] invest a lot of time nurturing relationships with reporters, including supplying interviews, insights, opinions and, sometimes, material company assets. If a journalist uses such material directly or indirectly from a company, it’s common practice (and courtesy) to credit the source of that information. In pre-Internet days, sourcing the company name alone was considered fair attribution. However, a decade into the commercial Web, it’s far from it!"

He then goes on to provide a decent rationale for a journalist to link back.

However, there's one potential (non) sticking point that may put the kabosh on this Utopian PR request: by including lonks to other sites, the journalist could in effect take the reader away from his/her site, which doesn't help much on the stickiness scale.

Max is nonetheless right when he suggests we make every effort to convince the journalist to give us back something more valuable in return for our efforts. Times have changed and link relevancy is the new currency.

"Looking after the link should be just as much a part of the interview process as preparing, conducting the interview, following up and ensuring name attribution."

Now, PLEASE link to this blog...

Beltway Springboard

Tweet

You'd be hard-pressed to find a PR calling that beats national politics as a springier springboard to a high-paying, high-profile gig. Makes little difference what you did or how you performed.

If you can claim spokesperson duties for any member of the Executive Branch, and you didn't screw-up too badly, you can invariably write your ticket after bolting the Beltway boiler room.

Here's a nugget from today's Crain's New York's daily alert about one of the President's men who just hung his shady shingle at the venerable sports management firm that numbers Tiger Woods among its many vaunted clients:

"[Ari] Fleischer teamed up with talent agency IMG last month to launch Ari Fleischer Sports Communications, a Manhattan-based media and crisis management firm. The outfit aims to help professional athletes and team executives dribble through the gauntlet of media interviews to score points in the public image department."

Or to hear Mr. Fleischer rationalize it:

“Sports reporters are now every bit as aggressive and assertive as political reporters. And most people in sports don’t know how, and don’t want to handle them.”

Sure, Ari. Just "handle" them with deception.

Not only did Mr. Fleischer knowingly perpetuate a massive hoax on the American people, but to this day -- after 4050 American deaths and many times that of Americans wounded -- he has expressed no contrition for his treasonous behavior. He's proud to have just stood up there day in and day out spewing double-speak to propagate a now-disastrous war.

But wait a minute, didn't he pepper the daily White House presser with a few sporty metaphors? Now that's the ticket out of the bleachers! Here's a quote from the IMG SVP who apparently opened his company's locker room to Mr. Fleischer:

“I’m a C-Span junkie, and I noticed that in his press conferences Ari always used a lot of sports references.”

I'll never understand corporate America's fascination with Washington. Does Pennsylvania Avenue have it over Madison Avenue or Silicon Valley in the PR smarts department? I don't buy it, and nor should have IMG.

Manage This!

Tweet

I had totally forgotten about my post two years ago featuring Chief Executive magazine's then editor Bill Holstein's rant against PR people.

It wasn't until PR Newser's Jason Chupick linked back to the "Jennifer and Jasons All" item in his post today based on Mr. Holstein's latest (yet not-unfounded) first-person diss of a broad swath of PR types. It appears in the April 17 issue of Bulldog Reporter's Daily Dog. (Think of the MSM version of Chris Anderson.)

Other than taking issue with the Holstein's use of his name, Chupick thought the argument was "tired." I don't disagree, but do acknowledge that there are many PR firms that still blast-FedEx press kits with tchatkes en masse to a list of reporters supposedly hand-picked from a Cision or PR Newswire database. Holstein's case-in-point:

"Sometimes, PR agencies go off completely half–cocked. One media friend who is in a gatekeeping role told me this story in an email: "I just got a FedEx, marked urgent, from a company in North Carolina called [Old Fashioned PR Inc.]. So I opened (and discarded) one medium FedEx box, transported from NC to New York. I removed (and discarded) some packing paper that was securing a cardboard box. I opened (and discarded) the cardboard box to find a plastic box wrapped in Styrofoam. I threw out the Styrofoam and opened the plastic box to find more paper packaging, a plastic bag of Styrofoam peanuts, a plastic swizzle stick, and a three–page press release.

"The title of the release? '[OFPR Inc. Client Name] Celebrates Earth Day by Leading the Way with Environmental Initiatives.' The gimmick is that the Styrofoam peanuts dissolve in water. My jaw just dropped. I feel like this might almost be a joke."

Turns out the press release was poorly done and not very revealing or well–angled. The editor was turned off, to put it mildly, by the use of a wasteful mailing to promote an unfathomable environmental message."

Gee. Didn't I just receive a press packet via FedEx? It included a cover note from a publicist, two-page bio, one-page listing of recent speeches, and a two-page press release (admirably printed on both sides of one sheet), and a little 1oo-page hardcovered book with the title: Manage the Media (Don't Let the Media Manage You).

The author: William Holstein.

I do plan to read the book, and in fact, thought about sharing it with Scoble and Israel, Gillmor, Jarvis and Rosen, for starters -- any one of whom would definitely have something to say about the book's premise in the year 2008. I'll table that post until after I finish reading it.

Pictured: Conrad Black

Kobe Bryant: Jackass

Tweet

Global Brand + Famous Athlete + Luxury Car + Photo Shop = 2.5 Million Views

The June 1980 issue of Esquire magazine had a famous cover showing a chimpanzee and a typewriter (remember those?) with the caption: "Is Anyone in America Not Writing a Screenplay?" Today, that headline could read: "Is Anyone in America Not Posting to YouTube?"

While some of the most viral YouTube clips come from the cameras of consumers -- think Diet Coke and Mentos (5.6M views) or that drowsy Comcast repairman (1.2M views) -- consumer-facing companies also are vying for that elusive virality and the boffo audience now residing on the dominant video sharing site. In fact, today there isn't a brand marketer who isn't seeking that magic formula for achieving branded video nirvana.

The stewards for one of the world's best-known and most-esteemed brands, though no longer among the top ten, appear to have found the right mix. Not only has Nike produced a cool video, but it has the added element of deception, which creates controversy, which translates into publicity and even more video views. Sarah Money of MediaPost reports on the Aston Martin leaping Kobe Bryant spot for Nike:

"The 53-second video showing Bryant bounding over an Aston Martin has become a hit on YouTube, garnering nearly 2.5 million views in its different versions. In just a few weeks, it's sparked lengthy-albeit fairly moronic-debates among viewers about whether it's real or not."

Nielsen's Pete Blackshaw adds:

"Just on the basis of word of mouth-are they building buzz and creating conversations? - it's doing quite well."

But he says it isn't without risks.

"This is the double edge sword of word-of-mouth and consumer-generated media. This is the new epicenter of consumer attention, but it doesn't always cut in the brand's best direction."

While I too take some issue with the deceptive nature of the spot -- it isn't real -- the (intentional?) controversy creates the requisite buzz without which the video wouldn't have captured the fleeting attentions of those millions of YouTubers. Just don't try this stunt at home.

Inauthentic Generals

Tweet

As one agency trumpets its new mantra of "authenticity," we learn today just how deeply our government has subverted authenticity to sell its war-time policies.

In a 7600-word investigative piece on page A1 of today's New York Times, reporter Doug Barstow outlines the extent to which this administration took (fairly standard) public relations techniques and nefariously used them to program hand-picked military "surrogates" for TV and radio "news" saturation.

"Torie Clarke, the former public relations executive who oversaw the Pentagon’s dealings with the analysts as assistant secretary of defense for public affairs, had come to her job with distinct ideas about achieving what she called “information dominance.” In a spin-saturated news culture, she argued, opinion is swayed most by voices perceived as authoritative and utterly independent.

And so even before Sept. 11, she built a system within the Pentagon to recruit 'key influentials' — movers and shakers from all walks who with the proper ministrations might be counted on to generate support for Mr. Rumsfeld’s priorities."

The White House's wide-spread deployment of supposedly objective military analysts to carry the message, a program in which Armstrong Williams and sketchy VNRs are only minor cogs, in effect usurped the media filter as the historical interpreters of government policy.

"Rather than complain about the “media filter,” each of these techniques simply converted the filter into an amplifier. This time, Mr. Krueger said, the military analysts would in effect be “writing the op-ed” for the war."

Many of these TV and radio-trained "analysts" had ties to defense contractors, and thus stood to reap financial gain from an escalation in the war. But the real motivation for their star turns in selling the war was not from pay-for-play, but rather through access to the halls of power:

“Oh, you have no idea,” Mr. Allard said, describing the effect. “You’re back. They listen to you. They listen to what you say on TV.” It was, he said, “psyops on steroids” — a nuanced exercise in influence through flattery and proximity. “It’s not like it’s, ‘We’ll pay you $500 to get our story out,’ ” he said. “It’s more subtle.”

The access came with a condition. Participants were instructed not to quote their briefers directly or otherwise describe their contacts with the Pentagon."

In reading this story, nothing really surprised me. This blog has consistently covered just how this administration has tarnished the reputation of a mostly ethical public relations profession. The use of third-party spokespersons to advance communications agendas isn't revelatory, and frankly, there isn't a company, institution, political campaign or NGO that doesn't use "surrogates " to advocate a POV through the media.

However, I find it egregiously unethical when an enterprise, let alone our government, uses "independent" experts to knowingly distort the facts in a deliberate campaign to mislead the media and by extension, the public. To me, this subversive use of an age-old PR practice flies in the face of the our industry's code of conduct, not to mention the burgeoning (and much-needed) authentic communications "movement" (if you'd call it that).

My second observation has to do with the sorry state of the news business. I have always felt that client-produced video footage sent to local broadcast news desks is not the culprit, assuming the source of that footage is made crystal clear. It's always been my opinion that the recipient news organization has responsibility for assessing the news value and veracity of third-party video.

But the blurring of commentary and news (i.e., are Bill O'Reilly and Keith Olbermann even "journalists?") has created a massive "hole" for opinion (posing as news) on the nations' cable news channels, and to a lesser degree, broadcast news programs. We have seen the disastrous consequences of the journalistic failures of the cable and broadcast network news chiefs, under which these programs fall, when deciding who fills these holes...and the free ride they're given once on the air.

Hopefully The Times's substantive piece today will give these network news programmers a long overdue wake-up call.

In Praise of the Press Release

Tweet

Two weeks ago, a client issued a news release nationally on Business Wire. Two days ago, a colleague sent me an effusive email containing a list of links to reputable web sites that posted the release verbatim.

It included the usual subjects: Yahoo! Finance, AOL money & finance, msn money, Forbes.com...

I ask myself: do these even count as "placements" or "earned media" as they are sometimes called? Charles Cooper, writing for CNET's "Coop's Corner," today points out what most of us already know: the lines between pure editorial content and corporate content have blurred. He writes:

"During the course of any 24-hour news cycle, PR releases often rank higher on news aggregation pages like TechMeme than do professionally reported articles or blog items. I began noticing the shift about a year ago and it's only becoming more pronounced."

I'm reminded of the irrational exuberance displayed by those dastardly dot-commers when their fledgling companies' news releases actually moved on PR Newswire or Business Wire. "Now this is PR-ogress!" many of them boasted.

As I contemplate the current magnetic state of the news release, I'm wondering whether my incredulity over their misguided excitement was well, also misguided. BusinessWire's Laura Sturaitis rationalizes her company's efforts to re-make the news release into a kind of conversation door-opener:

"This is stuff that people like to read online," she said. "We're not talking about the content, but the format...so the page becomes a portal or mini-Web page to other kinds of information. This is a new way to tell a story."

Or as "Coop" astutely observes:

"The company is not the final word. Instead, it's the start of a [sic] ongoing conversation. I can't speak for most of you but I think we can agree that the more voices, the better."

Update 4.22: Clickable's Max Kalehoff takes the conversation a step further with this post.

Off-the-Bus, On-the-Record

Tweet

If you missed Kit Seelye's take today on how one off-the-bus Obama citizen supporter/reporter could very well derail her candidate's political prospects, it's a most worthwhile read. For some command-and-control PR types, it should also strike a nerve.

In a nutshell, the Obama campaign invited one Mayhill Fowler, a 61-year-old reporter for Off the Bus, the Jay Rosen/Arianna Huffington's consumer-driven campaign press corps, to attend an Obama fundraiser in California supposedly as a contributor. It was at this closed-to-the-media event where the mostly inspiring candidate dissed all gun-loving, religious types living in pivotal Pennsylvania.

Ms. Fowler, wearing her journalist hat and armed with her digital recorder, struggled with whether to report the ill-timed and ill-conceived remarks by her candidate-of-choice. Four days later she did, and all hell broke loose.

Since this is a PR blog, I found it especially intriguing, in an age of the Internet-driven political campaign, how the Senator's handlers thought they could keep the media lid on what was ostensibly a public event. Ms. Fowler gained a "credential," (i.e., access) as a supporter, not as a reporter, but she believed otherwise:

“We had a fundamental misunderstanding of my priorities,” Ms. Fowler told me. “Mine were as a reporter, not as a supporter. They thought I would put the role of supporter first.”

Off-the-Bus's Marc Cooper provides this tutorial about on-the-record, off-the-record:

“It was indeed a fund-raiser to which the press was not invited,” he wrote. “Or if you wish, it was closed to press. Therefore it wasn’t on or off the record. Off the record is when journalists consensually agree to witness or hear something on the condition they not report it.”

To compound the confusion,

"Ms. Fowler said she held her digital recorder openly. The place was jammed with others using video cams and cell phone cameras. Among them, Ms. Fowler said, was a professor who was recording the event for his students. In fact, snippets of the speech have been posted on YouTube by others who were there."

It reminded me of when a former client instructed us to ask the audience of concert "extras" to bring cameras to a taping of a TV commercial featuring Elton John, but forbid them from taking actual pictures. Groan. Today, most of the smart PR set acknowledges that everyone and anyone can be a journalist, nothing is off-the-record, and that total command over a client's public portrayal is a thing of the past.

BTW - I did get a kick seeing Obama-supporter Ms. Huffington's quoted in the newspaper this morning:

"We are a news site," said Ms. Huffington, who cleared the post by cellphone aboard David Geffen's yacht in Tahiti. "We have opinions, points of view, but we'll post whatever is newsworthy."

So much for Obama shaking off allegations of elitism. Mr. Geffen (or Ms. Huffington) apparently took issue with his/her contextual presence in Ms. Seelye's story. The online version of the piece now reports "she’s on a cruise in the Pacific."

Here's the round-up of reactions to what has been dubbed "Bittergate."

Twittering for Dollars

Tweet

His motivation?

A) Writer's block
B) Digital disenchantment
C) Money worries
D) A PR ploy to regain media spotlight

To hear Rocketboom co-founder Andrew Baron explain his decision to sell his Twitter account (and his 1400+ followers) to the highest eBay bidder, one would think the answer is a combination of A and B.

"Every time I would go to Twitter, I would think really hard and try to come up with something important to say. I'd also try to talk about things I was doing, like going out to have a drink, or I would try to be poetic," says Baron. "It wasn't working for me."

But judging from the (good and bad) attention he's receiving for the ploy, I wonder whether this is simply an attempt to regain some media relevancy. After all, what numbnut would even want to follow Mr. Baron's tweets without Mr. Baron?

Heather Green's piece in Business Week, "Twitter for Sale," twittered by her Blogspotting cohort Steve Baker, points to the ethical dilemma inherent in selling access to one's "followers." Mr. Baron admits that in his deliberations to unload his account, he learned that someone had tried to do the same with a Digg account, but was rebuffed by Digg's terms-of-service. Twitter doesn't appear to have the same TOS issues.

And since we're talking about Twitter ambivalence, another Twitter development appears to be percolating: is the two-year-old tool readying a plan to accept advertising? Here's the overnight interplay between two of Twitter's most prolific users: Scoble and Arrington.

Scobleizer Is Twitter adding advertising? http://tinyurl.com/64hnvf

Scobleizer I want to advertise on only one guy's account. I want to spam the heck out of @jasoncalacanis. :-)

Scobleizer @TechCrunch I wonder if Twitter could come up with a model where we share in the revenues made on our Twitter accounts?

TechCrunch @Scobleizer thanks for the link on twitter advertising http://snurl.com/24gke

TechCrunch It seems to me twitter is turning into a major Internet utility. no reason to screw that up with ad insertions, yet.

TechCrunch @Scobleizer a model i would endorse is where twitter charges say $10/month and lets us put our own ads.

Thus far, the bidding for Mr. Baron's account is up to $1550 (or a little more than $1 per follower). Hmm. That means I can make about $90 if I put my feed up on eBay. Nah. It's too much fun getting an early beat on tomorrow's tech scuttlebutt.

Rehab Reality

Tweet

Lohan, Dunst, Spears, Carey, Mendes, O'Brien...and the list goes on and on.

AOL has a special section called Celebrity Rehab, and the host of the popular reality show Celeb Rehab allegedly is a substance abuser.

This cartoon appears in the current issue of The New Yorker.

Girls Gone Wal-Mart

Tweet

So Joe Francis is out of jail. Here's a guy who had the genius idea to turn his video cameras on sloppy drunk female Spring Breakers, or at last those willing to publicly expose themselves. He made millions, but paid the statutory price with jail time.

Today we learn that another video production company seeks to make millions -- $145 millions to be exact -- by selling footage, which to many, depict even greater scenes of depravity.

Tech Dirt reports, and others have picked up, that the former video company that shot Wal-Mart's internal employee confabs for the past 30 years is out peddling the footage.

The company "discovered there are actually plenty of people out there interested in viewing such material -- especially if it involves managers prancing about in drag at an executive meeting."

So what could be more marketable than Girls Gone Wild?

"Clips of male store managers parading in drag in front of thousands of colleagues as they all sing the corporate song, employees mocking dangerous uses of a product sold in its stores, and even founder Sam Walton referring to then non-executive director Hillary Clinton as 'one of us'."

Wired reports:

"To date, there's been tremendous interest in the videos by those involved in various lawsuits against Wal-Mart, including plaintiffs' lawyers and union critics with a bone to pick with the world's largest retailer."

Wal-Mart has offered the company $500K to take the footage off the market. Me thinks that number will rise. Says a Wal-Mart spokesperson:

"...we did not pay Flagler Productions to tape internal meetings with this aftermarket in mind."

The News Release: Content or Context?

Tweet

As PR types continue their obsession with the format and purpose of the modern-day news release, this resilient vehicle for allegedly breaking news continues to flourish in most industry circles. A quick scan of any 30-minute weekday block on Business Wire or PR Newswire will dispel any notion that the press release is dead.

Even so, I would venture to guess that 99% of the news releases issued on any given day fall on deaf ears. The vast majority of mainstream journalists and none of the citizen variety view them as catalysts, let alone primary sources for their coverage. There are some, however, that actually live up to the "news" in the term news release. Didn't Microsoft announce its intention to purchase Yahoo! via a news release?

Many argue that the typical news release format and paucity of usable "assets" prevent it from gaining editorial traction. Hence, the social media news release was born as a re-formatted headline-driven vehicle with links to images, video, pertinent articles, etc., and sufficient keyword density to capture both the journalist's and search engine spider's attentions.

On the other side of the "what ails the news release" argument lie the purists who believe that a news release's ineffectiveness results from a lack of compelling content. They contend that most releases get the headline and leads wrong, are poorly written, and simply do not contain what any journeyman journalist would consider actual news.

I was thus struck by the issuance this week, and pick up today by a most influential news organization, of one news release about the Tribune Company's hiring of a new head of interactive services. Rather than deploying a social media news release, as one would expect from this 2.0-flavored announcement, the purveyors chose the latter route -- to completely contort the content to capture attentions.

Guess what? It worked. PaidContent's David Kaplan, who's previously toiled in the PR space, took notice and published the news with a link to The Tribune's most irreverent (and mostly fictional) release.

"The press release was meant as a demonstration that we’re doing things very differently at the ‘new’ Tribune,” said Gary Weitman, a Tribune spokesman.

Good idea? Here's the headline and lead. You decide.

Surely You Can’t Be Serious?
Marc Chase - President Of Tribune Interactive!

Randy Michaels’ run of acquiring radio-management stars came
to a screeching halt today with Chase’s appointment

CHICAGO Apr. 7, 2008 -- Another freaking Clear Channel Communications executive on the payroll and this one’s been named President of Tribune Interactive....

Torched

Tweet

PR Week picked up on an FT report Friday that the Chinese government has invited a number of U.S. and UK PR firms to help it mitigate a most unwanted media spotlight.

The assignment would be separate from the work H&K has undertaken on behalf of the Beijing Olympics Organizing Committee, and instead focus on improving China's torturous Tibetan-tainted image in advance of this summer's games.

I wonder what kind of egg drop soup the invited firms will serve up to the Chinese, and more significantly, are the Chinese even prepared to follow the only real cure for what ails their government: a meaningful policy shift, i.e., a recognition of Tibetan rights? Only in this way can it extinguish the harsh media spotlight before that spotlight completely extinguishes the torch.

Let me digress. Since when does the torch relay provide proper kindling for political unrest? I remember my experience working on the Torch Run. The prospect for protests seemed as remote as the rural route the torch took. Coca-Cola's Torch Run sponsorship enabled ordinary citizens to win a chance to carry the flame for a few hundred yards.

We captured video footage of the lay torch carriers and fed it via satellite to their hometown TV news programs. It was a swiss-cheesed video news feed strategy, and it worked. What ever happened to Samsung's similar plan for this year?

Yet today, the torch has fallen prey to political protest.

"Never before has this happened," said Anthony Bykerk, the secretary general of the International Society of Olympic Historians, of the protests surrounding the Olympic torch. "This is the first time that the torch relay has ever been an element of protest, it's usually a very big celebration."

Why now? Could computer connectivity have catalyzed concerned citizens' coordinated chaos?

Apple's WiiPhone Shortage?

Tweet

What else can one say about Mark Penn?

Looking ahead to tomorrow's Publicity Club of New York luncheon with Huff Post, Business Week, Portfolio.com, New York Magazine Online and Media Post, I visited BW's "Blogspotting" whose co-editor Stephen Baker will represent the McGraw Hill flagship title.

My eyes turned to the videopost from Steve's co-editor Heather Green in which she and her Business Week colleagues Spencer Antune, Catherine Holohan and Arik Hessaldahl (remote from Long Island) dished on the latest tech news. The usual items included MySpace's auspicious entry into the online music retailing space, RIM raising its earnings projections, and the one that intrigued me the most -- the shortage of iPhones in Apple retail stores and a 5-7 day lag time for online purchase.

Huh? Is this true? Ms. Holohan suggested that the company has manufactured the supply shortfall in an effort to give the product some luxury goods cache, a la "Wii or Ugg boots," Mr. Antune chimed. Hessaldahl confirmed that it was not a parts issue since the key components of the iPhone are in excess supply. The dominant theory speculates that Apple may have something new (EG 3G) up its sleeve.

Separately on the Blogspotting site, Steve Baker reports that several of his Business Week colleagues are ankling the "ad economy" for (literally) greener pastures. A couple are headed to McKinsey, one to Bloomberg and another, senior editor Mike France, has joined former Wall Street Journal M&A reporter, now player Steve Lipin at Brunswick. Hmm. I wonder where he'll earn more?

A Kodak Moment

Tweet

Several months ago, I sat on a social media panel alongside Kodak's Jennifer Cisney who walked the audience through her company's employee-generated news content. It was compelling stuff with the right irreverent tone -- not too commercial, a bit self-effacing, authentic, and informative with a decent amount of "gee whiz" factor built in -- a key ingredient, I suppose, for a weblog from a technology company (with a "thousand nerds").

I've worked on the Kodak account at a couple of agencies over the years. It started with local market media tours with Kodak's photo experts who physically visited the nation's top ADIs, to appear on local TV talk and news shows. Then there was the company's partnership with the newspaper industry through which readers submitted and received awards for their best photographs.

And finally, I oversaw the PR for the mammoth 1996 global launch of the Advanced Photo System (APS) and specifically, Kodak's entry Advantix. It was at a time when digital photography remained but a small, but threatening glimmer in the eyes of the industry. Silver Halide (and other chemicals) still ruled.

Kodak actually co-developed the new easier-to-point-and-shoot technology with four other companies: Canon, Nikon, Fuji and Minolta. The consortium agreed to embargo the public announcements of their branded products until 12 midnight (ET) on a certain day. One problem: 12 midnight in New York was 12 Noon in the headquartered country of Kodak's partners! The sole U.S. developer feared it would be left in the pixel dust.

The PR strategy had two key elements: We invited every major news organization to Kodak's HQ and pre-briefed them under strict embargo, and 2) we held our press launch at a theatre in Los Angeles at 9pm (PT). The event featured Kodak CEO George Fisher, actress Stephanie (or was it Jane) Seymour and a giant roll of film descending onto the stage from the ceiling. What's a photo op without a photo op? The footage was fed via satellite around the world.

One billion media impressions later, we soon learned that when the other partners tried to pitch their story, many were informed that the Advanced Photo System story was already completed, i.e., in the can(ister) so to speak. Kodak dominated. Orders for its Advantix brand far exceeded supply.

Today, Kodak issued a news release on Business Wire naming Jennifer Cisney as the company's "Chief Blogger." From the release:

"Just over ten percent of Fortune 500 companies have public blogs. Fewer still have Chief Bloggers, and Kodak is among the first to name a female Chief Blogger," said Jeffrey Hayzlett, Chief Business Development Officer and Vice President, Eastman Kodak Company. "As Kodak continues to break new ground in the imaging industry with our innovative products and services, we are committed to staying on the cutting-edge of social media by utilizing the talents of our people."

Congratulations, Jennifer. Is the release embargoed?

Stein v. Scopes

Tweet

What's gives with Ben Stein? Could it be his years of putting words in the mouth of Richard Nixon have finally come home to roost? This lawyer, actor, comedian, economist, White House speechwriter, and newspaper columnist is poised once again to reinvent himself -- this time as advocate for the religious right, or more specifically the clandestine campaign to insert religion into U.S. schools.

Yes, folks, the latest star turn for this chameleon of a man has him propagating the theory of intelligent design in a soon-to-open motion picture called "Expelled." The film's marketing campaign may remind one of Mr. Stein's most memorable role as the teacher in "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" with a tinge of Jack Black's "School of Rock" thrown in, but don't be fooled.

Mr. Stein has borrowed a page from Moore and Gore to use the world's most popular medium to advance his POV. Unlike Moore and Gore, however, the pre-release flavor of Stein's new film masks its real intention through a comedic persona more akin to Rodney Dangerfield in "Back to School" than William Jennings Bryan in the Scopes Monkey Trial.

The makers of "Expelled" have obviously used intelligent design in designing the movie's marketing campaign. If only "Flock of the Dodos" had the same star power.