Friday, November 30, 2012

Business Insiders

Business Insider EIC Henry Blodget
In a previous post, I rattled off some of the myriad conferences one might attend for a glimpse of today's media, tech, and marketing punditocracy. While client obligations have forced me to be more judicious in parsing where I spend my time, Business Insider's Ignition conference, now in its third year, is one from which I've always derived some bankable enlightenment.

I suppose if AllThingsD or Allen & Co. invited me to their annual confabs, I'd make the requisite sacrifice. Also I was glad to see The New York Times finally getting in the conference game by leveraging the DealBook imprimateur.

Its Dec 12 inaugural event will feature Twitter's Dick Costolo, Google's Eric Schmidt, JPMorgan Chase's Jamie Dimon, Goldman Sachs' Lloyd Blankfein, and others too luminous to mention. (I won't tell you how five years ago I implored NYTCO to mount its own branded conferences. We even took a meeting to explore options, but I digress.)

As mentioned, I spent the better part of Tuesday and Wednesday absorbing the wisdom shared by dozens of business and thought leaders at the Ignition conference, which was held in a fab space on 10th floor of the Time Warner Center. The choice of venue certainly made it easier for $TWX chairman and CEO Jeff Bewkes to cap off the two-day affair. More on that below.

Event organizer Arden Pennell ("rhymes with fennell") gets started on the planning for Ignition some six months in advance. As the topics evolve, speakers are invited -- mostly of the industry leadership variety. Yes, Arden does entertain speaker suggestions from communications professionals, but she has little tolerance for junior PR types who don't take the time to understand this event's distinctive DNA. Here's what she told me. Audio here. (RT: 2:15)

Gene Munster (Photo: Michael Seto for Business Insider)
What's especially attractive about Ignition is the way in which Business Insider deploys its beat reporters, i.e., subject matter experts, to moderate or introduce the luminaries in their respective wheelhouses. For example, BI's resident gadget guy and SAI editor Steve Kovach intro'd Apple fan boy Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster who never fails to captivate with $AAPL's product pipeline.

His Ignition 2011 prediction for an Apple television in early 2013 has been amended to November 2013. He also said: "Apple is in good hands and should double down with Jony Ive."

The publication's deputy editor (and advertising lead) Jim Edwards took PepsiCo's Sgiv Singh, Facebook's Carolyn Everson and OMD's Colin Sutton through their paces. Everson noted: "49% of all of our CPG campaigns have delivered 5x return on ad investment, 70% delivered 3x." Edwards later chatted with the legendary Bob Pittman, now leading ClearChannel, and Macy's CMO Martine Reardon who, to many people's chagrin, reaffirmed that Macy's is sticking with Trump.)

BI/SAI Startup Editor Alyson Shontell
Startup reporter and SAI editor Alyson Shontell, who'll be joining my Dec 11 PCNY luncheon panel featuring startup reporters, had a one-on-one with Foursquare's chief revenue officer, and later sat down with some hot VCs: David Lee, Founder and Managing Partner, SV Angel, Bijan Sabet, General Partner, Spark Capital, and David Tisch, Managing Director, TechStars NYC. Even SAI alum Dan Frommer, now an editor-at-large for ReadWrite, tackled a panel of pundits pontificating on the ROI of mobile publishing.

Deputy editor Nich Carlson, BI's resident futurist, walked the audience through an illustrious (literally) panel discussion titled "the rise of the visual web," took Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman through a conversation on who'll own mobile, local commerce, grabbed a few minutes with Google+'s Bradley Horowitz, and still had time to probe Ross Levinsohn and Jon Miller, formerly CEOS of Yahoo! and AOL, respectively.

Greycroft's Alan Patricof
I personally think Alyson and Nich should have combined their panels to have Foursquare's CRO square off with Yelp's CEO. Maybe next year. I also enjoyed Joseph Weisenthal chat with (a reinvented and still exuberant) Alan Patricof, MD of Greycroft, about his 43+ years in the business of investing in emerging companies. BI piece here.

As impressive as many of these folks are -- at least to those of us toiling in the media, tech and marketing realms --  Business Insider founder & editor-in-chief Henry Blodget took the interviewing reigns for the really marquis names.  And guess what? He's a natural inquisitor with an uncanny way of charming and disarming his way to the crux of the issue at hand, without ruffling too many moguls' feathers.

It takes considerable chutzpah and a deft touch, for example, to challenge Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes on Bewkes' assertion that all is well and good in TV-land, or force a clearly beleaguered Andrew Mason to defend his role as CEO of Groupon on the eve of the board's meeting to consider his ouster.  (Mason survived, btw.)

It wasn't just Bewkes and Mason who sustained the Blodget treatment. He also had time with a very smart Jeff Wiener, CEO of LinkedIn, Jill Abramson, managing editor of The New York Times, and Startup Nation booster Steve Case, CEO of Revolution and founder of AOL. What follows are some notable quotables from the Blodget sessions (thank you Twitter):

LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner
Jeff Weiner, CEO, LinkedIn
On careers: "I do genuinely believe you can will things to happen." 
Our vision is to create economic opportunity for the 3.3B people in the global workforce" 
Blodget to Weiner: "Now you are a God among men..."
Weiner: We're more focused on long-term EBITDA margins. 
Today in low 20% range, expanding over time. 
The IPO was only stepping stone...it's a singular event...like a marriage 
On IPO pricing: "We sought to attract long-term investors who understood our platform. 
On "endorsements": Lightweight recommendation mechanism. Very strong start, over 50M/week, 300M since launch. 
We recently invited 150 "luminaries" to post on LinkedIn. Richard Branson is now most followed 
Our value for users is in building one's "professional identity" and sharing information 
We aspire to parse company data to train the workforce for the jobs of tomorrow... 
Only a slim minority of LinkedIn usage is generated by job seekers. 
We're really about "a professional graph"...we've mapped relationships up to three degrees. 
We want to be the essential source for professional insights...we also want to be ubiquitous. 
On LinkedIn you will only find professional content. 187 million members, growing at a rate of two per second.
Henry Blodget and NYTimes's Jill Abramson
Jill Abramson, managing editor, The New York Times
On how she'd like to be remembered: "I protected and expanded the depth & breadth of news report...I kept the place straight.
We'd love to have Nate Silver continue to be part of the NYT family & to expand on some of the things he does. 
It's a myth about the big disparity in age from paper to digital readers. Print upper 40's, digital around 40. 
Blodget to Abramson: What is the date the paper will be killed? 
There is a big appetite for both products. 800K+ still subscribe to the paper 
It matters to know what the readers want in determining coverage.
On digital news personnel: 300-350 mostly digital of the 1200 in newsroom; reporters are platform agnostic. 
The same newsroom produces a 'news report' for all platforms...It's given us a leg up." 
On BBC controversy: On BBC controversy: It's not the newsroom to judge CEO's qualifications...I'm not Joe Nocera's or The Public Editor's boss...I don't think our public editor actually looked at our coverage of the BBC...

Revolution's Steve Case
Steve Case, CEO of Revolution, founder of AOL
On $AMZN's LivingSocial (and Groupon): They'll have bumps in road, but they can be transformative. 
On his investment strategy: More than half the economy has NOT been disrupted by the Internet. 
$AOL, $FB were speculative investments. 
The Jobs Act (crowdfunding) has lessened the reg burden for startups. 
Things have changed in last 20 years: When we [AOL] went public, we raised $10M w/ a market cap of $70M. 
On immigration: "the politics of entrepreneurship/innovation are being trumped by the politics of immigration." 
Pass the bi-partisan Startup 2.0 Act
Groupon's Andrew Mason
Andrew Mason, founder/CEO, Groupon

As founder, CEO & a large shareholder, I care far more about the success of $GRPN than I do about my CEO role. 
We just launched in NY a browseable, searchable marketplace, ie., date night deals...
We will not try to out-Amazon $AMZN. $GRPN is about curation. We'll show one TV, not 1000's of TVs.
Trend lines toward mobile have been staggering, one-third of Groupon's North American transactions are on mobile devices.
On "Goods": We'll sell 30K Garmin GPS devices in eight hours. A first for manufacturers to move that much product.
Blodget likens his compares his past travails with Mason's who sardonically replied "It's awesome, Henry!"
We'll look back at these war stories and be proud that we had the opportunity to prove the world wrong
The hardest time was during quiet period after filing the S1. We've built up a resiliency to the negative noise.
Candor and straightforwardness will always be best policy.
Stock will reflect long-term performance.
Blodget to Mason: Is board going to fire you? Mason: Stock down 80% since IPO. It would be weird if not discussed. 
Blodget and Time Warner chairman/CEO Jeff Bewkes
Jeff Bewkes, chairman and CEO, Time Warner
Blodget to Bewkes: Should $GOOG buy $TWX? Jeff Bewkes: Why? It's kinda like AOL-Time-Warner. It doesn't help.
We're doing $5B/year in production on our networks & TV biz. (vs $100M for YouTube, Netflix...)
I think Netflix has a future. It's good place to make available syndicated, serialized shows.
Blodget to Bewkes: TV is still incredibly annoying w/ 500 channels... Bewkes concedes: the interface needs work
Remember how great TV was when you were growing up? It's back! It's in your hands.
# subscribers-up, minutes/day-up, program budgets-up, program quality-up, cable nets earnings-way up. 
The big story is TV. Ratings are not tanking, they're going up. Aggregate for cable nets...up.
On CNN vs. HBO: prime time ad revenue for CNN is only 10% of that network's overall revenue CNN made over $600M this year, double digit earnings growth. CNN is the biggest news service online.
On Jeff Zucker's reported hiring as CNN prexy: We're going to have an announcement soon.
And they did.

TWC CEO David Kenny
Finally, I had an opportunity to talk with two publishing industry giants -- David Kenny, chief executive officer of The Weather Channel and Larry Kramer, president & publisher of USA Today -- about changing ad revenue models, mobile, and what lies ahead.

Here's what TWC David Kenny had to say.  Audio here. RT: 5:44.) And below is a video clip of Larry Kramer.




All photos/video/audio: Peter Himler (Canon PowerShot SX20 IS/Olympus DS2)

Posted by Peter Himler at 11:45 AM 0 comments
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Wednesday, November 28, 2012

Zucker to CNN...Presumably

Jeff Zucker
It is 3pm Wednesday, and the news of former NBCUni's chief Jeff Zucker's ascension to the leadership of CNN Worldwide has still not yet been confirmed by Time-Warner, nor Mr. Zucker himself. Even so, the Twitterstream was buzzing last night and today with hedged assertions that this news was manifest.

Leading the charge was The New York Times's intrepid TV reporter Brian Stelter who broke the story with a carefully parsed piece that all but confirmed Mr. Zucker's new job. Based on Mr. Stelter's very credible, but unnamed sources, the piece soon morphed into one that examined the bigger picture of the challenges the new leader of CNN News would face in differentiating the brand from MNBC (NBCTV.com?) and the Fox News Channel.

What caught this blogger's eye was the day-after Twitter banter between The Times's Mr. Stelter, the Wall Street Journal's Katie Rosman and Bloomberg's Edmund Lee.  It provides a fascinating window into the editorial considerations weighed absent a corporate source or the subject of the story himself.

Not sure if I got the chronology down, but the tweets are insightful.

WSJ's Katie Rosman

NYT's Brian Stelter (AP)
Bloomberg's Edmund Lee











UPDATE 11/29 10amET: CNN announces Jeff Zucker named President of CNN Worldwide -- press release

Posted by Peter Himler at 3:20 PM 0 comments
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Monday, November 26, 2012

Hoaxing a Facebook Revolt

Over the long weekend, I couldn't help but notice the incipient beginnings of a groundswell revolt percolating on the world's largest social network.

Specifically, two wall posts caught my eye, each citing Facebook's recent changes to its privacy settings and purported ways to protect one's private and/or copyrighted content. The first was intended as a way to ensure that your wall posts are not shared outside of your circle of friends:
"To all my FB friends: 
I want to stay PRIVATELY connected with you. However, with the recent changes in FB, the "public" can now see activities in ANY wall. This happens when our friend hits "like" or "comment" ~ automatically, their friends would see our posts too.
Unfortunately, we cannot change this setting by ourselves because Facebook has configured it this way....So I'm asking for your help. ...Only you can do this for me. PLEASE place your mouse over my name above (DO NOT CLICK), a window will appear, now move the mouse on “FRIENDS" (also without clicking), then down to "Settings", click here and a list will appear. REMOVE the CHECK on "COMMENTS & LIKE" and also "PHOTOS" by clicking on each one.
By doing this, my activity amongst my friends and family will no longer become public."
This post was soon outed as a hoax, as explained by one respondent:
"Yes, and if your friends and family follow the recommendation above, they won't see your activity, either. The best (only?) way to prevent your activity from being visible beyond friends and family is to make sure that your activity is shared with "friends only." Here's Snopes with more. See in particular the material under "What happens is this" and "Do this..."
And another to tweet:
The second misguided post, from an AP staffer friend of mine, had more to do with ownership of the material you create on Facebook. It read:
"In response to the new Facebook guidelines I hereby declare that my copyright is attached to all of my personal details, illustrations, comics, paintings, professional photos and videos, etc. (as a result of the Berner Convention). For commercial use of the above my written consent is needed at all times! (Anyone reading this can copy this text and paste it on their Facebook Wall. This will place them under protection of copyright laws. By the present communiqué, I notify Facebook that it is strictly forbidden to disclose, copy, distribute, disseminate, or take any other action against me on the basis of this profile and/or its contents.
The aforementioned prohibited actions also apply to employees, students, agents and/or any staff under Facebook's direction or control. The content of this profile is private and confidential information. The violation of my privacy is punished by law (UCC 1 1-308-308 1-103 and the Rome Statute).
Facebook is now an open capital entity. All members are recommended to publish a notice like this, or if you prefer, you may copy and paste this version. If you do not publish a statement at least once, you will be tacitly allowing the use of elements such as your photos as well as the information contained in your profile status updates."
This too was deemed a hoax, prompting one savvy digital media pundit to write:
"That total BS Facebook "copyright" claim? the one that's widely discredited on Snopes & elsewhere? It's one thing when non-industry friends post it (tiresome enough). But social media practitioners/writers/speakers/authors/columnists pasting it into their status? You guys REALLY ought to know better."
And another to tweet:

P&G trademark
In the days before Snopes, let alone the ability for false rumors to spread quickly in the digital domain, I was involved in another such misinformed groundswell movement perpetrated on a big-branded company. It involved Procter & Gamble, and the pernicious and persistent rumors that its trademark was somehow tied to the devil. Yes, satan.

Back then, we didn't have the crowd to dispel such nonsense, and instead resorted to mainstream media monitoring to identify the geographic pockets where the rumors surfaced. We then arranged for a company spokesperson to be interviewed via satellite by local TV stations in the gullible DMAs.

As for Facebook's privacy-remedying rumors, on which Mashable has now weighed in, the growth of such ill-conceived activity likely has something to do with user confusion over the network's privacy policies and the new ways it intends to monetize user data and generated content (aka "stories").

Fake privacy and copyright notices aside, I have observed some Facebook denizens complain on Twitter and elsewhere that their names have surfaced on other people's walls as "liking" something they clearly didn't. One politically liberal Facebook friend was shown to have liked Romney, which she said "couldn't be further from the truth."

Sure, we all recognize the pressure a now publicly-traded $FB is under to demonstrate shareholder ROI for its ad-driven platform, but the recent changes to its Data Use Policy and Statement of Rights and Responsibilities (SRR), has sewed confusion, which in turn has created a climate where rumors and innuendo can escalate. The company needs to be more aggressive in explaining its data privacy policies. (It may also want to offer up a better means to have questions answered than via snail mail.)

Posted by Peter Himler at 11:55 AM 2 comments
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Saturday, November 17, 2012

Talking Tech, Media & PR Heads

It's next to impossible to keep track of all the tech, media, advertising and PR industry events that occur during any given month. On the horizon are CES, which continues to reign supreme for consumer tech and electronics buffs, while South By Southwest (SXSW) does the same for interactive, music and film aficionados. Then we have the "weeks:" Internet Week, Advertising Week and Social Media Week, each of which offers attendees a range of timely topics and speakers.

If you're among the lucky chosen few, the World Economic Forum, Allen & Co's media mover & shaker getaway in Sun Valley, the Aspen Institute's Ideas Festival or even the annual TED Conferences would be the hot tickets.

In recent years, mainstream and niche media brands have leveraged their names to create pundit-pontificating conferences and award shows that add lucrative new revenue streams to their coffers (offsetting their depleted ad revenue).

A few that come to mind include: AllThings Digital Conferences, TechCrunch Disrupt and the Crunchies, Business Insider Ignition, Fortune Brainstorm Tech, Mashable's Media Summit, and those from industry-leading trade publications like Variety, WWD, Ad Age, and MediaPost. Even the burgeoning digital outlets have gotten into the game. Among them: Digiday, GigaOM, StreetFight, AllFacebook, VentureBeat, Digiday Conference & Expo, and conference veteran O'Reilly Media.

In the public relations space, not a day passes without practitioners being wooed to attend any number of events or webinars or make an award submission. Followers of this blog will know that I recently presided over two sessions at PRSA's annual International Conference in San Francisco. The first featured CEOs from Ketchum, Hill+Knowlton Strategies, Golin Harris and Airfoil, while the second culled the wisdom from in-house PR pros from Facebook, Twitter and Skype.

Other content-driven PR industry events emanate from outlets like Ragan.com, PR News, Bulldog Reporter, Holmes Report, and, of course, PRWeek. PRWeek editor Steve Barrett invited me to attend this year's event after I had missed last year's. First, it was great to reconnect with so many friends and former colleagues including agency chiefs Rob Flaherty of Ketchum, Richard Edelman, B-M founder/chairman emeritus Harold Burson, F-H's Dave Senay, and Ogilvy's Christopher Graves.

I also had a chance to catch up with my former B-M and H&K colleague Chris Atkins who now leads PwC's U.S. communications efforts, former BM'er Judi Mackey who does the same globally for Lazard, Julia Hood, EVP at Haymarket Media (PR Week's parent), Arthur Page Society president Roger Bolton, Council of PR Firms' executive director Kathy Cripps, my former New York Times client now at Mashable Stacy Martinet (a "40 Under 40" winner), crisis/reputation "doctor" Mike Paul, health care PR pro Lauren Letellier, Edelman New York wunderkind Russ Dubner, and former trusted proteges Susan Pagano, now a senior partner at Fleishman Hillard, and Caroline Starke, a vice president at APCO.

Bolton, Robinson & Lockhart (l. to r.) Photo: Himler w/ Canon PowerShot SX 20
The first session I attended revolved around PR ethics and featured former Facebook communications chief and Clinton spokesman Joe Lockhart, Arthur Page Society's Roger Bolton and my former client Janet Robinson who recently departed as CEO of The New York Times Company.  Fleishman CEO Dave Senay moderated.

Taking a page from CNN's people meter during election night, PR Week retained the services of Michael Maslansky's firm, which provided gizmos that allowed the audience to register in real time their approval of what was being said.
Interestingly, the rating indices were split into < ten years in the business and > ten years in the biz.

Also interesting, if not supremely ironic given the nature of this particular session, was that Mr. Maslansky's firm was co-founded by none other than Frank Luntz, who, IMHO, is one of the least ethical, if not dupicitous communications professionals working in the business today. He is now on his own.


Some notable quotables I tweeted from the session on ethics:

Former New York Times Co. CEO Janet Robinson:
The media exists because of its commitment to the public's right to know. 
The situation w/ Jayson Blair quite a bit different than News of the World 
There is more potential for the PR industry for building a branded conversation than ever before. 
Your jobs (in PR) have gotten much harder in recent years...from media changes, etc. 
Fleishman Hillard president/CEO Dave Senay on ethics:
We are all one tweet away from sudden death. 
Former Facebook communications chief and Clinton spokesperson Joe Lockhart:
Gov. Romney's strategy to suddenly change his positions "almost worked." 
[PR Pros] no longer need, in many cases, mainstream media. 
There is no chance in our lifetime that federal regulators will look at the PR industry. 
The biggest change in the market is the diminished power of the MSM and the rise of the partisan media. 
Arthur Page Society president Roger Bolton:
It's important for the PR industry to adopt a set of values, i.e., who we are, what we stand for.

Joe Lockhart
ALso while at the PRWeek confab, I had a chance to grab some sound from a few of the presenters. Here's an audio clip of what Joe Lockhart had to say about his time at Facebook and the state of the media today. Listen here (RT: 4:12)

I also chatted up Jolie Hunt, AOL's new CMO and chief communications officer who honed her craft at the FT and then under IBM's Jon Iwata. Jolie's had two life changes in recent
AOL's Jolie Hunt
months: she's newly married and she's new to AOL. I asked her about the challenges in breaking the (mis)perceptions about AOL (dial-up, anyone?) and redefining the company around the quality content it offers today (i.e., TechCrunch, HuffPost, Patch...). Listen here. (RT 3:11)

And then who can forget the show the Republicans put on at their National Convention this year? Think empty chair! I was able to grab some time with James Davis, director of PR for the Republican National Convention. Fascinating how he got his first break. Listen here. (RT: 5:55)

GOP Convention's James Davis
Finally, at the very end of the evening, my pal Stacy Martinet facilitated a chat (and photo) with her boss, Pete Cashmore, founder and CEO of Mashable. Stacy's also newly married and I had a chance to also talk to her hubby Drake Martinet, formerly of AllThings D who now toils at Lerer Ventures' (and BedRocket's) hot new video news-driven portfolio company NowThis News, which is in partnership with BuzzFeed.

Pete & Pete (Photo: Stacy Martinet w/ Himler's iPhone 5)
I talked with Pete Cashmore about Mashable's new hyper-socialized site, launched into beta that very evening. He also talked about the virtues (to brand marketers) of the site's revenue-generating model he calls "native advertising," which sounds a lot like the paid-owned "hybrid" mashup I posted on last week.

While Pete says this approach, which uses editorial staffers to create original (paid) content, has been around at Mashable "for four years," Digiday's Jack Marshall posted a piece in which he asked execs from Tumblr, BuzzFeed, The Economist and elsewhere for a fresh take on the term. Here's our conversation. (RT: 5:58)

All in all, I'd say PRWeek put on a rather good show this year.

Posted by Peter Himler at 2:26 PM 0 comments
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Thursday, November 08, 2012

Media Walls Crumble: Brands Benefit

Staples Center Star Turn (Photo: Harry How/Getty Images)
Nowhere was the wall between editorial and ad sales as high nor as impenetrable than at mainstream news organizations.

Who can forget the maelstrom that erupted in 1999 when one esteemed journalistic enterprise the Los Angeles Times blurred those lines by publishing a 168-page special Sunday magazine issue devoted exclusively to the city’s new sports arena, the Staples Center? It was an ad-brokered deal.

The Times's respected media critic at the time David Shaw recounted the ethical breech (and the newsroom turmoil it caused) in a 30,000-word critique titled "Crossing the Line." Many other media pundits echoed Shaw's distaste for this egregious church-meets-state no-no.

My how things have changed! In an era when display and classified ad revenue at nearly every paper-driven media organization has fallen off the fiscal cliff, and the CPMs at Web-based media have failed to quickly fill the void, publishers have resorted to new and creative ways to blur the lines between advertising and editorial to enhance "ad" revenue.  (Shaw, who passed away in 2005, would likely not be pleased.)

Dena Levitz, in a just-posted PBS MediaShift piece titled "How News Orgs Break Down the Editorial-Business Wall, Ethically," cites an Adweek piece in which Atlantic Media president Justin Smith, an old friend, explains the company's turnaround. He said he wanted to make The Atlantic a place where the traditional wall between editorial and business could be broken down, but "in a way that would encourage innovation, not stifle journalistic independence."

"Content may be produced by outside parties not affiliated with The Atlantic"
The Atlantic's Smith is hardly alone in his thinking. Nearly two years ago, this blog looked at the innovative ad-editorial model Huffington Post had ushered in, recalling Mobil's former corp comms chief Herb Schmertz and the paid advertorials he pioneered on the op-ed page of The New York Times.

Who benefits from the slow dismantling of the ad-edit wall? Brand marketers and issues advocates, that's who. Communications professionals now find themselves in an era that has spawned new avenues for having their clients' branded content and POVs surface in established news outlets -- a kind of hybrid approach that defies easy classification into one of legs of the new media paradigm of paid, earned and owned.

MINI USA's Sponsored Post on BuzzFeed's News Stream
For example, when your client CEO pens a by-liner and you convince an editor at Forbes, Advertising Age, Media Post, Mashable or any number of these newly unshackled publications of the editorial merit of his or her POV, the resulting piece is a hybrid of earned and owned. (You own the content, but have earned its publication from the editorial gatekeeper.)

Similarly, when one purchases a "sponsored post" on BuzzFeed, promotes a Tweet, or amplifies a story on Facebook, it's a hybrid between paid and owned. (You created the "editorial" content, but paid for its appearance in an outlet or on a social channel's news stream or wall.  Facebook stories often originate from third-party "fans," but in effect are still manipulated by the brand.

I even noticed this #eBayFinders-sponsored post on ReadWriteWeb (re-branded recently to ReadWrite). What's more, the influential tech site promoted a link to the piece to its 1.2M+ followers on Twitter.
As more and more media bend their once-indelible editorial policies to allow for revenue-generating sponsored or third-party content, many companies in the communications space have taken note.

On a panel I recently moderated at the PRSA International Conference, Ketchum CEO Rob Flaherty acknowledged that his firm has a media "buying" unit focused on the growing opportunities in this area. While a company called ShareThrough promotes its ability to produce and place branded video content on websites - news and otherwise.

Net net: today there are many (new) windows and doors into a media outlet's news hole. Paid, earned and owned are only part of the story.

Posted by Peter Himler at 5:11 PM 0 comments
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Monday, November 05, 2012

Election Eve Round-Up

What a week...so many PR and media-related kerfuffles to ponder. Here's a round-up:

Frustrated Marathoners (Photo: AshleyKMayo via Gothamist)
Q: Was it a good or bad PR move for Mayor Bloomberg to cancel the NYC Marathon?

A: I think Mayor Mike's instincts were correct. The comparison to 9/11 is apples to oranges. Too many peoples' lives continue to be upended to merit a "return-to-normalcy" narrative. And let's not forget the role the social spheres played in the decision. From USA Today:
"The profound influence of social media alone did not sway decision makers but it played a significant role in the unprecedented decision. Tens of thousands expressed their opposition on Facebook, Twitter and online petitions."

LIPA Outage Map as of Nov. 2
Q: Will the Long Island Power Authority's (LIPA) lack of preparedness for Hurricane Sandy (i.e., one week out, several hundred thousand still in the dark), permanently damage the company's already sullied reputation, and cause it to lose its license?

A: As one of those still affected, I hope so. Granted the storm was worse than anticipated, but LIPA, which charges among the highest electric rates in the nation, remains ill-equipped to address such outages...and the consumer backlash. The UK-owned utility simply didn't learn its lesson when Sandy's kid sister Irene paid a visit earlier this year.


Romney's Dishonest Jeep Ad Still in Rotation
Q: The Washington Post's Greg Sargent asks: "Can a campaign based entirely on evasions and lies succeed?"

A: He's referring of course to the five-R ticket of Rove-Rush-Roger-Romney-Ryan. In one of the most insidious campaigns in modern history, Gov. Romney has seduced half the nation through a two-pronged PR strategy:

1) Deceive the public about POTUS's actual record, and 2) Make grandiose promises without any specifics on how to achieve them. Add to this the hundreds of millions of "dark money" in advertising from special interests, and sadly, we're witnessing the demise of American democracy. (Vladimir Putin is surely taking notes.)


NBC News' Alex Moe - Auditioning for Fox News
Q: Finally, can the sorry state of journalism get any worse?

A: It's depressing to observe neophyte "journalists" Zeke Miller of BuzzFeed and Alex Moe of NBC News -- both embedded with the GOP ticket -- use their respective and respected news organizations' pulpits and their own social channels to amplify the fact-free GOP talking points, unchecked. What's worse, the exuberance with which these GOP Tools have parroted those they're charged to cover has made it abundantly clear where their political allegiances lie.

We expect this from the Faux News Channel, but not from NBC News and the rapidly ascendant BuzzFeed. Then again, we didn't expect "60 Minutes" on Sunday to equally blame Senate ineptitude on both political parties when one of those parties has purposely obstructed important legislation with an unheard of 240+ filibusters.

As Dan Gillmor tweeted:
On top of this, one of the world's most respected news organizations cut the numbers and determined that the GOP Presidential candidate paid NO taxes from 1996-2005, yet the story gained little mainstream media attention.

Another reputable newspaper did some digging and found that Karl Rove and, potentially the Republican National Congressional Committee, had a hand in a national program designed to destroy or disrupt Democratic ballots. It too had no media legs.

Frankly, I can't wait for this nasty, friendship-rupturing election to be behind us.

Posted by Peter Himler at 6:00 PM 0 comments
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