Archive for Opinion
Are PR professionals afraid of the “New Rules”?
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If you haven’t read “The New Rules of Marketing and PR” by David Meerman Scott, you’re missing out on a top guide on how public relations has changed and “how to use social media, blogs, news releases, online video and viral marketing” to reach your buyers directly. You can find the book at his website www.webinknow.com or from Amazon and other online bookstores.
I re-read the book this past weekend (the revised 2010 edition), and there’s one section that I didn’t feel represented PR professionals properly – or, at least, not the PR professionals I know, most of whom are in Arizona. In chapter 7, “The New Rules of News Releases,” he writes that “many PR professionals have a fear of the unknown. They don’t understand how to communicate directly with consumers and want to live in the past, when there was no choice but to use the media as a mouthpiece….I also think there’s a widely held view about the purity of the press release as a tool for the press. PR professionals don’t want to know that hundreds of millions of people have the power to read their releases directly. It’s easier to imagine a closed audience of a dozen reporters.”
The book is brilliant and has helped completely change the way we look at public relations. I don’t think he has quite captured the issue here, however. Granted, he travels a lot more than I do and talks to way Read More→
My big regret from 2009
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My big regret in hindsight was not being bright enough, or energetic enough, to drive down to hear author, blogger, and wine expert Gary Vaynerchuk speak in person when he was here in Tempe this past October at the Changing Hands bookstore.
I asked for, and received, his new book “Crush It!” for Christmas. I’ve read several books that have summarized the social media wave and future trends, including PR 2.0 by Brian Solis, Now is Gone, by Geoff Livingston, and “The Social Media Bible” by Lon Safko, et. al. All good books, but in my mind, Gary is the one who really “crushes it.”
I like his book best because of 1) the personable way in which he delivers the message, 2) because it makes me feel like less of an anomaly in this world (Sometimes I think I’d get more people to believe me if I were male, not female), and because 3) it follows my own book formula of writing something that can be read in a 2-hour plane ride.
If you find yourself in the middle of two camps, like me, you’ll love this book. Read More→
Tiger Woods, Frankenstein, and Monty Python
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"Young Frankenstein" 1974
The PR blogs are abuzz with differing opinions on how Tiger should have handled his 2:30 a.m. car fiasco. Fraser Seitel, a crisis management expert and author of “Practice of Public Relations,” wrote an open letter to Tiger on Nov. 30th listing 5 critical PR moves Tiger should make right away. Seitel represents one side of the PR debate, one with which I agree: Go public, do it yourself, do it Tuesday, get it out, learn from your mistake.
Another view, represented by elite PR specialists such as Brian Solis, feels that Tiger should take time to compose his response before going to the media, and has a right as a private citizen to do so. Read More→
A bad economy demands great PR
Posted by: | CommentsI’m happy to spotlight guest host Bill Prickett, APR (accredited public relations). He has been successfully involved in Public Relations/Communications for more than 20 years, primarily in the nonprofit arena. He currently has his own PR Consulting business called Write You UP! (www.WriteYouUp.com) A prolific writer, he has had numerous articles published in national magazines and newspapers and wrote a quarterly PR column for a national trade publication targeting small businesses. He’s also a published novelist and a blogger. (www.write-you-up.blogspot.com) He lives in the Dallas-Fort Worth area of Texas.
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Bill Prickett, APR
In case you haven’t heard, the US economy is in bad shape. Not sure if you’ve read some of the news reports, but companies are hurting and laying off employees at an alarming rate. That is, those business that are even staying in business. Unemployment is out of control, and not expected to recover until late 2010.
In the midst of this meltdown, it’s my hope that our profession and professionals would rise to the occasion and provide some much needed expertise in crucial business areas:
Encourage the Employees. If you don’t think your employees are concerned, you are mistaken. They are worried about their jobs, they are probably overworked and they are stressed about everything from finances to healthcare to job security. They are asking tough questions about their future with the company or Read More→
Mother-daughter relationships, or PR 1.0
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I’ve long had a less-than-perfect relationship with my mother. I’m not good at PR 1.0. She and I parted understanding the minute I entered college.
She had persuaded me to attend Dickinson College in Pennsylvania because it was a “good school.” With apologies to my Dickinson friends, that was the last time I took advice from my mother! I spent 3 years of misery there, with a brief shining year abroad in Durham, England.
My mother has never understood what I do for a living, and when I wrote the first edition of my PR book in 2005 and told her about it, her first reaction was one of disappointment: “Oh, I thought you were going to write fiction.” No, “Congratulations!” or “Way to go, honey!” Just disappointment. that I wasn’t going to write the Great American Novel.
Having been born before the Great Depression, she’s never really entered the technology age. No voicemail, no answering machine, no computers, and only recently, cable. So over the years we haven’t had that much to talk about. Read More→
My guest post on www.amandavegablog.com
Posted by: | CommentsThanks to Amanda Vega Consulting, who asked me to be a guest on their blog. Here’s a link to my post today, “Five personal PR pet peeves.”
When the PR buildup doesn’t match the product
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I heard a lot of great things about the Clint Eastwood movie, Gran Torino. It was rated highly on Netflix, so when the DVD arrived in the mail this week I was very excited about watching it finally. The PR buzz around it has always been extremely positive.
So you can imagine how bummed I was sitting through what I found to be a very slow-paced movie, with (in my mind) not-so-credible acting from good old Clint, and not-so-credible plot development either. I won’t spoil the ending for you, but that was not so credible either.
I go to a lot of movies where there is pure suspension of disbelief, including horror movies. I posted about this for ValleyPRBlog recently. But Gran Torino was different. This was a movie positioned as a drama, and one that was supposed to leave me feeling satisfied.
Ever bought an item based on the expensive packaging, only to find the contents were not quite up to expectations? Sometimes PR can be misleading. Or maybe I’m just a hard-to-please movie customer.
