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Forget EI as equine flu ; an outbreak of EI is just what this spin doctor has ordered.

Big ad; football club seek sponsor for lasting relationship.

The St Kilda Football Club has taken a fair bit of flak (774’s John Faine verbally hounded club Chief Exec Archie Fraser) over its decision to take out full page ads in The Age and today’s Financial Review, advertising for a major sponsor. Having had substantial sports PR experience from back in the UK, I initially thought ‘what the…??’. But then I decided to look at it again. Read more

Just a reminder that the Australian Blogging Conference will be held tomorrow at the Creative Industries Precinct at the Queensland University of Technology’s Kelvin Grove Campus. The first session commences at 9am but registration will begin from 8:30am.
Peter Black, Lecturer, Queensland University of Technology
Good luck to Peter and his team;we look fwd to seeing some toplines soon.

The Tech-Dirt, Jim Horton, Shel Holz and The World’s Leading blogs are keeping tabs on the email trail of Jonathan Dinkeldein, a senior operator from the occasionally naughty PR/lobby svengalis, Burson Marsteller:
As a backgrounder, BM client Microsoft is trying to stop Google from being able to acquire DoubleClick, and thinks setting up an insta-grassroots lobby org might come in quite handy.

Reported by The Observer (though the WSJ is also all over this story) newspaper:
“The Observer has seen an email sent by a director at leading lobby firm Burson-Marsteller to a number of top UK businesses. The email urges board members to raise the issue of Google’s dominance of search engines with politicians, regulators and the media.The email asks companies to join a new organisation - Initiative for Competitive Online Marketplaces - which in the next few weeks will make a series of announcements on Google, internet privacy and copyright. The email’s author is Jonathan Dinkeldein, a director of B-M. He admitted the firm was working with Microsoft on the initiative. A spokeswoman for Microsoft agreed that the firm has an ‘ongoing relationship with Burson-Marsteller’ but said it is not lobbying for Microsoft.

This is what my blog readers are enjoying most this week…

1 Jol’s ‘phantom sacking’ a PR disaster for Levy and Spurs FC
2 Social media; an indelible reputational tattoo?
3 Vanessa Hudgens’ pixellated PR disaster (or great PR move?)
4 The ecstacy and the agony of Andrew Johns’ PR disaster
5 PR firm Hill & Knowlton editing Wikis (via Wikiscanner)
6 Character acts as real determinant of reputation
7 Does a complicit media selectively ignore scandals?
8 Proof that spin doctors tarted up Tony Blair’s WMD dossier
9 PR firms, counselors, agencies in PR practice of rewriting Wiki entries
10 Online PR; getcher free distribution list ‘ere, getcher free…

Internal comms specialist Melissa Dark (and longstanding pal) is temporarily blogging at Melcrum and is raving, fifth dan like, enthusiastically about the black belt dojo business. It’s all about internal comms excellence.
Melissa Dark.

Also via Melissa, Al Gore has some interesting tips on public speaking that he gives to his climate change crusaders. Big Al refers to meeting three ‘budgets’: time, complexity and hope/opportunity.
Time: if you’re booked to speak you have to start and finish on time, but you can sometimes add to this budget if you are humorous and engaging – the audience won’t mind if it’s five or ten minutes over.
Complexity: there’s a limit to how much information people can absorb from one presentation.
Hope/opportunity: be aware (particularly with a potentially depressing message such as climate change) about the balance between hope and despair. Ultimately you want to leave people with a sense of hope so they will take action. In the case of a business audience, he says it’s about opportunity rather than hope – what opportunities exist as a result of this information?

Sydney’s Daily Telegraph asked for my PR take on ‘revelations’ (pah-lease!) by ex-Mrs Shame (geddit?) Warne that her husband was sending sms messages to a new flame. Big deal!
The Warneses’zzzz perhaps in happier times.

Under a sub heading of Simone’s claims ‘a PR stunt’, they wrote that:
“Public relations expert Gerry McCusker said Ms Callahan appeared to be trying to inflate her media career by detailing her life with “a love rat husband”. Mr McCusker said the sordid tale was sad for their children - who last night held up a “Welcome home dad” sign and squealed when they saw him - and that it could also affect Ms Callahan’s public image. “Simone’s got her own media career starting out,” he said. “She needs coverage. She needs currency. She needs ammunition. Until she proves herself to be a media player, her only currency is her link to a love rat husband.”<br />
What I also said was that it seemed that both Mrs and Mr Warne’s dirty laundry was being used as defacto media release material by New Idea (a weekly gossip mag that ex-Mrs W contributes to), and other media outlets. I also hinted I’d like to see Simone developing her media profile for something else other than having been married to someone who was unfaithful to her. And I agree this must be a tad unesettling for the little ones/Warnes (geddit??)

I’ve just joined the business blogging roster at Melbourne’s daily broadsheet The Age. My latest post takes a real life look at what happens when ad ‘extras’ turn a TV campaign into a media-wide PR disaster. Love to hear your views.

Down here in Australia, a couple of TV ads have created PR disasters for the clients placing them and, I’ll guess, little PR headaches for the Comms agencies that commissioned them. But in an increasingly transparent media environment, the embarrassing truth is out there, and it’s getting much easier to find, too.

Some people think that PR and reputation management is just for celebs, corporations and governments. But in the increasingly transparent Web era it’s fast becoming a personal imperative, too. For instance, recent revelations show that two of the three ‘thug’ actors appearing in the pro-Workchoices TV advert actually have actual criminal ‘form’. While the ‘boss’ in a previous pro-Workchoice reform ad was found to have been an abusive employer in real life. (He’s just been fined $7000 for his personal business affairs). These ‘true life’ character revelations can have a huge impact not just on your own reputation, but on the reputation of any of your business associates. Take the ‘thugs’ example where the disclosures have impacted on the reputations of all concerned; Read more

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