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For those of you who’ve been eagerly awaiting the news, Shelley my Euro-based book agent tells me copies of my best-selling PR text ‘PR Disasters’ (printed in Vietnam language version) are running hot off printing presses. Question is; how does a linguistically-challenged (only smatterings of French and Spanish) PR  veteran proofread this one? Suggestions/offers of help appreciated

We’re seeing the (editorial) launch of what’s inaccurately billed as Australia’s ‘first pure Social Media Marketing agency’ ( Julian Cole has scored a gig at the ‘The Population’). Tad embarrassing for noo agency and journos, no-one researched the ‘first’ Social Media agency claim (yet Smart Company used the erroneous PR soundbite). Photon shareholders will be encouraged by the headline clips, though.

Other Soc Med Marketing agencies in Oz might include Zest, Shifted Pixels and Sticky. And several PR firms like Edelman, Text 100 and Howarth are certainly active in the Soc Media area from a PR/marcomms stance.

Population MD says their “…first goal is to simply educate the market about developing new ways of using social networking as a marketing tool, and merging the use of technology and branding.” So, pretty much treading turf similar to that taken by Ozzies like Lee Hopkins, Gavin Heaton, Trevor Cook, Laurel Papworth, and myself (and others like Paull Youngie in the US) over the last 2-3 years or so?

I welcome The Population, hoping their intellectual input will enrich the sector’s knowledge base and their Photon parentage will add weight to the validity of Web2.0 as a two-way Comms conduit, not just a marketing channel.

http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2008/s2348362.htm

Click above to hear UK journalist and author Nick Davies lambast today’s commercial media as passive processors of PR puff, led by the nose by powerful corporate PR influences. As well as aiming a kick at flacks, hack Nick echoed points I’ve previously made in my ‘Public Relations Disasters’ book. Particularly he explained how the death of the deadline has further depleted the resources of ‘time-pressed, deadline-stressed’ journalists. ‘Churnalism’ was the keyword of Nick’s interview with ABC’s Kerry O’Brien.

And against a backdrop of all powerful PRs and depleted newsrooms what does news org Fairfax do? Scythes its staff by 550 jobs, including 100-plus losses from its editorial complement. PR’s rejoice!! More potential success for thinly-disguised advertorials surely? 

National Australia Bank has distanced itself from a PR consultancy (p’raps Cox & Inall), which attempted to spam post commercial messages on several leading Aussie sports blogs. Local SEO practitioner Jim Stewart tele-interviewed NAB PR Felicity Glennie Holmes who asserted that ‘this activity was poorly executed by our PR agency”. Jim Stewart primarily challenged Felicity on corporate spamming & the ethics of placing covert NAB ads disguised as blog posts. Felicity kinda defended her employers decision.

Interesting note to PR practitioners; be wary of responding to a blog query. As you would with a journo query, ask if they plan to broadcast your communication and if you’re uncomfortable with their response, decide if you wanna participate (or not). For eg: Jim Stewart conducts his interview with Felicity, filming himself for vodcast, and putting her on speakerphone - his body language, facial expressions and other non-verbal silently ’spin’ his take on her responses. Judging by Jim’s raised eyebrows in his vodcast of the telecon, he couldn’t quite believe what he was hearing from FGH.

I’ve called Cox Inall to see if they were involved and if so, to hear their side of the story. Someone called ‘Killingly’ is supposed to contact me; after almost 18hrs, am still awaiting any call or email. Agency head Tim Powell left a voice mail for me around 9am and is happy to speak to me later today…stay tuned.

If you share Chris Anderson of Wired magazine and Gina Trapani of Lifehacker’s annoyance with inept PRs, Shel Holtz is giving you the chance to vent on his ‘For Immediate Release’ forum. On Wednesday June 11, 2008, For Immediate Release will host a call-in community discussion on FIR Live on BlogTalk Radio, in which you can take part if you have a point of view. Members of the media database industry, PR professionals and media people will be part of an expert panel to lead debate and discussion of the issue of poor PR picthes and PR spamming. A recording of the show will be published as an FIR podcast (subscribe). Go on, vent; you’ll feel better!

Talk about stamping on a man’s grave before he’s cold in the ground; Gawker gleefully reports how BM’s PR supremo got chucked outta the Clinton campaign (which incidentally culls aides faster than China does with Tibetan dissidents). Why did Mark Penn depart? Most commentators agree it was his PR consultancy interests, which saw him meet with the Colombian government with a view to representing them on the opposite side of an issue from Hillary Clinton, while running her campaign. Conflict of interest anyone? Sterling judgement from an expert in impression management? A salutory lesson for any ‘big’ client; is your adviser too big to represent you? After all, when the consultant (and his other interests) becomes the story, it can eclipse your goals and reflect poorly on your reputation, too.
Oh, and as Gawker happily reports, Penn and BM also dropped the ball with the Columbians too, who were none too happy with the publicity, either.
But a wee word to Gawker; many decent PR practitioners disagree with your description of the…”PR industry, which is definitively one big amoral hired gun.” Tsk, tsk. That’s like saying all journos are delusional hacks that play decorative second fiddle to a revenue-driven media model based on advertising expenditure. Doh!!

Melissa Cavanaugh writes me from the mediabistro forums where she’s just posted this piece. Melissa tells of how a North Carolina agency manages to portray its client (TharpeRobbins) as ludicrously hypocritical, by announcing their commitment to environmentally sustainable operations with a really wasteful mailing, replete with eco-unfriendly plastics, styrofoam and excess packaging! Melissa says:
“I just got a FedEx, marked urgent, from a company in North Carolina called McNeill
Communications Group. 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? “TharpeRobbins Celebrates Earth Day by Leading the Way with Environmental Initiatives.” The gimmick is that the styrofoam peanuts dissolve in water. My jaw just dropped. Read more

One of the world’s best known ex-PRs, Alistair Campbell, recently critiqued the media for its inability to separate between speculation and information, the important and the trivial, rehashing news, getting it first rather than getting it right plus its language of extremes. In reply, Guardian columnist Peter Wilby aimed a kick at the PR industry saying, among quotes…
“PR at best aspires to a partial truth and, at worse, to outright fabrication.”
“PR far more than journalism shapes the news agenda…At least half the news in papers is generated not by journalist, but by PRs or spin doctors.” And he insists the problem centres around:
“Fewer journos producing more copy plus more PRs offering more ‘instant stories.”

Wilby says the solution might be a ‘narrow newspaper’ - where every statement gets rigorously checked and attributed to name sources…journos only use press releases if they could corroborate contents from other sources…editors would appy some test to distinguish the important from the trivial - sorry, Peter…but aren’t your solutions just the fundamentals of professional journalism??

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