Posts Tagged ‘PR’

You’re unlikely to hear a PR agent publically criticise a major news outlet, unless they’re feeling commercially suicidal that day, yet sensationally Matthew Freud has made a gloves-off attack on Fox News, the leading US TV news network owned - and this is where it gets even more surprising - by his father-in-law, Rupert Murdoch.

Agreeing to contribute his thoughts to a New York Times profile of Fox founder and boss Roger Ailes, Freud said: “I am by no means alone within the family or the company in being ashamed and sickened by Roger Ailes’s horrendous and sustained disregard of the journalistic standards that News Corporation, its founder and every other global media business aspires to.”

Commentators suspect that his comments don’t so much represent a spectacular gaffe by Freud as a tactical move to destabilise the station chief. Michael Wolff, a biographer of Murdoch said “Matthew Freud, a PR man of extraordinary craftiness, is not going to say anything off the cuff, certainly not that.” Read the rest of this entry »

A social media strategy meeting expertly lampooned, the advocates quaking as they fear the wrath of the old guard, referencing the Toyota Yaris Australia pitch where five agencies have been given $15,000 each to show what they can do with social media.

Based on a survey in August of 1500 businesses by Hubspot, those that blogged had 55% more visitors, 97% more inbound links and 434% more indexed pages.

Most businesses accept, even if they don’t anticipate these sort of figures, that a blog will revolutionise their static corporate website, but trying to get momentum for that internally can be a trying business. Who’s going to write it, what will it look like, who’s going to build it.

Outsourcing the build and content provision makes sense from an operational standpoint, it requires the minimum of internal input and you benefit from the expertise of people who are 100% blog content and blog marketing focussed.

Hubspot say 55% more visitors, on average, anecdotally we’ve seen much, much more than that. How does 1000% more visitors sound (albeit from a low base). Read the rest of this entry »

Brands like Mastercard and Geek Squad are creating their own news content published direct to consumers via channels like YouTube, rather than pitching stories to traditional media, Advertising Age reports today.

The US advertising monitor cites the declining number of media outlets combined with the growth of quick fire customer engagement through online communities as drivers of a new approach to PR.

Mastercard,  for example has deliberately pursued a low tech video route, interviewing it’s executives on camcorders, editing on laptops and uploading to YouTube. Mastercard’s PR agent, Andrew Foote at Cohn and Wolfe says:

“They’re realizing they can comment on issues and get the points of view of their experts out there and on the record. Once the videos are up, the company will often tweet the links and follow up with reporters letting them know MasterCard commented on the topic.” Read the rest of this entry »

In a post on her blog on Thursday, Susan Moskwa, Google’s Webmaster Trends Analyst recommends proactively publishing “useful, positive information”  to gain control of your business (or personal) online reputation.

Moskwa’s comments come in the context of dealing with negative online publicity and in 2009, it’s still the case that most businesses only think of online reputation when something goes wrong. It’s the online equivalent of crisis PR.

Other companies are taking a more considered approach, combining elements of search and editorial planning to ensure that their online reputation matches their brand values. Read the rest of this entry »

Andy Bond, Chief Executive of Asda outlined his new vision for a “transparent” business yesterday, “run for the consumer by the consumer” including web cams of the farms where Asda’s milk and carrots come from and a team of bloggers recruited to tell shoppers about the business, rather than “a bunch of PR consultants” said Bond.

Bond has labelled his new way of doing business as “democratic consumerism” drawing comparisons with President Obama’s politics, “offering openess, transparency, collaboration and dialogue”. Read the rest of this entry »

In their latest marketing offensive against dwindling sales, Starbucks has announced an iphone application with a barcode feature enabling iphone owning coffee fans to pay with their handset.

It won’t make much impact in the UK just yet as it’s on trial at just 16 stores in Seattle and Silicon Valley, but boy the headlines, 93 stories on UK Google already. This begs the question, should the money for iphone app development really come out of the PR budget?

Such is media interest in iphone applications and Twitter, Read the rest of this entry »

I truly think Scots are taking over the world, they’re everywhere. Gordon Brown, Susan Boyle, my girlfriend, the plumber yesterday and then of course there’s Mashable, the incrediably successful social media guide with 1.5 million twitter followers and 254,000 RSS feeds - made in Scotland, from servers.

Mashable has just posted their top 5 business blogging mistakes and already has 17 comments. So foolishly I’m going head to head with my own. Come on big man, let’s see what you’ve got (cue Victorian boxer type shuffle and arm movements). Read the rest of this entry »

Freedman International has appointed Furlong PR to a wide ranging online brief including blogging, social media and SEO.

Freedman, who specialise in global marcoms implementation, is switching from traditional to online PR in a bid to interact more closely with their international audience of marcoms professionals who use Freedman to design and run pan-regional brand campaigns. Read the rest of this entry »