People are thinking a lot about how to monetize “new” media, such as podcasts and blogs. Well, prepare for a game-changing bomb drop right here on AdPulp. What I’m talking about is monetizing old media; namely, me. Case Study: Gavin Gavin is a 14-year-old developmentally disabled boy who lives in my neighborhood. For a few bucks, he’ll cut my grass, take out the trash, etc. I’m one of Gavin’s biggest customers. As a …
No Vendor
Gracenet founder, Sylvia Paull, knows how to say no to a client. Sign up for lessons here: I like to help make strategy, not be told what I'm supposed to do as part of someone else's strategy, especially when people don't know what they are doing and think they do. I've had many startup guys come to me with some great technology they have developed or are developing and want me to do PR. "Who is going to use it? For …
Citibankers Up A Creek
Boing Boing is running a customer service horror story about Citibank. Citibank customer Jake Appelbaum tried to withdraw cash with his ATM card on Saturday night in Toronto. The ATM machine rejected the transaction and urged Applebaum to contact his financial institution. When he did, he discoverd his problems were part of a much larger fraud crisis at the bank. The supervisor informed me that there had been no …
Journalists Write For “The Customer” First
Jefferson George writing to Jim Romenesko: I was a newspaper reporter for six years before taking my first (and only) PR job, which I had for four years. Despite a comfortable salary and impressive VP title, I left PR about six months ago and returned to newspapers -- Knight Ridder, no less -- at arguably the most anxious time in their history. Why? In the end, it was that whole "public service/making a difference" …
Continue Reading about Journalists Write For “The Customer” First →
Will Paid Word-of-Mouth Do The Trick?
From Ad Age: Troubled by the worsening reputation of drug companies that is ranked just above tobacco and oil manufacturers, pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline is out to win over a skeptical public -- by turning its entire sales force into a PR machine. In an unprecedented mission, the $35.4 billion pharmaceutical giant has quietly anointed its 8,000 U.S. sales representatives as “public relations ambassadors” to …
Continue Reading about Will Paid Word-of-Mouth Do The Trick? →
Aim Carefully
Guy Kawasaki's post "How To Suck Up To A Blogger" offers some good advise to PR flacks. Blogging has flipped traditional PR on its head. It used to be that ink begat buzz. Life was simple then: you sucked up to the Wall Street Journal, one of its reporters wrote about your product, and the buzz began. Nowadays buzz begets ink. Journalists no longer anticipate or create buzz--rather, they react to it. Guy lays out a …
Hitting Up The A-List Does Not A PR Strategy Make
From Phil Gomes: A whole bunch of people are talking about this article from a magazine I don't read. Reminds me of something that started early in my career. Something I called "Wall Street Journal Syndrome." Even as a junior employee, it astounded me how a PR team could pole-vault over every expectation and every conceivable measuring stick, only to allow themselves to get beaten up for not getting a "hit" in the …
Continue Reading about Hitting Up The A-List Does Not A PR Strategy Make →
In The Conversational Marketplace PR Gains Momentum
The Economist: "News is what someone wants to suppress. Everything else is advertising,” said Reuven Frank, a former head of NBC news. So what sort of business is public relations (PR), which spends half its time huffing about bad news; and the rest puffing politicians, companies and celebrities? The answer is that, for business, PR is an increasingly vital marketing tool—especially as traditional forms of …
Continue Reading about In The Conversational Marketplace PR Gains Momentum →