Stella Artois pouring in2 web

European Beer giants Stella Artois have begun an online ad-campaign (a few bitten nails away from PR but certainly swimming in the digested lake of consumer comms).

Renowned for producing some of the most creative TV ads, we think they’ve hit the jackpot..again!

George.K

50 or older PR..hm.. :-/

A new public relations firm, After50 Marketing, was launched “with the expressed purpose of targeting baby boomers and senior consumers,” writes PR Week. The firm will specialize in healthcare, adult living, legal and financial areas. By 2015, 45 percent of the U.S. population will be 50 or older, according to After50. The firm also estimates that the household net worth controlled by baby boomers is $19 trillion. After50 president and founder Kelly Kroll says that, due to her target demographic’s “experience making decisions about their valuable resources,” her firm will provide “more honest content and feedback.” After50 is a sister firm to Marketing Renovations, which has offices in New York, Washington and Detroit.

Sources: PR Week, September 14, 2007 /The Weekly Spin, Centre For Media and Democracy, September 26, 2007

George.K

Transparency Bites Comcast. (and might hurt a certain area of PR?)

A tragic tale ripped straight out of Yahoo! News:

“The Federal Communications Commission is proposing a $4,000 fine against Comcast Corp. for airing a pitch for a sleep aid without telling viewers that the spot was financed by the maker of the product.

The fine was in response to a complaint by the Center for Media and Democracy, a media watchdog group, which said it marks the first time a company has been sanctioned for airing a “video news release,” a type of programming it dubs “fake news.”

A video news release is a sponsored public relations video that mimics actual news reports. Such programs are common in broadcasting and are usually offered to news shows for free.”

The Center for Media and Democracy states on their site:

“The FCC’s action against Comcast is precedent setting. It firmly rejects the public relations industry’s argument that no disclosure is needed if television stations are not paid to air VNRs. Hopefully, the FCC will soon address the nearly 140 other undisclosed VNR broadcasts that were documented in CMD’s two reports, ‘Fake TV News‘ and ‘Still Not the News.’” 

-PJT

“Don’t Tase Me, Bro!” thoughts on a PR nightmare

Last week the University of Florida police tased a student at a John Kerry event. Some thoughts on the matter can be found here at PR Newser, and the video of the tasing can be found HERE, or blurrier HERE, or (best view?) HERE.

-PJT

Media relations across the local carpet with a hum’rian twist of lemon…

The International Committee of the Red Cross has opened a blog hosted by the website of French daily Le Monde to focus on humanitarian issues that receive little coverage in the local media. The French language blog run by the ICRC’s office in France is aimed at highlighting broader concerns about armed conflicts and will draw in other relief agencies and actors, the Geneva-based agency said on Wednesday. The ICRC already has an extensive website, but said it was interested in exploring the interactive element of the blog and feedback from visitors. One of the blog articles this month explains some of the less direct language used by the agency, which prides itself on its neutrality in trying to reach victims of war and keeps public criticism of warring sides as a last resort. The agency said it was keeping an open mind about expanding the venture in other languages.� (AFP via Expatica France)

George.K. rough’n'ready 

NY TIMES has stopped charging for online content

Why pay for news when you can just let the advertisers pick up the tab?

As of midnight Sept 19, 2007 the NY TImes has stopped charging for  its Times Select and archived content:

“In addition to opening the entire site to all readers, The Times will also make available its archives from 1987 to the present without charge, as well as those from 1851 to 1922, which are in the public domain. There will be charges for some material from the period 1923 to 1986, and some will be free.

The Times said the project had met expectations, drawing 227,000 paying subscribers — out of 787,000 over all — and generating about $10 million a year in revenue.

‘But our projections for growth on that paid subscriber base were low, compared to the growth of online advertising,’ said Vivian L. Schiller, senior vice president and general manager of the site”One would also hope that this will also mean the beginning of the end of paid content online once and for all- afterall, why pay for somthing when you can get it elsewhere for free? It would be ideal if the move by the NYT pressured other pay content sites (the few remaining) into following suit. Is there an issue of quality being lost when something is “free”? Perhaps, but how much of a difference are we really talking-? Many important paid-for articles are copy-pasted into other blogs anyhow.

And will we have to see MORE online ads at nytimes.com? Perhaps- most likely… oh well.

FULL ARTICLE IN NYT HERE

-PJT 

Taking CSR seriously – Who you gonna trust?

The most recent issue of Communication Director Magazine, “When the saints go marching in…” The facets of Corporate Social Responsibility handles the subject of CSR from many different angles. The recent interview with The Media Foundation’s founder Kalle Lasn however echoed the setiments exactly of the Edelman Trust Barometer, in which Richard Edelman states:

“Why does trust matter? Well, we find that, in fact, people are taking action against companies they do not trust. What do we mean by that? Well- hey don’t buy their products or services, they don’t what to invest in them, and- in fact- increasingly we find that people protest and demonstrate against them. So, we think that, in fact it is growing over time that people are expressing their displeasure.”

Quoted from Podcast Vol. II, Ep.3

In the CD interview, Kalle Lasn basically said the exact same thing:

“I think it is all about public pressure -and government pressure- I don’t have to tell you that corporations are basically set-up to make money for the shareholders, and that is the main drive of the whole corporate dynamic and they will only change their ways if there is some sort of pressure comes to bear on them, and lately many corporations have suddenly suffered because there has been a groundswell of bad feeling against them and their brands have, in a way, been ‘un-cool’ed, then of course they take it seriously. They have to. They are going to lose market share if their company is just playing cynical games and re-washing and playing this CSR game because ‘everybody else is, -so we might as well – we better get in on the action’ – that is sort of a ‘ha-hah’ attitude. The bottom line is making money for the shareholders, which is the dominant thing and everything else is just subterfuge- ultimately that corporation may actually suffer some major brand damage and eventually lose its market share, and down the road, basically go out of business.“

-PJT

Microsoft still left with hefty EU fine of €497.2 million

“The European Court of First Instance, in a starkly worded summary read to a courtroom of about 150 journalists and lawyers here, ordered Microsoft to obey a March 2004 commission order and upheld the €497.2 million, or $689.4 million, fine against the company.”

full story in the NY Times

Have you heard about the iPod revolution?

Companies both large and small are amassing libraries of podcasts
then buying their employees iPods to listen to the podcasts.
Communicators compare the necessity of iPods to that
of cell phones and laptop computers.
Meanwhile, your client or CEO might be suffering from spin-itis—a
malady reserved for the rich and powerful. What a
public relations dirge eh?

George K

Blog nod by WSJ

“By and large, heads of companies and their communications departments, representing various degrees of bigness, ignore blogs…” BUT “If bloggers can effect the ratings of stocks, sway investors from buying or selling, or even drive money into the private sector, then they’re worth some attention and bridge-building.”

Full post HERE at Cheezhead. Cheezhead author Joel Cheesman, president of HRSEO and Oaseo, is one of the most widely-read bloggers on emerging recruitment issues in the world.

-PJT