I came across an unusual website today, that of Anita Roddick, the founder of The Body Shop. Roddick is probably best known these days for her strong views and stand on environmental and other social issues. That stand and those strong views permeate the website. From the site description: […] Think of this website as […]
Category: PR
Skype is not yet ready for a blog
Stuart Henshall asks whether Skype should start blogging. Will Pate says Skype should. Will makes some very convincing arguments for why they should, including suggesting Skype hires a Chief Blogging Officer to be the new proactive interface between the company and its growing customer base. The CBO, and a blog, would play a major role […]
New list of PR blogs
If you want a comprehensive and up-to-date list of blogs authored by PR professionals – and want a one-stop place for all the RSS feeds – look no further than the new resource list just created by Constantin Basturea. This new directory of PR blogs at Bloglines has more than 160 entries and includes personal, […]
Illustrating unfiltered conversation
Last week, I posted critical commentary about Anita Roddick’s website which I’d discovered when researching information about the enterprise software market (no, there’s no connection between the two – the links you follow when researching on the net can lead you to some interesting places). Anita Roddick is well-known as the founder of The Body […]
New PR survey
Tom Murphy at PR Opinions has launched his second annual PR survey, and asks all PR professionals to participate. Tom says: If you have a couple of minutes why not complete the survey here. I’ll be publishing the results in the coming weeks. Let’s support Tom’s initiative to gather some useful information on PR and […]
Tips for successful media relations
If you’re a PR pro, you have your text books and you’ve done the training on how to relate to journalists and how to handle media interviews. Well, put those things away and take look at some sound advice from David Tebbutt, a journalist in the UK who’s been there, done that and got the […]
An open conversation with Steve Rubel, Micro Persuasion
Last Monday 21 March, Shel and I interviewed Steve Rubel for The Hobson & Holtz Report bi-weekly podcast. Steve is Vice President Client Solutions at CooperKatz, a New York PR firm, and author of the Micro Persuasion blog. He is arguably the most prominent and influential blogger in the PR profession either side of the […]
Preparations for Global PR Blog Week 2.0 have started
What Global PR Blog Week 2.0 is an online conference on how new media technologies are changing the practice of public relations and corporate communications. We’re talking weblogs and participatory journalism, wikis, podcasting, and RSS – but the list of topics is open. Global PR Blog Week 2.0 will follow the success of last year’s […]
Edelman and Intelliseek highlight the growing influence of blogs
A newly-published white paper on blogs from PR agency group Edelman and marketing intelligence firm Intelliseek explores the importance of blogging for public relations and marketing, and provides a first-of-its-kind directory of influential bloggers, segmented by industry. The report, Trust MEdia: How Real People Are Finally Being Heard (22-page PDF available for download from both […]
PR satire blog shut down
If you try and get the Spin Bunny satirical PR blog today, you may get a ‘404: not found’ error. They’ve been legally shut down. The blog’s still up as I write this (although some links produce 404s) and the RSS feed was still working. The blog and the feed have this post: Official statement […]
GM: Poster child for the executive blog
Since General Motors began the GM FastLane Blog in early January, it’s attracted considerable attention from business communicators. That attention has been sparked by who the bloggers are – senior corporate executives, starting with GM Vice Chairman Bob Lutz. The blog’s been under a continuous spotlight with a great deal of ongoing commentary and opinion […]
Content plagiarism – is extra exposure worth going along with it?
Constantin Basturea writes that excerpts of postings from PR blogs are republished, with new permalinks, on a website with pages featuring Google ads and asks, Do their authors know about and approve this practice? The website in question is called PR Blog Watch, part of a website called 101 Public Relations. Constantin’s post lists 18 […]
Prince of Wales “momentary lapse”
Just catching some of the TV coverage of today’s marriage of Prince Charles and Camilla Parker-Bowles, I saw a brief BBC TV interview with the Prince’s communications secretary, Paddy Harverson. Amongst the tame chit-chat about today’s event (eg, was the Prince feeling nervous and how many letters of support there have been from the public) […]
Interview: James Cherkoff and Johnnie Moore on Open Source Marketing – April 12, 2005
In this first of our new series of For Immediate Release podcast interviews, separate from our "Hobson & Holtz Report" bi-weekly podcasts, Shel and I enjoyed a 35-minute conversation with James Cherkoff and Johnnie Moore about open source marketing. Download the conversation here (MP3, 14.6MB), or sign up for the RSS feed to get it […]
Nike breaks new ground in communication transparency
Communicating on corporate responsibility doesn’t get more transparent than this. The Financial Times reports: Today Nike breaks a three-year silence on social reporting as it publishes its 2004 corporate responsibility report. This is Nike’s first report since a 2002 California supreme court ruling that the company could be sued by Mark Kasky, a labour rights […]
Blueprint ethics code for the profession
One thing I’ve frequently commented about in this blog is ethics in the communication profession. Or, rather, about the lack of an authoritative and cohesive voice that speaks on ethics on behalf of the profession. I’ve taken my own stand, so to speak, in castigating our professional associations – notably, IABC and PRSA – for […]
Just because you could doesn’t mean you should
Are character blogs – a topic that’s producing lots of discussion at the moment – worthwhile or not? It seems to me that a polarization of strongly-held views is emerging on something that isn’t really worth spending that much time on unless everyone is talking about the same thing. For instance, the link above is […]
GM blog stays on track
Yesterday, General Motors announced its financial results for the first quarter this year, reporting a net loss of $839 million compared to a net profit of $1.2 billion for the same period last year. It’s interesting to see the focus in media reporting about yesterday’s announcement – “GM posts worst results in 13 years”, “GM […]
Bland but with gems
Kudos to Jeremy Pepper for securing a blog interview with Lord Chadlington, aka Peter Gummer, the ex-journalist, PR man and brother of John Gummer, British Conservative politician (and minister in John Major’s government in the early 1990s). Chadlington is a founder of Shandwick, now Weber Shandwick, one of the big PR agencies and part of […]
Why every company should blog
I’ve just been reading the drafts of the four interviews that Shel Israel posted in the past few days on The Red Couch, the blog that’s the focal point for developing the book on blogs that Shel and Robert Scoble are writing. Those interviews are with Jonathan Schwartz, COO of Sun Microsystems; Bob Lutz, Vice […]