Blurring the Lines in the Blogosphere

There was an interesting development in the story on Bear Sterns and the difficulties surrounding two of its hedge funds. The New York Times ran this story on how Richard Martin, the person running the division that managed the funds had blogged about dealing with this and his life on Wall Street on his personal blog. What is interesting here is how this personal blog written for his friends and family has made its way into mainstream media and provides...

iPhone, YouPhone, Weallphone?

Willyouphone? It's an understatement to say the iPhone has lots of buzz in the media. It seems every major newspaper and business publication has published multiple articles, including a photo spread of complementary products in Time which features our client Zink Imaging, about the iPhone as the big day of first shipments drew closer. There is even coverage of the buzz itself. Or how to leverage the buzz -- I like Valleywag's article for PR agencies of high tech products...

As the Healthcare Industry Turns

I'm sure I'm not alone in my opinion that most healthcare conferences follow the “soap opera” model. Much like story lines in “Guiding Light” or “As the World Turns,” you may have attended a health conference in 2001 and then another in 2007 – and you find yourself in the middle of the same conversation. While some of this remained true at the recent TiECON event in Boston, it was also refreshing to hear that there’s finally industry movement along...

Blogging is the "Coffee Talk" of your Brand

I just saw an email preview of Jupiter's recent research by Emily Riley on "Maximizing Blogs: Fostering Brand Advocacy" and it brought up some thought-provoking points about how many advertisers maintain or plan to create blogs, but few consumers actually read them when researching products and services. So, I'm wondering if corporate blogs aren't actually being read by consumers making buying decisions, why do companies still create them? This question arises from some of our existing B2B clients and potential...

What is Important to CIOs These Days?

Gary Beach of CIO Magazine came by the other day to talk with our senior team and some clients about "The State of the CIO 2007" and other updates. Gary is always a great speaker and brings not only the data his pub cranks out, but also his own recent insights from the many C-level meetings and conferences he regularly attends. Some interesting takeaways from Gary's discussion included: The breaking down of CIOs into four distinct categories: Business Leader, Innovation...

Follow the money (er, announcement, that is)

Where does the news really originate these days? The lines are getting pretty fuzzy. Trolling through my Bloglines playlist, I found this link on CNet to an interesting post about AT&T hiring 2,000 additional workers to deal with the anticipated frenzy when the iPhone goes on sale next Friday. Interesting, I thought. Let me see how the master promoter Steve Jobs, ably assisted by a very savvy AT&T (and their agency, our friends at Fleishman-Hillard) are taking advantage of the...

The Old Rules of New Media

On Tuesday morning I participated in a PR News Thought Leaders Roundtable in Boston. The topic was "The Future of Integrated Communications." Over the course of a couple of hours about 15 senior level communicators from agencies and client organizations in the area talked about everything from the impact of social media on integrated communications, if integrated communications is really being implemented effectively anywhere, and what changes we can make or suggest in order to deliver more strategic, integrated marketing...

IT Trust in Social Media

Always on the hunt for hard numbers that illustrate the shifting influence of social vs. traditional media, I was struck by survey results published recently by IT Toolbox, an online community of IT professionals that claims 1.2 million members. Based upon responses from over 2,000 members, the major takeaways from the results are that IT spends more time consuming social media than traditional trade publications or vendor material, and also trust the material they find there more. The full results...

Teach Your Children Well

I was out of the office for personal and business reasons for a couple days last week and I feel a little like Alice stepping through the Looking Glass. First of all, as Don Jennings notes in an earlier post, many of us are disheartened about our good friends in the media being caught in layoffs. Barbara Darrow, for example, is one of the best journalists in the business. I've personally been referencing her in my executive media trainings for...

These Times They Are A Changing...

March used to be the month of Madness but perhaps June is the new month of madness. Take the changes in the media and storage trade show landscape for example. This month should have marked the annual passage for vendors and customers at Long Beach, California for Storage World Conference. Many of us used to wait to see who would keynote the event, who would be hosting a party at the Queen Mary or who would launch a new product....