John Mayer’s New Do Offers Insights into Effective Targeting

Source: Fallen Star, PacificCoastNews.com, Kevin Winter/Getty Images via eonline.com The other day, I was perusing celebrity news on People.com (admittedly one of my guilty pleasures) and couldn’t help but laugh at the headline “PHOTO: John Mayer Chops His Hair!” My first thought was “Who the hell cares?” My second thought was “Why is this the most read story of the week on People.com?” What was even funnier to me was the serious tone of the article. Careful attention was paid...

The Intersection of Social Data and Storytelling

Thanks to Steve Olenski for tuning me into a recent white paper released by Bazaarvoice called "Chief customer advocate: How social data elevates CMOs". The paper focuses on how the mountain of data emanating from social networks empowers the CMO to become more strategic within the "consumer-obsessed C-suite." Specifically, it highlights the value of social data as real-time insight into the voice of the customer by revealing "first person words and sentiments" about a brand. It then presents data from...

Headlines Remind Us Journalism is Redefining Itself

A few years back I was part of a focus group at a newspaper where I worked. Our task: create a plan that would enhance the paper's website with fresh content, while not cannibalizing the print edition of its articles. That was a tall order, as we knew readers wouldn't return to a website two, three or four times a day to get their news if it wasn't up-to-date, yet they wouldn't buy the paper the next morning if it...

Exclusives Ave. - The Two-way Street Between Public Relations and Journalists

There was yet another in a long line of advice to us public relations people from the journalist side over the past week. This one was in the form of "commandments," which takes this to a whole new level of requirements. I'm not sure who handed down these tablets, but these were penned (cut into stone?) by Ashraf Engineer, a content media leader for an agency in India. Staying with the religious metaphor, it's the usual list of PR people's...

Does Silicon Valley Have a Public Relations Problem?

Silicon Valley is facing an image problem. Facebook didn’t even leave the Valley to ring the opening bell on its tragic IPO, and that was after spending $1 Billion on Instagram. Meanwhile Zuck’s sister is shooting a “reality” show in San Francisco and calling it… well, reality. Let’s not forget the Angry Birds movie, either. The land of Apple, Google, Twitter, Facebook, Oracle, SAP, and thousands of bootstrapped and VC-backed startup admirers are facing a public relations problem in light...

Don't Believe Everything You Read?

Real news by fake reporters? Essentially that's what newspapers in Houston, San Francisco and Chicago confessed to publishing, both in print and online. The revelation was made on the radio program "This American Life." According to the story on NPR, the offending newspapers admitted to "outsourcing" their news, some to a service called Journatic, the brainchild of Brian Timpone, a former journalist himself who created the service six years ago and has received a financial shot in the arm from...

Reporter Tips on Email Pitches that Don't Work

Last week my colleague Mike Sullivan shared some great influencer relations tips for working with veteran reporters from Mike Gormley of VentureWire. This week my colleague Christine Simeone sent around another great post from Business Insider in which the reporter candidly admits she missed some news because the three email pitches she received from high tech PR people did not capture her attention. There are some great lessons to be learned and I thank Christine and Alyson Shontell (@shontelaylay) for...

Media Veteran to Budding Sources: Be an Expert, Be Accessible and Be Responsive

As PR practitioners, it's our responsibility to build and maintain relationships with members of the media. They're our bread and butter, and without these relationships it's far more challenging to seed the media landscape with our clients' stories. However, after we've introduced our clients to the media, it benefits these clients to also build and maintain those relationships as well. After all, the media look to PR reps as sherpas who pitch the initial story idea and make the introduction...

How Bloomberg Broke Through the Valley Echo Chamber at D

There were a number of interesting takeaways from the Wall Street Journal's All Things Digital conference this week in lovely Rancho Palos Verdes, California. But the part that intrigued me the most was NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg's addressing the crowd via video interview (due to an unexpected issue that prevented his travel). In his very candid and engaging interview with Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher, he deftly provided a real person view on the application of technology in government and...

Remembering Mike Wallace

Among the many tributes that have appeared since the passing of legendary investigative journalist and "60 Minutes" anchor Mike Wallace is one from the Washington Post that noted that "the four most dreaded words in the English language for anyone hiding a secret were 'Mike Wallace is here.'" I will never forget one of the founders of a company we worked with many years ago telling me about the nightmare he had after his company struggled with their first few...