I’ve spent the past week in bed with Swine Flu, which incited a lot of jokes from others, made me feel like a leper, provoked anger at the CDC for hyping up something lamer than the tonsillitis I had in January, caused me to rethink my life, fueled my quarter-life crisis and finally led to wondering how I could turn a bad event into a blog post. Here is what I have come up with – “Swine Flu – The Best PR Campaign (since the last pandemic).”
Swine Flu has all the makings of a great campaign. Let me unpack that statement for you.
Excessive hype (specialized Web sites, Twitter accounts, Web pages, ect.)
Its own branding. You know you’ve made it big time when you get branded in the rash and publicized form of your own vaccine (read Barbie doll, playing cards, etc.)
Made a competitor (read another industry) angry since it was [...]
Andrew Swenson kindly asked me to guest blog for him about a snarky biz topic. I’m not sure if I mastered snarky on this one, but this is a topic that is near and dear to me. As I mentioned in the background for the guest post he recently wrote about marcom on here, he is a tweeter to be followed and a blogger to be read. Thanks again for the space and opportunity to share about this topic Andrew!
If someone tells you ageism does not exist in the workplace today they are lying…
Transparency isn’t just a buzzword; it’s also an ethical practice in my opinion. When I see companies not being transparent, especially companies whose products and services I use, it makes me very angry.
This morning I tweeted about an AT&T video blogger, Seth, who kindly informed us outraged iPhone users that picture and video messaging was finally on the way (link to story and video). I’ll spare you my thoughts on that delay. So I am getting all giddy about the prospect of finally being able to send picture messages to someone directly and not having to worry if they have access to email to view pictures.
At least I was giddy, until I was informed by my friend Matt Motley that Seth the AT&T blogger guy, as he calls himself, is actually Seth the SVP of Fleishman-Hillard acting as the AT&T blogger guy. And then I got fired [...]
[Background: If I'm being honest, nearly everyone I follow on Twitter related to my profession pisses me off. Their not so hidden agendas, "ME ME ME!" attitudes, lack of valuable content and overall shmooziness make me want to not be on Twitter to connect professionally. Andrew Swenson (aka @wordpost) is not one of those people. I'm not sure how we got connected, or who followed who first, but this guy is the best kept secret on Twitter (seriously, check out his blog). When I asked him to guest blog for me (an invitation I would not hand out lightly) he heartily agreed (making him more awesome). In addition to his business smarts and Twitter awesomeness, I'm fairly sure our iTunes libraries were twins separated at birth, our snark whittled from the same balsa wood and our passion for Gen Y in biz pennies in the same wishing well. So without [...]
I was at lunch with Matthew (face pictured to the left) with Eyegate Media the other day when he said public relations is marketing. After chocking on my Chipotle, I emphatically said that I 150% disagreed. That might have been a brash, in-the-moment overstatement, but I at least mostly disagreed - or I did.
Part of our discussion stemmed from a book called Church Marketing 101 - I know, horrible title and most of you (not naming names) will think it sounds totally lame. In the book, Richard Reising outlines the well-known ’4 P’s of Marketing’ with the last being promotion, which is where he places PR.
After digging into the book a bit and mulling over my conversation with Matthew, convsations with myself, and conversations with others, I decided that marketing folks see PR as an arm of marketing with marketing being the umbrella that all things fit under. Therefore marketing is [...]
A tribute. I hesitated to put this up since it’s such a horrible example of my spokesperson abilities, so please forgive the umms, uhhs and stuttering ands. Gross lack of sleep.
As many of you know, as of a week ago I was getting laid off. The company that owns my company decided to move the corporate communications function to their headquarters in Cincinnati and I decided not to join them in that move. So while I was in the throws of planning the new business I would start, all the things I would do while collecting the joke that is unemployment (without exploiting the system of course) and the new career paths I would take (hairdresser, world traveler, private investigator) I was blindsided – in a good way – with the offer to take a promotion and switch departments to become the new marketing manager for Greyhound.
Skirt and top in hand, I waited in the excessively long line at Urban Outfitters. When I finally approached the counter and handed over my goodies I almost snatched them back and left the store at the sight of the latest catalogue cover. Before I go on, I should clarify that I’m in my 20s, female and I sometimes shimmy up to the bar in outfits I would not want my mother to see. I also sometimes read trashy magazines like Cosmo. This information is for you to realize you are not dealing with this.
This is not the first time blatant sex in marketing for non-sex products has upset me. Sexualized advertising dates before this UO catalogue, before the rich, middle school moms got upset with Abercrombie’s sexual ad campaign that ran (and continues to run) back in the 90s, and [...]
I go back and forth about whether this site should be purely professional or partially personal. Most people seem to think the most effective way to have a blog is to keep them separate and stick to a certain topic. I understand the reasoning; however, I do not stick to a certain topic and I am not purely professional.
Something that seems lost in the public relations profession is a sense of genuineness. Lately, the public relations I have encountered seems less about the passion for real and effective communication and more about a pretense of popularity. As a person who strives to be real and really is incapable of being anything less than that, the PR professionals I have met touting their own skills to other colleagues, PR professionals, agencies, companies, etc., is getting a little annoying - to the point that I have considered leaving the industry.
Welcome online and real-life friends to my new site, The Picaresque. Picaresque, according to the truly reliable source Wikipedia, “is a popular sub-genre of prose fiction which is usually satirical and depicts in realistic and often humorous detail the adventures of a roguish hero of low social class who lives by his or her wits in a corrupt society.” It is Spanish, I am not, but really that is neither here nor there. I found this word to be ironic, fitting, humorous and obviously the perfect name for my new site.
The image of the goose chasing the dog is the visual interpretation of the picaresque from the uber-talented design brain of Sara Stoner with Hillebrandcory. This site is a combination blog, portfolio, contact info and platform for expansion of all that and more. On the blog side you can expect to read material related to my profession (pr, communications, all [...]
|
|
|
