On Tuesday afternoon, President Obama spoke at a memorial service for the victims of the Ft. Hood shooting. Some observers are calling it his best speech ever. “I guarantee: they'll be teaching this one in rhetoric classes,” Marc Ambinder wrote for TheAtlantic magazine. “It was that good.” In the lead up to the speech, former Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson likened Obama’s remarks to the words of George W. Bush after 9/11, of Bill Clinton after the Oklahoma City bombing, and of Ronald Reagan after the Challenger explosion, according to Time magazine’s David Von Drehle. The reaction on Twitter was equally positive, Mediaitereported.
This week, Lee Odden, CEO of marketing firm TopRank, delivered a presentation at the PRSA International Conference that was about search engine optimization for PR. Here are 10 tips for PR pros from that presentation.
It's Twitter contest time again. Today Mark Ragan is handing out FOUR registrations to the Nov. 18 pitching webinar featuring the wildly popular New York Times columnist David Pogue. Mark will post a trivia question on his Twitter feed at exactly 1 p.m. CT. The first of his Twitter followers to submit the correct answer wins. But so do the 10th, the 20th, the 30th and the 50th follower with the correct answer. Hint: The question this week involves a British actor, an acclaimed film and a famous line. Are you ready? Here's Mark's Twitter handle: MarkRaganCEO.
How do people in their 20s view brands? A blogger at Brazen Careerist has 15 insights. Here’s No. 2 on the list: “For Millennials, brands are not a bad thing, just a thing.”
Look around. Count the women. Now, count the men. Statistically speaking, your office or department is 60 to 70 percent female. Why is that? Kate Ottavio, a PR pro and blogger at PRBreakfastClub, has a few ideas. “Is it because we are often times considered more left-brained?” She wrote. “Women statistically are more verbal, speaking twice as many words as men, which can help with pitching, right?” What does that mean for men in the profession? In response to Ottavio, another blogger at PRBreakfastClub has offered 4 tips for men pitching female reporters.
Dairy Council of California is seeking a director of communications in Sacramento. The director of communications manages internal and external communications, including press releases, social media, marketing, media interviews, issues management, and crisis planning. Read more about this job. Related Mopwater PR and Media Notes More PR jobs, including ones from Coca-Cola, Ruder Finn, Google, and more.
Based on reports in PRWeek's UK edition, it appears the Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR), a respected PR association in Great Britain, is caught in a financial bind. PRWeek said last week that CIPR is expecting a loss of 700,000 British Pounds in 2009. In dollars that’s … a lot. (It’s more than $1.1 million.) CIPR president Kevin Taylor told PRWeek the institute’s executive board had agreed upon a three-year recovery plan.
Has anyone ever asked you: What’s PR? It can be difficult to explain. David Moye, the media relations manager of marketing communications firm Alternative Strategies, fielded this question from his 6-year-old daughter. He published a transcript of the talk on the SoCalPRBlog. Here’s an excerpt. “Daddy,” his daughter said, “what do you do for a living?” Moye replied, “I’m in PR, sweetie ... PR is short for public relations. It basically means that, uh, I help people relate to the public.”
The blog 24/7 Wall St. released its annual list of most valuable blogs, ranking them according to several factors, the most important being their probable sale price. Gawker Properties placed first, with a valuation of $300 million. The Huffington Post was runner-up, with $112 million, and Perez Hilton hit No. 3, with $44 million. Rounding out the top five were Drudge Report and TechCrunch.
Last week, Price Floyd, the principal deputy assistant secretary of defense for public affairs (that’s a mouthful), spoke about the Pentagon’s communication challenges in the age of social media. Elizabeth Sicuso, an account coordinator at PR firm Adfero Group, had this to say about Floyd’s talk. “I walked out of the presentation with this one simple thought: If the Department of Defense (and all of its many players and moving parts) can balance security, information sharing and transparency, then why can’t every company?”
There was news this week that two unrelated PR shops have closed. Paul Wilmot Communications, which is owned by Fleishman-Hillard and headquartered in Manhattan, is closing its Los Angeles office. Wilmot told Fashion Week Daily that the L.A.office, opened in March, was an experiment that didn’t work. “We just didn’t find” any business out there, he said. Wilmot’s clients include Oscar de la Renta, Tommy Hilfiger and the Whitney Museum. Meanwhile, Raleigh, N.C.-based PR and advertising firm The Catevo Group will shut down Nov. 13 and lay off 25 full-time employees, Triangle Business Journalreported.
The architect of the White House’s attack on Fox News, White House communications director Anita Dunn, a longtime Democratic consultant and aide to Obama since 2007, has resigned and will return to the consulting firm, Squier Knapp Dunn, where she is partner. She will continue to consult for the White House. Her deputy director, Dan Pfeiffer, will replace her. Dunn's departure was expected, Chris Cillizza wrote for The Washington Post.
You know the tweet. Someone posts a message that's so self-congratulatory or maybe an obnoxious quote and you've had enough. Sorry, pal, you're unfollowed. What kind of tweets make you unfollow someone?
Graduation season is over, which means college grads are either in the workforce or looking for work (or maybe none of the above). What advice do you have for budding communicators in today's harsh hiring landscape?
RSS
CART
Comments
