Archive for the 'News' Category
January 13th, 2010
We’ve written before about our location in Philadelphia. Despite the international scope of our work here at ELISE, Philly is home. So we were excited yesterday when it was announced that Philadelphia is a contender to host a World Cup game in 2018 or 2022, if the United States is given the games. (Seventeen other U.S. cities, coast to coast, would also host matches.) Hosting the World Cup would enable us—finally—to cast Philly in a positive light. And also, I really like soccer.
But not long after the good news, a tragedy to obliterate the warm fuzzies: a magnitude seven earthquake in Haiti, destroying most of Port-au-Prince and potentially causing the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Haitian residents. And the first thing I thought of when the news hit last night? Soccer.
A few months ago, a friend of Carrie’s mentioned a project he was working on to try to deliver the World Cup to Haiti. The ELISE team was interested and did a little bit of research on this endeavor, thinking it segued nicely with our work in poverty alleviation and education. While the efforts to bring soccer on a large scale to this small island nation remain up in the air, we became quite familiar with Haiti and its robust and often volatile history. For better or for worse, yesterday’s quake affected us just a little more because it didn’t happen halfway around the world in a country we’d never heard of, but in a place not too far from American shores that we felt we’d gotten to know, if only a little.
This isn’t a post about PR. It’s a post about solidarity. As some of our favorite columnists here at ELISE reflect on the tragedy that befell the people of Haiti yesterday, we’re sending thoughts to Port-au-Prince, too. Here’s hoping that in no time at all, the soccer—and the joy—will find its way to you.
December 8th, 2009
“Lovely weather we are having today, don’t you think?”
Okay, unless you enjoy the cold it might be a bit chillier than normal in Philadelphia. But the weather and climate are not just small talk topics these days.
Starting yesterday until December 18, 2009, the United States, along with nearly 200 other nations, will be discussing the issue of climate change in a global meeting in Copenhagen, Denmark. Political officials of the represented nations are set to discuss the most crucial issues surrounding the environment.  Tom Zeller of The New York Times states: “Among the most difficult hurdles, many participants acknowledged throughout the day (Monday), are achieving adequate cuts in greenhouse gas emissions—particularly from big polluters like the United States and China.” Zeller also noted that in days leading up to the global meetings many of the big polluters such as the U.S., China, India, etc. announced new emissions goals. According to some officials and participants, those projected emissions targets were arguably too low to prevent temperatures from swelling more in the future.
In efforts to promote climate awareness, GreenLaces (an ELISE friend) sent Caitlin Fisher from the London School of Economics to be an ambassador at the Copenhagen meetings. GreenLaces was founded by Natalie Spilger, a professional soccer player (Football, fútbol, footy/footie, etc. depending on your location) for the Chicago Red Stars. The GreenLaces movement promotes the idea of making promises for a better planet. They do so by activating the global athletic community to wear green shoe laces in honor of their commitments. For example, Dhani Jones of the Cincinnati Bengals and formerly of the Philadelphia Eagles, promised to ride his bike to work 50% of the time and get three of his teammates to join him.  According to the GreenLaces Web site, with the help of professional athletes such as Dhani and Natalie, the GreenLaces’ community of on-line promises is saving over 100 tons of carbon dioxide and $5,600 each year. Over time their ultimate goal is to accumulate one million promises for a better planet.
Mohandas Gandhi once stated: “A small body of determined spirits fired by an unquenchable faith in their mission can alter the course of history.” Even though many of us do not have the opportunity to attend the Copehagen meetings, everyone of us does have the ability to make and keep a promise to help GreenLaces reach and exceed their ultimate goal.
November 11th, 2009
I decided that I would take a hiatus from our PR Tools Blog Series and take a moment to comment on a story that I have been following since I returned from my vacation to Australia in September.
While in the land of Oz, I made it a point to try all native foods, ranging from grilled Kangaroo, Tim Tams, potato wedges and sweet chili (my favorite) and Vegemite. Vegemite, for those of you who don’t know, is a brown, concentrated yeast spread that Aussies use as much as Texans use BBQ sauce. Meraiah Foley of the New York Times describes the Aussies’ loyalty to the brown goo best when she said: “Australians are passionate about Vegemite.”
Weeks later I stumbled upon a post on Harvey Chimoff’s Wonderful World of Marketing blog that focused on “the great 2009 Vegemite controversy.” The controversy Chimoff was referring to began shortly after my trip:
In July, Kraft launched a marketing campaign that called for the public to help name the new cream cheese based Vegemite spread. According to Chimoff: “35,074 people participated; 48,243 names were entered; and of those, 16,071 names were unique.” On September 26, 2009, Kraft announced the winning name: Vegemite iSnack 2.0. Foley reported that: “The executives at Kraft chose iSnack 2.0 to reflect that the product had been developed using information gleaned from thousands of online surveys.”
So how did the Aussies receive this new name? Not with open arms. Aussies took to Twitter, Facebook and used the media to show their disdain for the name. Four days later Kraft responded by announcing another naming contest for the formerly-known iSnack 2.0.
“A marketing failure or a publicity coup?” is the question Foley asked. It seems as though it could have been a publicity stunt to potentially garner more international attention to an otherwise domestic food. I cannot help but think that it may have just been poor marketing and an over eagerness to associate the spread with technology.
The marketing idea to call on the public to help name the new spread was, in fact, a great idea for two reasons. First, it aligned itself with the successful naming process of Vegemite back in 1923 by again letting the consumer control the product and name it. Second, the campaign succeeded in gathering public interest and drove sales of the new product. But I would suggest that including the public might also be the campaign’s downfall. By allowing each individual voter to submit a unique name the results became overwhelming and I don’t think Kraft’s marketing team was ready for the feedback.
But then again, maybe society just was not ready for the transition of food names from something sumptuous to something practical and overly-techy like iSnack 2.0.
July 28th, 2009
On July 16, 2009, David Gelles from Financial Times reported that for “the first time a government has found Facebook in direct violation of its laws, and comes as the world’s largest social network with 250m users, is pushing its users to share more of their information with everyone on the Web.” Personally I think this is a bit scary. Even though I jumped on the Facebook bandwagon in 2004, I have a hard time accepting the fact that I am being shared with 250 million people. To me this is absurd—but if you were to monitor my social media activity, you would question the above statement because I find myself logging into Facebook every time I re-open a Web browser. It has become as habitual for me as checking my e-mail.
In my defense, this past weekend I was more concerned with Facebook than I had been previously. Last week, both Jill and my friend Dave brought to my attention something suspicious when they logged on to their accounts. Under “Suggestions,” Jill and Dave had an icon named Chrissy Buckley. This concerned me because we were already friends, and I do not have multiple accounts.
I did some research, Googled myself, looked up my profile privacy settings—everything seemed to be fine and very secure. Long story short, somebody had cloned my account. This means someone or something had copied my account and privacy settings and set up an identical Facebook page. After a few days, back and forth with what seemed like a machine automated e-mailer named “Will,” I was finally able to get this cloned account deleted.
This ordeal got me thinking: how secure am I when I log in to my account? Who’s to say my privacy settings are even working? I felt violated. I felt as though someone had taken a piece of me and taunted and teased me. In a way, isn’t it a form of identity theft? If I found out who did this, could I press charges? Unfortunately, the answer is probably not. I do, however, think that Facebook needs to reform its privacy settings now that this tool is available to 250 million people. It’s just a thought.
Canada’s Privacy Commissioner Jennifer Stoddart said it right when she stated: “Facebook has to be more transparent about telling people what they do with their personal information, how long they keep it, and who is able to use it.” Isn’t that already a standard practice when it comes to collecting and utilizing personal information such as credit cards, birthdays and other such important details?
I’m not sure what to do or how to solve this problem; however, I do think that Facebook could come up with a system that checks on new accounts. Maybe it is the idealist in me that thinks employing actual humans to monitor the activity could fix the problem of offensive and cloned accounts. Not only would you be setting up some sort of justice system within a social networking program, but you would also be providing more jobs for people to fill. It seems like a win-win situation. What do you think?
July 13th, 2009
The other day I was perusing the Internet when I stumbled across an article by Jeremy Porter called “How Do You Measure PR?” The article explored the many different ways in which PR professionals document and measure their success for their clients. The article states that: “…a recent survey conducted by the American Association for the Measurement and Evaluation of Communication (AMEC) and Institute for Public Relations (IPR)…found that 88 percent of PR practitioners believe measurement is an integral part of the PR process, and 77 percent are currently tracking their programs.” Porter than goes on to ask, “Am I the only one that thinks this should be 100 percent?”
No, Jeremy, you are not the only one that thinks this number should be 100%. In my experience, most clients require summaries of successes. How extensive that summary is depends on the client, but most clients like to see what they are paying for. How can a company grow if it does not document, analyze and act based on past failures and successes? How does a company acquire more clients if the company has nothing to show for itself?
As we all know, the definition of “media” has grown, within the last few years, to include social media. It is no longer just print (newspapers and magazines) and broadcast (radio and television). Now, in order to measure PR success in its entirety, we need to consider blog posts, tweets, Facebook mentions and links. Since it’s no longer acceptable to just list newspaper, magazine or TV/radio mentions, there are new questions we need to ask: How do you decipher which blog posts are relevant and which tweets are considered successful? How do you measure the success of a tweet? Can you really evaluate the success of something that has the potential for being accessible to millions?
As we are in the middle of compiling a report for one of our clients that documents our media successes, we have to consider when and if we will include any relevant tweets and Facebook posts that would catapult someone to read a blog post that mentioned our client. Is it enough to say x-amount of readers were exposed to this story based on the publication’s reported audience? Or do we have to take it one step further and state that x-amount of people tweeted and re-tweeted a link to this story, and thus the number of readers exposed to the story equals the audience of the publication + the audience of a tweet containing the link to the story + the audience exposed to the story via Facebook and other social media outlets?
I think we can answer the question in part: messaging needs to resonate with its audience. If we can say we have successfully reached our intended audience (as demonstrated by the numbers), then we have done most of the job. The second part of our job—and really the most important—is asking whether we created a compelling story that inspires or motivates the consumer.
July 9th, 2009
On Fourth of July we read the Declaration of Independence at the dinner table. It is filled with passion and conviction, and I now think that the beauty of the document can only be fully experienced when read aloud.
The most important part is at the beginning, as it should be:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
The founding fathers’ premise is only 176 characters long (210 with spaces), the equivalent of one-and-a-half tweets. The rest of the document goes on to defend this position and offers a long list of “abuses and usurpations.” All of the evidence supports the original thesis: men are created equal and deserve certain rights. It is short and to the point. Kind of like the communication on Twitter. I know that my habits have changed with the advent of Twitter: I read tweets about the day’s news by following media outlets and journalists. For more in-depth coverage, I check out nytimes.com and cnn.com or follow the links that are shared through social media outlets.
I think that Twitter is doing it right: letting us know (in brief) what we need to know. It is our responsibility to dig further and read more if we so choose. It is putting a customized and time-saving tool in our hands and giving us the freedom and individuality to select who will serve as filters for the information that bombards us each day and who will, in part, shape our world view.
When Matthew Bishop tweeted about Gideon Rachman’s article “A categorical imperative to twitter” in the Financial Times, I identified with Gideon’s reasoning: although he originally thought tweeting to be moronic, he later agreed with the importance of extreme brevity. For instance, he encapsulated the Bible in a tweet, “God made the world in seven days. Respect.”
I think that the best communication has always been short, impactful messaging, like the most important sentence in the Declaration of Independence. A communications vehicle that forces us to work with only 140 characters gives us the opportunity to write succinct messages that others will find relevant, interesting or perhaps revolutionary…or to be moronic. I challenge myself to choose the former and find those I follow tend to do the same.
June 29th, 2009
Technology has come a long way in my lifetime. Before my digital camera, I had a 35mm; before that, I had a 110mm and a Polaroid; before DVDs, I remember the Laser Discs they used in my grade school science classes—and before them, I remember VHS and Betamax tapes. And before I had an iPod, I had a CD player, a cassette player, and yes, even a record player.
I begin this week’s blog post this way because something happened last week that caused me both to remember my record player (it had Rainbow Brite on it) and to consider changing technology: Michael Jackson died.
Michael Jackson, the artist behind the first vinyl record I remember buying (it was Bad and I was four) died, and I got the news on my iPhone, via an emailed link to a post on TMZ.
The day the King of Pop died may also have been the day social media became a credible source.
I have mixed feelings about TMZ and other blogs of its nature. Part of it is my personal opinion that celebrities are people, too, and they deserve at least a little privacy. Part of it is that I’ve never found reading from a screen to be as satisfying as holding a newspaper or magazine. And part of it, too, is that for all my evangelizing that blogs are important and bloggers matter, I’m not really sure that most blogs are quite “there,” as far as having research departments and full-time news staffs and careful editors and all the other things that newspapers employ to make sure they have well-written, well-researched, timely news stories. But without all of these limitations, blogs do have something that traditional media does not: the ability to break news as it’s happening and to go viral with it. (Some would argue that they also have the ability to break the news without the constraints of journalistic ethics—the downside to social media’s speed.)
All of this comes on the heels of the Associated Press’s recent, and very strict, social media guidelines issued to its staff. Guidelines that more or less ensured that the news agency—one of the nation’s largest—would get scooped by social media on one of the biggest pop culture stories of the year. It’s not that I don’t think that mainstream media outlets shouldn’t have waited before officially reporting the news… it’s just that I don’t think they should have held back on the speculation. A Tweet from an AP writer (on a personal or official account) saying: “Michael Jackson reported dead of cardiac arrest (unconfirmed); stay tuned for more details…” (at a whopping 93 characters, including the ellipsis) would have kept the outlet from looking like it had fallen completely behind. A more direct Tweet saying: “Yes, we’ve heard the MJ rumors. Waiting for confirmation before we officially report,” (at a mere 85 characters!) would not only have acknowledged the initial report but would have given the AP’s official stance on reporting the news—namely, that they (unlike blogs) were awaiting official word from a credible source. They might not have been the first to report the news, but there would have been an air of legitimacy to the AP’s Tweet that was lacking from TMZ’s series of blog posts on the subject.
But instead of being able to comment on rumors, the staffers at the AP (and, to be fair, seemingly all major traditional news outlets and bureaus) had to sit on their hands while social media beat them to the punch—and, to add insult to injury, they had to concede in their eventual articles that TMZ was on the story first. It was amazing to see the “big dogs” of traditional media begin sentences with “According to TMZ…” or “Celebrity blog TMZ reports…” because for the first time it showed that the media was conceding the power and influence of its nontraditional sister outlets. After all, when the news broke, people weren’t clamoring for the evening editions of their local papers. They were turning to Twitter and blogs.
I don’t necessarily think this is the harbinger of Associated Press 2.0—but I do think that it’s a sign that traditional media has a lot of catching up to do. After all, things have changed a lot since 1987, when my mom took me to the record store in Bassett Center Mall to buy Michael Jackson’s latest LP. We have embraced the MP3 as a sign of changing technology… maybe we should embrace the blog, too.
Image credit: Flickr user bernissimo, used under a Creative Commons license.
June 23rd, 2009
Over the weekend The New York Times ran a story about Ray Bradbury, a science fiction author best known for writing Fahrenheit 451, and his views on the closing of California libraries due to floundering taxpayer dollars. Coincidentally, I had visited the Chester County Library on Sunday.
Being a recent college graduate, I am not that far from the days of holing myself up in a study room at the university’s library. But it has been years since I had to use an encyclopedia to research something. Most of my time spent in Villanova’s library was spent with headphones on, coffee at hand, books spewed about long tables and laptop opened to my email, just in case. Looking back on it, there was no need for my Internet to be connected if I were truly studying. Like Mr. Bradbury had said in the New York Times article, “The Internet is a big distraction … it’s distracting. It’s meaningless; it’s not real.”
While I do agree that at times I get very distracted by the Internet, I don’t agree that it is not real. The Internet has become a means of universal communication. It has changed the way that we interact with each other. Even the ways in which PR professionals operate have changed—press releases and traditional media kits, for example, are used less and less these days. The utilization of social media, however, is demanded daily. Within the last year I have seen many print publications go under, due in part to the high demand for information shared over the Internet through blogs, Facebook and Twitter.
While I enjoy the efficiency, ease, instant gratification and the rapid messaging of the internet, I cannot say that it will be the place I go to when I want to read a poem by Walt Whitman or research where to go while I plan my upcoming visit to Sydney, Australia. For those items, I, like Mr. Bradbury, still enjoy going to the library and perusing the aisles of worn-out books and old wisdom.
June 15th, 2009
It took me a while to break down and start using Twitter—and even now, it’s only for ELISE work and not for my personal life. In 2007, when the service launched, I wasn’t interested: something about several-times-a-day updates about my life seemed invasive… and completely uninteresting. (What was I going to do? Tweet about my cats and the sandwich I had for lunch?)
But Twitter has evolved from more than an outlet for narcissism or self-importance: it’s fast becoming a valuable tool for monitoring and influencing conversations and disseminating important news quickly. And those people who have the most influence and share the most information are now part of Twitter’s elite A-list.
The New York Times yesterday ran an article by Noam Cohen and Brian Stelter called “The Tweet Smell of Success,” which analyzed the increasing pervasiveness of Twitter and how fame can be brought to Tweeters through this list, comparing being named a top user to being mentioned in Walter Winchell’s column in the days of yore. I’m not sure I’d go that far, but there’s definitely something to be said for having your Twitter account recommended, whether on the A-List or by other Twitter users. We saw this first-hand last week while Carrie was on the ground at the Games for Health Conference in Boston: a couple of #followfriday recommendations, a couple of re-tweets, a couple of tweets about the conference itself… and suddenly our follower base grew. We’re not close to the tens of thousands of followers some of the Twitter users in the Times article have, but we’re getting there. Thanks to all of the @ELISE215 followers who are along for the ride.
