You may have heard that Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevech has hired a publicity firm to help him deal with all the media attention he’s getting, since he was arrested for corruption when he (allegedly) tried to get some kind of compensation to fill  President Barak Obama’s Senate seat.
Hiring good PR counsel when you are facing a major problem is a good idea.
But I am not sure if this firm is really working on Blago’s reputation, or perhaps doing some major spin doctoring.
The public relations agency actually send out  a press release announcing the Governor’s media schedule for today. Huh? Since …read more

In our house, Sunday dinners are special. It’s the one time each week when we make a point of being together as a family.
When the first person is nearly done their food, they start Appreciations and Complaints, listing the people or things that caused grief or joy during the past week.
Here are my social media appreciations for the past few years. I have Appreciations for:
Neville Hobson and Shel Holtz, who showed the way for many in the public relations field with their enthusiastic coverage of all things social. They led by example, week in, week out. A particularly good …read more

There can never be too many … PR blogs. Or maybe there can be.
But as Tom Foremski notes, it’s a good thing when public relations firms adopt social media. They are called upon to recommend PR tactics, including those involving blogs and other consumer-generated content, so they might as well dip their feet in the ‘Sphere and find out what all the fuss is about.
Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide’s Tech PR Nibbles could probably have been better named (at least it’s not PR Dribbles), but it’s definitely worth checking out, as is the more established Ogilvy 360 Digital Influence Blog.
…read more

Why bother hiring an agency, if you’re not going to let them do their job?
At times I’ve been guilty of second-guessing agencies, and jumping straight to tactics before a strategy has been agreed upon. Tactics are the most visible aspect of a campaign, so it’s easy to zero in on them.
That kind of thinking undercuts the work of the agency to identify the end result that is desired, and how best to arrive at it.
Jay Moonah describes the dilemma well:
“If you are working with an agency, what you need to help your agency partners understand is WHAT you want …read more

What PR agency wouldn’t benefit from having an in-house creative shop to call upon?
Edward Boches launched the Relentless PR blog by suggesting that an ad agency may be the best place to be doing PR these days. Boches is chief creative officer for Mullen, a Wehham, Massachusetts ad agency that has evolved into more of a full-service agency with offices in North Carolina, Detroit and Pittsburgh.
He describes the growth of Mullen’s PR group to 60 people, and credits “a competitive advantage in the form of a creative department able to deliver posters, viral campaigns, and PSA TV commercials to …read more

In the comments about my podcasting informercial rant, Joseph Jaffe poked fun at the advertisers on this blog.
I’ve never really said anything about the ads, and advertisers because I thought it was self-explanatory.
But Joe’s slightly snarky comment got me thinking that I’ve never openly thanked all those advertisers who support the blog and b5media.
To all the companies that have supported this blog and the b5media business channel,
Thank you!

Eric Eggertson
Technorati Tags: advertising,advertisers,sponsors,thanks,relationships,blogging,bloggers,commonsense pr,b5media

It’s been a busy week of accusations, gnashing of teeth, and protests of innocence.
The Middle East? No, I’m talking about the ongoing debate between bloggers and journalists on one side and public relations folks on the other.
Most bloggers (and many journalists) seem to assume that the only thing a PR does all day is dream up pitches and indiscriminately spam them to innocent victims.
If that we in fact what PR was all about then I’d have no problem writing off the entire profession as a blight on society.
Steve Yoder of the Wall Street Journal takes a good stab at explaining the …read more

I don’t hate advertising.
It’s bad advertising that either has me laughing or crying, depending on whether it’s interrupting me or filling some dead time in my otherwise busy life.
If advertising didn’t exist (see Life without Advertising: Quiet, Too Quiet?), I would have to do more research to find what I need or want. Clerks in stores would need to be well informed about the products they sell. Their status would soar, as we looked to them for help.
Without advertising, expert advisers would be more in demand than they are. We might make more use of interior designers, professional …read more

Would you miss advertising if it didn’t exist?
That’s what Terry O’Reilly asked today on his radio series The Age of Persuasion.
In this week’s episode, he takes us to a world where ads don’t exist. Neither does Google, or free TV shows, or most of the fashion industry.
A quieter world, yes. But maybe not as idyllic as we think.
“Advertising stimulates competition, stimulates demand. It is the accelerator of the economy,” he argues.
There would be fewer professional composers and musicians, fewer full-time actors, and fewer employees in all the industries that use advertising to drive sales.
He admits the ad industry has a …read more

Big agencies are good at systematizing strategy development, media buying and media contact management.
But can you automate creativity?
How do you keep from turning into a factory for homogenous advertising or public relations?

These question were asked 60 years ago by Bill Bernbach, as his agency began to grow. His response was a manifesto that calls for the nurturing of true creativity:
“…  [The] danger is a preoccupation with technical skill or the mistaking of technical skill for creative ability.
“The danger lies in the temptation to buy routinized men who have a formula for advertising.  The danger lies in the natural tendency to go …read more