I don’t know who Nancy Pelosi and the House of Representatives have doing they’re public relations, but did you catch her YouTube video which was created to kick off the House’s new YouTube Hub?
Here’s the video, just in case you missed it.

I feel bad for the Speaker of the House. A Rick Roll? Really?
It’s so old – and got even older after Macy’s tried to do the same thing at their 2008 annual Thanksgiving Day parade.
Nancy, if this was your (or your PR people’s) idea to look cool, hip and with the times, you’ve made a big mistake.
The Speaker …read more

The basis of any PR campaign, no matter what tool you use, is to identify your target audience, right?
Then what the heck is going on with the folks on Facebook?
I don’t know if you are experiencing this, but I’m getting a lot of invites to events promoted on Facebook from my ‘friends.’ The problem is that they are just blindly emailing all their Facebook pals their promotion, whether they are in the target market or not.
For example, I’ve gotten invitations to events and classes where I will learn:

to find true love in 2009 (I’m happily married)
the strategies to keep the …read more

Have you heard the news? Time Warner may be dropping dozens of channels, as negotiations with Viacom (MTV, Nick and many others) come to a halt. Viacom is “seeking an increase in affiliate fees of less than 25 cents a month for each subscriber for all 19 of its MTV Networks cable channels.”

Time Warner blames Viacom for setting very high fees. Viacom says the fees are needed. The list of channels being taken off the air, effective Jan 1, are:

Nickelodeon/Nick at Nite
MTV
VH1
Spike
TV Land
Comedy Central
Noggin
MTV2
VH1 Classic
Logo
MTV Hits
MTV Jams
MTV Tr3s
Nick Too
Nicktoons
The N
CMT Pure Country
Palladia
VH1 Soul

I don’t know who’s right here, but what …read more

Even if you don’t know the original source for a fact or a quotation, you need to indicate that it’s not your idea.
Otherwise, your audience will assume you are either too dim to know that you’re borrowing from someone else, or that you are too unethical to acknowledge the debt.
Either way, you have everything to gain and nothing to lose.
If you have time, track the information back to its first author. And for facts and statistics, it’s worth doing a quick check about the validity of the statement.
Commonly-accepted pseudo facts like “You should drink eight glasses of water a day,” …read more

I’ve been to a lot of funerals this year.  Too many of them have included a sales pitch for the religious choice of the deceased.
This strikes me as an odd choice. The religious affiliation (or lack thereof) of the people attending could be all over the map.
Yet, like clockwork, the kindly person running the memorial service starts explaining that we can all breathe easier because the person who died backed the right horse in the religion sweepstakes. They have gone to heaven because they chose (insert name of deity or prophet here).
It goes without saying that anyone in attendance who …read more

Journalists and bloggers are often willing to put up with a fair amount of inconvenience in the pursuit of a story, but when the inconvenience is the news conference you’re holding, you know there’s a problem.
Here’s the unimpressed commentary by hosts of the Evil Avatar Radio show/podcast, after the early morning Nintendo press conference they attended at the E3 video game industry conference.
 
Scott:  (no one seems to use last names on Evil Avatar Radio) They got us up so early, we thought, Are they going to feed us? “Yeah, they’re going to have food for you, coffee … We’re going …read more

My Twittering comes and goes, depending on whether the service is up at any given time, and I’m online.
If you have a Twitter account, follow me. You can add your Twitter handle in the Comments below, or wait a week or so, and I’ll get around to finding my new followers and adding you.
I don’t do a lot of Tweets during the work day, but evenings and weekends I’ve been known to add to the wisdom of the Twitterverse.
You can find my profile at: http://twitter.com/ericeggertson
Tweet you later!
Technorati Tags: twitter,business,communications,social networking,tweets,sharing,ericeggertson

I saw Wanted yesterday, with Angelina Jolie and James McAvoy.
The whole thing felt like a trailer, with action money shots coming (pardon the pun) at you one after the other.
It fell far short of the Jason Bourne films, but I’m sure it will do fine at the box office.
I couldn’t help but reflect on the declining value of trailers. Most of the Coming Attractions show you key plot elements deep into the movie. It’s one thing to show you the initial dilemma faced by the hero, but why do so many of them show you the climax of the film? …read more

Reviews are hell.
Writers, actors, directors and restaurant owners hate them. And so do business owners.
It’s never easy observing or taking part in a discussion about your business, especially when customers are taking potshots at you.
Calley Nye writes on TechCrunch about businesses fighting back against the review site Yelp by creating “sucks”-type sites about the site that features local reviews.
She says: “The good news for Yelp is that when businesses are afraid of you, it’s only because they realize how much power you really have. See, for example, Paypal and Ebay, two of the most reviled and profitable businesses …read more

Your customers/clients have predictable needs.
Any organization that doesn’t act on its knowledge of those needs, risks alienating the people it most wants to impress.
I wrote the other day about talking on the phone with the local agency that handles driving tests.
The follow-up call today, to book a road test, offered up another example of making false assumptions about your clients.
I booked the road test today, and the woman on the phone was very specific about the things my son would need to bring with him:

his driver’s license,
his driving school certificate, and
the receipt for his prepaid driving test.

Now, …read more