Pay to Play…
The Wall Street Journal on the use of third party spokespeople. Something I think most intelligent viewers are aware of but a practice nevertheless, that isn’t in the least but transparent.
In November, Child magazine’s Technology Editor James Oppenheim appeared on a local television show in Austin, Texas, and reviewed educational gadgets and toys. He praised "My ABC’s Picture Book," a personalized photo album from Eastman Kodak Co.
"Considering what you showed me, kids’ games really don’t have to be violent," said the anchor for KVUE, an ABC affiliate and the No. 1-rated television station in its market.
"If…you’re not careful, they will be," Mr. Oppenheim replied. "That’s why I’ve shown you some of the best."
There was one detail the audience didn’t know: Kodak paid Mr. Oppenheim to mention the photo album, according to the company and Mr. Oppenheim. – WSJ, April 19, 2005
Now I’ve been pretty harsh in my comments regarding the Bush Administration’s use of paid spokespeople and VNRs without any kind of transparancy. Commercially this has been happening for decades. So at what point does the PR industry issue some guidelines on transparency and correct this erroneous practice. The Government has set the standard’s bar low enough that you could pretty much roll over it.
And at what point does the media – especially the broadcasters – step-up and do their job of fair and balanced reporting. Tell us where the "independent expert" is being paid to speak to a particular brand or product. If you want out loyalty and trust, you are going to have to earn it. We the people expect more. Dan has more on this.
Cymfony Launches Blog…
Measurement co’ Cymfony launches a blog on measurement – current content seems to be more generic PR… If you are looking for measurement tips, take a look at Katie’s blog.
The Race Of All Races…
For all you yachties be sure to tune into the Rolex Transatlantic Challenge. Imagine two hundred foot plus racing machines cutting across the top of the planet. These are two of the biggest, fastest yachts ever built. Charlie Brown says it all:
Designed by Greg Elliott, who was also part of Mari-Cha IV’s design team, Maximus may be 40 feet shorter than her rival but benefits from state-of-the-art technology, maintains Charles Brown. He too is enthusiastic about the race celebrating the anniversary of Charlie Barr and Atlantic’s record-breaking voyage. “It is the greatest challenge, a 100-year-old record, what better could you do? Charlie Barr was the most famous yachtsman in the world. It has everything to do with why we built the boat. And it is extreme stuff. You go north, near the ice, and it is 3,200 miles – a really fantastic race.”
I wish these guys would RSS enable their sites though…
NY Times Says RSS is Big, Really Big
Thanks to Tom for the pointer…
NYTimes.com’s RSS feeds generated 5.9 million pageviews on the site in March, which represents a 342% increase year over year and a 39% increase from February’s 4.3 million pageviews. The sections that were most popular among RSS feeds included: Washington and Business. The feeds have been available since February 2002 (www.nytimes.com/rss).
Shel’s On It… Blogs Don’t Replace News Releases
A post worth reading… of course blogs won’t replace news releases. Much like blogs won’t replace magazines. I’ve written about this so many times that I won’t rant on again about it here. Other than to say…
The press release performs a key technical communications function. It’s the official, final, absolute communication from a company. And that moves markets and influences decisions like no other. It’ll be here for a long time. Ok, it’s getting commoditized like everything else – prices are coming down, richness and distribution are going up, folks are getting much more targetted… but they are here to stay… I promise.
Too often people think of this little paper mechanisim when thinking of a release. For the most part they are digital and have as much utility as a blog. Many are RSS enabled – just like a blog. (I get all my Sun releases via RSS). And as Shel rightly points out, they’re written for the press. At least some of them are.
And as Shel says:
None of which suggests that company executives shouldn’t blog. Opening a channel of communcation between an organization’s leadership and key external audiences is one of the best business uses of blogs. But it doesn’t eliminate the need for press releases any more than the introduction of e-mail eliminated the need for telephones and faxes.
