Going out on top - happy new year

I’ve always been a sporadic blogger so it’s not that big a stretch to become a non-blogger - at least in this forum. Business has been booming - taking an increasing portion of my time. We’ve re-designed our website, re-calibrated (I love that word) our business and I can’t pay attention to this blog anymore. But, everybody likes to go out on top, so I find some small degree of solace knowing I am STILL the #1 Sidewiki comment on the Twitter homepage!

Blogging less here means I have more time to read blogs I enjoy. My favorite blog: 3QuarksDaily.

Blogging less here also means I can pay more attention to my theatre blog, where my heart is these days: markrosenyc.com

All bloggers should support the struggle for freedom in Iran. Image below from Tehran 24 | also check FRONTLINE: Tehran Bureau for updates and THE LEDE, The New York Times

Five PR bloggers worth following, derived from random scans of intelligence, original thinking and personality in the PR blogosphere: #1 tomforemski - leadoff batter | #2 occamsrazr - the Leonard Cohen of PR bloggers | #3  [chrisbrogan.com] - the merry prankster of social media | #4 Richard Edelman - the Philip Roth of PR | #5 Loren Feldman - incendiary pupeteer

Some favorite posts:

• Alex Rodriquez Comes to His Senses - What Next?
• MLK & RFK Brothers In Battle
• Google Sidewiki is PR Game Changer
• Kristen Revealed
• So you want to break into public relations?
• What is Your Wikipedia PR Strategy?
• Mahatma Gandhi & Business

HAPPY NEW YEAR. Peace. Health. Freedom. Prosperity.

PRBlogNews, launched June, 2005. Archived, December 30, 2009.

Wells Fargo Launches Breakthrough Twitter Stream

On March 26 Wells Fargo carefully and judiciously launched an ‘active’ Twitter account. By ‘active’ I mean it is actually monitored by a person who is available weekdays, 9-5, to answer basic banking questions. This is a bold move that the bank did not undertake lightly. For months, the bank held an inactive Twitter account, saying it was monitoring the Twitosphere before it would become involved. Usually tweets are one way broadcasts - a company or individual telling its followers a snippet of information. By going a step further - engaging its audience - Wells Fargo is once again proving it is a social media pioneer in financial services.

Leading financial services into social media. Wells Fargo has been blogging for over three years; the company has several blogs in product areas and its own dedicated YouTube channel.  Ed Terpening, VP of Social Media for Wells Fargo, is the kind of buttoned down visionary that financial services neeeds to show how social media can be used for PR advantage. In the top Vator.tv video in the right column of PRBlogNews, Ed talks about how Wells Fargo used a blog to quell a potential crisis.  “We want to use all channels available to get our story out,” says Ed. That means sometimes publishing comments that are harsh and negative- as long as they comply with  strict posting guidelines.  Acknowledging prevailing sentiment to a particular event is often more constructive than ignoring or denying it. By having its blogs set up and running, with thousands of subscribers, Wells Fargo is able to respond quickly to a broad audience.

Social media for mergers.Wells Fargo launched a blog to manage communications for its merger with Wachovia (see bottom Vator.tv video on the right). The objective was to humanize the company, tell Wachovia customers what to expect, and reach a vast audience of constituents with news about the combined company. “Wachovia customers love their bank,” says Ed; there was strong brand allegiance to Wachovia.  Combined with Wachovia, Wells Fargo now has approximately 250,000 employees and millions of customers. A single blog can reach employees, customers, mainstream media, other bloggers and the general public. A blog is an incredibly efficient information distribution channel.

Social media as PR asset for financial services.  Financial services companies are heavily regulated, highly scrutinized and understandably reluctant to delve into the uncontrolled world of social media. Note the disclaimer on the Wells Fargo Twitter page. As Ed Terpening says, blogs, Twitters and videos are usually the last stop for company information to be disseminated, after it has been thoroughly scrubbed and approved by compliance officers, lawyers or regulators.  In essence, Wells Fargo is simply pushing out public information through added channels that have become available via the Internet and mobile devices.

The economy dominates news these days. Money is an emotional issue. We need to feel good about the company, and the people who manage or advise us about our assets.  Social media helps humanize an institution and offers the comfort that real people are listening to our concerns, offering feedback when appropriate, and are consistent in their approach. Wells Fargo has bloggers, an editor and programmer on staff, and now  Twitter ‘responders.’ Not every financial services company can devote that level of resources to social media. But most could benefit from following Wells Fargo’s lead in exploring the PR advantage derived from deploying a social media program.

So you want to break into public relations?

This is a difficult and confusing time to break into the public relations business.  As  traditional media continues to disappear at unprecedented speed, and the acceptance and use of social media increases exponentially, the PR landscape becomes radically altered.  How do you promote a service, product or person in 2009 when the rules of engagement have shifted so far that nobody can say for certain what they are? How do you judge success when you have no verifiable way to measure it? Why on earth would anybody want to break into this business now when there are no jobs and nobody can agree what public relations is anymore?

I faced a room full of mass communications students last weekend at VCU and tried to answer these questions. The short answer is:  Uncertainty brings opportunity and this is a thrilling time to be in the communications field.  It begins at the top, as Barack Obama re-defines how government communicates with and interacts with its constituents.  And it comes down to us - never before have the methods of communication - the ability to package and distribute news and information on a mass scale - been in the hands of ‘the people.’

All the news and info distribution sources we now have at our disposal - including web sites, blogs, Twitter, Flickr (or any web photo platform), YouTube (or any web video platform), RSS, widgets - are absolutely free. All it takes is imagination and time and you can shout to the world. 

The PR business still treats social media as a curiosity, an add-on. They generally still don’t get that  PR needs to lead the communications mix (PR/marketing/advertising) and PR needs to follow media into an Internet-based, digital distribution system. Instead of pitching the media we become the media.

Writing has always been an important, and sorely under served, element of public relations. Now that we can’t complain about lack of avenues for publishing, writing is even more important.  Check out Emily Valentine’s blog Cultural Anthropologist. Emily was one of the 50 or students from the 10 colleges and universities at the VCU PRSSA event last weekend.  There are also links to writing samples on Emily’s blog, including Microfinance: social networking meets social enterprise on the Young Professionals in Foreign Policy web site. Coming into the ‘new PR’ landscape, Emily is honing her writing and social media skills, and engaging in socially optimized PR. It make take some time for PR employers to understand the value of writing, blogging, and social media literacy - but the smart ones will soon enough.

See The Future of PR (SlideShow) | Mark Rose LinkedIn

PRBlogNews Greatest Hits

Forget McCain - Obama, the big vote for top dog PR blogger starts tomorrow, Wednesday, August 6, PRBlogNews against the lame Glass House blog. Click logo on the right or here to vote PRBlogNews. Voting ends Friday, August 8, 5:30 PM EST.

Why vote PRBlogNews?

Okay, I am a sporadic blogger, prone to fits of inspiration, long bouts of malaise, and I don’t do the incessant link-love cirle jerk thing necessary to pump up the social media ratings. I am not even a fan of social media -  I would rather eat a three day old hot dog out of a street cart than go to the Social Media Club.

So, we have a bit of an attitude. This is New York and it’s required. No excuses. We also break the BIG stories, like PR & LSD - a long strange happy tradition and Don’t eat the brown acid. Look around the cubicles of Waggener Edstrom these days and you might notice naked account executives tripping and writing far out PR programs thanks to PRBlogNews.

We don’t swallow the PR of the PR business - Burson digs itself deeper - and we stand up for flack rights when reporters try to assert their delusional superiority - Nocera to PR: Screw You.

Jay Rosen, academic social media pundit and tenured huckster took umbrage with our post: Jay Rosen - I Can Do Whatever The F@#k I Want . Jay’s adult response: Rosen: Mark Rose is a clown. Use that as a headline for your next post.

Okay, Jay, I’m a clown. I don’t take myself, or this business, seriously. See Is there no humor in public relations? Transitive Nightfall. Now with Extra Diamonds.

And the bigshots of the business notice us, sort of, unless they don’t:

Mark, you denegrate yourself  … Richard Edelman

Thanks for being such a great ambassador for PR … Howard Rubenstein

Mark Rose. Who he? … Jack O’Dwyer

Glass House is a corporate blog by a corporate guy who wants to say he has a blog. How many of those do we need? Do the right thing. Vote PRBlogNews now and send a message to the PR Man: we want change we can believe in!

PRWeek Blog Competition is a Joke

PRWeek has announced its Blog Competition and PRBlogNews is one of the lucky 32 in the running. What, you didn’t know there are 32 PR bloggers? There aren’t. The other 31 are imposters, has-beens, hacks and hucksters. By process of elimination, PRBlogNews is not only the best PR blog, it may be the only PR blog. 

In posts this week we will dissect the first head-to-head competitor we face - the Glass House blog by Waggener Edstrom (sounds like a play by Henrik Ibsen) Worldwide President Frank X. Shaw.  Anybody with a middle name of X. should be automatically “X”d out.

For now, here is a snapshot of some of PR blogs in this sorry “competition” (no link love here). 

PR 2.0? We’re already on PR 3.0. Solis should archive his blog and find another gig.

Richard Edelman 6 AM? Richard has 2,400 fawning employees who must read his droll blog or else they don’t survive until 7 AM. Unfair.

Micropersuasion - How did Rubel get on this list? He doesn’t write about PR, wouldn’t know PR if it smacked his Twitter. His blog should be renamed Microconfusion.

Blogservations - How much can we stand Gomes aching about how he doesn’t like to blog? How many Edelman white male bloggers stacking this deck?

Digital Influence Mapping Project - Grandiose title masks Ogilvy big agency psycho social media babble. I don’t know what Bell is talking about … it’s not PR.

more later …

PR/Media Week-in-Review, 07-20-2008

Loren Feldman Goes Too Far

“How do you know you’ve gone too far until you go there?” - anon  |  This quote should be on the 1938Media web site. As we know, Loren Feldman, the ganza macher of 1938Media, likes to push the edges. Technigga, his digital trilogy to racial stereotypes and the vacuity of social media, was perhaps his boldest stride into comedic social commentary. The whole “black tech” issue came back to haunt Loren recently with a dustup with NPR - he’s like a heat seeking missile for controversy.

What’s to become of Loren Feldman? There was buzz of a C-Net deal, Verizon signed him up for a day or two before they realized his content could not be controlled, he tried integrating into Mahalo like a MTV V-Jay (NO!), he floated the idea of charging for “premium” content (apparently 99 cents was too much for most people), and he hobnobbed with Calacanis in Brentwood and Arrington in the Bay area like Blanche DuBois relying on the kindness of strangers. He even gave up pounding on Shel Israel and absolved Julia Allison - still he could not go mainstream with the digerati.

Read more

Review of the Jew - so long ‘07, hello ‘08

EPIPHANY OF THE YEAR - You Don’t Need to Blog

November 19, 2007 broke like any other morning with one big difference - the thought of blogging made me ill. I had plenty to say, just didn’t feel like saying it, at least in this forum. And so it was for more than a month, a blissful break that could reactivate at any time. During my hiatus I discovered that we as Jews involved in the grand conspiracy to control the media, entertainment and banking businesses of the world, sometimes need to take a break, especially after such a fruitful year. I need to read the Talmud and go to shul, I don’t need to blog. So what I need to do right now is to celebrate Jews (and a couple of goys) who have had an exceptional year in creative and clandestine media manipulation.

VICTORY OF THE YEAR - Feldman Defeats French in Epic Battle

Loren Feldman is not only a Jew, he is a New York meshugenah who enoys good food and women with ample bosoms. His 1938media videos were entertaining and often hit on uncomfortable truisms driven by the force of Feldman’s Stanley Kowalski personality. In 2007 Feldman was making his mark in a tight little circle, and then he unknowingly picked a fight with the Frenchies and took the whole thing to a higher level.

For a few days in December as Loren banned the French from his site (you can ban country-specific entry to your site) and the French Seesmic people tried to ban Loren in some pathetic display of ‘retaliation,’ we were witnessing real time prime video theatre that showed why unabashed French baiting is now a divine right of all Americans. It also showed that Loren is one tough Jew.

It started with the Seesmic Review, 12/16/07, but the heat of battle lasted more than three days through a torrent of videos on both sides of the Atlantic. Loic Le Meur CEO of Seesmic had run into the Feldman buzzsaw and he was completely Frenched. The lame-o videos that the Seesmic-ites produced to counter Feldman confirmed every French cliche going and created a few more.

Loic made two critical errors: he thought Loren was racist and he thought he was serious. And because of that Loren decided to get real serious and to taunt and antagonize and mock and humilate the French. It was amazing how many others wanted to join in. 1938Media attracts a sometimes rabid gang.

Vinny Says:
December 16th, 2007 at 10:59 pm

I love all the people calling Loren a racist. I know him personally. NONE of you do. The man is OBVIOUSLY not a racist so get the hell over yourselves.

Secondly, he made some valid points in the review. If your stupid asses watched it instead of looking for something to be offended for, you’d realize he was pretty much right. The interface sucks, the quality is dreadful, and the idea of having to watch multiple RE:RE:RE:RE:RE:RE:RE: videos to see a reply.

Oh, and the Flash use on the entire site? SUCKS, and it’s slow as ass.

So maybe all you wounded Frenchmen should pay better attention and stop venting your inferiority complexes as cries of racism.

Pay attention, and learn.

VIDEO OF THE YEAR - Jew Hip Hop /Crank That Kosha Boy

BUG OUT OF THE YEAR - Jason McCabe Calacanis / Goy Wonder 

Baby faced Greek thumb sucking serial entrepreneur and dog face licker JasonMcCabe&Mrs.Miller CalacanisOuzo III (left, at NYC dim sum orgy) bowed out of a scheduled face-to-face one-on-one basketball showdown in a New York City schoolyard with Feldman the Mad Bald Jew. Bloated and surly from a dim sum fest in a dowdy Chinatown emporium with lowlife hackers and blogger wannabes, Calacanis blamed his bow-out on the weather and an over stuffing of kalamata olives.  In ‘07 Calacanis aggressively hawked Mahalo, the first human powered search engine. Can it work? I question the following in its Guide Notes on the assassination of Benazir Bhutto: “Although shots were fired at her, she died of a fractured skull from hitting her head against the sun roof of her car.” Is that true or Pakistani government propaganda? Does the “human” in the Mahalo equation simply cut and paste “facts” from unreliable sources and further solidify a false story? ‘08 will be a dangerous time in Internet communication as questionable sources gain credibility with unquestioning distribution channels. Calacanis is from Brooklyn. He should know about this.

PERSONALITY OF THE YEAR - Brian Connolly & Friends

Actually Brian (right) is runner up, third, fourth, fifth and sixth place in this category. “So, when I get an email from Amanda it’s really Brian?” somebody asked me, perturbed by the various genders and shadings of Brian. “Actually,” I said. “That is one of Brian’s personalities. And then Brian himself has several personalities. These days it’s best to keep a scorecard before responding.” One of Brian’s personalities likes to confront adversaries in postings, email and on the phone. That is the Brian that over-thought Strumpette into oblivion and then resurrection. Where does Strumpette go in 2008? I couldn’t venture but now at least my cell phone minutes are down 50% since I started talking to only one Brian. Despite the name that implies a long line of patronage in the Chicago police force and prominence at St. Patrick’s Day beer bashes, Brian actually claims Orthodox Judaism in his immediate family. Isaac Bashevis Singer wrote about Connolly and one of his personalities in Sex and the Shtetl.

PRBLOGNEWS POST OF THE YEAR - Psychedelia baby 

See PR & LSD - a long strange happy tradition

MOST CHASTENED - Steve Rubel

I apologize for calling Microconfusion blogger Steve Rubel a shiny head Yoda and incorrigible link whore. Now that he has admitted that everything he has been frantically flogging for the past two years is bull he can only be accused of being the latter. 

MOST STALWART - Richard Edelman

Talk about a big shot Jew. Richard has his name on hundreds of doors all around the world. This year he finally admitted that we don’t need the established goy media and we can manipulate the masses directly through social media. My mother Shirley, God rest her soul, would be in love with this man. Plus, he blogs consistently even when he has nothing to say except that he had drinks with a journalist and commissioned a new study that will prove a greater need for his PR services.

MOST IMPROVED - Eric Schwartzman

He got a haircut and picked up his pants. Bravo.  But the goofball video he has on iPressroom looks geeky and dated … but maybe that sort of thing works in L.A. Is he a Jew?

BEST LOBOTOMY - B.L. Ochman

It has to be why she is like that.

PR/Media Week in Review 11-11-07

Can YouTube elect the next U.S. President? That question is much more viable today than last week as Ron Paul, the fervent, iconoclastic Congressman from Texas with two first names, raised $4.3 million in one day largely based on an amateur video posted on YouTube. See thisnovember5th.com for the video and the story. Ron Paul’s YoutTube channel is already the 40th most popular of all time and surely to rise in the rankings.

Although there is a large field of Presidential candidates from both parties, nobody has emerged as the new H. Ross Perot or John McCain when he was barreling around the country in his “Straight Talk Express.” Ron Paul may be that guy. He is a Republican who is passionately againt the Iraq war and wants to get government out of your face. He wants to abolish the I.R.S. (now who can’t support that?). He is a medical doctor who has some straight forward proposals about making healthcare sane and affordable. I suspect that he will now have a much more prominent role in debates and media coverage. Here’s how he presents his record:

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