Author: admin

Yesterday, we found ourselves reading this article and banging our heads against our keyboard. How could these presumably intelligent people not realize this guy was a total snake and liar? And how the heck did he end up getting another job after being fired at a brand as big as Rosewood? We’ve worked with snakes, liars and thieves both in-house and at various PR firms and they usually have a lot of things in common. We’re not trying to pretend that we can always spot them a mile away or that our instincts were 100% right but some of them were so obvious, we couldn’t believe everyone else in the room wasn’t rolling their eyes and seeing Russia on Sarah Palin’s porch. So here are a few obvious signs that the PR practitioner or social media “evangelist” you’re meeting with is actually Keyser Soze (and no, the first sign isn’t that they work in PR, harty har).

SIGN #1 – THE JARGON

They are a walking, talking jargon machine — “skill set,” “ROI,” “proprietary algorithm,” “mocial” (<- yeah, that one is plain vile). Words that sound like nails on a chalkboard. We’ve all pretty much figured out that the overuse of jargon is often to disguise the lack of saying anything with substance so don’t let their silver tongue fool you into thinking they know what they’re talking about. The more jargon used, the less they know.

SIGN #2 — THE SELF-DESIGNATED STATUS

They call themselves an expert. Or a guru. Or an evangelist. Or any other such obnoxious designation. No one is a social media expert. Social media is still evolving and has hardly defined itself, let alone created experts and gurus. Let their work, and results, signify their titles. And call them out on it. “So what makes you an expert?” Don’t let them respond with their Klout score. A Klout score is as meaningful as a World’s Best Dad mug.

SIGN #3 — THE NAME DROP

If someone is name-dropping all over the place, it means a couple of things. One, they don’t have enough currency and value in themselves so they need to use other names to make up for it. Two, they are hoping you will be impressed by their big name, kind of like how a cat gets distracted by lights, and you won’t realize they’re talking out of their arses. Three, most people who name drop are glorified socialites, and all they’re doing is going to cocktail parties for the free booze and the hopes that they’ll get noticed by the producers of that awful Bravo Silicon Valley show. The bigger names that they drop, the more unlikely it is that the names know who they are. Do you really think Sheryl Sandberg, Walt Mossberg and Jack Dorsey have time to rub elbows with us plebeians? We leave you with these two words: Shirley Hornstein.

SIGN #4 — MIND THE GAP

Long gaps in resume/work experience can be tricky as some people do have a legitimate reason for having a gap in their work experience. Things like family obligations, a serious career change, or maybe they just needed to unwind are all valid reasons and shouldn’t be held against anyone. But if you see large gaps, like the GameStop guy who left off 7 years in his CV to get hired by Rosewood, you should wonder why and you should be very suspicious. Most likely, they’re leaving off a former job where they left someone deeply unhappy or swindled millions of dollars.

SIGN #5 — THE ‘GUARANTEED’ LIE

They promise you the sun, the moon and the stars. We will do everything we can to move mountains for our clients but we’ll never promise to move said mountain (and really, who can move a mountain except Zeus?). Don’t believe anyone who promises you anything. Listen to what they can do for you but as soon someone says the word “guarantee,” you should run for the hills. There is no such thing as a guarantee in the crazy world of PR, and if they are guaranteeing a press hit or brokering a relationship, whatever it might be, we can guarantee you that they’re lying.

SIGN #6 — THE BOBBLEHEAD

They like everything you’re saying and doing and don’t have a single bit of criticism and OMG you are amazing and a genius and soooo good-looking. You don’t want a Yes Man for your PR firm. Drinking the kool-aid is not a good thing. Of course, you want someone who is passionate about your company, who clearly looks like they care about you and what you’re doing, and has genuine enthusiasm. But someone who nods their head at everything and doesn’t seem to offer you any counterpoints is someone who is blindly agreeing to anything you say so that your ego will be stroked and you’ll drop big bills into their wallets. A PR firm is an advisor who should respectfully counsel you if they think you’re going down the wrong path.

By the way, if none of these seem like red flags to you, then we’d love to evangelize some SoMoLo ROI with you, sipping mocktails with Marissa Mayer at our beachside resort and guaranteeing that we can get you the front page of the Wall Street Journal. Call us!

Share your thoughts with us on Facebook or Twitter

Yesterday, struggling UK music retailer HMV announced plans to lay off 190 employees. In the midst of their house-cleaning, they forgot was that some of their employees still had access to their corporate Twitter page, and they immediately tweeted their outrage for a full 30 minutes:

Unfortunately, their corporate marketing department wasn’t able to change their password fast enough:

So why does this matter in the long run? The HMV case stands out since their corporate Twitter account is broadcast to over 60,000 followers. What is really noteworthy is that this seems to be part of a larger trend in which disgruntled employees who have just gotten the axe are taking to social media for their final kiss-off.

Google’s former engineering director, James Whitaker, blogged about his last months at his job “as a whirlwind of desperation, trying in vain to get my passion back.” Sallie Krawcheck, once the most powerful woman of the banking world, tweeted “More on the theme of big bank complexity: not Too Big to Fail, but Too Complex to Exist?” when she was ousted from Bank of America.

So should sending out a revenge tweet after your boss sacks you be the default recourse for angry employees? Being fired can be deeply emotional and while you’re feeling a knee jerk reaction to spill all the dirty office secrets, remember the 2-2-2 rule: how will that angry tweet affect you in two days, two months, and two years?

After Aaron Brown was fired as a CNN anchor, he was quoted in the Huffington Post as saying “I didn’t think the viewers were behind me when we did dumb television.” He later regretfully reflected about his CNN jabs, “I clearly took a pop at CNN, there was no higher purpose there. When I thought about it, that’s not how I wanted to be.”

In every job you still have the option to control how you want to remember your last day, whether it’s a forced resignation or a voluntary one. Try not to burn all your bridges; you might need some of them for future interviews/references. Who wants to give a good recommendation for that crazy hothead who blasted their workplace?

 By Courtney Lee

 

 

 

Email pitches are probably the trickiest item for PR professionals to write, not only because you want to capture a product launch, company news, etc in a simple yet concise way but because you’re also trying to grab a reporter’s attention. Your pitch has to be compelling enough that a reporter will not just click on your email but feel that it’s interesting enough to share with his/her readers.

Grab Their Attention With A Headline Worthy Subject Line
It won’t matter how great the rest of your email pitch is if your intended target doesn’t even bother to open that email. The first step is to write a subject line that will grab someone’s attention. Have it be applicable to your client or their product (don’t try to trick anyone) but still noticeable and interesting. If there’s a celebrity or famous CEO that’s associated with the product, don’t be shy about name-dropping in the subject line. The headline “George Lucas’ Star Wars Tamagotchis Launching in 10,000 West Coast Stores” stands out a lot more than “Tamagotchis Come Out With New Toys in California.” Twitter has become an excellent medium to practice writing attention-worthy subject lines due to the 140 character limit.

Keep It Short And Simple
After your subject line, lead off with what would interest a reporter’s audience about your client or product. Is it that 40% of Americans use social media as a guide before a major purchase? Or that 88-90% of Americans who have a smartphone use your client’s particular app? Stats and fact-based evidence lend credibility to your pitch. At the same time, keep your pitch short and sweet, about 3-5 sentences in 1 paragraph. No one is going to read more than that, frankly, unless it’s to make fun of you.

What’s Your Call To Action?
Don’t forget to include an action line and offer additional information if needed. An abrupt ending can lead to confusion, which leads nowhere but if you provide a course of action for the recipient, they’ll know what to do. Don’t confuse a call to action with a directive or a command. That always comes across as pushy and/or rude. And don’t forget your manners. A “thanks for reading” goes a long way.

Still unsure of how to write an email pitch? The Open Notebook has an excellent article and don’t forget that practice makes perfect.

By Courtney Lee

“Writing is magic, as much the water of life as any other creative art. The water is free. So drink. Drink and be filled up.” — Stephen King, On Writing

When you think about PR, do you immediately think about writing? How about storytelling?

Both of these elements are critical to the practice, and you’d be amazed at how few PR practitioners are competent writers. We’re not even talking great writers, because if you were a great writer, you’d probably either be writing exclusively or be a copywriter at some fancy advertising agency. Merely possessing basic writing skills and old-fashioned storytelling abilities is a rarity in PR professionals.

What is good writing? Well, we don’t mean the fundamentals, like spell-checking and knowing when to use a verb (or avoiding adverbs). We’re also not even talking about butchering the English language or peppering your pitches with “amazeballs” (a word we wish would die a quick and painful death).

We mean compelling writing that would make someone want to open up an email pitch, or a press release that isn’t drenched in jargon and technical terms that would put anyone to sleep.

Press releases are maligned not because of what it is — after all, a press release is meant to be a useful document that outlines the news in a factual manner — but because of how they’re written. Whether saturated with marketing-speak, technical jargon, or false claims, press releases these days are entirely too long, entirely too hyperbolic and entirely too poorly written for any journalist to take seriously.

We don’t blame the media for loathing press releases. It was a grave that we PR practitioners dug ourselves, and maybe it was time to stick a fork in it anyway. But it’s clear that poor writing is to blame for the press release’s loss of relevance.

PR practitioners should be able to write, and write well. Whether you’re the SVP or an AC, you should be able to tell a compelling story in one short paragraph about your client. And if you can’t do that, then go read up on how to tell great stories, grab a copy of Stephen King’s “On Writing,” take an improv class, and brush up on those writing skills.  And please don’t use “amazeballs” in your pitch.

You might not know who Parry Gripp is, but millions of YouTube fanatics do. Not only did Parry create the 15 million views+ video, “Baby Monkey Going Backwards on a Pig” (which spawned our client Kihon Games‘ hit iOS game), he also has more than 97 million combined video views on YouTube (and his animal-themed songs are ridiculously catchy).

With that kind of built-in audience base, anything Parry does has quite an effect on his followers. Content creators like Parry have thousands, sometimes millions, of followers not just on YouTube but across social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, etc. Their influence is far-reaching and to call them tech-savvy is an understatement. These content creators, these new “weblebrities” if you will, understand how to market themselves, and conversely, understand how to market other brands in a way that million dollar-fetching celebrities simply don’t.

It would be a great exaggeration to proclaim the death of the celebrity but it would be accurate to say that the term “celebrity” has changed drastically with the social media era that we now live in. YouTube (and other social media platforms) are making regular folks with a camera and an Internet connection famous (and often infamous). Granted, most of these folks are being laughed at, rather than with, but it’s not stopping some of them from collecting impressive paychecks that make us rethink our career path.

Our client, Threshold Interactive, an interactive marketing firm that is often charged by major brands to create these advertising campaigns, recently wrote a great article for MarketingProfs outlining the reasons why a YouTube weblebrity is probably better for your brand than Kim Kardashian (well, anyone would be better for your brand than Kim Kardashian).

What does this all mean in the world of marketing, where brands used to throw millions of dollars to movie stars and television personalities like George Clooney, Brad Pitt and the dashing Mad Men? Are these movie stars in danger of losing a very easy (and sizeable) source of income?

Not exactly, but it does mean that the playing field gets just a bit leveled for brands that can’t afford even one item on Mariah Carey’s rider. Smaller, scrappier brands are enlisting the services of equally scrappy YouTube and social media weblebrities and creating mutually beneficial relationships. For the brand, they get a built-in audience and a seriously influential brand ambassador for just a fraction of the cost of a film star. For weblebrities, they get a paycheck, and better yet, more content, which is really the incentive.