Defining Convergence: Advertising - Entertainment Crossover

"The reality of it is that the future does not fit into the containers of the past.” — Rishad Tobaccowala, CEO of Denuo Group, a Publicis GroupeAccording to Ad Age, Tobaccowala said it’s time for marketers to drop the idea that they can authoritatively distribute promotional messages by traditional means and get their heads around the notion that they must create content where audiences can migrate. As an example,...

E-Mailing Everybody: Marketers Say Spam Works

Forget Facebook and other online advertising models for a minute. Datran Media released a study that says direct-to-consumer e-mail spam works. More than 82 percent of the marketers surveyed indicated that they plan to increase e-mail marketing this year. That’s a whole lot of e-mails.Why? As much as everybody complains about e-mail advertising, it seems to work. The Direct Marketing Association (DMA) even released...

Yodeling Less: Yahoo! Cut Backs

Yesterday, Yahoo! announced that what was expected to be hundreds of layoffs will be rounded up to more than 1,000 jobs cut. Unfortunately, the writing has been on the wall for some time as several Yahoo! assets were underperforming.Yahoo Video fell 80 percent while traffic to rival YouTube grew by nine percent. Metacafe grew by 27 percent. Traffic on Yahoo! asset MyBlogLog, a social network for bloggers, has been declining...

Mixing Media: The Recruiting Animal

Last March, the unabashed shock jock of recruiting, best known to the industry as the “Recruiting Animal,” launched an online radio talk show. Since, the show continues to capture growing interest, maybe even contributing to his recent win as the “Best Recruiting Blogosphere Personality” gratis RecruitingBlogs.com Best Recruiting Blogs Of 2007. You think? No way, says Animal.“I feel guilty about the prize because David...

Corresponding Attorneys: Andrew Dwyer

Corresponding by e-mail with Andrew Dwyer, the employment litigation specialist who owns The Dwyer Law Firm, L.C.C. and is representing Steve Biegel in the Biegel vs. Dentsu case, reminded me why some reporters become cynical over time. Many journalists are privately bombarded with persuasive babble, coercion, and spin, based on little more than the erroneous notion: if the reporter writes what we want, they are intelligent;...

Counting Words: 16 Makes A Sentence

Almost every year, I set up the students in my Writing For Public Relations class by asking them “how many words does it take to write the optimum sentence?” Inevitably, several will enthusiastically answer. Sixteen words!“Ah ha!” I smile, walking a bit closer to anyone whose eyes might have drifted downward for lack of answer. “It’s always good to know who is reading the assigned chapters … and who might not be....

Checking Reality: Writers Strike

Yesterday, the Writers Guild of America (WGA) and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) began informal discussions to determine if there is a basis for both parties to return to formal negotiations. Restarting negotiations has not come soon enough.For weeks now, the writers strike forced networks to scramble and offer an increasingly odd array of reality shows to the public. As long as people...

Improving Advertising: Nine Rules, Part 2

“Copy is a direct conversation with the consumer." — Shirley PolykoffFor all its benefits, social media communication sometimes misses. One of my favorite misses is the constant buzz of conversation and how it differs from traditional communication. It’s even one of the premises in Join The Conversation, recently reviewed by Valeria Maltoni.Yet, despite never being engaged in social media, Shirley Polykoff felt the...

Blogging For Kindness: Mental Stimulation

“The world, Rich, needs more togetherness,” she said. “More healing. And I feel Bloggers Unite brings people closer together.”Simply stated, but inspired.Dee Graham (a.k.a Iriegal) is one of those bloggers, like many I have met through BlogCatalog’s Bloggers Unite social awareness campaigns, who turns blogging stereotypes inside out and upside down. And maybe that’s because there is no “them.”You see, Graham was diagnosed...

Remembering Greatness: Martin Luther King, Jr.

Every year, Americans observe Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday (Jan. 15, 1929) on the third Monday in January, sometimes leaving others from around the world to wonder why. The reason is simple enough.“The Martin Luther King, Jr. Holiday celebrates the life and legacy of a man who brought hope and healing to America. We commemorate as well the timeless values he taught us through his example — the values of courage,...

Needling Romney: The Associated Press

The exchange between Mitt Romney and Associated Press reporter Glen Johnson yesterday provides an interesting glimpse into everyday media relations. It’s being covered from several angles, but not so much from a communication perspective, where my interest resides. Here is a quick link to the video of the exchange from CBS News’ Scott Conroy. At a press conference inside Staples in Columbia, South Carolina, Romney was...

Catching Buzz: Richard Becker

On Jan. 4, Geoff Livingston tagged me with the popular “eight random things about you” meme, but with all the great questions recently posed by Livingston and Larissa Fair in my interview at The Buzz Bin today, the last thing I want to do is talk about me.So this time around, I’m going to cheat the meme by directing my response to the first time I was tagged with it. You can find it over at RecruitingBlogs. Yes, that...

Ending Rumors: CBS Clarifies Release

If some fans are still wondering, and some of them are, CBS did release episodes of Jericho Season 2 to the media. But it only released these episodes to the media, which is a common practice in the industry.This isn't a guess. CBS was kind enough to follow up today after I requested clarification. Given this, any speculation that the network intentionally leaked three episodes for general consumption and Internet...

Improving Advertising: Nine VW Rules, Revisited

On Monday, after alluding to advertising rule number 5 (people sometimes lie), which is simply meant to remind professionals not to follow qualitative focus groups or quantitative surveys on blind faith, I received an e-mail asking me what some other "advertising rules" might be. I thought about posting a few, but then decided doing so deserves the same pretext I provide public relations students (sometimes public...

Banning The Net: Survey Says 31 Percent

Every now and again, Ragan Communications hits upon a good story related to social media. Michael Sebastian did yesterday. Less interesting are the feuding comments that followed, which do nothing more than polarize the issue into this or that, black and white. Despite the back and forth, everyone seems to ignore that lost workplace productivity, now blamed almost exclusively on social networks, predates the social...

Employing Social Media: Del Monte Foods

According to The Wall Street Journal, Del Monte Foods employed social networking while considering a new breakfast treat for dogs. It sent out a note to its private online community of dog owners called “I Love My Dog," asking them what they most wanted to feed their pets in the morning. The consensus answer was something with a bacon-and-egg taste, which led Del Monte to introduce its Snausages Breakfast Bites. They...

Leaking Jericho, Season 2: Three Full Episodes

In 2006, Jericho Season One was one of many new shows with its first episode or so leaked to the media and across the Internet for early viewing. The same now seems to hold true for Jericho Season Two. At least three episodes can be found on the Internet. Maybe more.Post spoiler: if you are looking for a download link, you won’t find one here. I have verified their existence, but do not support the proliferation of...

Blogging For Kindness: Listening..Learning..Living

Sometimes a single photo can lend even more to a story, which is why Bokjae (a name given to him by his Korean business contacts) included this one with his post as part of a social awareness campaign organized by BlogCatalog. The campaign asked bloggers from around the world to perform an act of kindness and share a post, picture, or video about it.Bokjae chose the picture of John Gebhardt comforting a young girl....

Checking Reality: Business Blog Validity

Liz Fuller, who writes Business and Blogging, recently pulled together a list of Fortune 500 blogs. In sum, she found 8 percent of Fortune 500 companies had some level of corporate blogs. Two of the top ten — GM and GE — have blogs. The GM Fastlane Blog, of course, has been sourced as a best practice staple for some time. It appeared in my first presentation on business blogs in 2005, cited for its human approach,...

Engaging Students: AAF and Heineken

In communication, especially advertising, there is no substitute for practical, hands-on experience. It’s something that underscores any class I teach. I’m not alone in this belief, of course. There are several opportunities for college students to find experience across the country, including the American Advertising Federation (AAF). Every year, the AAF hosts the National Student Advertising Competition (NSAC), which...