Self Sufficient Artists And Merchandising
The Name Sells – Artists And Brands How do you react when you see a product that has the name of a musician or actor on it that you like? Do you think, wow, that’s kind of cool? Does part of you wonder whether the artist themselves had anything to do with...
Everyone Loves Metrics
Tweets And Facebook Likes For The Popular Kids Everyone is into metrics these days – even your not-bothered daily tweeter, Mr Average Joe Facebooker, and intermittent blogger anonymous. Every single person wants their posts to be read – even those guys who...
Mockingbird Sings Again – Harper Lee’s PR
The PR Around To Kill A Mockingbird Just because you haven’t been working on your social media presence, it doesn’t mean that you don’t have one, especially if you are noteworthy for some reason. This is true just as much in the real world as it is...
We Don’t Need Roads Or Robots Where We’re Going
PR For A Human Not Robot Future There have been a lot of breakthroughs in artificial intelligence of late: a machine passing the Turing Test designed to demonstrate a machine’s ability to think like a human being in a way that is indistinguishable from said...
The Talking Dead – Phone Calls & Bad PR
How You Speak On The Phone Matters Are you actually involved in the communication that you deliver when you call a client, or are you just thoughtlessly rattling out what you always say to the people you are calling? Do you see the statistic of your post as number of...
Bad PR For Journalists
Don’t worry, I totally get the irony of talking about the degradation of journalism into opinion pieces and personal platforms for writer’s grievances in a piece that is primarily my opinion, and not necessarily sourced from anywhere. I studied as as a...
Let’s Talk About Religion And Race
Why is it that some religions are loved more than others? Why is it okay for societies to hate and attack other religions? What is it about skin pigmentation that bothers people? Why do non-Euro-American people suffer more than the latter? These are questions that I...
What Does Keanan Kintzel, Lee Iacocca and The Statue of Liberty Have in Common?
Knowing marketing with purpose is hard to beat! Here is another fine example of marketing genius combined with purpose. When President Ronald Reagan asked Lee Iacocca to save Ellis Island and our beloved Statue of Liberty, it was a marketing engineers perfect storm....
Repackage, Reimagine, Reboot – The Movie As Pre-Chewed Food
The repackage, the reimagining, the reboot – never the rehash, the refried or the reheated. For every original franchise that makes it to the screens, or into print, there is an equal, if not greater number of established properties that undergo a periodic...
The Matrix Has You: Advertising & The Film Industry
The PR machine for Jupiter Ascending, like most other Hollywood movies was pretty slick. The usual striptease slow reveal of all the choice delicacies from the movie was rolling out months before the movie even had a trailer out there, and it made you want to watch...
Ello Vs. Facebook: A Simpler Aesthetic
Facebook does what it does pretty well, and it seems to, on the whole, be holding its ground a lot better than Myspace managed to. Livejournal is a cul-de-sac for nostalgia addicts; Plurk is a niche; some of the PHP forums are haunted by troglodytes who can just about...
Under Fire For Imaginary Grenades – Brian Williams & Iraq
What a PR disaster for a news anchor – to be found to have “misremembered” as he termed it, an event where he claimed to have been in a helicopter that was hit by a grenade in Iraq. Brian Williams, who is one of the faces of NBC’s Nightly News...
The Outspoken Artist & PR: A Handshake Is Better Than A Slap
PR is important. When you have uncompromising views about something, or are known for your forthrightness, is it still wise to not stand the chance of alienating a whole swathe of your potential audience by making blanket statements about a religion or a political...
Personal PR
It’s interesting when you start to look at the idea of personal PR, and how you advertise yourself to the world. A lot of people might immediately reach for the example of what they are doing with their social media; their Facebook or the blog they infrequently...
Net Neutrality – The Saga Continues
Net Neutrality Is Important To Everyone Net neutrality has been a hot button topic for a while, and until something is put in place that actually ensures the internet is protected people are going to be skeptical of any promises one way or the other. The current FCC...
Marketing And Programming
What is it that makes a programmer like programming? It takes a specific mindset to be into programming, dealing with “ones and zeroes” all day long, and it is a small minority of people that would even consider getting into this field. You would need a talent and...
The Internet Giants And The Ad Blockers
The online world is awash with advertising, and on some sites it can get a little oppressive, and it seems like half the loading time for a page is due to the ads that crowd the screen. People buy ad-block programs so they can have a less commercially saturated web...
Normally Only the Ads are Super on Superbowl Sunday…
Advertising Agencies Bring Their “A” Game Too! It had been a very long week for me and quite frankly, going to a super bowl party was not on my radar. The games normally turn out to be a big gamble, I had invites to 2 spectacular events and took a pass as...
Searching For A Search Engine Solution
Everyone has their favorite brands – this holds true across most things people buy; there will be one make of item that hits the sweet spot for them. Search engines are the same, so are social networks. The way the information is organized has a big impact on...
Sold On The American Football Field
By no stretch of the imagination could you call me a sports fan, and the amount I know about American Football could fit on a pinhead. I had a San Francisco 49ers t-shirt when I was a kid; I knew about The Refrigerator; I had watched Mean Machine with Burt Reynolds;...
The Swedish Invasion Has Come
To start off I am not talking about an actual invasion of Swedish immigrates to ‘Merica, one of the greatest countries on Earth. However, I am talking about the invasion of IKEA to America, Europe, Asia, Australia, Middle East and some parts of North Africa....
How Do You Spin It? Selling Records
How as an artist do you protect you work in an age of record leaks and film leaks, and illegal rips? Bjork answered by releasing her album ahead of schedule. This is the downside to what should be a system that actually empowers the artist rather than ripping them...
Selma and the Social Outrage of its Absence at the Oscars
I am tired of hearing about social injustices concerning the lack of recognition concerning African Americans, Latinos and other minorities in the United States. I am equally tired of hearing about the hate crimes that occur all over the world: whether you are a...