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Home > Blogs > The Cycle
The Cycle

The oldest trick in the book?

Posted April 16, 2009

This week’s media analysis delves into ways the “church-and-state” divide between news and advertising will further erode as the industry faces economic realities. The two Los Angeles Times have accelerated the conversation surrounding “creative” or “innovative” advertising, but not everybody agrees with those terms. Among those not featured in this week’s analysis is Geneva Overholser, director of USC’s Annenberg School of Journalism. She calls advertorials “the oldest trick in the book” and adds:

This is not creative or innovative – it’s caving. Why do something that fundamentally trades on deception? If they didn’t believe it would be more credible to make [the ads] look like editorial content, then why did they do it? This was bad advertising. It was aesthetically ugly as can be – not creative and definitely not progressive. Editors have fought this for years, not because they are prissy but because they don’t want their readers fooled.

For more perspectives on advertorials, see the analysis.

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Filed under: Advertising, Media

Tags:Geneva Overholser, the Los Angeles Times

Yahoo’s comms restructuring being “fleshed out”

Posted March 4, 2009

According to Brad Williams, VP of corporate communications at Yahoo, the company’s corporate communications team hasn’t been impacted by the massive restructuring - yet. “But we’re working [with] incoming CMO, Elisa Steele, to determine how to best align our team to Yahoo’s new organizational structure as it’s fleshed out in the coming weeks,” said Williams, who is acting as head of the company’s corporate communications team since Jill Nash’s departure.

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Filed under: Corporate Communications, Crisis Communications

Tags:Brad Williams, Jill Nash, Yahoo

Microsoft calls social media review ‘an exercise’

Posted February 27, 2009

PRWeek UK has reported that Microsoft is rethinking its global media strategy, as a way to improve its consumer communications. According to the piece, the tech giant has called in its three global agencies – Weber Shandwick, Edelman, and Waggener Edstrom – to present their social media credentials.

In a statement provided to me, Microsoft called this “an exercise to better understand the digital and social marketing capabilities of a number of our marketing and communications agencies.” The company asserts,“This is something we regularly do and this exercise is not specific to PR. We don’t envisage significant change in either our strategy or our agencies of record”.

Stay tuned for more.

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Filed under: Agency-client relationship, Social Media, Technology

Tags:Edelman, Microsoft, Waggener Edstrom, Weber Shandwick

Posted February 27, 2009

Facebook is taking the of its critics and allowing users to chime in on the way the site is governed. In a blog entry , CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Facebook is going to practice what it preaches on transparency. As a first step, Zuckerberg is inviting user feedback on two documents: , which defines users’ rights and will act as a guiding framework on any policy it considers or discards; and , which will replace its existing Terms of Use. Both groups have about 4,000 members.

“With both documents, we tried hard to simplify the language so you have a clear understanding of how Facebook will be run,” Zuckerberg writes. “We’ve created separate groups for each document so you can read them and provide comments and feedback.”

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Filed under: Corporate Communications, Corporate Reputation, Crisis Communications, Social Media

Tags:, Mark Zuckerberg

Yahoo departure fuels more speculation

Posted February 24, 2009

The head of Yahoo’s news and information division, Neeraj Khemlani, has jumped ship from the troubled company to Hearst Corp. The move has fueled even more speculation that Yahoo’s rumored reorganization could happen as early as tomorrow.  According to a Hearst , Khemlani will be VP and special assistant to the CEO and be “responsible for promoting and coordinating digital content transformation across the company.” Stay tuned for more on Yahoo’s restructuring.

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Tags:Hearst Corp., Neeraj Khemlani, Yahoo

Dev Patnaik on PR and partial credit

Posted February 11, 2009

Last night I attended the West Coast launch party for Dev Patnaik’s new book Wired to Care. In the book, Patnaik, CEO of growth strategy firm Jump Associates, argues the secret to connecting with customers is to be empathetic. By this his means rely less on power points and market research data. Instead companies should use intuition and gut instincts to get a sense for what their customers want. It sounds like what PR – at its best – should be able to do. When I asked Patnaik, who is working with Peppercom to promote the book, about this he said, the problem is so many companies don’t trust their gut.

“It’s like when you’re in college and you don’t know the right answer on the essay question,” he said. “You write for pages and pages in the blue book hoping to at least score partial credit. But the smart guy who knows the answer, comes in writes one page and is done. Too often PR puts out so many messages hoping to get partial credit, hoping that maybe one of those messages will stick.”

He also contends, empathy helps companies move their bottom lines.  Shouldn’t this help communications have a proverbial seat at the c-suite?

“Absolutely,” he said. “Most CEOs feel so powerless and chained to [Wall street]. So they need a PR person – or a communications professional – to come in and help them with resonance.”

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Tags:Dev Patnaik, Peppercom, Wired to Care

Posted February 11, 2009

Yahoo the Twitter conversation this week. Its first Tweet, posted February 9, admits joining the Twitter conversation now is “better late than never.”

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Filed under: Corporate Communications, Social Media

Tags:, Yahoo

Another talent crunch looming?

Posted February 6, 2009

The days of battling for mid-level PR talent are – for now – clearly over. But all the recent PR layoffs raise the question, is the industry headed toward another mid-level talent crunch when the economy improves? Some agency execs who I’ve spoken to have said the answer is “no” because senior-level folks are being harder hit. “If firms need to make deep cuts, the $200k folks will go first and not day-to-day client contacts earning $100k,” said one agency principal.

Another principal added, “A lot of companies will be laying off more expensive people at the manager and director level people rather than at the AE/SAE level.”

Amid these troubled times, a third principal wistfully noted, “Talent crunch is a good problem to have – it means you’re growing. Right now agencies are worried about surviving.”

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Filed under: HR, layoffs

“No one wants to be the next ethanol”

Posted January 30, 2009

This week’s story “Obama’s pledge empowers green comms” reported that many green energy companies are mobilizing to take advantage of  Washington’s $71 billion planned investment in green. But not all green companies are reaching out for dollars – yet. One PR rep for a wind power company told PRWeek that some companies are keeping a lower profile because “no one wants to be the next ethanol.” Ethanol, once touted as the leading alternative to crude oil, has also endured backlash from several trade groups and organizations.

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Tags:Ethanol

AOL layoffs impact unclear

Posted January 29, 2009

Yesterday AOL announced it is cutting 700 jobs, in response to economic troubles. Tricia Primrose Wallace, EVP of corporate communications at AOL, told PRWeek it’s not clear whether the layoffs will impact communications because there have been no announcements made along those lines yet. In 2007, AOL refocused its communications department after it cut 1,200 jobs company-wide.

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Tags:AOL

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For both journalists and communicators, the news cycle never ends. At The Cycle, PRWeek’s editorial team offers commentary and viewpoints on how the latest marketing, business, political, and cultural news impact the PR industry.

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