Exxon Mobil media adviser Alan Jeffries told PRWeek that the company asked Twitter to give it control over accounts associated with its brand, after a person calling herself “Janet” created an account in the oil company’s name and gained hundreds of followers. Janet is not an Exxon employee, the company says.

The “brandjacking” incident has generated a fair amount of attention in the media, at least online, since it was first reported by the Houston Chronicle a few weeks ago. (Jeffries said the company’s digital team discovered the tweeting itself, rather than hearing about it from the media, contrary to some reports.)

Jeffries declined to say one way or the other whether Exxon would begin sending out its own tweets. He did note that the incident has “reinforced” the company’s belief that it needs to look at all types of forums for communications. Read more »

DreamWorks has dropped some of its promotional efforts tied to the release of Tropic Thunder after advocacy groups protested the film’s references to the mentally disabled, the Associated Press reports. This includes a Web site promoting a fictional film within the film featuring Ben Stiller’s character, a faux ‘80s-era actor portraying a “retard,” as he calls it.

DreamWorks and Stiller argue the insensitive language is meant to mock Hollywood portrayals of the mentally disabled, not the mentally disabled themselves, and that no cuts will be made to the film as requested. Representatives of Special Olympics and other groups say it goes too far and are calling for a nationwide boycott.

The flap comes as something of a surprise as in the lead up to the release of the film much of the discussion about it had centered on anticipated controversy over Robert Downey Jr.’s character, an especially self-important actor who does his role in blackface.

“Active grannies” could be the key voter demographic in this year’s presidential election, writes Burson-Marsteller CEO (and former Clinton advisor) Mark Penn in the Politico.

Social security and healthcare are two important issues for this group, who wield particular influence in battle states such as Ohio and Florida. And those issues have not been much discussed of late on the campaign trail.

“And they are not going to vote for an older candidate just because of his age — if anything, they may vote for a candidate who reminds them of their children rather than themselves,” Penn writes.

Should PR folks be entitled to preview TV camera angles prior to interviews? The communications folks with the McCain campaign evidently think so, judging by video taken by the Fox affiliate in St Louis of bickering between local TV reporters and producer McCain national press secretary Brooke Buchanan and senior advisor Nicole Wallace.

Don’t miss seeing this video. As the Huffington Post notes, it’s a compelling look at the PR operations that go on behind the scenes.

Harper’s Washington editor Ken Silverstein on his blog is following the Sunday Times’ recent undercover “journalism sting” of a UK lobbyist interested in representing a former dictator of the energy-wealthy country of Kyrgyzstan.

Silverstein himself pulled a similar stunt on APCO and Cassidy and Associates last year, creating some debate over whether going undercover was ethical. At the time Silverstein said that criticism of his tactics, by the lobbying firms anyway, was simply a way to change the subject away from the ethics of representing countries with human rights issues.

Burson-Marsteller worldwide CEO and president Mark Penn said the recent appointment of longtime President George W. Bush confidante Karen Hughes as vice chair marks the start of an effort by the agency to create a worldwide “bipartisan braintrust.”

The issue of global warming politics has reared its ugly head again at NASA, this time with a newly released report (pdf) from the agency’s inspector general’s office.

It finds the press office did indeed interfere with the release of climate information, though credits the agency chief with quickly reforming press policies once the issue came to light.

Current and former NASA public affairs officers are defending the agency, though, with former press secretary Dean Acosta, for instance, calling the assertions by the IG “patently false.”

Checking in with PR and public affairs professionals around town, I find that the new Scott McClellan tell-all (or tell-some) book about his days as Bush administration press secretary is generating a lot of interest. But does it mean much in the long run? We’ll see.

One former member of the Clinton administration suggested its contents aren’t necessarily anything new – that people already knew the Bush administration used faulty intelligence to argue for the Iraq war; that Rove and Cheney shaded the truth about what they knew or revealed about Valerie Plame’s job with the CIA; etc. Read more »

MS&L Boston MD Ed Cafasso blogs incisively about the predictable, over-the-top coverage by local Boston and national media of Sen. Ted Kennedy’s hospitalization and diagnosis of a malignant brain tumor. As soon as the story broke, Cafasso says he flashed back to his days as a newspaper reporter covering the Kennedy family.

“Get the story about how even Kennedy’s critics are praying for him,” Cafasso imagines the editors saying. “Get the ‘real’ story. Assign someone to talk to every nurse and doctor and janitor at [Massachusetts General Hospital.]“

PRWeek’s Washington Bureau chief, Ted McKenna, chatted with Richard Grenell, US spokesman at the United Nations (UN) in the wake of the cyclone disaster in Burma. Grenell heads the communications team representing the US mission to the UN.

McKenna: What is the work you do here?
Grenell: The interesting part of what we do here is we get to communicate what the US is doing, to the world, because the UN press corps is quite large – larger than any other press corps around the world.

McKenna: So there are communications issues you’re dealing with all the time?
Grenell: Yeah, the Burma one is a fascinating one because we obviously have two tracks with Burma. We’ve been doing the political track in trying to get the opposition to have a greater voice in Burma, and as we all know the junta that is in charge of Burma is a dictatorship. So we’ve had this political track of trying to get elections and get people to speak out, but then all of a sudden we have this terrible tragedy with the cyclone, so now we have this humanitarian disaster.

McKenna: Is there something your communications team does to make the distinction between providing aid and pursuing a political objective?
Grenell: We have a team of 13 people here, and what I try to do on a daily basis, is when we talk about Sudan or China or any other issue, is bifurcate the issue. When you talk about political changes, you’re talking about confronting the government of Myanmar. There’s a different communications strategy when you’re talking about delivering urgent aid and care to the people of Myanmar. I try to make sure that whenever we’re speaking about the subject that we’ve very clear about who we’re confronting and what we’re trying to do. Those differences are not subtle and when you’re in Burma you understand when people are speaking to the people and when they’re confronting the government.

McKenna: So if you’re talking about distributing food or first aid supplies you just talk about the “people?”
Grenell: Right, that the people of Myanmar are hungry and cold and that the government should allow shipments in to help. And we talk about the different regions, where the greatest devastation has been and speak to that people.

McKenna: So you lay off blaming the government?
Grenell: Right, when there’s a humanitarian crisis, when people need food or otherwise they will die, or need urgent care and shelter, you have to prioritize. The political track of trying to open up the govenrment to greater democracy is a second track that needs to fall down in priority for the current moment. Read more »