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Last night, National Promotions & Advertising (NPA) launched its new Hispanic effort, NPA Español, with a panel discussion and party. Rick Del Mastro, a partner at NPA, introduced the two panels on “Who is the Hispanic and Latino consumer in the US in 2009?” and “How do you reach Hispanics and Latinos?” More information after the jump.
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The most popular man this election season, Joe the Plumber, signed with Nashville, TN-based PR firm The Press Office, Politico reported. Joe, real name Samuel Wurzelbacher, lives in Holland, OH, and has supposedly asked the firm to help with a possible record deal with a major label, personal appearances, and corporate sponsorships. He also signed with booking-management firm Bobby Roberts. Wurzelbacher is currently campaigning in Ohio for Sen. John McCain, USA Today reports.
A documentary about pop singer Britney Spears is set to be released on Nov. 30, two days before her album, Circus, is set to drop. In the film, tentatively called For the Record, Spears talks candidly about her behavior in recent years, saying “What the hell was I thinking?”
MTV decided to take a break from its Total Request Live show, which is celebrating its 10th Anniversary this year (hmm, who else has been around for 10 years?). After a two-hour special in November, the show will take a break, the Associated Press reported, with Dave Sirulnick, executive producer of TRL, emphasizing that the show wasn’t ending for good.
While some people want TRL to disappear forever, the show has been a popular destination for celebrities to reach the key young audience to promote albums, movies, television shows, or just themselves. The recently-debuted show FNMTV, hosted by Fall Out Boy’s Pete Wentz, has become a similar place for appearances, and the show will start another run in November, the AP reported.
The Alliance to Save Energy (ASE) and the Wal-Mart Foundation’s “Drive Smarter Challenge,” which helps the public reduce gas usage, has expanded into the Hispanic market and partnered with NASCAR, said Rozanne Weissman, director of communications and marketing for ASE.
PRWeek’s Ted McKenna originally covered the campaign in a May 16 article called “Nonprofits team up to help public reduce gas usage.”
“When we raised more money, our first priority was to do outreach to the Hispanic community,” Weissman said. The ASE signed with the Hispanic Communications Network in June and introduced Spanish-language PSAs and a song called “Driving and Saving” (”Manejando y Ahorrando”) song, in mp3 and ringtone versions this month. HCN, who worked pro bono on the campaign, also provided Spanish-language print columns with money-saving gas tips to send to Hispanic media. Consumers can also sign up to receive weekly money-saving tips in Spanish via text message.
NASCAR, the 19th partner in the Drive Smarter Challenge, is working with the campaign by including car care tips on its reality television show NASCAR Angels, featuring PSAs during the NASCAR Performance Live weekly radio show, and offering drivers like Sam Hornish, Jr., who hosts for the campaign.
Rock band the Police will be ending its final tour with a fundraising concert for public television stations WNET and WLIW, held at Madison Square Garden on Aug. 7, the reported. This concert, part of a campaign to reach a wider audience for public television, will not only end the Police tour, but it will kick off the Public Television Rocks campaign from WNET. While a representative from WNET told PRWeek the station is not ready to speak more about the campaign, the representative said the station hopes to make an announcement about more events to benefit the stations and reach a wider audience in the near future.
You might already be on , but if you’re working with musicians, you should check out Blip, the “Twitter for music” that recently launched from independent music Web site Fuzz. Blip allows users to tag a song they are listening to or really interested in at the moment and fellow Blip-ers can steam the song, comment, or post their own song-of-the-moment. I’m a perpetual song-skipper, even with my own music, but I did enjoy some Bloc Party and Eye of the Tiger while playing around.
With as strong social networking component, several blogs and Web sites have taken notice of the new site, including Thrillist and . Blip also has functions that allow musicians to connect with fans and promote their music on the site.
In researching this PRWeek article on video games as an art form, I got some great responses from video game and PR professionals alike. You’ll find full interviews with several sources here.
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Bands signed to the Fueled By Ramen Records, including Panic at the Disco, Phantom Planet, and Fall Out Boy, use blog posts, creative Web sites, collaborative tours, and endorsements of each other as ways to promote the bands. The label’s founder John Janick’s “instinct for grass-roots promotion has made Fueled By Ramen one of the few labels that consistently scores hits with alternative rock,” the reported today.
One example online is Panic at the Disco, which turned its Web site completely white, offering fans hidden clues about the release of its new album Pretty. Odd. Offline, many of the bands at Fueled By Ramen were found and endorsed by Pete Wentz of Fall Out Boy, one of the label’s first success stories. Bands go on tours together and mention each other at shows and through blog posts. On May 1, Fall Out Boy’s to-do list mention on its blog included getting the new album from Fueled By Ramen band The Cab.
“Fueled By Ramen has its acts promote one another as well as the company itself, as indie labels have done since the 1960s heyday of Motown and Stax,” the Times reported. “But Mr. Janick has brought such cross-promotion into the Internet era, where fans of one band are just a click away from information on another on the label’s Web site.”
AUSTIN: Yesterday, I wrote an article about the Austin City Limits Music Festival and the PR work Fresh & Clean Media is doing for the event. Here’s the link to the mashup mentioned in the piece, created by Car Stereo (Wars), the music project of Christopher Rose. See if you can figure out which 29 artists are featured in the mashup, and therefore figure out a percentage of the 130 acts at the ACL Music Festival in September.
But if the guessing game isn’t for you, the full lineup is now available on the ACL Web site. So far, Billboard, the Dallas Morning News and Austin TV station KXAN have covered the news. Some of the acts scheduled to appear are the Foo Fighters, Robert Plant & Alison Krauss, Beck, Tegan & Sara, Iron & Wine, Gnarls Barkley, and Vampire Weekend.
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