Nathan "PRCog" Burgess

It’s an honor to…

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Mother and Newborn in Hospital
No one we know

Nota Bene: Please note the date on which this post was originally posted and enjoy it with appropriate grains of salt.

As many of you know, one of our own, the enviable Ms. Marie V-B has gotten knocked up is with child – her first.  This upcoming addition to our family brings the total number of grand-PRBCers (as in grandchildren, not as in “really cool” though that likely applies as well) to some number we can’t count without taking off our shoes (damnit Jim, we’re not rocket scientists, we’re flacks!).  You can find a full list here.

As we do with all things, we’ve blown this completely out of proportion and purchased a day care center in midtown to be headed up by CT Michaels, a longtime lover of the minor people, and have been coaxing Ms. V-B into bestowing an appropriately odd name upon the child. Continue reading →

CTMichaels

The Mother of all PRBC Announcements:

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Woman Crying in Empty Movie Theater
We're not really sure who she is either. If you know please come to the customer service desk.

Nota Bene: Please note the date on which this post was originally posted and enjoy it with appropriate grains of salt.

Fellow readers. The time has come for the big announcement. This announcement will go down in history as we are one of the first Web sites to ever make it big like this. From our beginning stages back in October, to our current status here in April, it is only suiting that we share our amazing venture with you all.

What started out as a joke and a tid bit of fun, has become a reality and a dream come true. Every PR pro has dreamed of this day, some have made it happen, others just hope and pray each day for it to come true.   Continue reading →

TJ Dietderich

PR Pros Join Forces to Ban April Fool’s Day

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Dog looking away
The Spokespoodle

Nota Bene: Please note the date on which this post was originally posted and enjoy it with appropriate grains of salt.

April Fool’s, the longstanding day of traditional tomfoolery and silliness, is getting a swift kick in its pants from PR pros. Industry insiders and public relations associations confirm that this April 1st is no laughing matter.

“There are only 365 days in a year, and to devote one entire day to fake news, gags, and joke press releases is unacceptable,” said Bob Trout, CEO of Gold & Trout, a PR firm based in New York City. “That’s just one less day we can expect coverage for our clients.” Continue reading →

Keith Trivitt

PR Spending Forecast: Are We Set for a Big Decade?

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Businesswoman Holding MoneyA Financial Times article from Friday, March 26 (online subscriber edition here; free PDF version here), noted that global advertising spending is set to rise 4 percent in 2011, as the advertising, PR and marketing industries start to see a surge in client confidence, revenues and overall re-emergence of the world’s economies. What I found particularly interesting was the note in the third paragraph of the article which explains that even with a strong overall global ad spending growth, the total 2011 global ad spending will still below 2006 levels, which is right about the time the US and UK—which are the world’s top spender on advertising, marketing and PR budgets—saw a drastic uptick in overall corporate market and stock values. Continue reading →

Kate Ottavio

Like, duh! Ten Tips to Totally Rock Your Internship

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Thinkstock Single Image SetYou got in the door! You landed that dream internship that will be a glowing addition to your resume. So now that you’re hired, don’t forget to try not to get fired.

Here are ten tips to keeping your internship…even excelling at it. This should be common sense, but I’m sad to report some people just don’t get it. Continue reading →

Jess Greco

Why We Have Such a Crush on Twitter (and Not On Facebook)

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Stack of Business Cards Next to a KeyboardIt’s no secret PR professionals have an unhealthy relationship with Twitter. Despite the existence of countless other social networking platforms, including Facebook (which actually has much higher numbers than Twitter), people working in PR seem to naturally gravitate towards the micro-blogging service more than anything else. We give out our Twitter handles at networking events and print them on our business cards, which is especially interesting considering LinkedIn is probably the most professional social media platform out there. However, professionalism doesn’t have everything to do with it- Twitter is as much for creating friendships as it is for forming business relationships. So why are all of us flacks such hopeless (and I mean hopeless) Twitter fiends? Continue reading →

Christina Khoury

Job Performance Review

10 Comments

Desk of the bossI feel like an adult. I recently had my first job performance review in my PR career. The only other job performance review I’ve had was as a resident assistant in college. Those were intense and formal. Surprising right? I was required to evaluate my strengths, weaknesses, what areas I’d like to improve on and goals I’d like to achieve. I did very well in past reviews and as a PR pro, it’s not like I’m a stranger to evaluations so why was I dreading this review? Continue reading →

Rebecca Meyers

The Evolution of An Unemployed

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Everyday People 2It’s interesting to  see how being unemployed has become this evolving subculture I’m currently surrounded by. To see how everyone deals with it, the process, the evolution:

Stage 1: The first two months you are almost refreshed. You are excited, feel motivated. You spend tons of time exploring, walking every street in the city and just thinking. You shop all the shops and see all the sites.

Stage 2: Then you’ve walked every street there is. The funds start to run low. Ramen remakes its way into your life. You stop going out in the day so you don’t spend money. Happy hours, entering contests and dating for free meals becomes your new religion. You start reading up on creative ways to save/spend money and learn to love the term “recessionista”.  You make up fun ways to answer the question, “what do you do?” (Personally, my favorite answer is “I’m on a PR hiatus.”) Continue reading →

Nathan "PRCog" Burgess

The Nitty Gritty: Email Tracking

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Open mailbox and keyboardFollowing a comment left on Keith’s post from last week  regarding email analytics I received a number of questions (public and private) regarding the simple use of the tools already available to us to track email opens (and forwards, number of views, etc.) this seemed like an ideal time to introduce a new (and hopefully semi-regular feature) on the nitty-gritty of using technology to your business advantage.

You may be asking yourself, “Why should I care?  I’m a flack, erm PR Pro – let the techies handle that stuff (or we don’t care about analytics on our emails).”

Perhaps true.  But if you’re in a small agency you may not have techs around to really handle this or they never thought to apply analytics to emails because they simply don’t know our business and don’t know what questions to ask. Continue reading →

Marie Baker

The Inner Turmoil of a SM User VS. Marketer

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Man standing on rural road holding road map, head obscured by mapWorking in the social media space, I can safely say that overall I understand the marketing perks of Twitter, Facebook, etc. Sure I participate in these sites as part of my job and as marketing research, but at the end of the day I’m also a user.

Originally I fought tooth and nail against signing up for Twitter because at the time I didn’t see a need for it. I kept wondering, “Who is going to care what I have to say?”  Obviously I have changed my tune, and decided to just dive into the world of Twitter once I found my niche.  Still, I primarily use it solely for work.

Lately, however, my social media conundrum is with Foursquare. As a marketer, I know I should be using it; as a consumer, I just don’t care. Continue reading →

…..a chance to start the day off right.