Tag Archives: ketchum

Could ConAgra Happen to You?

By now everyone has heard about the ConAgra-Ketchum crisis and forwarded it along to their consumer clients as a cautionary tale.But if you’ve been living under a rock for the past week and missed the public smearing (NYT, HuffPo, Gawker, PRWeek, Business Insider, to name a few) here’s the nutshell version:Ketchum planned a bait and switch stunt with celebrity chef George Duran being the bait and Marie Callender’s frozen food line being the switch. Taking note from other major food brands like Pizza Hut and Domino’s and hoping for similar success, ConAgra thought the invited bloggers would be pleasantly surprised by the quality of their meals and the company hoped they would be able to use the footage for promotional videos on YouTube and its Web site.

They weren’t pleasantly surprised but they did spread buzz – the bad kind. Continue reading

Location-Based Marketing for Newbies

I’m first and foremost a publicist, but as you know these days, we need to know a lot of stuff. I spend most of my energy focusing on trends in public relations and social media, and I understand the basic gist of mobile marketing, but it’s definitely an area I’m a bit fuzzy on.

Why do I need to know about mobile marketing? Well, when you are strategizing and creating campaigns for your clients, you need to think about the “big picture.” I’m not a developer by any means; however I do need to understand the basic concepts about what would work for my clients.

Last week I attended a fantastic panel “What’s Hot in PR: Brand in the Hand — How Location-Based Marketing is Shaping the Future,” sponsored by AWNY. The panel included the likes of Jack Bamberger (Apps Savvy), David Berkowitz (360i), John Puterbaugh (Nellymoser), Jared Hopfer (Mobext) and Barri Rafferty (Ketchum). Continue reading