Mere weeks after the PR world was shocked with news of unethical product review practices of client-developed iPhone apps by Reverb Communications, the profession is again faced with revelations of supposedly unethical practices, this time stemming from the undisclosed use of paid spokespeople by the toy industry as supposedly third-part, objective experts on local TV newscasts throughout the country, as Los Angeles Times media columnist Jim Rainey chronicled last week.
This glaring example of ethical misgivings from the toy industry brings clear an ugly truth in the new world of public relations: what is often best for the client is increasingly winning out over what is most ethical and best for consumers.
And that’s bad news for anyone serious about seeing the profession evolve and thrive. Continue reading →
A few weeks ago I was given the opportunity to go on my very first business trip on behalf of my client. I was excited for all of the expected reasons- going to a part of the country I hadn’t been to before, getting a few days to work outside of the office (can you really blame me when summer is just around the corner?), etc. However, the trip also ended up being an incredible learning experience because it introduced me to a side of public relations that I really hadn’t experienced before, and it did a great job of expanding my personal definition of the field. Continue reading →
Despite all of my love for social media, digital communications, community engagement etc., something that is beginning to particularly strike me as a clear fact of 21st-century PR is that yes, media relationships do matter. A whole lot. And dare I say it? It does matter who you know. More importantly, how well you know/trust them.
Let me put this into a bit more perspective: Say you’re working on a pretty time sensitive client announcement that has a lot of moving parts (e.g. 2-3 parties involved with multiple executives/personalities and many different times zones), which requires you to be both confidential with how closely you hold the client announcement/information and also proactive enough so you obtain the desired outcome from the announcement with a little extra audience reaction thrown in from a good pre-announcement story or two. Continue reading →
As the internship coordinator for the Connecticut office of my firm, Co-Communications, I’ve interviewed a number of candidates. The one question I always ask no matter what?
“What kind of media do you consume?”
I’ve received a variety of answers and I consider myself fortunate to have never heard, “um, I don’t really read or watch the news…” Continue reading →
Mere weeks after the PR world was shocked with news of unethical product review practices of client-developed iPhone apps by Reverb Communications, the profession is again faced with revelations of supposedly unethical practices, this time stemming from the undisclosed use of paid spokespeople by the toy industry as supposedly third-part, objective experts on local TV newscasts throughout the country, as Los Angeles Times media columnist Jim Rainey chronicled last week.
