the(new)mediaslut

When themediaslut saw Apple’s first ad for its iPhone, she wonders if Steve Jobs secretly visited Malaysia before approving the ad.

The iPhone ad is somehow very similar to Digi’s ad, which has been airing at almost all Malaysia cinemas recently. Only difference is the STAR power that only Apple could pull in.

Digi Ad

Apple’s iPhone Ad

Noticed any similarities?

The Indian media and PR community is aghast by how a BT executive reacted to a Indian journalist who broke the news a day before the announcement of BT’s acquisition of i2i.

From the Economic Times blog:

This is a rather strange and abhorring incident  that must have taken the media world by storm in India. At the press conference of BT India — to announce its acquisition of i2i — on Tuesday, the telecom reporter of The Economic Times, Joji Philip Thomas, was asked to leave the venue even though he had a formal invitation.

What’s worse, the corporate and media manager of Asia-Pacific David Clarke abused Joji, calling him an "ass****", for ruining the press conference.  

From what I understood, your correspondent had merely broken the story a day earlier.

How should a PR deal with a journalist broke the news before the official press conference or press release is issued?

For sure, scolding the journalist a ass**** isn’t going to help matters.

Two best mates of themediaslut got hitched yesterday.

Their codename is "The Bunnies" and we shall stick to that.

The Bunnies decided on a simple ROM (Registry of Marriage) ceremony but people do get excited at such events.

She-Bunny spend the afternoon putting on make-up for the big day. 

It was at 420pm at the Singapore’s Registry of Marriage that they signed their "contract" to bind them forever, in sickness and in health, till death do they part.

It then dawned upon themediaslut why He-bunny decided to choose yesterday to get hitch.

It was 22-02-2007, an easy date for a guy to remember his wedding anniversary.

Though the Bunnies decided not to go through the wedding photo shooting session as they felt it was quite cheesy and old fashion, they could resist to have a few taken when themediaslut came across a place at the reception area with a nice, warm and soft backdrop to add to the couple’s big day.

 

Links to slut for Feb 23, 2006

• The state of the PR industry
  You are not the real deal unless you put your mobile phone number on your business card, says Singapore journalist.

• Public Relations Promises Publicity
  Before you appoint the PR agency, consider this checklist.

• Why Most PR Professionals Turn a Blind Eye to Blog
  While Richard Edelman sees blogs as the new media, a majority of PR professionals are blindly treating Web2.0 as Media1.0.
  

• Are PR agencies customer centric?
  Bleah, says a PR insider.
  

• Step forth and comment
  Singapore’s Marketing magazine turning comments into blog entries.
  

themediaslut all her a readers a very Happy Chinese New Year!

Traditional Prenakan dishes at Grandma’s place for reunion dinner on the eve of Chinese New Year.

Armed with a mobile video phone, the citizen can now record his grievances and post it up online for the world to see.

Welcome to Web2.0.

In conversations with the tech journalists community, their biggest complain is how often their PR counterparts email press releases or pitch to them stories not related to their publication profile.

A consumer tech magazine might end up getting a pitch or press release about products for the business, whereas a business tech magazine might regularly get pitches about a consumer story.

Though lately, consumer stories have started to appear in business tech publications as these publications look to chase the consumer advertising dollars.

It could be expected that the PR pp read up on the tech publications before they even recommend to clients who and what they are pitching too, but shouldn’t the publishers or editors play a pro-active role in trying to prevent unneccessary pitches for their editorial team.

Tamar Wilner, for Real Business Magazine in UK, took a pro-active step to look at reduce the number of uncessary pitches and press releases that get send their way.  Wilner suggestions could help PR craft strategies and activities for their clients to get that sort after media placing.

From Real Business, UK,

Hi everyone,

I think I ought to put my two pence-worth in here… I don’t think I can tell you what the local papers look for in business stories, but I can certainly tell you what Real Business looks for! I don’t know if this is what you were after, Dan, but I think it will be useful to lots of people on the forum.

Look through Real Business and you’ll see what while we write about a lot of companies, most of our articles aren’t straight "profiles". We do run some profiles, of course: the cover stories ("I’ll Have What X is Having") being a notable example. These tend to be reserved for the hyper-successful companies: founder-run firms which have grown to £100m turnover or more.

But most of our stories talk about how a company solved a particular problem. So that’s rule number one: don’t be afraid to admit you’ve run into difficulties. Conflict is interesting.

Rule number two: Tell us what makes your company UNIQUE. Is it your product, your business model? Have you found a new way of getting finance or advertising your product/service? Make it crystal clear why we should write about you and not your competitors.

Rule number three: Write your email as if you’re talking to a six-year-old, or your gran. Don’t talk about "value-added systems integration management solutions specialists". Say: "we sell software".

Rule number four: Do give us numbers. Turnover, profit, number of employees, years in operation. They’re the only way to prove that you’re as successful as you say you are.

Rule number five: Tell us what bit of the mag you think your story would work for.

Rule number six: Don’t send us press releases every day or every week. We get too many to deal with as it is! Instead, send a really well-crafted proposal for an article, listing everything you think we ought to know about your company. Send it to editors@realbusiness.co.uk .

Rule number seven: anniversaries, milestones, charity donation, new products, sponsored events? No thanks!! Maybe it works for local papers, but it doesn’t do it for us. Lots of companies have anniversaries, lots give money to charity.Again, it’s about saying what makes you UNIQUE.

Hope that helps… and that we’ll now be flooded with info about your fascinating companies!

All the best
Tamar

The pitch blog by Marketing Magazine posted an interesting argument between the merits of public relations and advertising.

Here’s an except.

From The Pitch :

1. Advertising person: What’s so good about PR?
   PR person: Coz it’s the most economical way to reach mass audiences.
   
   
2. Advertising person: So you mean advertising is expensive?
   PR person: Erm, oops, no. But, erm, PR attracts public interest.
   
   
3. Advertising person: Isn’t that what advertising does?
   PR person: Hold on, PR creates long-term results.
   
   
4. Advertising person: And advertising is a short term thing…?
   PR person: Well, people regard companies more favourably when they read about them in a positive editorial spread and that pays off in the long term.

5. Advertising person: Now you’re insulting me. Are you saying advertising is biased? But advertising is based on truth!
   PR person: [sigh] That’s not what I mean.

themediaslut thinks the PR person has failed his/her duty to PR the Advertising person because the Advertising person is unimpressed with the way the PR person communicated the merits of PR.

However, the PR raised more questions than answered.

(Note: themediaslut has a background in the technology field, so lots of the reference will be on the tech industry.) 

Point 1. PR is the more economical way to reach mass audiences.

The normal practice for PR to reach out to the mass audience is to do it via traditional mainstream media. 

To do so, PR send out press releases, organises press conference and launches, etc..

Thought PR is more about press releases, press conference and launches, how often does a PR agency pitch to a client to guarantee press coverage?

And how often do every single press release gets published in the main stream media? How many journalists can afford the time to attend press conferences and launches these days?

What if the journalist receives the press release but does nothing about it? Or attend a press conference and not feature it?

All an advertiser would have to do is go to the sales person, agree on the price of the ad and presto, the ad is printed the next day. In fact, the advertiser has full control on what appears on the page and the size.

The PR person can only call the journalist, ask if the press release, conference or launch will be featured and pray when it comes out.

Point 2. PR attracts public interest 

From experience, press events are press events. How many events have there been that are organised by PR for the public?

It seems PR here attracts press interest rather than public interest.

Point 3. PR creates long-term results.

What long-term results? The PR person should have elaborated on the long-term results rather than give a general statement.

From a business perspective, it makes sense and dollars for a PR agency to be interested in the client as long the the client continue to pay the bills.

Most of the PR activities that themediaslut have very short term goals.

For an example, in the technology space, most of the PR activities are for the launch of the particular gadgets. Gadgets, unfortunately, have very short live span and before the dusts settle, a new gadget is geared for launch.

Seldom do themediaslut come across PR activities that looks at establishing a particular vendor as the thought leader in the technology behind the gadget.

For an example, there was once a homegrown product that tripled up as a storage device, MP3 player and Bluetooth headset.

Unfortunately, the PR activities were targeted at the features of the product because of it was a three-in-one device.

Because MP3 players were the rage, thanks to the iPod, the device was compared to the iPod and it then fail miserably.

themediaslut felt that the PR activity should have focused the spokesperson on being the unofficial spokesperson of Bluetooth, explaining its benefits and uses.

Feedback from resellers also highlighted that when the device was pitched as a Bluetooth device with additional features, rather than a three-in-one device, it immediately turned into an easy sell.

Point 4. People regard companies more favourably when they read about them in a positive editorial spread and that pays off in the long term

Of course, a third party write-up is more believing than it coming from the horse’s mouth.

Unfortunately, too much of a good thing is too much of a bad thing too.

If everything is positive and favourable in the editorial spread, page after page, issue after issue, volume after volume, readers tend to believe that has a positive biasness towards that company.

This in turn results in the people not believing in the publication and articles any more.  How can this pay off in the long term?

In fairness, the journalist have a tough time in finding a balance not to write something too bad about a company which might scare away future advertising opportunities or something too good that the readers do not find the story credible at all.

In the real world, publishers tend to reward their writers who impressed the advertisers, not the readers.

Nothing much in Point 5, but a good PR person would have bridged the subject and not cause animosity between the public, in which this case here is the advertiser.

themediaslut invites her PR readers to comment on this post.  

Technorati Tag: public relations

themediaslut would like to thank her guild mates at Kiss of Death on the Scarlet Crusade server for helping her achieved level 60 as a hunter.

Finally!!!

Well.. themediaslut has decided to enter link-o-rama community and share with her readers the links that caught her attention in technorati.

Being one of the only PR Media blogs in Singapore, here’s to sharing…  

(…Drum roll please…)

Here are the first ever PR Media links by themediaslut.

Links to slut for Feb 13, 2006

• The easiest free publicity you never thought of
  What’s better than a free lunch if you got free publicity for your company? No gurantees though.
  
• Blogs and Media Relations
  In case PR here forget, journalists read blogs. Here’s why it is important to start looking at blog relations as one of their PUBLIC relations activity.

  PS: Number of visits from Singapore Press Holding’s server to themediaslut last year - 60.
  49 of them were all direct hits!
  

• Don’t Do This
  Big no - no in Media Relations 101.