Could advertising replace PR?

May 13, 2010

Rich Becker of Copywrite Ink has an interesting post today about how the lines between advertising and PR are blurring. I’ve been noticing this as well but I wonder if all this blurring could eventually lead to the replacement of many PR functions by advertising.
Here’s why I think this:

People in advertising are better at telling [...]

HubSpot is a hub for humor

April 28, 2010

I’m going to make a bold statement: HubSpot would be nothing without humor. Ok, maybe nothing is too strong a word but the company is certainly more successful because of humor.
How did HubSpot do this? Simply put, they took their humor public. Early on the company made a decision to let humor become part of [...]

Should Twitter sell ads on the Fail Whale?

April 23, 2010

Last week I posted a toon about Twitter selling ad space on the Fail Whale. At the time it was just for fun, but a few days later I started to wonder if Twitter should consider it a legitimate revenue opportunity.
Though the frequency is a lot less than in the early days of Twitter, I [...]

How to kill (bad) PR

April 9, 2010

Begin rant.
What is it with all these angry memes aimed at the PR industry? Kill the press release, fire your PR firm, death to the embargo, all PR people are idiots etc.
Unlike other professions that simply ignore them (e.g., lawyers), we PR people love to jump on the bandwagon (me included) and share the crap [...]

Behind the scenes with Dave Carroll and United Breaks Guitars

March 31, 2010

Most of you by now have viewed one or more of the brilliant viral YouTube videos titled: United Breaks Guitars. This topic is of special significance to me because I too was a traveling musician (violinist) who battled often with the airlines to ensure that my instrument didn’t suffer a gruesome death at the hands [...]

Humor? PRNewswire and BusinessWire say bah humbug

March 19, 2010

My friends over at Elasticity had an interesting experience with the newswires the other day. In an effort to make their content stand out they used humor to spice up a press release announcing a few new hires to their team. Part of their outreach strategy was to distribute it via the major newswire services. [...]

Four great tips for becoming powerfully funny in PR

March 17, 2010

It’s a good day when you discover someone who is doing exactly what you want to do successfully. Kathy Klotz-Guest, is the owner of Powerfully Funny, a consultancy based in the Bay Area, whose mission is none other than: to help individuals and organizations of [...]

More humor PR myth busting

March 9, 2010

Part of my goal with this blog is to build a strong case for the use of humor in PR. Last week I read a great post by Brian Cross, a Managing Partner at Elasticity, titled: Does Humor Belong in PR? Brian is one of the geniuses behind the fake/real American Mustache Institute – one [...]

This van was a rockin’ and people came a knockin’

March 4, 2010

Not long ago I wrote about the boring press releases from this year’s Consumer Electronics Show. And just when I thought all hope for creativity in marketing and PR was lost, I ran across a blog post written by Chris Brogan about a clever campaign put together by the folks at Griffin Technology called CES [...]

Want to succeed in PR? Grow a mustache

January 28, 2010

If you still need convincing that PR can pull off humor, take a good look at the American Mustache Institute.
AMI is the brainchild of three former Fleishman Hillard alums who created the fake institute to prove a point to their masters – that humor can be a serious public relations strategy.
The masters at Fleishman didn’t [...]

Are PR people boring or just bored?

January 13, 2010

I just finished reading the press releases from the Consumer Electronics Show. You’re probably wondering what kind of masochist would do such a thing. Well, I was looking for examples of companies that used humor (or creativity) in a press release at CES.
Sadly, I didn’t find any great examples. Some of them showed promise but [...]

A holiday wish from Guhmshoo

December 18, 2009

This is my final cartoon of the year. A big thanks to all of you for your support in 2009.
I have a holiday wish that I hope will come true in 2010: My wish is for PR professionals to integrate more humor into their work.
As I’ve written before, humor can be a powerful tool for [...]

Our top predictions for 2010

December 8, 2009

Warning! This is not your typical top prediction post. Stock prices will rise and fall based on what is written below.
To increase the accuracy of our predictions we opted against using Google search. Instead, we turned to Alta Vista (when it takes a full 5 minutes to calculate your search results, you know that it’s [...]

Maclaren: Case study in PR errors

November 17, 2009

In this age of product-recall overload, it’s easy to become inured to the daily flow of releases from the Consumer Product Safety Commission. But if there’s one exception, it would be the recall of about 1 million baby strollers last week by Maclaren, the gold standard of its industry.
Much has been written about this issue–which [...]

Peter Shankman’s bold idea

November 11, 2009

I just finished reading Peter Shankman’s “Can We Do That? Outrageous PR Stunts That Work and Why Your Company Needs Them.” For those who don’t know him, Shankman is best known as the founder of Help a Reporter Out (HARO), a fast-growing free service that connects expert sources with the media. Before that he ran [...]

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