PR tagged posts

June 5, 2014,  Essential Law for Marketers, Guru in a Bottle, News, Public Relations practice  One comment

The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) in Luxembourg has affirmed the legal position that internet users have the right to browse news sites without the threat of infringing copyright law.

The argument, put forward by the Newspaper Licensing Agency (NLA) that represents the interests of media owners, was that even temporary electronic copies made on an individual’s computer required a licence and a licence fee to be paid and this could have cost the PR industry many millions in licensing fees had the ruling of CJEU clarified the legal position today.

The CJEU accepted all of the legal arguments of the PRCA, the largest professional body representing the interests...

January 31, 2014,  Consumer behaviour, High Impact Marketing that Gets Results, Legal update  3 comments

The Seattle-based company successfully obtained a US patent on Christmas Eve 2013 for what it calls “anticipatory shipping”. This was the gist of the news item that appeared in the Wall Street Journal (17 January 2014) that’s caused something of a stir on social networks, such as Slashdot. According to the WSJ, Amazon in the US may box and ship products that it expects customers in a specific area will want based on previous orders, product searches, wish lists, shopping cart contents, returns and other online shopping practices it gleans from its customers’ shopping patterns, even before they’ve clicked ‘buy’.

Amazon has worked out how to cut delivery time...

January 15, 2014,  Events, Guru in a Bottle, Marketing practice, Public Relations practice, Social marketing practice  No comments

This week, our friends at Vocus hosted a fascinating webinar that looked at how to build better relationships with bloggers and the media with a bunch of experts in the field.

Sharing their thoughts on this and other topics were Ben Davis, content and community producer at eConsultancy, Chris Dawson, co-founder and publisher of Tamebay, San Sharma, digital manager at small-business community Enterprise Nation and John Hayes, an expert in email marketing and social media at Vocus.

We covered the following areas in the webinar which you can listen to here by registering your details.

These are some of my own thoughts to the questions that were asked in the webinar which I ho...

December 26, 2013,  Essential Law for Marketers, Guru in a Bottle, Marketing practice, News, Public Relations practice  No comments

Given the tendency for over-indulgence during the Festive Season it’s not surprising that some brand owners of diet plans, slimming and low fat products will think their Christmases have all come at once in the New Year as millions of us try to shake off the excesses of eating and drinking by trying to lose some weight!

Marketers may be tempted to do what Flora pro. activ (owned by Unilever) did a few years’ ago in the UK by inviting a national journalist to ‘fight the flab’ and exercise alongside a calorie controlled diet and keep a daily record of her progress.

This may sound like a great way to connect with consumers who may feel they need some encouragement to do ...

November 6, 2013,  News  No comments

Let’s suppose you’re sitting in a job interview to be the next director of communications for a large, well-known B2B brand.

The key aspect of the role is public relations and of course you’re well versed in the art of how to manage the flow of information.

After all, you’ve done it a zillion times before. So what’s new? Well, that’s kind of true. PR had its place in the marketing mix, was focused on creating awareness, grabbing headlines, engaging with the media and creating an environment where the sale was more likely to place as a result.

Control and timing was everything, wasn’t it? PR’s big brother marketing was a discipline that focused on the channels to m...

July 8, 2013,  Guru in a Bottle  No comments

It’s often very difficult to know what makes a news release work and what doesn’t if you haven’t been doing it for that long. For those of us who do it for a living, we’ve witnessed some major changes in the art and craft of getting the message across to desired audience and customer segments. Today, PR is a very different business to what it was even a couple of years’ ago.

For me it comes down to taking a hard-nosed approach and increasingly that means understanding what we’re trying to achieve with using PR as a business tool rather than leaving it to chance and Lady Luck.

PR used to be about what I call the “transmit” mode of communication...

June 29, 2013,  Guru in a Bottle  No comments

This year has seen the blurring of the traditional line between marketing, PR and communications.

In the past, they were once stuck in their own silos.

But 2013 is changing all that.

Research for High Impact Marketing That Gets Results shows that the industry is in the throes of reinventing itself.

Making the customer, client, prospect or supporter the centre of the communication process is still some way off for many organisations but the signs are that marketing and communications are moving in this direction at a much faster rate in 2013.

The reality is that the customer doesn’t care where the info is coming from, just that they can get that info easily...