Journalists on Twitter
May 18, 2009
Anyone that reads this blog regularly knows I’m a fan of Twitter. (Although I must say I liked it more before it went mainstream). With my PR hat on, I have been using it to follow journalists and have even (successfully) pitched stories to journalists in a Tweet. It is amazing how succinct your pitch gets when you only have 140 characters.
I came across this list of people in the media on Twitter from The Early Edition (@earlyedition) who has classified a journalist as anyone who produces content for online or traditional media.
Top publicity stunts
May 11, 2009
There is a time and place for publicity stunts, and some PR stunts you may not even realise are, in fact, stunts to get media coverage. For example the The Olympic Torch Relay is executed in the months before the Winter and Summer Games and generates massive publicity for the Olympics, athletes, and sponsors .
UK PR Agency Taylor Herring have complied their top 50 publicity stunts. Here are some of my favourite.
Dove’s Campaign For Real Beauty. Unilever’s toiletry brand Dove became a household name thanks to its highly PR’able ‘Campaign for Real Beauty’ which used real women in ads rather than the stick thin models favoured its by rivals. The campaign kicked off in 2003 with adverts featuring six ordinary women in their underwear, and boosted sales by 700%.
Earth Hour. Earth Hour started off in 2007 with 2.2 million people turning off all their non essential lights in Sydney, Australia. A year later and this event had captured a global audience with up to 50 million people across 35 countries participating. Famous landmarks such as the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco and Rome’s Coliseum all plunged into darkness as the world joined together to raise awareness of climate change issues.
PETA. The animal rights campaign group are renowned for their highly visible, frequently controversial campaigns. From young women dressed in lettuce bikinis to the annual “Running of the Nudes” PR stunt which sees PETA activists run naked through Pamplona, Spain in a parody of the bull run tradition. The organisation has managed to win the celebrity vote – as such Christy Turlington, Eva Mendes and Naomi Campbell have posed naked on billboards supporting the slogan “I’d Rather Go Naked than Wear Fur.”
Up to 80% of media content is from PRs
May 4, 2009
Today The Australian reported that as much as 80 per cent of media content is derived from public relations material.
Jim Macnamara, director of the Australian Centre for Public Communication at the University of Technology, Sydney analysed more than 70 local and international studies published over the past 80 years.
His analysis showed the oft-heard journalists’ claim that they never find PR sources useful was “a myth”.
Macnamara said the data showed 30-80 per cent of media content was sourced from, or significantly influenced by, PR practitioners, depending on the outlet, with estimates of 40-75 per cent common.
“PR is a fact of life. Journalists should recognise it as an important communication channel and not deny it. And if there is PR material being used, it should be open and transparent.”
Macnamara will present his findings in Sydney this Wednesday night at a debate hosted by the Public Relations Institute of Australia on the topic: “That PR and journalism are different sides of the same coin.”
