Some journalists must be idiots

This has nothing to do with PR, but has everything to do with PR. 

It's all about journalists spreading misinformation. Dangerous misinformation.

We are continually told that Perth's hot weather is ideal beach weather. Channel 9 told us so last night, as Perth heads for a 39C day today – the first of the annual heatwaves.

Bloody irresponsible. Journalists mustn't know anyone that's had skin cancer.

This type of reporting is trite, but is also insidious and irresponsible.

What's it got to do with PR? Well, I'm going to run a PR campaign against idiotic journalism. This could also include things like over-use of unnecessary adjectives (i.e., gruesome murder). But it won't.

It might even save someone's life. 

Malcolm Turnbull's gone nuts

I read one article on Malcolm Turnbull using Twitter while in Parliament, so I decided to check out the Leader of the Opposition.

I'm not fan of Twitter. However, Mal's presence led me to discover he's spreading himself all over the social media landscape.

Mal's got a presence on: a personal web site, Facebook, YouTube, two blogs (one is on his two dogs - a dog blog?), Flickr and MySpace. And of course, he has e-mail and his parliamentary web presence. I don't think there's much more he could use.

And there's the key word, "use". What exactly is Malcolm using these platforms specifically for? I'm awaiting the conversation to determine the strategy.

Methinks it's a just a matter of the scattergun approach: try to engage as many people as possible. However, I think he may find this won;t work, as all these mediums have different user demographics.

And who's putting it all together? These things take a lot of time, thought and energy. Hardly enough left for walking the dogs. If it is to be successful it will have to have the personal touch, otherwise he'll be "outed".

I wonder if he's on LinkedIn?

From the PR Lab at http://www.prlab.com.au

WA miner's puzzling stance

WA miner Fortescue Metals is a strange beast.

On the one hand its owner, Andrew Forrest, is heralded as a “saviour” of Abroigines by creating a scheme to employ them. On the other, the company is taking them to court in oder to access their tribal lands - or in this case, part of Port Hedland Harbour.

Whether the Aborigines or Fortescue is found to be in the right by the Supreme Court, the action has undone all of the goodwill the company built with its employment initiative.

And from the company? Stony silence. The normally media-friendly Andrew Forrest seems to have gone to ground.

The PR Lab: http://www.prlab.com.au

Hotel in the "poo"

Pardon the headline, but it really is the case with Sydney's iconic Coogee Bay Hotel, which has been accused of allegedly putting faeces in customers' gelato after they complained about several issues.

The hotel's novel approach to PR was to offer its customers free gelato. This, from the Australian Hotels Association's top pub in 2005 and 2006.

On top of that, management wouldn't comment because it was "a legal issue" and they said they thought it was sabotage. Heaven forbid they express concern, or that they are taking it seriously.

There's also some argy-bargy going on, with the hotel saying the customers demanded $1m, and the customers denying they asked for any money.

More PR at the PR Lab - http://www.prlab.com.au

Pitfalls of a social media release

As if we haven’t had enough information about social media floating around the “blogosphere” these past few years. Yet still, many people don’t get it. Social media is just one method (with several sub methods) of delivering PR.

I received a social media release from some students the other day. They had just attended the national PRIA conference and were, no doubt, fired up by one of the keynote speakers, who turned out to be disappointing.

At 6mb it was a “weighty” document. The main problem is that the Australian media wouldn’t even give this a glance, as they don’t accept attachments in e-mail releases. Apart from that, it didn’t contain the necessary elements people use in these documents (at least I think some people use them).

I commented back to the group, but they never responded (that’s bad PR, people).

As my boss at work said: “haven’t they heard of a phone call?”

See: Australian PR at http://www.prlab.com.au

Police PR. Money well spent?

The Australian newspaper today revelead that police forces (services) are spending about $10 million a year on communication programs.

While there are legitimate media demands made on police, such as obtaining information on crimes, much of this money could be seen to be used for pushing a government’s political agenda.

There’s a fine line between a commissioner being seen to promoting new crime-fighting initiatves and supporting a political agenda.

It’s an area that I will take a little more notice of, particularly in Western Australia, where a State election is looming later this year. Hopefull, the “commish” will stick to operational matters.