PR

The Washington Post's Gene Weingarten is fed up with the language employed by PR execs. So he came up with a solution. He turned the tables and queried them with language that mimics their own. Here he is asking his contact at Meir Kahtan a question about MasterCard: Given the degree to which the deployment of incentives-based purchasing paradigms leads to the accretion of goods and the contracting of services by …

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Guy Kawasaki's buddy, Glenn Kelman, the CEO of online real estate brokerage Redfin, has written an eleven-point treatise on DIY public relations. His sixth point about going agencyless in this brave new interworld is well fashioned: 6. Most publicists feel threatened by the Internet’s systems of attribution, glorification and punishment, where Digg can make an obscure posting more important than the evening news. …

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I've often said that when it comes to marketing themselves, ad agencies are usually clueless and pathetically bad at it. A couple of recent stories have enlightened me as to how some agencies ensure that they maintain the reputations they have. When Adweek selected Goodby its 2006 Agency of the Year, Adweek devoted much of its article to Goodby's own determination to remake itself for the digital age: The agency …

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Academics and public relations practitioners gathered in London this week to debate a moral issue--whether or not people in PR are duty bound to tell the truth. According to Martin Moore, PR-man Max Clifford delivered "a low-key, frank and absorbingly anecdotal performance" at University of Westminster Tuesday night. His thesis: In PR, the truth is not always the best policy. He told the audience how his first duty …

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ExxonMobil spent approximately $16 million between 1998 and 2005 on 43 organizations that have cast doubt on the reality of human-caused global warming. Funding ranged from $30,000 for the group Africa Fighting Malaria to $1.6 million to the American Enterprise Institute, a pro-business think tank in Washington. Deborah Zabarenko, Environment Correspondent for Reuters, sees a parallel between the energy company's aim …

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Richard Edelman is the president and CEO of the world's largest independent public relations firm with 1800 employees in 40 offices worldwide. He graduated from Phillips Exeter Academy in 1972, has a Bachelor of Arts degree from Harvard College and an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School. In other words, he's a smart guy. Given his native intelligence, he wants to "set expectations" for the myriad bloggers on his …

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Yesterday, we drew your attention to Microsoft's ploy to influence the bloatosphere with fancy Ferrari laptops running Vista. According to one recipient, Marshall Kirkpatrick, Microsoft's PR flacks want the machines back or to be given away. Here's the email Marshall received from Aaron at Edelman: Marshall, No good deed goes unpunished, right? You may have seen that other bloggers got review machines as well. Some …

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Long Zheng writes about the fancy new machine he and many other bloggers received from Edelman, the blogger-friendly PR giant working with Microsoft to help launch Windows Vista. Microsoft gave out some timely Christmas presents to a bunch of bloggers this year. Brandon LeBlanc got one, Scott Beale got one, Barb Bowman got one, Mauricio Freitas got one, Mitch Denny got one, Zen.Heavengames got one, plus many other …

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