Entries from May 2006 ↓

• Armstong cleared of doping charges
  It’s about time. The guy tested clean numerous times
  (tags: armstrong tourdefrance)

One of the amazing things about the media is that they have a way of telling an entire story with one headline. This is the perfect example: U.S. troops kill pregnant woman in Iraq.

The problem is most don’t know that headlines are not written by the same people that write the stories. So, what happens is that a person may spend 5 hours on a story learning details and context and a headline person (it’s called the copy desk) will write a headline for the story after reading it once. Headlines don’t provide context!

Nevertheless, context didn’t matter in this case. The troops say the women were in a car that was given warnings about stopping, but it doesn’t matter. The message was clear: U.S. troops kill pregnant women in Iraq.

• Looking back at baseball’s best brawls
  (tags: baseball)

• DEMO.com : The Premier Launchpad for Emerging Technologies
  (tags: business internet marketing innovation Demo)

I can’t stand it when I see things like this comparison between the cost of a gallon of gas and the cost of a gallon of other liquids like Gatorade or brake fluid because it’s not an apples to apples comparison. It makes no sense.

My guess is that this has some ties to the oil industry, one of its public affairs firms or a guerilla marketing firm because gas prices are a 1) already higher than they have been in the past, and 2) almost always go up around Memorial Day weekend, which starts today. They need to thwart the publicity a little.

They have reason to try to circulate information like this because people will start talking about it over dinner and at work.

John: Wow, gas is expensive.
Ralph: You think gas is expensive . . . (that’s exactly what they want to happen).

Here’s one I found online . . .

• Diet Snapple 16 oz $1.29 …….. $10.32 per gallon
• Lipton Ice Tea 16 oz $1.19 ………..$9.52 per gallon
• Gatorade 20 oz $1.59 ….. $10.17 per gallon
• Ocean Spray 16 oz $1.25 …….. $10.00 per gallon
• Brake Fluid 12 oz $3.15 ……… $33.60 per gallon
• Vick’s Nyquil 6 oz $8.35 … $178.13 per
• Pepto Bismol 4 oz $3.85 …… $123.20 per gallon
• Whiteout 7 oz $1.39 …… $25.42 per gallon
• Scope 1.5 oz $0.99 …….$84.48 per gallon
And this is the REAL KICKER…
• Evian water 9 oz $1.49……….$21.19 per gallon?! $21.19

• 8 stupid frat boy business ideas
  (tags: business venture entrepreneurship finance funny humor)

At first glance this “Command of the Grill” event looks like just a charitable event, but it’s so much more. It’s a brilliant PR campaign for Weber grills (and a nice fund raiser for injured Marines). It’s brilliant because it does something good, and it’s constructed in a manner that makes it attractive to the news media.

Let me show you what I mean and how I found it.

I was reading the Deseret News today when I read this article: Salt Lake Marine to compete in N.Y. in ‘Command of Grill’ contest

- The word contest was my first clue.
- The idea that a local marine was participating in this national contest was clue No. 2. You always want to find a way to give a reporter a local angle.
- The third clue came when I visited commandofthegrill.com and saw a big Weber logo in the bottom left-hand corner of the website. (Seems like a no-brainer, but unless you look for it, you will never realize its there). The entire site is branded and focused on the contest.

Some may think it’s a marketing campaign, but it’s not. It’s designed to get publicity. HunterPR in New York City does this all the time with many of the food companies it represents. You have probably seen some of their work before with the Fireman chili cookoffs. (That’s a campaign for Tobasco sauce).

The premise of Command of the Grill is that Weber is releasing a cookbook of steak recipes made by marines. 100 percent of the proceeds go to U.S. Marines wounded or killed in the line of duty and their families. The results aren’t a surety, but the odds are good that they’ll get news coverage of this event (they already are), which I am sure will show marines cooking their steak recipes on none other than Weber grills. The Today show would love to cover something like this.

First is almost always remembered more than second, and things are no different when it comes to public relations. When someone does something first and you are the PR person, you have to do all in your power to make sure it’s known that what you represent was first.

It’s a little strategy PR people use all the time to create a spokesperson for an industry. Sometimes, you become the spokesperson by default.
- First man on the man
- First mp3 player (wasn’t iPod, someone lost that opportunity)
- First personal computer
- First to climb Mt. Everest

I love to see when the default spokespeople step to the challenge and do it honorably as is the case with Sir Edmund Hillary, the first person to scale Mt. Everest.

Apparently, someone recently died 1,000 feet short of the Everest summit in what is known as the death zone. The low amount of oxygen makes it terribly dangerous, and if you go down, chances are no one will help you because they will die if they do, and it just happened. Forty climbers walked right passed solo climber David Sharp, 34, as he was starving for oxygen and crippled with altitude sickness. He died, and reporters all wanted to know what Hillary thought about it.

“It was wrong if there was a man suffering altitude problems and was huddled under a rock, just to lift your hat, say ‘good morning’ and pass on by,” Hillary said. “I think the whole attitude toward climbing Mount Everest has become rather horrifying. The people just want to get to the top.” via Yahoo

In this case, I doubt someone tried to make him the spokesman for Mt. Everest climbs, but he is, and I think he does a might fine job of helping shape the public opinion on the safety of scaling the mountain and the sanctity of human life.

sidenote: More than 1,500 climbers have scaled Everest. 190 have died trying. Those aren’t good odds.