Entries from May 2006 ↓
May 24th, 2006 — Blog, Business, Utah Public Relations Agency
It was only a matter of time before someone went along and did a thing like this . . .
And it should be fun too.
Utah Bloggers is putting on a conference for . . . um . . . Utah Bloggers.
Ryan Money and Phil Burns present the first Utah Bloggers Conference - a networking opportunity for all Utah Bloggers!
WHEN: June 13th, 2006 6:30 pm - 9:00 pm
WHERE: Miller Innovation Center
Dinner will be provided. We will be having a question/answer session with a panel of Utah bloggers from 7:00 - 7:45. The panel will be made up of Phil Windley, Tim Stay, Phil Burns and Cydni Tetro.
Utah Public Relations
May 18th, 2006 — del.icio.us
May 18th, 2006 — Business, Media Relations, Public Relations, Strategic Marketing
One of my favorite things about doing a continuous PR campaign is that unexpected things come out of them. I have had two of those since I started doing PR for a company called HandHeld Entertainment.
1 - We had worked quite often with tech journalist Leo Laporte, and little did we know until it happened, but when Live! with Regis and Kelly has someone come on their show to talk about cool new gadgets, it’s always Leo Laporte. So, when Leo went on the show one day, he took my client’s ZVUE portable media player with him (mp3/movie player like a video ipod).
2 - The ZVUE is also sold in some 1,800 Wal-Mart stores. This week on Donal Trump’s The Apprentice they were doing a lot of filming in Wal-Mart stores because the two teams were setting up POP displays for XBOX 360s. One of the teams used a bunch of mp3 players, and one of them was the ZVUE as seen in the screen shot to the left and right (blue thing).
Call it the law of unintended consequences, but I’ll take it.
May 17th, 2006 — del.icio.us
May 17th, 2006 — Media Relations, Public Relations, Strategic Marketing, del.icio.us
A few weeks ago I was having lunch with two friends at Chili’s when one of them asked me how many Utah public relations firms were in the Beehive State.
Here’s my best guess -
5-10 firms that do just PR.
Politis Communications, my employer is one of them.
SNG, Connect PR, Brember PR, Intrepid Group, are a few.
10 firms that do PR/Advertising.
Richter 7, Love Communications, PPBH, are a few examples.
10 individuals that do PR out of their home.
John Pilmer, etc . . . Most of them aren’t that well known, but John does a good job of making himself known in the community.
I guess that gives people choices. It’s good for the marketplace.
May 16th, 2006 — del.icio.us
May 11th, 2006 — del.icio.us
May 11th, 2006 — Customer Service, Strategic Marketing
I am going to give Geely Auto (pronounced “jeely”) a reason to start spending their PR and marketing dollars to thwart a bad impression of their products. I don’t think it will help them, but they’ll do it anyway. My impression comes solely from their scooters, and this is it.
They suck. They’re trash. They’re complete garbage. (Read what a scooter shop has to say about Geely).
You have probably seen these Yamaha/Honda knock-offs cruising around college towns, but then again, maybe you haven’t because they don’t run very long. What could would marketing or PR do at this point? The gears are made of plastic. The body is plastic. Total garbage. Total waste of money. The only marketing that will ever overcome that is a better product.
So, when Geely Auto says that it will start selling cars in the U.S. in 2008, I say bring on revenge of the Yugo. All except this is a Chinese made. Geely is the first Chinese auto maker to enter the U.S. market, and it seems like the auto analysts are ill-informed, which means the news media was ill-informed, which (heaven forbid) means that the news media will be writing about terrible Geely vehicles down the road.
MSNBC
The entry of Geely into the U.S. “might be good news for cost-conscious Americans, but analysts say it could be bad news for Detroit’s Big Three, now struggling with sagging U.S. sales and busy laying off workers and closing down factories to cut costs.” - WRONG!
more from MSNBC
“But executives at established auto makers say they aren’t too concerned about the threat of competition from Chinese brands any time soon, citing quality and other factors.”
It sounds like Geely’s COO knows about this image problem as well.
“One issue for Chinese carmakers is the perception that their products are not up to par when it comes to safety and reliability. It’s a perception problem that Harmer (COO) plans to deal with through aggressive marketing.”
Aggressive marketing. Crappy history of quality. Which do you think will win over the customer.
