Drew B's take on tech PR

Monitoring Kellogs and BMW PR in blog land

Do you realise what your product is bein used for? RUDE THINGS, that's what. Kellogs is giving away vibrators? It only wanted to do some counter-publicity on the whole tooth rot thing. And BMW is the new porn wagon? Is that even a phrase? Well, that's why firms should monitor blogs carefully, according to Jim Horton's Online PR Thoughts blog. Products sometimes get used for different things, and the stories spread on blogs very quickly.

IABC blog, IPR blog?

European marcoms blogger Nevon says that the chairman of The International Association of Business Communicators (IABC) is talking about the planning of a blog. Well here it is. Does IPR have a blog? I might be wrong but I think the IPR website hasn't changed for the last five years. Not much any way.

Gmail invite

I have run out of friends to give these things to (not that I had friends anyway) so if you'd like a Gmail invite I have 5 to give away. Just leave a comment or email via my address at the top right of the front page of my blog.

Introducing Charles Arthur blog to Tom Foremski blog!

Two tech journos - Tom Foremski (ex-Financial Times) and Charles Arthur (soon-to-be-ex-Independent) - are talking about their future blogging plans.

I got a trackback from Charles Arthur's blog and Charles says that he found out about Tom Foremski by reading my UK PR blog - that's how he found Tom Foremski's Silicon Valley Watcher! I'll be watching their blog relationship develop closely.

Ebay fraudster - good publicity?

News out today reports that a 17 year old fraudster conned £45,000 out of Ebay shoppers in the space of just over a year.

The story is in most of the national papers and it was on Radio 1 this morning. You can't help but wonder whether this story was purposefully leaked by Ebay's UK PR outfit, 77PR.

After all, all publicity is good publicity. It would be interesting to hear if anyone knows more about the management of this story.

Corporate blog

A report on the value of corporate blogging out in AFR's Boss magazine shows concicely why corporate blogs are doing so well. It's becase they "bring personality and authenticity to a bleak landscape of dull newsletters, breathless media releases and "brochureware" websites."

Thanks to NevOn for the link.

Corporate blog on the way from Coke

So it seems Coke is putting together a blog. Scoble and Rubel pointed me in the direction of it but now the marketing people at Coke have realised they need to password this new top secret blog otherwise it will look like this.....

BBC reports on Scoble saving Microsoft

Microsoft geek blogger Robert Scoble and European PR blogger Neville Hobson have reported on some interesting BBC radio coverage on blogging. So Scoble saved Microsoft?

My post here highlights two pieces of good blog coverage in The Guardian earlier this week.

VNU shuts down VNU News Centre and Colin Barker leaves

Full Run has reported that VNU has shut down VNU News Centre, and has made redundant the six journalists who work there. According to Tom Foremski's blog: "the cuts may go deeper, totalling 23 possible redundancies in editorial, sales and marketing.... Casualties include Colin Barker, former editor of Computing."

Blog articles - sacked for a blog

An article in The Guardian today entitled Spilling the Beans, by Jim Mclellan on negative publicity from blogs, as well as a separate interview by Sean Dodson with a UK blooging copper. I have also picked up on Shel Holtz's blog thanks to Steve Rubel that a Delta airlines has sacked an employee for putting their photo on their blog.