Inside PR #17 – Tuesday, July 25, 2006

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Comments? Send us an email at [email protected], call us on the comment line at 206-600-4741, or leave us a comment on the Inside PR show blog.

This week, Terry and David have a lively chat about conflicts of interest in the agency world, talk about Terry’s work on the Michael Ignatieff Liberal Party Leadership bid, welcome comments from Luke Armour and Paull Young, and Chris Clarke contributes his regular segment.

You can listen to the show with the player above or download or subscribe with the links in the show blog’s sidebar.

Show Notes:

00:30 David introduces the show and welcomes listener comments to the comment line at 206-600-4741.

01:30 Terry mentions Paull Young’s audio comment that can be found on the show blog. Terry points listeners to the NewPR’s Anti-Astroturfing page.

02:00 Terry thanks Luke Armour for his comment. Luke wanted to say that even though he lives in the US, he knows who David was talking about when he mentioned Les Habitants (the Montreal Canadiens).

02:45 David brings up Terry’s work on Michael Ignatieff’s bid for the Liberal Party of Canada leadership race. Terry discovered through this post that Ignatieff is the only candidate with a podcast. Terry says it’s incredible that none of the other candidates in the leadership are podcasting, as it’s a perfect way to get the word out. David adds that Ken Dryden is running for the Liberal leadership as well, a former Montreal Canadien goaltender.

07:15 David brings up a hazy area of PR for discussion: conflicts of interest in relation to client assignments. Terry tells a story from early in his career at Hill and Knowlton, where his Toronto office had a conflict of interest with an H&K office in Honolulu.

11:00 David adds his perspective as a member of a major PR firm, Fleishman-Hillard. His personal opinion is that clients can ask for whatever they want, but as a general rule should reserve issues of conflict to the firms themselves.

15:20 Terry says that the most important issue with conflicts is disclosure. Thornley Fallis has a code of conduct, part of which deals with conflict of interest. According to Terry, the first thing to do is disclose the conflict of interest to the client. Terry adds that he is not a proponent of ditching a smaller client to add a competitor with a bigger budget although the opportunity has arisen and is often tempting.

17:45 David says that chasing dollars is not the way to go. He invites any stories that deal with conflicts of interest through the appropriate channels.

19:50 Terry brings up the conflict agency. He once led a small agency owned by Hill and Knowlton, but operated independently. During his time there, he never received a single referral from Hill and Knowlton. He recommends that conflict agencies not to count on business being passed on from the parent agency.

23:00 Terry says that the bigger the agency, the more conflict of interests arise. He says to be sure to disclose any conflicts to the client. David says that clients will eventually find out if there is a conflict of interest, and Terry adds that the short-term gain is not worth the long-term pain.

24:20 Chris Clarke discusses goals and objectives, as well as titles of PR blogs.

28:10 David discusses goals and objectives. He thinks goals are long-term, whereas objectives are short-term. Terry agrees, and adds that a future show will discuss the difference between strategies and tactics.

29:30 David says that adding “PR” to the title of a blog (or, in this case, podcast) just feels right, although there will eventually be no more titles to choose from. He also mentions that the name “Inside PR”, in some ways, comes from Paul Holmes’ “The Holmes Report”.

33:00 Terry does his segment, “PR Words to Banish”. This week’s word: moot versus mute as in “it’s a moot point.”

34:19 David invites comments through the comment line (206-600-4741), to the Inside PR show blog, or to [email protected]. He also welcomes any listeners to the Inside PR Blubrry site, which he visited thanks to Jill Pyle.

Music: Our theme music is Streetwalker by CJacks, and is from the Podsafe Music Network; Roger Dey is our announcer.

Inside PR #16 – Tuesday, July 18, 2006

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This week on Inside PR, David and Terry talk about a variety of matters. They discuss the ideal background of a public relations practitioner, the importance of public relations to claim social media as its own, a new service called Weblog Wire, and Mary Ellen Armstrong of Thornley Fallis Communications’ MA work being published in an upcoming book. Also, Terry brings back the segment “PR Words to Banish”, and Chris Clarke presents his weekly segment as well.

Please send your comments to the comment line (206-600-4741), through email ([email protected]) or to the show blog at insidepr.ca.

You can listen to the show with the player above or download or subscribe with the links in the show blog’s sidebar.

Show Notes

00:32 Terry opens the show and welcomes first-time listeners and thanks returning listeners for listening to this week’s episode. He thanks Mitch Joel from Six Pixels of Separation for filling in last week while he was vacationing in France with his family.

02:08 David invites listener comments to the comment line (206-600-4741), through email ([email protected]) or to the show blog.

03:10 Terry asks readers to visit the show blog to hear audio comments from Owen Lystrup and Mitch Joel.

03:45 Terry introduces an audio comment from Colin McKay from Ottawa. This comment was intended for Episode 14 and has been on the blog for some time now. Colin says PR is a bit slow to react as an industry, and that more leadership is necessary in the PR world’s trade publications.

06:00 David and Terry discuss Colin’s comment. The two of them agree with Colin’s view and and cite examples such as Paul Holmes’ The Holmes Report as one who is doing great work on the topic.

11:00 David brings up a PR measurement survey via Katie Paine run by University of Maryland student Debra Berthard-Caplick. Those interested in participating are encouraged to do so.

12:06 Weblog Wire is a wire service that offers press release distribution to bloggers. Terry and David discuss the use and merits of a service that distributes press releases to bloggers.

17:05 Mary Ellen Armstrong of Thornley Fallis Communications has had her MA dissertation from Cardiff University in Wales published in a book by former BBC correspondent Nicholas Jones titled “Trading Information: Leaks, Lies, and Tradeoffs.”

21:05 The final comment comes from Vishnu Mahmud in Jakarta, Indonesia. Vishnu wants to know what kind of people make good PR pros, to which Terry and David work out some answers as their discussion. Terry does not believe that good PR pros are necessarily journalism majors, graduates of a community college PR program, or graduates of MA programs. He thinks many of those skills cannot be taught, such as being able to connect with people and managing relationships.

26:40 David admits to having a journalism degree and says that he has had great success in hiring journalism students into PR, but he says that their success probably had little to do with journalism. He elaborates, saying literate, well-rounded people do well in PR.

37:00 David introduces Chris Clarke‘s weekly segment, in which he discusses astroturfing as a hot topic in public relations.

40:55 Terry introduces this week’s “PR Word to Banish”: fulsome

42:40 David wraps up the show and invites comments to the comment line (206-600-4741), through email ([email protected]) or to the show blog at insidepr.ca.

Music: Our theme music is Streetwalker by CJacks and is from the Podsafe Music Network; Roger Dey is our announcer.

Audio comment: Owen Lystrup on IPR #15

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Owen Lystrup has called in with an answer for Chris Clarke’s iPod/iTunes frustrations. (By the way, there is a great site for iPod junkies that has answers, reviews, etc. for just about everything you can imagine related to iPod. Check out www.ilounge.com.)

Owen also notes that you have to be knowledgeable about a whole lot of things in the agency business. Ain’t that the truth!

Audio comment: Mitch Joel on IPR #15

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Mitch Joel drops in with a “car-cast” for a couple of thoughts on his co-hosting gig on IPR #15.

Mitch and I broke the time record with our free-form discussion and I had to leave two meaty segments on the cutting room floor to keep the podcast a respectable length. One interesting segment covered Mitch’s dabbling in Second Life and where he sees possibilities for an interesting business/communications tool. The other segment was about educating the next generation of communicators in the world of social media.
Mitch has offered to resurrect them for a segment on his podcast and I’ve been toying with the idea of packaging them up as special editions of IPR.

Inside PR #15 – Tuesday, July 11, 2006

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This week on Inside PR, David welcomes Mitch Joel from Twist Image and the man behind the Six Pixels of Separation podcast as co-host in Terry’s absence. Mitch and David talk about a variety of social media matters, with podcasting being central to each of their topics for discussion. Let us know what you think of Mitch as a guest co-host. Send us a comment through the comment line (206-600-4741), [email protected], or leave a comment here to the show blog.

You can listen to the show with the player above or download or subscribe with the links in the show blog’s sidebar.

Show Notes

00:40 David introduces this week’s co-host, Mitch Joel

01:07 David introduces Terry’s segment

01:45 Terry steps into the confessional and talks about his struggle with the task of delegation

05:20 Terry re-introduces his favorite segment, “PR Words to Banish”. This week word: “comprise”

06:18 Terry bids everyone adieu and vows to return for next week’s show

06:42 David invites listener comments to the comment line (206-600-4741), the show blog, or to [email protected]

07:18 David asks co-host Mitch Joel for an explanation of how he came to be a star in the social media scene

07:46 Mitch confesses that his first gig came in 1989 when he interviewed Tommy Lee of Motley Crue, talks about how he got involved in the dotcom boom and bust, and how Twist Image was founded

10:31 David asks Mitch how he characterizes Twist Image

12:06 Mitch confesses that Twist Image is not just seeking out clients, but clients are seeking out Twists Image. Mitch has been working on the Internet since the earliest days of the 90s.

13:17 David confesses to being a traditional PR guy, and that his means of finding information is Google

14:55 David talks about transparency in the PR world and how social media is helping bring everyone together

16:12 Mitch says that it’s just as important to be podcasting as it is to figure out how to do it from a technical standpoint

18:00 David suggests that people interested in the space of podcasting should go out and get their hands dirty and do it themselves.

18:45 Mitch brings up his very first episode of Six Pixels of Separation, which is an example of someone trying out podcasting for the first time. He mentions that his latest guest was CC Chapman.

20:03 David says that podcasters are their own harshest critics, and talks about the artificiality of producing a podcast of the same length on the same day every week

22:12 David brings up the mesh conference in Toronto from this past May

24:00 Mitch talks about his 7-hour presentation for the Canadian Marketing Association called “Blogs: A Marketers’ Secret Weapon”, and brings up that he recently started listening to Adam Curry’s Daily Source Code

25:00 Mitch says he found the new talk radio, and it’s called podcasting. He says he wouldn’t call himself a podcaster just yet, but that he appreciates the immediacy of the podcasting medium

27:40 Mitch likes the fact that there is not much gear needed to be podcasting. It becomes about quality content rather than quality production

30:10 David brings up Chris Clarke. He and Mitch talk about his blog, and Mitch says about Clarke, “He did it, and he got it”.

31:30 Chris Clarke’s weekly segment

34:20 David introduces and reads Chris Clarke’s former classmate Megan Zinn’s comment to the show blog

36:15 David closes the show and invites listener comments to the comment line (206-600-4741), the show blog, or to [email protected]

36:34 David thanks Mitch for co-hosting and invites listeners to check out his podcast

Intro music: Our theme music is Streetwalker by CJacks and is from the Podsafe Music Network; Roger Dey is our announcer.

Inside PR #14 – Tuesday, July 4, 2006

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First, apologies for the late arrival of this week’s episode.

Second, starting next week, the show will be posted on Tuesday mornings rather than Monday mornings.

Also, with Terry absent next week, Mitch Joel from the Six Pixels of Separation podcast will be co-hosting with David.

Show Notes

00:27 Terry opens the show and invites listener comments to the comment line (206-600-4741), the show blog, or to [email protected]

01:20 Terry brings up housekeeping items: the show will now be posted Monday nights at midnight instead of Sunday nights at midnight

02:00 Terry will not be co-hosting next week’s episode. In his place, Mitch Joel will join David as co-host. Thanks to Mitch for filling in for Terry.

03:00 David introduces Eric Schwartzman of the On The Record Online’s comment on Inside PR #13 about branding of social media inside agencies.

7:08 Terry and David discuss Eric’s comment

9:42 Robert French supports posting comments as they arrive on the blog page

10:42 Terry mentions the latest special edition of Inside PR with Andrew Laing. K.D. Paine has recommended it to her readers. David brings up having met K.D. in Toronto recently.

13:25 David brings up Podcasters Across Borders and Terry talks about his time at the conference in Kingston, Ontario.

16:10 David and Terry discuss a post on Steve Rubel’s blog about John Edwards’ speech at Gnomedex.

19:45 Terry brings up Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s bare-bones podcast.

22:12 Terry brings up the Nokia blogger-relations program done by Matchstick, a word-of-mouth marketing company. There is some discussion as to how Matchstick could have done a better job communicating with the blogosphere. David points to Darren Barefoot and Boris Mann as examples of bloggers who were recruited but chose not to participate.

32:14 Amy Cole comments on Chris Clarke’s segment from Inside PR #13

33:33 Chris Clarke contributes his weekly segment

35:20 Terry identifies with Chris’ segment and shares a story of his own from circa 1988

36:40 Terry invites comments to the blog page, comment line, or via email to [email protected]

37:35 David closes the show and looks forward to Mitch Joel co-hosting next week

Intro music: Our theme music is Streetwalker by CJacks and is from the Podsafe Music Network; Roger Dey is our announcer.