A new study by Harvard called “Wages of Failure” was released yesterday. It shows that in the years right before the collapse of bear stearns and the lehman brothers, executives cashed out big time and didn’t have to give it all up when the companies went bankrupt.

The CEO of Bear Stearns, James Cayne, cashed out at $388 million and lehman brothers CEO, Richard Fuld, $541 million.

Should they have lost everything? That’s debatable. Should they have walked away as multimillionaire? Probably not. Either way, the public is sick of hearing these types of statistics. PR agents are going to have to speak up when they see this type of injustice in the future. Otherwise no one will ever trust Wall Street again.

Point and case: http://wheels.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/24/answering-your-questions-about-the-chevy-volt/?partner=rss&emc=rss

If this wasn’t the work of PR agent, then kudos to Chevy for making a car people are sincerely interested in. If it was the work of a PR agent, wow! I’d love to know your secret.

Many PR practitioners were popping the corks off of their most expensive champagne.

Typically clients create a wishlist of mediums they’d like to appear on to increase their publicity (and usually sales of some sort). Oprah, the queen of talk shows, has been on the average client’s list for decades.  Unfortunately, the average client is just that, average, and Oprah can only host so many people.

With the end of Oprah’s show in 2011, PR agents will soon have some free time and excuse for why their client won’t be featured on the Oprah show.

http://www.odwyerpr.com/blog/index.php?/archives/704-PR-Pros-Mixed-on-Oprah-Exit.html

Is that really so bad? Well, maybe. The problem is that this question has existed for centuries.

Maybe it’s not such a difficult question for public relations professionals though. After all, public relations is all about making connections with different audiences. To make these connections and facilitate understanding it’s important not to use jargon. Maybe I’m just spewing what the Communications school has brainwashed me to believe, but if so, they’ve done a really good job.

Current PR classes all stress talking in familiar, concise terms with the public (see Cluetrain manifesto). In this case I don’t think we can be accused of talking down to people. It’s not necessarily people’s job to remember all the acronyms of an investment banker for example. So, Mr. Levy, when you set fire to the Communications school, please save the PR students!

Rupert Murdoch, the CEO of NewsCorp, is considering making a deal with Microsoft, the owner of Bing, to remove search engine competition on NewsCorp sites.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/24/technology/internet/24soft.html?_r=1&ref=internet

In my opinion, this is just a little too close to making certain information unavailable to the public. If every company begins monetizing the information available on their website, the internet just won’t be the same.

Anyway, as I searched for articles related to this topic, the first few I clicked on were all about whether or not to contract with a PR agency or to hire an in-house agent – all from the business owner’s perspective. I had forgotten what an important question it is from that perspective as well.

In the articles I read, most suggested contracting out to a large agency because hiring an in-house PR agent makes the employee too vested in your company and thus unable to related with their audience’s perspective. Plus, they often don’t have all the media contacts that agency counterparts do.

I understand that perspective, but it’s a little sad from an employee perspective. It just seems so much more genuine to pick a company that you love and want to promote and then work for them in-house. Wife vs prostitute.  Oh well, I’m sure there are lots of agency publicists who believe for and care about their different clients.

The article focuses on the corruption in the health care system, specifically in health care PR.

My roomate is a receptionist at an Austin health clinic and a pre-med student at the University of Texas. She has often told me that if she called the shots, she wouldn’t let medical/pharmaceutical companies advertise at all. I always thought that she was being over-dramatic, but now I’m not so sure. Her postulation that medical companies have no actual interest in the health of their clients is starting to ring a little too true.

In the article A Change of Heart Amy Jacques, a writer for The Strategist, interviews Wendell Potter, a former PR exec for large life insurance companies. Potter, after working for years in the industry, had a revelation and realized that his work was helping disenfrachise millions of people from receiving the help they needed. He maintains that many of these people work, but they can’t afford their copays and/or deductibles. His touching description of a health festival he went to where he saw hundreds of people trying to get help is both inspirational and depressing. Of course, this is only one side of the story, but it’s from a former member of the opposing side…

http://www.prsa.org/Intelligence/TheStrategist/Articles/view/8367/Executive_decision_Persuading_CEOs_to_do_the_right

I think we often forget that CEOs are people too. They are either demons or business gods in the media. Granted, some are geniuses and many are evil geniuses, but when a crisis occurs some just get scared. The Strategist article is interesting because it comes at this issue from an interpersonal perspective. As a PR exec, a lot of times, you have to convince the CEO not to act a dolt in front of her comrades and public during a crisis. This article discusses how to do that successfully – very fascinating for those interested in psychology and human relations.

Already, sites like Tudou and Youku attract large numbers of non-Asian viewers. Other Asian sites that have less appeal to non-Asian users still have as many users as their mostly English counterparts (e.g. Baidu (google), Xiaonei/ QQ (facebook) ). In fact, according to a blog post by Richard MacManus on ReadWriteWeb, Asian social networking sites are far more profitable than American sites like Facebook too.

Oddly enough, again according to MacManus, Chinese sites may be much more successful because they are not so focused on marketing. While American sites are catered to appeasing the advertisers who pay for the site, Chinese Web sites are more focused on improvement for improvement’s sake, not money. Yet, that’s why they have more of it.

So, get used to Chinese symbols because they won’t just be in the business newspaper, they’ll be on your favorite Web sites too!

Chances are you know what all of those texting abbreviations mean. You probably use them a lot too. But do you use them while you’re talking?

While most news articles are saying that Generation Y has lost the ability to write because we are too busy speaking in abbreviations, in my personal experience, I’ve encountered many more people who will refuse to talk with someone if they actually use an abbreviation while speaking. It seems that friends from all walks of life – educated, uneducated, rich, poor, etc. – disdain people who dare to use the phrase lol while actually speaking. In fact, I’d say that my more affluent friends are more likely to use these abbreviations because they’re trying to be ironic.

Personally, their usage catches me off guard but I won’t disown anyone who uses OMG around me.

While researching abbreviations, I came across the term ASAP as a “popular texting abbreviation.” I’d say it’s much more than that. ASAP seems like a common abbreviation in any medium. I realized that I had actually used it today at work.  Is that what LOL/OMG/BRB and the like will be in a few years?

For more info on the subject read this: http://www.newsweek.com/id/150449