PR education in Australia – what do you think about it?
Well? What do you think about it? I’m asking because I’ve just read a short essay that Professor Jim Macnamara wrote for a great report called Public Relations 2011, Issues, Insights, Ideas*. Titled PR Education – Getting the Theory-Practice Balance Right, the premise of his article is that PR students need more theory. By theory Jim means knowledge and critical thinking so universities don’t over-emphasise practical skills or place too little emphasis [...]
Evaluating event sponsors via editorial coverage
Big consumer events, big brands and big media appeal means big dollars invested - which also means someone standing there, at the end of the line, waving an even bigger measuring stick and demanding it be applied. So rather than having it applied to your behind in a whooping motion, here’s how you might use a measuring stick (of sorts) to evaluate event sponsors via the content analysis of editorial coverage (sounds tricky; it’s really not). This post is timely because we’re [...]
AVE for measuring public relations
After a year-long inquiry and debate on the topic of using AVEs* to measure Public Relations ROI, the Institute of Public Relations Commission (IPR, from the USA) has concluded that there is no evidence to suggest that advertising and editorial space hold equivalent value. Most rational people already know this but it’s good the industry has taken a firm stance. This comes after PR practitioners at a European measurement summit in June this year agreed and released The Barcelona Declaration [...]
MJ’s brilliant career, B&T’s December issue
Marguerite Julian (or MJ as we like to call her), Stellar*’s founder and managing director, has featured in this month’s B&T magazine. As a PR person it’s quite comforting to have someone like MJ around because over the span of her career she has seen it, done it and PR’d it all! The thing is, she’s very laid back, modest and unassuming so her remarkable achievements are not often highlighted. [...]
New knowledge for PR professionals: how much do you know?
“I’m supposed to be on top of what’s new in tech, but there’s just too much, too fast; it’s like drinking from a fire hose” I like this quote a lot. American tech columnist, David Pogue, said this and it’s sometimes how I feel trying to keep up with social media. Today’s PR professional needs to be on top of many new things to keep up with the rapid technological and social changes we’re [...]
Food bloggers & PR professionals’ meet up
Lately, there has been some very public instances in which PR people have been ‘named and shamed’ online - on blogs and in twitter – for the way they have approached food bloggers. It hasn’t been pretty and when situations like this occur, it doesn’t do anyone any good. I attribute this strife largely to a general lack of knowledge and understanding about bloggers and blogging. So in an effort to improve relations between PR [...]
A quick bitch about a slack pitch
Today something happened that made me appreciate why journalists loathe PR people who ‘slack pitch’ them. Let me explain. This morning I got an email from a PR person who was pitching their client to me for a possible story on the Stellar* blog. Firstly, the email was addressed to the sender with my email BCC’d, so it was a group email. Immediately I’m thinking: if you don’t know me, [...]
