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great moments in pr
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Great Moments In Pr
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great moments in pr
great moments in pr
Sergey Brin schools us on how to take a stand, boldly do nothing
CEOs and founders feeling hounded by pesky profit-hating humanitarians could learn a lesson or two from Google cofounder Sergey Brin. At Google's annual shareholder meeting yesterday, Amnesty International presented two shareholder proposals on behalf of the New York State Pension Funds involving Google's difficulties with China, privacy and censorship. Brin handled the PR mess, no problem. More »
great moments in pr
Webby Award winners a typical mix of celebs and self-promoters
Another year, another round of nominees who paid up to $475 to be considered for a Webby have been awarded their publicity prizes. The long-running promotional gambit started by early Valley PR pro Tiffany Shlain, now under new management, does give awards to "special honorees" whom I presume don't have to pay. Those deemed "special" provide big names for media coverage and a draw for award winners to shell out for tickets to the awards gala. This year, Stephen Colbert is the biggest name, having won "Person of the Year" for his achievements in promoting himself online when he was unable to do so on air during the TV writers' strike. Michel Gondry got the nod for "Film and Video Person of the Year" for convincing YouTubers to promote his movie Be Kind, Rewind. And Will.i.am's treacly Yes We Can video garnered the musician "Artist of the Year." Who didn't win? Any of the engineers who, you know, build the Web. (Photo by AP/Matt Rourke)
sex trade
Valley matchmaker charges high price for dates
Linx Dating, a Bay Area matchmaking service, isn't pimping anyone per se. They claim to connect San Francisco women with Silicon Valley guys. Why is this legal but being a madam of an outcall service isn't? Your explanations welcome in the comments. The pitch, below: More »
great moments in pr
Craigslist CEO pretends to be British for his PR girlfriend
We've heard of in-house PR, but this is ridiculous. Susan MacTavish Best, who is both the girlfriend of Craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster and his company's PR rep, is also a director of Glasshouse, a nonprofit which produces events meant to educate entrepreneurs. Educating entrepreneurs at an event tonight: Buckmaster. The fireside chat is meant to highlight U.K. Web entrepreneurs. Buckmaster's only plausible U.K. tie? His girlfriend, MacTavish Best, is British. All very cozy, and absurd. What we think really happened here: MacTavish Best couldn't come up with any other speakers, and Buckmaster filled in.
self-demotion
How Oprah helped a startup CEO take Yahoo for $300 million
In its April 2008 issue, Entrepreneur caught the immodest-to-a-fault Gurbaksh Chahal in a self-promoting mood — not hard to do — when it asked him how he sold ad-targeting startup BlueLithium to Yahoo for $300 million. "G" — as Chalal calls himself — responded with a tale from the life of Oprah: More »
biotech
23andMe admits personalized genetic test serves no medical purpose
Facing possible fines and jail time, local gene sequencers Navigenics and 23andMe will have to get permits if they want to continue testing resident of New York state. Meanwhile, California is investigating 12 complaints against unnamed gene sequencing companies, with officials noting that "all genetic tests must be ordered by a licensed physician." Trying to distance themselves from health regulators, 23andMe spokesman Paul Kranholdt told Forbes that "23andMe's services are not medical ... they are educational." In other words, getting tested amounts to a $1,000 exercise in vanity. No wonder people in the Valley love it.
great moments in pr
Microsoft pretends Vista sales video is a gag, and CNET editor buys it
With the leak of an internal sales video, Microsoft is having its ironic cake and pretending not to eat it too. Its marketing team produced an awful spoof of Bruce Springsteen singing about Vista. One should note: Companies do this routinely to motivate their salespeople, but the innocents in engineering normally aren't exposed to the cheerleading routines. Microsoft's spin on the video: It's a gag! We're being sly! And incredibly, CNET editor Charles Cooper bought their line, quoting an anonymous flack: "They thought folks internally would get a kick out of not taking themselves so seriously all the time." More »
Valleywag editor spins firing as great leap forward
Sweater-bear editor Owen Thomas just sent the following email to staff here. It's so obviously designed to be leaked that my only reaction is: Owen, can you please not use the little asterisks for bullet points? Movable Type screws up the formatting when you blockquote them. MORE
great moments in pr
Sheryl Sandberg's underlings offer flattering fictions
What a coincidence: Sheryl Sandberg seized responsibility for PR when she left Google to join Facebook as COO last month. Like clockwork, there's an organized publicity campaign to buff the executive's image. Take this sycophantic utterance from Christopher Cox, Sandberg's head of human resources: "It was like Sheryl came and kicked everybody in the ass and said this is going to be hard. And then gave everybody a hug." That's what Cox told Fortune, at any rate. He privately confessed to colleagues that he "felt sick after saying that." Sheryl, you should give Cox a raise: An HR chief who's so ready to fib for you is golden.
great moments in pr
Brooke Hammerling, online-video PR rep, weighs in on online-video audience debate
BrewPR's snacky flack Brooke Hammerling penned a guest column for Silicon Alley Insider, arguing that the Web video industry needs to come up with a strict viewership metric. Though she doesn't mention it in the piece, New York-based online-video startup NextNewNetworks is a Brew client. (It's disclosed, in tiny type, at the end.) We could ask why Henry Blodget is giving a self-interested company rep a soapbox, or why they couldn't fix the red eye in Hammerling's photo. But the real question is why Hammerling suddenly cares about online video analytics. More »
great moments in pr
The engineer Google doesn't want you to see
Who is Jayant Madhavan? Google would just as soon you not know. The programmer featured prominently in a recent post on SearchEngineWatch about a troubling new Web-search routine: Madhavan's research would have Google's bots attempt to fill in Web-based forms meant for humans, in an attempt to discover more Web pages to index. Madhavan's picture appears on a Google bio page describing his research. SearchEngineWatch's editors reproduced it next to their post. Google's control-freaky PR reps demanded SearchEngineWatch take it down. More »
great moments in pr
CollegeHumor founder won't sue Take Two Interactive for patent infringement
Ricky Van Veen, founder of sophomoric entertainment site CollegeHumor, was surprised to see one of his inventions pop up in a box of promotional schwag for the new Grand Theft Auto IV game from Take Two Interactive. No, it wasn't some nifty new electronic gadget, but a simple foam fan hand — in the shape of the "shocker." Yes, the savvy Van Veen actually patented the thing. But no, he won't be suing:Lucky for them, they're one of CollegeHumor's biggest advertising clients. Though I must admit a high drama court case over "the shocker" would be a funny thing to see.
great moments in pr
Ticketmaster creates fake Facebook profiles to boost fake popularity
Ticketmaster, the event-ticket retailer whose monopolies on venues and exorbitant fees are legendarily evil, has somehow garnered nearly 157,000 fans on Facebook. And by "somehow" I mean "created thousands upon thousands of fake accounts." At least that's according to the East Village Idiot, who did some digging and turned up some obvious fakesters, like the hilariously misspelled "Stebe Jobs." Look for Stebe to accumulate thousands of fans of his own as desperate Apple fanboys friend the account to show their undying faith in the real Jobs's techno-cult.
great moments in journalism
Citizen journalism fails Al Gore
Climate change superstar Al Gore banned the press from his appearance Friday at the tail end of the RSA Conference on information security in San Francisco. The move seemed like a joke: Surely, Valleywag's editors reasoned, the roomful of high-IQ IT professionals carrying wireless communications devices into Gore's presentation would blog, tweet and shoot the whole thing. Gore would be streamed live to Qik via multiple videophones. No need for a pro journalist to sneak into Gore's talk and liveblog it, as I used to do with Steve Jobs keynotes. Web 2.0 had it covered. So what really happened? The only on-time account of the event came from CNET reporter Robert Vamosi, who used his conference speaker badge to get past security. Vamosi posted a thorough report less than an hour after Gore began. Hey Robert, didn't you get the memo? You're supposed to be out of work by now.
great moments in pr
Press banned from Al Gore's RSA keynote
In the Moscone Center, former vice president and current Valley privateer Al Gore will be speaking at the RSA Conference 2008 today at 2:15 p.m. — but there's no press allowed. There will, however, be hundreds of people with top-of-the-line technology and at least a passing familiarity with cryptography and the like. Hacks in the press room have been overheard discussing plans to sneak in. Valleywag encourages anyone with Wi-Fi, EVDO, a Twitter account with SMS enabled or, better yet, a videophone that can live stream to Qik or another service to let us know where you're posting smuggled coverage of the speech. (Photo by Dan Spisak)
great moments in pr
BuzzTemple wants to convert top Digg users to PR agents
Reportedly started by a pair of heavy Digg users who were tired of landing stories they promoted to the front page and not getting paid for it, BuzzTemple PR is looking to recruit heavy users of social services from Digg to Facebook, AIM to Second Life. While the site promises "We are not and will never be 'Pay Per Post,'" the jobs on offer basically amount to shilling for clients online, and words like "disclosure" don't appear on the site. But then Edelman flack Steve Rubel's job is shilling for clients online, and that firm has paid for coverage. So, yeah, sounds like yet another PR agency.
great moments in pr
