Victim of the tainted Chinese Milk (Courtesy of Chonkit Leong’s Blog)
One after another bad news came thick and fast for the middle kingdom. And then some more.
First up were the contaminated pet food which caused the deaths of many precious pooches and kitties in the West.
Michelle Obama at the DNC (courtesy of AP Images)
[This post was updated twice on end March 2015 and 27 July 2016]
Michelle Obama brought the house down at the Democratic National Convention this year. Her wonderful speech affirming Democratic Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton was widely lauded as one of the best speeches made in the ongoing race for the President of the United States, with elections slated for 8 November 2016.
Some have even proclaimed that she was the star of the show that night – and she isn’t even a politician by any measure of the word!
Courtesy of Christopher Chan
Yesterday, I flipped through My Paper and read that Singapore has hit the top spot in East West Communications global survey.
According to the report, all 192 countries in the United Nations together with another eight which were not are included in the survey. The company has also analysed five million references to the 200 countries or regions. These references are found in about 400,000 news articles found in 38 leading global media sources in the second quarter this year.
Crises can be opportunities if handled well, as these Chinese characters show (courtesy of tingilinde)
One of the most important skills PR practitioners need to know is crisis communication. That is when things go wrong but need to be made public. Public listed companies would probably be most familiar with this when sharing their quarterly earnings reports.
Hiding the truth is probably one of the worst things to do in such a situation. The widespread availability of information and records through both the internet and public libraries makes it difficult for one to fudge. Sooner or later the truth will come out, and it would be far better coming from you rather than a third party source.
Decided to follow the illustrious examples of some of my friends in highlighting the worthy reads in PR and marketing this week, focusing on those in Singapore’s blogosphere.
First up is Daniel’s excellent analysis of the Prima Deli debacle and how the company could have saved itself more heartache by harnessing the media and public opinion. Let’s hope and pray that they will survive this one.
Melvin Yuan of the PR2.0 Universe has a good take on the PR 2.0 bubble. Read it and see if you agree or disagree whether new media is a fad or will eventually exist side-by-side with other more mainstream forms.
Source of image
Here’s a counter post following my first one on how PR agencies should manage their clients. Hats off to Priscilla Tan who used to work in an agency but will now be joining a global MNC (drool).
Getting the most out of your PR agency doesn’t mean squeezing the life out of them. Conversely, it also doesn’t mean that you just let loose completely and pray everyday that page one news would come on its own. Sorry buddy it doesn’t work that way.
So what can you as a client do to optimise the Client-PR relationship?
Source of image
I got tipped off to write about this following Priscilla Tan’s expose on what goes on behind the doors of PR agencies and their clients. Many of the situations which she described – expecting page one news, wanting to be called “the next big thing”, and agency bosses “kow towing” to clients – are not unique indeed.
Uber marketing guru Professor Philip Kotler
I had the fortune of attending a recent conference featuring one of the world’s top management guru Philip Kotler. Apparently, he is a museum fan too and may feature the National Museum of Singapore in his next book. Woo hoo!
At the lecture, Professor Kotler shared about the rising importance of PR versus advertising and gave us a new acronym – PENCILS – in which to desribe the dimensions of PR. What does it mean?
I recently attended a conference by the PR Academy on “Markets and Brands – Positioning for the 21st Century”, and was pretty inspired by some of the speakers. One of them was Ho Kwon Ping, Chairman of Banyan Tree Holdings and creator of one of the world’s most highly respected and heavily awarded resort brand.
In his keynote speech “Branding, Marketing and Credibility in a Connected World”, Kwon Ping dispelled the marketing myth that “branding is everything and everything is a brand”. His chief contention is that people are paying far more attention to hype than reality. Advertising after all is largely self praise and this leads consumers to treat them with suspicion.
Got this interesting post by Guy Kawasaki which explains why PR doesn’t work in certain situations. According to the PRSite.com’s Margie Zable Fisher, the top 10 reasons are:
1) The client doesn’t understand the publicity process.
2) The scope of work is not detailed and agreed upon by both parties.