Tag: Public Relations

Brand it like Banyan Tree

June 6, 2007 • Public Relations • 8 comments

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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.

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I Can’t Believe It Yet Again!

May 11, 2007 • Public Relations • 10 comments

Cheers!
Let’s toast to more blogging successes!

Dear readers,

Thank you so much for your support, links and visits. I just found out that this blog is ranked 9th according to the Buzz Bin’s list of Top 15 Independent PR Blogs. While I do sneak in some personal bits here and there, my chief intention is to share my thoughts and those of others on PR, marketing, branding and social media issues here since I first started about a year and a half ago.

Oh yes, since we are on the subject of accolades, I do invite all of you to visit my other pet project yesterday.sg. That apparently is ranked the 5th museum blog in the world (out of 100 museums blogs) according to this list from Museums and the Web 2007.

Looks like its time to pop the champagne and celebrate! Definitely couldn’t do it without all of you!

10 Tips to Hit the Headlines

February 20, 2007 • Public Relations • 9 comments

This is a rehash of something I wrote for a major national newspaper more than two years ago. I have tweaked it to be more comprehensive, with the general principles remaining the same. Of course, this doesn’t guarantee coverage everytime, but if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again!

Here are 10 tips to improve your chances of making it into the news:

1) Understand the needs and target audiences of different media. Establish rapport with journalists and editors and speak to them to understand what they are gunning for. Which categories of stories do they normally cover? What are their editorial styles?

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New School of PR

February 6, 2007 • Public Relations • 5 comments


Courtesy of Hugh MaCleod’s gapingvoid blog

I am currently attending a conference on Strategic Media Relations organised by Pacific Conferences. Its a good refresher on public relations and also an opportunity to broaden my horizons and network.

As usual, it covered the blogosphere’s growing influence (57 million blogs and counting), use of RSS, wikis, podcasts, photo/video communities, and so on.

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The Death of the Press Release?

January 25, 2007 • Public Relations • 2 comments

Read this post by Long Tail’s Chris Anderson about how social media relations brings a different dimension compared to traditional mainstream media PR. He blogs about the dilemma faced by traditional PR practitioners as captured by this quote:

“So now imagine that you’re one of those PR professionals. What do you do? Stick with the world you know, and continue calling and emailing releases to the traditional press (trying not to notice that their ranks are shrinking and influence waning)? Start spamming bloggers, too, and hope for the best? Or just treat alpha bloggers like traditional press and shower them with love, while ignoring the rest?”

His suggestion to evolve the role of PR from external relations to internal relations is radical. Can we as PR professionals coach the numerous employees in our organisation to do the outreach through their respective social media channels instead of doing it ourselves? Chris suggested some possible topics for coaching:

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Social Media Relations

November 22, 2006 • Public Relations • no comments

Came across this excellent piece from the net savvy executive on how one should manage and deal with bloggers, podcasters, you-tubers and other digital denizens. They have coined a new term for it called Social Media Relations. This could be an interesting offshoot from traditional public relations which is usually more concerned with Main Stream Media (MSM).

The key roles of Social Media Relations?

1) Coordinate the development and implementation of social media engagement strategy and policies, including blogging policy, formal blogger relations programs and social media monitoring programs.

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