Critical Mass PR

Pop music star Sting held a news conference at a New York Apple store on Nov. 15 to announce his Sting 25 “appumentary,” an iPad app with historical interviews, music videos and concert footage promoting a career-spanning CD box set of the same name. Similarly, Clear Channel Broadcasting, Inc.’s iHeartRadio app repurposes audio and commercial messages [...]

A recap of my 2011 Digital Dialogue column offering digital communication advice as published in the PR Tactics Journal by the Public Relations Society of America. Happy Holidays and a prosperous 2012 to everyone! Mobile’s challenges for digital communicators (Jan 2011) – Tablets, Tumblr and a pack of mobile options kicked off a year of communicators needing [...]

When Steve Jobs died Oct. 5th, digital media outlets published instant tributes to the man who changed how people consume media and software. Every major news source covered his death; tech gurus like The Wall Street Journal’s Walt Mossberg wrote essays, the President issued a statement and millions of social media users posted their respects. Wired [...]

“Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it,” Ferris Bueller said in the 1986 film, “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.” Bueller’s comment is still true in today’s consumer technology market, where users of ubiquitous services like Netflix and Facebook endure rapid changes to features, user [...]

They’re everywhere! Fancy graphics fused with interesting and even humorous facts, collectively known as infographics, are taking over the Web in a similar manner as viral videos, retweets and e-books have before them. But aren’t these just visual aids? And haven’t newscasts and publications like USA Today used them for decades to help tell stories? Yes and yes, but [...]

Google+ debuted in June and amassed its first 25 million users faster than any other social network, according to PC Magazine. This finally established Google’s social media presence, after its previous Wave and Buzz experiments received little fanfare. Google+ functions similarly to Facebook, including requiring users to register their real names. Google experienced crisis-level backlash in July [...]

The President completed a social networking trifecta in July, hosting a Twitter town hall meeting that generated 119,000 #AskObama tweets containing 40,000 unique questions, according to TwitSprout. The President’s digital communications strategy may focus on balancing activity across several channels, but in the private sector, Facebook, Google and others are waging the battle for social media [...]

LinkedIn Corp. closed its first day of public trading on May 19 at $94.25 per share, tallying a net worth of nearly $9 billion. This development triggered optimism for other social media companies anticipating Initial Public Offerings (IPOs), including Facebook — with a projected $100 billion valuation, according to CNBC — and eventually Twitter. Regional deal-of-the-day [...]

Aflac fired “spokesduck” Gilbert Gottfried over his comments about the Japanese tsunami. GoDaddy CEO Bob Parsons documented an elephant hunt that angered PETA.  An Applebee’s restaurant in Michigan accidentally served alcohol to a toddler. These headlines illustrate how crisis topics vary. However, there is a common mindset that PR practitioners can apply to help manage [...]

I’m fortunate on occasion to receive books for review. Such is the case with When the Headline Is You: An Insider’s Guide to Handling the Media, authored by media and crisis communications trainer Jeff Ansell, with Jeffrey Leeson. My thanks to both for sharing a copy. Ansell’s 16 years of journalism and 22 years of [...]