Public Relations

With the academic year winding up here at MIT and graduation upon us, I wanted to give everyone a few updates regarding what's going to be happening with the Consortium.

As we posted here on the blog, we are in the process of hiring a new research director, and we will have an announcement about who that is once the decision has been made here on the blog.

Last week was the end of my duration as the Consortium's project manager. I have now gone to work for PR firm Peppercom as Director of Customer Insights (see more at PRWeek and Bulldog Reporter, as well as Firm Voice and The Holmes Report--subscription-only, so I can't link to it. I co-authored some pieces with Peppercom founder Steve Cody in the past, including writing some thoughts pieces available from The Christian Science Monitor, PR News, and Bulldog Reporter, if you're interested in knowing more about what a Director of Customer Insights might think or do...(I'm still trying to figure that out myself.)

However, I will remain an official research affiliate with the Consortium and can still be reached at samford@mit.edu. That also means that, while I won't be writing here quite as often, I still plan to post a couple of times a week here on the Consortium blog, so don't think C3 is suddenly going to run out of posts on soaps or the WWE.

Continue reading "Changes Around C3: My New Position and Consortium Summer Schedule" »

Posted by Sam Ford at 11:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | View blog reactions

First off, since the following post is about reputation, I wanted to share with everyone the resulting white paper from the recent PR News Webinar I participated in with Peppercom. The paper is entitled "D=BC²: Are You a Digital Einstein?" See more here.

Sometimes, you can't help but wonder what companies are thinking. But here's a rule of thumb that I think might help anyone out in their decision-making process. If it's the type of move that you don't want the public to know about, then don't make it. Transparency is crucial.

Take, for instance, all the blogosphere discussion regarding Wal-Mart from earlier this month. For those who haven't heard the story, a Wal-Mart employee suffered serious brain damage after being hit by a truck in her van several years ago. She eventually won a settlement with the trucking company, but Wal-Mart decided to sue her in order to recoup medical expenses that had been paid out for her injury. As if this didn't seem suspect enough, it was complicated by the fact that the amount Wal-Mart was asking for was more than the amount the woman received, after lawyer fees. Ultimately, Wal-Mart took the funds remaining in the woman's trust, which amounted to approximately $277,000.

Continue reading "Transparency and the Public Eye: Wal-Mart's Shank Controversy" »

Posted by Sam Ford at 10:19 AM | Permalink | View blog reactions

We write rather frequently here at C3 on issues surrounding Intellectual Property (as well as things that suck, come to think of it), though, admittedly, home improvement falls a bit outside the usual area of focus. But, given some of the implications, both disturbing and humorous, of Lowes Home Improvement's recent trademark controversy, it seemed time to learn something about fence installation.

A couple of weeks ago, the register ran the story of Allen Harkleroad, a man who, after being frustrated by what appears to have been epically bad service from Lowes Home Improvement, went and did what we've all done on occasion: he complained.

On the Internet.

Continue reading "Lowes (tm) Sucks: Consumer Criticism and the Lowes Trademark Fiasco" »

Posted by Xiaochang Li at 10:07 AM | Permalink | View blog reactions

I've had the pleasure of being connected recently to some intelligent folks over at Peppercom, a public relations company that serves a variety of interesting clients, from The Columbia School of Journalism to Netflix to Panasonic to Tyco.

Ed Moed, who is one of the co-founders of Peppercom, wrote a piece recently about the public relations industry, focusing on the dangers of the way quantitative metrics are understood for measuring corporate reputations in the public relations industry.

Considering all that we've been writing lately about metrics in relation to the Nielsens, engagement, and both the television industry and the success of Web advertising (look here), I found his perspective on the dangerous assumptions always backing what are accepted as "hard numbers" to be illuminating.

In short, he looks at a recent study which measure company reputations on the basis of the amount of positive press that company has received. Ed's point, however, is that articles touting the release of some new product or service doesn't necessarily mean that readers, or the media itself, views those companies positively, just that they gave them some positive coverage.

Continue reading "The Problems with Measuring Reputation in the PR Industry" »

Posted by Sam Ford at 2:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (5) | View blog reactions

I wanted to point the way to some interesting posts from various Consulting Researchers with the Convergence Culture Consortium. A variety of our affiliated thinkers maintain regular blogs regarding their opinion of the latest developments in the media industries, and a wide variety of other subjects.

Henry Jenkins posted a piece on his blog last week emphasizing his own interest and respect with NBC's Heroes and his reading of a recent interview with Heroes executive producer Jesse Alexander, in which he brought up reading Jenkins' book Convergence Culture. Henry links his look at fan communities with Rob Kozinets' recent writing on wiki-media.

Jason Mittell writes about the contest among the different cities of Springfield across the country to claim The Simpsons and to host the premiere for the upcoming Simpsons Movie. The state Mittell calls home, Vermont, won the contest.

Continue reading "A Look at Recent Writing from Affiliated C3 Thinkers" »

Posted by Sam Ford at 10:58 AM | Permalink | View blog reactions