The application of public relations and the use of advertising are sometimes misunderstood, igniting a series of unanswered questions for companies needing to create awareness for themselves. (Read more…)

Surfing the web this morning, I came across an interesting interview on Talking Biz News with Hope Heyman, a senior vice president at Edelman (http://weblogs.jomc.unc.edu/talkingbiznews/?p=2096). Heyman has been in the public relations business for more than 25 years and she also worked as a business journalist. The interview touches on a number of facets regarding the relationship between public relations practitioners and business journalists, and Heyman’s insights should be required reading for any PR department or newsroom. (Read more…)

It’s easy for public relations firms to overestimate the impact of media coverage. Unless you land your client on the cover of Time or the front page of the New York Times, it can be disheartening to see how little impact a single piece of media coverage brings. My own history with media coverage is an example of how difficult it is to quantify the benefits of media coverage in the public relations world. (Read more…)

Countless business-oriented magazines have failed in the past few years, and the column space now available for technology companies looking to garner some publicity has become golden turf. Newspapers have slashed technology coverage; many long ago cut their weekly technology or business technology sections. So where can public relations professionals turn for a technology-friendly face these days? (Read more…)

Being a third party can sometimes lead to public relations headaches. Earlier this year I helped a journalist on a story about a company that shall remain nameless. I helped the journalist analyze some data and provided him with my perspective on what the data meant. I’ve done this hundreds of times over the past few years and this particular time was no different than any other — until the story was published. (Read more…)

Arizona is probably best known for three things: the Grand Canyon, sports, and retirement communities. Arizona doesn’t exactly top lists when it comes to notable businesses and the media moguls. Jeremy Pepper is a public relations professional who cut his teeth in Silicon Valley, Los Angeles, New York, and San Francisco during the dot-com boom, working for both new economy and old economy companies. (Read more…)

I recently received an interesting email from a PR Fuel reader that serves as an interesting public relations talking-point: “I recently emailed a press release to a newspaper writer and then followed up with a call. The writer said she doesn’t pick up email but was interested because of the telephone pitch. (Read more…)

To put together each PR Fuel story, we spend countless hours each week on research, scanning the globe for interesting stories, insights, and ideas from the world of public relations. These are just a few of the interesting PR-related items we’ve found recently. (Read more…)

The Vermont Teddy Bear Co., known for its array of themed teddy bears, became the subject of much public scorn when the company began selling a “Crazy For You” bear. The bear came complete with a straitjacket and commitment papers, and it riled advocates for the mentally ill and the governor of Vermont, among others. Under normal circumstances, this story would not be too odd, but the Vermont Teddy Bear Co.’s public relations response was anything but normal. (Read more…)

Recently I received a batch of CDs that contained a digital history of a little more than two years of my life. There were email exchanges with long-lost friends, spreadsheets containing old NCAA basketball tournament picks, and over 1,500 documents, including hundreds related to my old business. (Read more…)