May 21

Written by: News Account
5/21/2008 5:52 AM

The media is providing significant coverage of what’s happening in the ever-changing, challenging world faced by communicators. Working with Fleishman-Hillard’s DC office, we have identified some media reports worth sharing:

- Speakers at a major advertising conference urged executives to stop wallowing in self-pity and meet the challenges of new media head-on, reports the New York Times. The remarks, delivered at the leadership conference of the American Association of Advertising Agencies, underscored the need for the industry to change the way it does business, recalibrate itself and respond aggressively to profound shifts in media, consumer behavior and technology that are remaking the advertising landscape. "We should just stop talking about what was," said Tom Carroll, the "Four A's" chairman. "You're not sure what's ahead of you but you have to keep driving." Lee Clow, TBWA's Chairman and Chief Creative Officer, said, "Stop whining." Eric Schmidt, Google's CEO, told the audience that digital media will "create new opportunities for advertisers and new opportunities for information, which will come in the form of developing new forms of stortytelling, adding, "The scale of this is underappreciated."

- Proctor & Gamble, a longtime leader in TV advertising and sponsorships, has been shifting its marketing focus to the Internet, reports Promo Magazine, producing its own online video programs and launching niche Web sites that obliquely plug the company’s products. Last year P&G launched is own online soap opera, "Crescent Heights," that included product placements of Tide in its three-minute Webisode segments. Capessa.com, a topic-driven Web site aimed at women, and Petside.com, for animal lovers, are aimed at niche audiences.

- Corporate blogging has hit the mainstream, reports Financial Week. Coca-Cola, Marriott and Kodak are among the companies appointing "Chief Bloggers" to help tell their story and engage consumers. Today more than 11% of Fortune 500 companies have corporate blogs, and the number is increasing.

- The handbag designer Coach came under fire, reports AdWeek, after funding a university project featuring "Heidi Cee," a fake online personality, designed to generate word of mouth about the brand. Students in a Hunter College PR course created "Cee," a purported female student who used a series of fabricated online and blog postings to enlist help finding her lost Coach purse. More than 15,000 online users accessed "Cee's" text and video postings in which she detailed research regarding criminal activity, child labor and terrorism associated with counterfeit goods before the class went public that Cee wasn't real.

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