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It seems like everyone has something controversial to say about sponsored content these days, from John Oliver on HBO to even us here at Contently.Much of that controversy centers around two key questions: Is brand-backed content on publisher sites labeled well enough? And is it eroding the publishers’ editorial independence and reputation?
Now, a Google engineer has taken on this transparency and labeling challenge with a browser plug-in for Chrome and Firefox called AdDetector, that adds another layer of labeling to sponsored posts. It’s drumming up a fair amount of buzz in the media world already....
The 50th anniversary publication of Roald Dahl's children's classic Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is leaving a bad taste in some mouths. Controversy surrounds the cover of the Penguin Modern Classics edition, which eschews Willy Wonka's fanciful factory, golden tickets, Oompa-Loompas and other familiar story elements. Instead, we get a stylized image of a young girl, quaffed to the hilt in colorful bows and silks, sitting in her mother's lap.
Detractors are denouncing the shot for sexualizing kids, and they deride its sleazy '60s vibe as inappropriate for a story geared toward young people. They have a valid point, though in fairness, the broader meaning of the image is open to all sorts of interpretations. (It's not overtly sexual. I mean, we don't see Wonka's willy, thank goodness.)...
Earlier today, Paramount Pictures Australia tweeted a poster which features the Ninja Turtles jumping from an exploding building. No problem, right? How about if the release date for the film in Australia is September 11th? Still not a problem, you say?
How about if the poster that was tweeted has the Ninja Turtles jumping from a New York City building that’s exploding with "SEPTEMBER 11" in bold lettering at the bottom? And Leonardo has a NYC pin in blue and white just so you’re extra-aware that you’re in New York City?...
Last week Uber General Manager Chris Nakutis (follow him on Twitter) spoke to a group of entrepreneurs about his experience launching the e-commerce platform Short Stack–and became the latest heavy-hitter to weigh in on the “do startups need PR” debate.
As you can tell from our headline, he answered in the negative.Nakutis said that PR was not a valuable tool in growing his business and that the return on investment was not immediate or well-defined despite the good press.
Here’s the key quote: new companies “can almost jump over the PR process.”...
Microsoft already had a public relations crisis on its hands with Thursday's news that it was laying off 18,000 employees. That's 14 percent of its workforce, and the biggest batch of job cuts in the company's nearly 40-year history.
How it's communicating those layoffs to employees doesn't seem to be helping matters. Microsoft published the email from Stephen Elop, head of Microsoft's devices unit, to about 12,500 laid-off employees. The lion's share of the employees who are losing jobs come from his department.
The memo begins, "Hello there," ends with "Regards," and is loaded with business jargon. Terms such as "financial envelope," "business continuity," and "right-size our manufacturing operations" are peppered throughout. Worse, it barely makes clear that its recipients have been discharged. It's mostly about the company's new strategy to make and sell Windows phones, which wouldn't seem a primary concern for people who no longer work for Microsoft....
...As Kiera Butler noted on Mother Jones, Chick-fil-A—whose chicken sandwich is stuffed with 27 grams of fat, 1750 milligrams of sodium, and an ingredients list almost as long as the Declaration of Independence — is an odd fit to launch a wellness site.
It’s clearly an effort to change the image of a brand that’s currently recognized nearly as much for its stance against gay marriage than for its fast food, but in doing so, Chick-fil-A is dismissing two of the cardinal rules of content creation: don’t trick your consumers, and don’t piss them off.
Healbe finished up its Indiegogo scampaign for its miracle, calorie-counting wristband on April 15 with promises to ship in June. As we have reported previously, even if the product was suddenly scientifically possible (which it isn’t), that was a really tough deadline to meet. For one thing, manufacturing a complicated electronic product in two months would be unheard of and, for another, when photos of its prototype leaked online, hardware experts who we showed them to commented that it looked rough and primitive.
Well, after Healbe had teased that it would be releasing its June delivery schedule this week… it turns out we were right....
It seems that no matter how good you think you are at cleaning, you’re just not up to scratch – missing those vital nooks and crannies where all manner of everyday dirt might hide and fester. If only there were a solution to your squalor! A spokesman for ContractCleaning.co.uk, who polled their employees, said: ‘We appear to be a nation of clumsy people, and not only that we’re lazy as well, with many people admitting they’ve never once cleaned behind the fridge.
Given that this story was created and pushed into the news by a professional cleaning company, it’s little surprise that the results condemned our cleanliness so. That said, there’s a silver lining here: ContractCleaning.co.uk created this story by polling its employees… therefore, what we’ve really discovered, if this story is true (usual caveats apply, there), is that people who hire professional cleaners to clean their homes are utterly filthy.
The maker of ‘Watch Dogs’ sent an Australian news publication a safe with a copy of the game inside. When staffers got suspicious, they called the cops.
Online video ads were supposed to be a marketer’s dream. Instead, many become lost in an unruly maze.
...According to the standard spiel, ads in this medium are alluring because they can be aimed at specific audiences. They can roll in front of content that people want to see. They exist in the digital space where coveted demographic groups are spending more time. It’s an enticing portrait, but one that glosses over an essential question: Is anybody watching? By many estimates, more than half of online video ads are not seen, either because they are buried low on web pages or run in tiny, easily ignored video players on those pages, or run simultaneously with other ads. Vindico, an ad management platform company, deemed 57 percent of two billion video ads surveyed over two months to be “unviewable.”...
In February, Chevron apologized to residents of a town where a fracking well exploded by giving them pizza coupons. Columbia University seems to be taking a similar, food-based approach to contrition over its alleged mishandling of high-profile sexual assault cases.
Anna Bahr—who writes for the campus magazine the Blue and White and publications including The New York Times Upshot blog, according to her Twitter profile—tweeted a photo of a cake she saw in the Ferris dining hall decorated with red roses and a message written in cursive that reads “sexual violence prevention”:...
Note to self: Never mention a celebrity on Twitter from a company account. Recently, it hasn't worked out well for two different brands.
A few weeks ago, people were in an uproar over Red Sox slugger Big Papi's selfie with the President. Then, last week, Katherine Heigl issued a lawsuit to Duane Reade for posting a paparazzi photo of her on their Facebook and Twitter accounts.
Here's what they posted on Twitter (Facebook's post was almost identical)...
Before the “selfie” term was coined, many people were already figuring out ways to take photos of themselves...
Before the “selfie” term was coined, many people were already figuring out ways to take photos of themselves, whether it be with digital cameras, smartphones, or even film cameras back in the day. Safe to say “selfies” aren’t exactly new per se.
However with the term having been officially coined, it seems that there is now a mental disorder associated with it as well.
According to the American Psychiatric Association, the act of taking a selfie can be considered a mental disorder. The disorder has been labeled selfitis and is defined as an obsessive compulsive desire to take photos of oneself and publish it onto social media, like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and so on..
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A GIANT public relations agency that has been under fire for a couple of gaffes in the last couple of weeks says it is taking steps to try to make sure such blunders do not recur — the kinds of steps it would recommend to clients in the same predicaments.
“What the leadership team decided,” Ben Boyd, president for practices, sectors and offerings at Edelman in New York, said in an interview on Friday, is that “we will treat ourselves like we treat a client.”
“Lesson learned,” he added.
“Just because you advise clients on the complexities of today’s world, that doesn’t mean they’re easier to manage,” Mr. Boyd said, adding that “it would have been smart” to have had in place at Edelman some of the internal protocols and processes that the agency’s 5,000 employees suggest that clients adopt....
Last week, Gawker uncovered a hapless tie-up between genetically modified seed/pesticide giant Monsanto and Condé Nast Media—publisher of The New Yorker, Bon Appetit, GQ, Self, Details, and other magazines—to produce "an exciting video series" on the "topics of food, food chains and sustainability."
Marion Nestle was offered $5,000 to participate for a single afternoon. Since then, I've learned that Condé Nast's Strategic Partnerships division dangled cash before several high-profile food politics writers, in an unsuccessful attempt to convince them to participate....
The first half of 2014 is already in the books, and it looks like a lot of marketers and companies didn’t learn anything from last year about social media. Many brands still made a number of bad judgments and stumbled when it came to handling their social profiles, which led to backlash and a tarnished image for some.
Mistakes can happen anytime, and with half the year already over, now is a great time to discuss some of 2014’s biggest marketing and social media blunders so far. With five full months ahead, this should serve as a great lesson for all individuals, brands, and companies trying to market themselves to the public.
Here are some things to keep in mind: - It’s easy to post things on social media, especially on Facebook and Twitter. Remember, though, that backlash can come just as swiftly and easily. Sure, people make mistakes from time to time, but with all the previous instances, everyone should know by now how not to act in public, especially if you’re representing a brand known the world over....
...With MH370, the flight seemed to vanish into the ether, like all those horror stories about the Bermuda Triangle. And just when the airliner had that atrocious “breaking news” down to a minimum, the unthinkable happened over the Ukrainian coast as MH17 was shot down…presumably by separatists in the region.
And then Sky News went rummaging through the luggage of the dead passengers on live television.
In the report from Sky News’ Colin Brazier, viewers can practically hear the internal ethics debate as he says, “I probably shouldn’t be doing this” before doing the very thing he knows he shouldn’t be doing....
The great thing about social media is that it allows whatever stupid thing you want to say to reach your audience instantly. The terrible thing about social media is that it allows whatever stupid thing you want to say to reach your audience instantly. It takes about 30 seconds of thought to accurately gauge whether your brilliant marketing gimmick will build brand engagement or be prosecuted as some kind of hate crime in certain countries in Europe.
The folks on this list did not take those 30 seconds......
...On Monday, the NCAA announced a $20 million settlement with former and current players seeking to be compensated by the use of their images and likenesses in video games. That's in addition to the $40 million EA Sports has also settled on. Although the NCAA claimed there has been no compromise of its policy that prohibits any form of compensation for performance, the deal was announced the same day as the start of a long-awaited antitrust suit brought by former UCLA star Ed O'Bannon in a U.S. District Court in Oakland....
An interview about criminal charges in the Richmond Height, OH mayor's office quickly escalated on Thursday, as Mayor Miesha Headen tried to shove reporter Sarah Horn's camera out of her face. Headen quickly apologized, but the awkward and aggressive exchange continued as she refused to answer the reporter's questions.
...It seems that luck is a simple affair – if you don’t get a parking ticket while having sex in your car, you’re one of the lucky ones amongst us. However, if you don’t self-report as ‘lucky’ in an online survey, it’s clearly your own fault: However, two in five people who say they are unlucky have never done anything superstitious to turn around their luck with 61 per cent of them saying they would happily walk under a ladder.
There may be a very good reason why people considered to be unlucky haven’t gone out of their way to ‘turn their luck around’, namely that that isn’t really a thing. But, far be it to point out such minor details, when the stakes of poor luck are so high: Unlucky people are also twice as likely to be single and will probably not have any children.
Naturally, the company who paid for this ‘research’ have their own vested axe to grind:
A global ad agency has sparked outrage with its mattress firm cartoon promo showing Pakistani teen Malala Yousafzai being shot in the head.
Ogilvy & Mather is catching serious heat for the sick illustration for Indian bedding firm Kurl-On that sees the young schoolgirl "bouncing back" from being hit by a Taliban gunman.
In the advert Malala is shot in the face, falls backwards covered in blood and is treated in hospital.
But then, after bouncing off the mattress, she receives an award wearing her trademark pink and gold hijab....
When it comes to recent Google Plus news, what we have from Google is a failure to communicate.
To recap, last Thursday Vic Gundrota, senior vice president for Google Plus, publicly announced his resignation by this rather touching Google Plus post And Then.
His boss, CEO Larry Page, responded with his own G+ post to Gundotra’s.
The cat was out of the bag the previous week with this post on the Secret app: “Vic Gundotra is interviewing.”
Of course the news exploded in the technology media and speculation continues to echo around the Internet. Including Google’s own survey asking if G+ would be missed as reported by Curtis Jacob?
What was missing was a proactive Google PR response....
If you're going to launch a "War on Fox News" -- and decide to appear on the Fox News Channel anyway -- you should have been prepared better than this.
...The first lesson is this, as stated by Political Wire’s Taegan Goddard: “Pro tip: If you’re running for Congress and pledging a “war on Fox News” then it’s probably best not to appear on Fox News.”
But I only agree with that partially. Appearing on Fox News while pledging a war on the network could have turned this local Democratic candidate into a popular national Democratic hero—if he was a skilled debater who could have held his own against an experienced host....
Samsung may be learning a lesson this week that most of us observed by watching Mr. Smith a long time ago: What flies in Hollywood doesn’t having any relation to the real politick of Washington, D.C. And so it is that headlines are calling out both Samsung and Boston Red Sox slugger David Ortiz for “punking” the President with a moment reminiscent of Ellen DeGeneres’ selfie-fulfilling prophecy at the Oscars that did, indeed, set a record for the most retweets....
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Bravo!