Eye-catching "Revolution" campaign

It's clever, very very clever.

PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) have used Che Guevara's  granddaughter Lydia Guevara stripped of her clothes to pose semi naked with bandoliers of baby carrots across her shoulders and the iconic beret for a new advertisement campaign with the slogan:

 “Join The Vegetarian Revolution”.

‘It’s a homage of sorts to her late grandfather,’ said a PETA spokesman. ‘It very much evokes the tag line of the ad, which is “Join the vegetarian revolution”.’

While her grandfather fought for freedom, Lydia wants to change minds and make everyone go vegetarian. 

 (Che Guevara was an Argentine Marxist revolutionary, politician, author, physician, military theorist, and guerrilla leader. Since death, his stylized image has become a ubiquitous global symbol of counterculture).

The image of carrot-wearing Lydia appeared in papers all around the world.

Like I said, clever, very clever.

Discuss: How can you use celebrities or well-known people to support your cause?  What are the advantages and disadvantages of doing so?

UBank Proving a hit on YouTube

Refusing to follow the expected conservative marketing approach expected from a Bank, NAB has turned to Twitter, FaceBook and You Tube to launch it's start-up online and phone based banking brand, UBank - to lure customers who are allergic to bank branches.

Using humour the two-minute information videos, called Money Box, tackle issues such as consumerism and the global financial crisis - with very low key reference to NAB (in fact, you really have to strain your eyes to see the logo at the end).

How effective do you think this form of promotion is? Is using like media ie web-based to attract customers to a web-based service, an effective way to promote the brand?

Myth Busting Ad Myth-leading

Did they really think they would get away with it?

Coca-Cola's full page advertisement, which ran nationally on October 11, used well-known actress Kerry Armstrong to 'bust" some of the myths about their product. Oops.

Now Coca-Cola has been busted for misleading advertising after a joint complaint was lodged to the ACCC (Australian Competition and Consumer Commission) by the Obesity Policy Coalition, The Parents Jury and the Australian Dental Association.

Come on Coca-Cola - show a bit more respect for the intelligence of your customers!

Learning Exercise: Find out what is the role of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC). Do you think it plays an important role or is it just another bureaucracy that companies have to deal with when consumers have a complaint?

Local message becomes gobal in just three years!

As reported in the Fairfax press, up to one in seven people around the world flicked the switch for the good of the planet for Earth Hour.

It's hard to believe that a simple idea - turn off your lights for one hour - has become a global phenomenon in just three years.

Staging the event in thousands of locations in every time zone around the world was an enormous logistic challenge, largely co-ordinated from the local office of the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) Australia in Ultimo, Sydney.

Check out the website here for an outstanding model of how to use the internet to spread a message.

Consider: What did WWF do to turn a local promotion into a global one? Trawl the website and list all the elements that contributed to the spreading of a 'political' message - which resulted in the personal participation by millions of people right around the planet.

What price sponsorship?

Usually we hear of brands dumping their sponsored celebrities over an incident of wrong doing - so does the same rule apply if the shoe (or the undies) is on the other foot?

The recent news story that Pacific Brands, famous for the iconic Bonds range, is under fire for the decision to sack 1850 Australian workers and transfer those jobs offshore to China has upset many Australians, particularly as the company has received a reported $157m in recent years in government assistance.

As a result, tennis legend and former Australian of the Year Pat Rafter, and his fellow Bonds ambassadors, were urged to condemn their sponsor Pacific Brands for this decision.

Do you think it is appropriate for a celebrity to condemn or sack their sponsor? Just how responsible are they, as the 'face' of the brand, for the quality, ethics and standards of a product they are recommending by nature of their sponsorship arrangements?

(Consider the article here which outlines what the celebrity deal is likely to be, when forming your opinion).

"Former PR head real culprit, say Hardie lawyers" ...

How would you feel if you opened today's paper to read this headline in the Business Section - if you were Greg Baxter, former head of Public Relations for James Hardie?

It raises the question as to just how much responsibility public relations practitioners have in relation to the accuracy of the information they are instructed to release on behalf of a company that employs them.

The issue relates to the long running case in the NSW Supreme Court against the former directors of James Hardie and their actions in relation to paying of compensation to those suffering from asbestos-related illnesses as a result of James Hardie products.

Apparently the law firm Allens Arthur Robinson, who were advising Hardie at the time of the incident, named the former head of public relations as "the culprit" in announcing incorrect information when he issued a media release about a new asbestos compensation trust - even though the release had been approved by the Board.

What do you think? Just how responsible should the PR practitioner be for the issue of information on behalf of an organisation? What are their legal rights and responsibilities?

(The report of events on the asbestos compensation issue on James Hardie's Investor Relations website page makes interesting reading too. )

Putting a New Face on Social Networking

Victoria's bushfire emergency, Australia's greatest natural disaster. Photo: Jason South

The bushfire crisis in Victoria has shown another use for social networks such as Facebook, MySpace and Twitter. According to Emma Young reporting in the Sydney Morning Herald (11/2/09), users inundated Twitter, the microblogging site, with expressions of support.

In a more practical approach others set-up an account posting updates from the Country Fire Authority, dispersing the potential overload of people in search of information logging onto theofficial emergency services sites.

Even the Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, used the site to post messages to his 7,000 "followers" about how to make donations of cash, blood and seek government help.

Young also reported MySpace contact over 2 million users registered with a local group to relay information on emergency contacts and how to make donations; and Facebook had a number of groups created to support the families of those filled in the fires.

With social networking becoming a part of everyday interaction - how could you use this medium in a public relations campaign? Where would you draw the line between what was relevant information and what was straight-out promotion?

Do provocative, controversial campaigns work?

The charity, Adults Surviving Child Abuse (ASCA), has launched a campaign today of "in your face" print, radio and television commercials designed to get the issue of the long-term effects of child abuse onto the political agenda.

Do you think such campaigns work? What are the pros and cons of running such an approach to get attention to your cause? What role can public relations play in such a campaign?

Check out ASCA's media release and commercials here.

When there is no limit on budget .....

The Internet and digital media generally was used extensively during Barack Obama's campaign for President.

The numbers make interesting reading:

E-mail
13 million people on the e-mail list who received 7,000 variations of more than 1 billion e-mails

Donors
3 million online donors who contributed 6.5 million times

Social Networks
5 million "friends" on more than 15 social networking sites, 3 million friends on Facebook alone

Web site
8.5 million monthly visitors to MyBarackObama.com (at peak) 2 million profiles with 400,000 blog posts 35,000 volunteer groups that held 200,000 offline events 70,000 fundraising hubs that raised $30 million

Video
Nearly 2,000 official YouTube videos watched more than 80 million times, with 135,000 subscribers 442,000 user-generated videos on YouTube

Mobile
3 million people signed up for the text messaging program. Each received 5 to 20 messages per month

Phone calls
3 million personal phone calls placed in the last four days of the campaign.

You can get more details from this website

If you were doing an election campaign for a candidate, say someone running as a local member of Parliament, which of these techniques would you use and why? How would you obtain subscribers? How would you monitor the success of the campaign?

Spoof on "Body Image" good fun

Do Bratz dolls really give young girls a complex about their head size?

Sometimes it's good to have a laugh at just how silly things have become (or could become) in our media- driven world!

Check out this excellent example

Have you seen any other good send-ups of how the world of public relations/media works?

Mouth Wash - Wash Out?

Sydney's Sunday Telegraph (11/1/09) was just one of the many papers, TV stations and radio news reports around the world with the startling news "Listerine warning - Mouth Cancer Alert". In a damming front cover and two page coverage of quote: the health study the industry tried to bury.

As the market leader, Johnson & Johnson's product, Listerine, featured strongly in news reports. It's claimed they spent $6.9m from December 07 to November 08 on advertising for the product (compared to $0.3m for its closest competitor, Colgate Palmolive's Plax).

The final paragraph of the Telegraph story reads: "Johnson & Johnson was unable to give The Sunday Telegraph an official comment.

What steps would you take if you were in charge of the Johnson & Johnson team responsible for managing the response to this media crisis?

Largest rebranding exercise just launched

Woolworths are in the process of rolling-out the "largest rebranding exercise in recent corporate history" with the release of it's new logo this week. Huge undertaking with the stylised 'apple' logo appearing on 800 trucks, 780 supermarkets and on millions of items.

Read what Corporate Marketing Manager, Luke Dunkerley says about the company's strategy here:

The rebranding of Woolworths is a huge investment in money and resources. Do you think it will achieve the result they are after? What image do you think the new logo creates?