Amazing Insight on the "Antennagate" Apple PR scandal

This video offers funny insight on the Apple faulty antenna crisis. It is done by the same group that did the Tiger Woods crash animation. Funny.

I just won the National Science Foundation's|Public Entity Risk Institute| Swiss Re Dissertation Fellowship (a long title)

My friends & collegues

I hope you are having a good summer.

Today, I found out I was awarded the National Science Foundation's|Public Entity Risk
Institute| Swiss Re Dissertation Fellowship (a long title).

In summary, its a top award in the field of disaster studies.

More details can be found here:
http://clas.ucdenver.edu/periship/Program.html
http://clas.ucdenver.edu/periship/Fellows.html

A formal press release will be issued in the coming days.

Thank you for your help and support everyone.

A fascinating public relations tactic

BP is blaming Transocean; Transocean is blaming Halliburton; Halliburton is blaming BP. Publics will blame all three companies. These companies really need to rethink their approach to handling this crisis.

Completed Web Redesign

I was tired having a Flash site so I have moved everything to Blogger.

With the arrival of the iPad I (like many others) are thinking twice about using Flash. I loved Flash but it does make maintaining things a challenge. Rather than investing in a content management system, I just decided to tweak blogger to my liking.

Plus as a graduate student, paying a hosting amount to Yahoo was getting old.

I hope you like my new site. I will continue tweaking it. Thank you for visiting.

If you are interested in how I made the edits, email me. I will be happy to share them with you.

REDESIGN!!

This blog is being redesigned. If everything looks a hot mess, it is because I am working on redesigning the look! Under construction

Spotlight: SPINdustry isn’t terrible: An Entertainment PR background perspective

This post by Lauren Fernandez at http://www.laurenafernandez.com/ is good rebuttal to the points I made in the blog post below (Women, Reality Television, and Public Relations).

She makes good points that highlight the complexity of the entertainment public relations world. A good read:

http://www.laurenafernandez.com/blog/spindustry-isnt-terrible-from-an-entertainment-pr-background/

Women, Reality Television, and Public Relations

This week, I learned that socialite/gossip magazine favorite Kim Kardashian is producing a documentary on the world of celebrity public relations.

These shows truly fascinate me. Ms. Kardashian's show joins a reality tv marketplace already occupied by another show focusing on celebrity/fashion pr titled Kell on Earth.

The focus of Kell on Earth is on a Ms. Cutrone who apparently has made a name for herself due to her aggressive "diva" style to management . According to news reports, she fired (and threatened to sue) an intern for blogging. In addition, some of the show's episodes explore the issue of firing her employees in extensive detail.)

And who can forget the short lived Power Girls on MTV which focused on publicist Lizzie Grubman (who went from representing stars like Puffy Combs & Jay Z to serving jail time for a road rage incident in which she injured 16 people).

In my classes, I make a point of discussing the myths these shows perpetuate:

A. You simply have to be pretty to succeed in public relations.

B. Making a spectacle of yourself and your client are simply what pr is about.

C. Aggressive, type-A careerists with a take no prisoners attitude are those who succeed in pr.

D. PR is simply about partying with socialites

I am not against anyone making a living. Ms. Cutrone and Kardashian have a right to sell whatever vision of public relations they feel is appropriate. And to be honest, what they are portraying is (in some cases) not far from the truth. As my father always warns " Don't be too judgmental of others."

My question, however, is: How can we highlight the numerous women who work in public relations, do good work, and do not engage in any of the "interesting" behaviors the shows portray.

The majority of my bosses in public relations have been women. Whether in Washington DC where I worked with smart women at the American Insurance Association or in Indonesia at UNCEF, I have met some very talented women in pr.

They are hard working, family oriented people who come in, put a long day of work, and go home to work another shift to take care of their families.

I think their stories need to be highlighted. As pr people, we can use our skills to showcase these women because out there in the world, the women of pr people are seeing are not representative of numerous pr professionals I have encountered.