Financial Times: When Procter & Gamble is deciding whether to put its advertisements on television or elsewhere, it puts a call in to Nicosia, Cyprus. The same holds true for Nissan and dozens of other leading corporations and marketing-services agencies. The calls are requests for help and go to Nicosia because the city is the […]
Category: Marketing
Skweezer and copyright infringement
A lively discussion is bubbling on Jason Calcanis’ blog on the issue of how others use content you have produced where copyright enters into the picture and, in essence, what’s right and what’s not. Here’s how it started as outlined in Jason’s post on 28 December: It’s one thing to take headlines. It’s one thing […]
Marqui could re-define marketing and PR
I spent a very interesting 30 minutes last night listening to a Geek News Central podcast recorded on Tuesday – an interview with Stephen King, the CEO of Marqui, the company who’s paying $800 a month to certain bloggers to write about their product. When I first wrote about Marqui’s pay-the-bloggers programme last month, I […]
iPod Shuffle: The new Official Cool
This could be a no-brainer decision for anyone (like me, for instance) contemplating getting a digital music player – get an iPod Shuffle. Launched this week at Macworld in San Francisco, the iPod Shuffle is a USB flashdrive-based player that costs just $99 for the one with 512 megs capacity and $149 for the one-gig […]
Doing the iPod shuffle
iPodlounge: Apple’s retail store in San Francisco sold 20,000 iPod shuffle units in its first four hours of availability this week, depleting its entire inventory. […] While some individuals purchased four, six, and nine of the 512MB, $99 units, the day’s record was apparently set by someone who purchased 24 at once. iPod shuffles are […]
Breaking news blogger style
Steve Rubel has a very interesting story on a news story that’s not yet a news story (in the traditional sense) but probably will be soon – once the the media pick up on what blogs are already saying. He talks about the posts and comments in blogs about an apparent rift between Hewlett-Packard and […]
Online ad market in Europe set for shake up
New York Times: A motor scooter in Manchester, an apartment in Amsterdam, a poster in Paris. All are available via Craigslist, an online bulletin board that presents a new challenge to the established players in the estimated $100 billion global market for classified advertising. This story in today’s NY Times highlights changes in a relatively […]
Complaints about Apple prices in Europe spur online petition
ZDNet UK reports today that an online petition has been set up to put pressure on Apple to bring European prices for the new Mac mini in line with their US equivalents. The petition – created by and written by Timo Schöler and simply called Reasonable price for the Mac mini in the EU – […]
Microsoft gags tech news bloggers
Reported on Neowin this afternoon: After an exclusive story here at Neowin.net regarding future Windows Mobile Technologies, Microsoft Bloggers across the world syndicated the news and each received legal threats to take down the material. Bloggers who follow Microsoft technologies are calling on Robert Scoble as a way of contacting Microsoft and are questioning Microsoft’s […]
Insights on GM executive blog
If you’ve been wondering who was behind The GM Fastlane Blog, General Motors’ step into the public blogosphere by executive blogger Vice Chairman Bob Lutz, Susannah Gardner at Buzz Marketing with Blogs has the details: The blog was result of an ongoing conversation between [PR agency] Hass [MS&L] and GM about blogs. It is run […]
Panel discussion: Blogging and branding
Highlight points from the panel – pictured, left to right: Anita Campbell, Evelyn Rodriguez, Dan Taylor, Andy Lark – moderated by Elizabeth Albrycht. The panel addressed the broad theme of how the connectedness of blogs and other networked media creates both threats and opportunities for corporate brands: Where are conversations occurring and how does this […]
Panel discussion: Blogging and journalism
Highlight points from the panel – pictured, left to right: Dan Forbush, Tom Foremski, Jeremy Wright, Heath Row – moderated by Dan Forbush. The panel addressed the impact of blogs on their work, their general view on the value of blogs as a communication channel, and how best to promote their blogs. Tom: Blogs are […]
The Hobson & Holtz Report – Jeremy Wright Interview – January 27, 2005
Welcome to a the second Special Edition of the Hobson & Holtz Report, a 30-minute conversation with Jeremy Wright recorded live at the New Communications Forum 2005 in Napa, California, USA, on January 27, 2005. A high-profile business blogger, Jeremy authors the Ensight blog and is now focused on building his new venture, Inside Blogging. […]
Making Tablet PC evangelism wholly transparent
Having bloggers evangelize Microsoft’s Tablet PC is what Steve Rubel suggests as an answer to Robert Scoble’s vexation on the seeming invisibilty of the Tablet PC: So Microsoft, if you want to save the Tablet PC please take the hundreds of thousands of dollars you might be earmarking for a new ad campaign and invest […]
Maybe this is the future of search
Yesterday Microsoft announced the release version of its new MSN Search tool, and, as reported by CNet News, gears up for a marketing and advertising blitz to imprint its offering in consumers’ minds: As expected, MSN, a unit of the software giant, has taken its Web search technology out of the laboratory, and placed it […]
Comments fuel engaging conversations
The GM FastLane Blog is attracting quite a lot of commentary and opinion, with varying views being expressed on how effective it is as a means of engaging with GM’s customers. I’ve posted commentary, too, most recently on the role of PR in its development and some insights on how it started and how commenting […]
The genius of Apple coolness
I had my first true iPod experience today. You know, the feeling of coolness as you’re out and about in public with those little white buds sticking in your ears with the white cables dangling down that disappear under your jacket. Yes, I did succumb to strong temptation when I was in the US last […]
Hear the podcast, read the interview
During the New Communications Forum 2005 conference in California last week, Shel Holtz and I interviewed Jeremy Wright in a special podcast of For Immediate Release: The Hobson & Holtz Report. In that 30-minute conversation, Jeremy talks about his planned book on blogging, comments on his being dooced for blogging, and discusses his own blog […]
McDonalds deceives with fake blog
What do you make of this? Kevin Dugan writes about a website and faux blog from McDonalds as part of their advertising in yesterday’s Superbowl: […] Anyway, I dutifully visited the site and was intrigued initially to see it also had a blog. Then I realized it is a fake blog. Even the post comments […]
Firefox NYT ad poster delays
As one of the contributors to the ground-breaking Firefox double-page ad in the New York Times in December, I ordered the poster version from the Mozilla store expecting to receive it in early January. A couple of emails in early January reported on delays finalizing and shipping the poster as corrections were being made (name […]