My thoughts on the record setting (2.9 million) episode dubbed “Public Relations.”

The crew at AMC – writers, producers, etc. – has lost nothing on their collective fastballs.

They could have called the episode “Private Relations” given what Don’s up to when he is not wooing clients, barking orders at his creative team, pouring over paperwork with his lawyer or brooding around the office.

Speaking of the office, Don’s new agency, Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce, lives pretty high on the hog for a fledgling one-year old firm, but then again, it’s all about image for Don and Co. And, you gotta love the fake second floor they talk about with clients and prospects.

Don is Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce. “We are all here to please you” is what Peggy tells Don after he unceremoniously drops her from the Jantzen presentation because the idea of having a woman in the room while pitching a bathing suit client is pinching Don’s tab collar even tighter.  I think the “we” includes his clients and potential clients.

Don’s no natural with the media, but brilliant marketeer that he is– he got it after just one mis-step with Ad Age. You just know the pending Wall Street Journal profile will produce some great business leads for Sterling Cooper in future episodes so the firm won’t have to bother with the “cattle call” pitches with multiple agencies for seemingly second-tier accounts.

However, the process of “getting Bert’s man at the Wall Street Journal on the phone” and Don’s wooing of said “man” was way too easy.

How many of us ad/pr/marketing men or women would have the stones (or is it the integrity?) to kick a prospect (Jantzen) out of our offices – particularly when the firm has just lost a sizable piece of business –  for simply showing an unwillingness to let down their hair and do something bold versus going the staid, safe route to generating sales, attention and customer loyalty?

- Tim Hurley

//

//

//

//

All joking aside, I was thrilled at the opportunity to participate in this year’s conference. Each year, the world’s top technology leaders, entrepreneurs and influencers gather together for three days of thought-provoking discussion and debate, which ultimately informs Fortune magazine’s editorial coverage for the coming year.

I was able to meet some extremely passionate leaders and entrepreneurs during my time at the conference. Here’s a sampling of just a few companies that are absolutely on fire right now, and I think deserve a shout out. Each one has found an innovative way to address the age-old need for entertainment and relevant content through the evolving media landscape:

Flipboard: You know you are on to something when you break the Internet. Okay, so maybe it wasn’t the entire Internet. However, when Mike McCue launched his latest company, the response from people eager to get the free iPad app was so great that Flipboard couldn’t accommodate everyone immediately.

McCue demonstrated the sought after app for the first time publicly at Fortune Brainstorm TECH. Inspired by the beauty of print and designed for the iPad, Flipboard creates a “magazine” out of a user’s social content. Flipboard aims to improve how people discover, view and share content across their social networks, and judging from the immediate and incredible response in the first few days, it looks like it will do just that!

Zynga: Did you know that more than 30 million Facebook users fertilize and grow crops every day on their FarmVilles? We have Zynga to thank for that. Zynga makes social games that are free and accessible for everyone to play. Every month, 235+ million people interact with their friends and express their unique personalities through games like FarmVille, Mafia Wars, YouVille and Zynga Poker. Zynga players have also raised more than $3 million for several international nonprofits by purchasing virtual social goods within their favorite games that have benefited earthquake victims in Haiti and contributed to school lunch programs for children.

Scribd: As the largest social publishing and reading site in the world, Scribd has set out to rewrite the rules of publishing. The company has made it incredibly simple for anyone to share and discover informative, entertaining and original written content on the Web and mobile devices. Scribd maximizes the power of the Web to bring readers and creators of written content together, regardless of physical or format constraints, or even where or how they want to share and consume that content. On Scribd, there are no printing, distribution or storage costs. Content gets quickly discovered through a network of social websites and search engines, where even the most obscure topics find their audience.

Stay tuned for more Fortune Brainstorm TECH highlights, as well as commentary and a link to my favorite presentation of the conference!  (Hint: There was some serious dancing involved!)

–Posted by Jill Newberry

Highly-targeted self-service ads based on information about users, which individuals or small businesses can design with a simple jpeg image, easily afford and closely track the results of, is one reason Facebook ads have taken off. Facebook ads are organic – designed right on the site. Due to Facebook having such a rich data set, advertisers no longer have to track users behavior to determine where to advertise – they can join conversations in targeted environments using Facebook’s market research. The data of 400 million people: where they reside, what their interests are and more importantly, who their friends are, is invaluable to marketers. It is no wonder why 66 percent of all marketers have now integrated social media into their strategy in some way.

Whereas Google returns advertising results when searches are conducted by users, Facebook targets ads to you to help you determine what consumers need or what might be interesting to consumers – generating demand and building a proposition for brand advertising. Facebook’s revenue, likely to reach $1 billion in 2010, is largely driven by low-priced small self-serve ads ($300-400 million), engagement/brand ads ($100million) and Microsoft’s ad campaigns ($50 million). In addition, applications inside Facebook that host ads to direct users to other applications get roughly fifty cents per click-through.

Media companies or outlets also have an important use for Facebook. If an organization is represented on the site and frequently updates its page, its information is aggregated into its “fans’” news feed – right where information about the “fan’s “friend’s reside.  Given that Facebook likely will challenge conventional media financially overtime, many media outlets are embracing Facebook as a way to interface with the masses. In fact, Verizon recently incorporated social media sites such as Facebook into its FIOS package – subscribers can now update their pages right from their TV.

Google has had a long-standing interest in acquiring Facebook, though much to the chagrin of his fellow board member s and advisors – Mark Zuckerberg (founder of Facebook) is not motivated by money. In fact, that is why he refuses to disrupt user’s experiences with banner ads and page takeovers – even though he has been approached and offered large sums of money to do so. To Zuckerberg, growing Facebook’s user base is far more important than monetizing it.

In the meantime, advertisers will continue to get highly-targeted ads for what many consider to be “a steal.” With more than 50 percent of active Facebook users logging in daily, spending a combined 500 billion minutes each month on the site, Facebook will continue to shape the media landscape and generate incremental ad revenues that surpass Google in the next five years. That’s my prediction, what do you think?

**Note: The information and data contained in this post is based on the data presented in “The Facebook Effect” by David Kirkpatrick.

-Posted by Danielle Millerick

What’s Old is New – Last week Scott Kirsner of the Boston Globe’s “Innovation Economy” blog commented on the changing   dynamics of PR and media relations with a post that discussed how competitive things have gotten for journalists and bloggers to either get the story first or to get a different angle or element that no one else has. Otherwise, why bother covering something that several completive media outlets are already covering?  One of Scott’s most telling quotes in the piece was – “I would usually prefer to spend my time working on unique pieces that’ll have a little more juice to them.”

This didn’t strike me as either overly egotistic on Scott’s part or anything all that new based on our work with him for the past two decades.  Respected and veteran business journalists (and I consider Scott in his camp) have long set the ground rules with communications professionals and the companies they cover that this is their raison d’ etre – they want to break news or get access to an executive for an inside scoop, a story behind the story, the exclusive, etc.  I don’t see this as something Scott or his peers in media have adopted recently; it has been the practice long before the advent of twitter and the explosion of blogs being written by business reporters. I think I this actually made us all be better PR professionals by demanding the untold story, the new wrinkle, the story behind the story etc.  Sure we had to do some of their work for them (most reporters will never give PR people this much credit) but trust me, it happens this way more often than people realize.

Scott also said he really will not cover anything under embargo. I read this as not that he will break embargoes (hello TechCrunch or other blogs) but he does not want to wait in line for a me-too story or blog post.  Again, not a brand new development and it forces PR pros to decide – do you go to one single outlet and hope to get them early enough to get a big story, blog post, (the Home Run) or try to interest multiple outlets to cover something at the same time (singles and doubles)? This is the quality vs. quality decision.

Scott does mention page views of his column vs. the print circulation of the Globe, but he did not put it in the context of how this might affect the companies, technologies, sectors, etc. of those companies he writes about. Highly respected journalist turned blogger Tom Foremski of Silicon Valley Watcher has written about this topic a few times in the past. Tom feels that we are in the age of “page view journalism” and reporters will not touch a story about an unknown company or obscure technology if it will not generate page views or if too few people search on terms germane to that company, often a start up, Tom says. He goes on to say that this means that small companies will be “crowded out” by their competitors. This is definitely happening a lot more frequently.

AP Gets Dose of Own Media Medicine – A little known (at least to me) online store called Woot.com which sells “cool stuff” cheaply had a little joust with the mighty Associated Press this week.  Woot was acquired by Amazon.com last week and the AP story on the deal by Rachel Metz apparently included five words from Woot’s “content.” So Woot decided to charge AP $17.50 for the use of these five words. This was in response to the AP edict a few years ago under which it would start to charge bloggers for using text from its stories. Word is they blogged about it, got AP’s attention (and other blogs and media outlets) and then essentially said, “Never mind – the story you wrote on us was worth the $17.50.”

The King (of Media Manipulation?) – ESPN should be completely embarrassed by the LeBron James Fiasco. How can a news organization be in the business of producing an hour-long show in which James (he of the 90K followers on twitter on first day – no I am not one of them) announces his decision on where to take his game and make his gazillions next year. Break the news guys, don’t make it.  And oh by the way, I was convinced he was staying in Cleveland yesterday but now my money is on Chicago (his kind of town, Jordan’s legacy, etc.) but he will wear number 32 for The Bulls.

//

//

//

//

//