CustomScoop Blog

Pro Sports PR in the * Era

Watching the saga of NFL quarterback (and alleged dog fighting conspirator) Michael Vick unfold, I can only hope that professional sports associations are watching closely, and planning their public relations strategies accordingly. Responding quickly and resoundingly to these problems is the only way for pro sports to avoid a massive image problem.

Even without Vick, the image of pro sports has been taking a beating lately—baseball steroid scandals leaving asterisks all over the record books, Olympic judging mishaps, raucous off-field antics from high-profile football players, doping accusations in the Tour de France, the diminishing stature of pro boxing, professional wrestler Chris Benoit’s murder-suicide—the list appears boundless.

Add to that a scandal as egregious as the allegations against Vick, who is not only accused of running an illegal pit-bull fighting operation, Bad Newz Kennels, but of participating in the gruesome, needlessly cruel deaths of the dogs who did not perform up to expectations—including hangings, beatings, drowning, even electrocution. If Vick is found guilty, the NFL would have no choice but to banish him from the league permanently; this is not a situation where a suspension would cut it in terms of maintaining the already shaky reputation of the NFL when it comes to disciplining players for off-field behavior.

Thus far, Vick has been banned from the Atlanta Falcons training camp, pending an official NFL investigation into the dog fighting accusations. Nike and Reebok have also both pulled Vick products from shelves and suspended their endorsement deals with the troubled star. Yesterday, one of his co-defendants pled guilty to the charges, and some are speculating this could be a sign of big trouble for Vick.

Unfortunately for Vick and the Falcons, I can’t foresee an outcome in this case that could allow Vick to return to work this season without massive PR repercussions, including howls of protest (no pun intended) from PETA and other animal rights organizations. And, in the wake of the Pacman Jones debacle and near-constant drum-beating for a crackdown on player behavior, the NFL’s best move may be to ban Vick from playing this season altogether--and to do so immediately rather than waiting for a courtroom resolution.

Justice is blind, but in business, the court of public opinion must sometimes trump our nation's "innocent until proven guilty" philosophy. Suspending Vick for the season (as the league has already done in the Pacman Jones situation) sends a clear message that pro sports will not tolerate criminal behavior, and win the league some PR points--despite the fact that to do so before due process is served may not be fair.

Do you agree? Should the widespread anti-Vick sentiment color the NFL's disciplinary decisions? Would you root for Vick again if he is cleared of the charges (though the likelihood of that seems slim)?

Pitching bloggers takes time--and time is money

Posts about how to pitch bloggers abound, and almost universally the following points are made:

• Read the blogger’s blog and know what he or she writes about
• Personalize the email
• Don’t use corporate speak—sound natural
• Be transparent

The point of this level of groundwork is to build a relationship with a blogger, preferably before you need to pitch on behalf of a client.

All of this takes time, and I’m curious as to how PR agencies, especially those that work under a billable hours model, approach this.

When pitching traditional media, you pull together and update your media list, making sure your contacts are still where they were when you last pitched them. This is a task that someone more junior in the agency can do; they can also look up and add niche publications that might fit the product/whatever you are pitching. You pull together your release, send it, and make sure you follow up with a call, etc. It’s all finite, manageable, and it can be done in a reasonable amount of time. When you’re billing a client at $150-$200 an hour, this shouldn’t take too long, certainly not weeks. And, once you’ve established a relationship/trust with someone on the Home & Garden beat, or the environmental reporter, you can pitch other relevant stories down the road. Nurturing these relationships builds strong practice groups and enables PR practitioners to become trusted sources.

Contrast that with the “must do” list for pitching bloggers. About the only step a junior person could be handed is the research on locating the potential blogs to pitch. Even that step is going to take considerable time, depending on what you are pitching—sifting through millions of blogs, determining which fit, have a following, and are active.

The person that will be doing the pitching needs to be the one to read the blogs on that list—that’s the only way to include the right info in the email (see: ‘personalize email’ and ‘don’t use corporate speak’). Scanning won’t do, you need to actually read the blog to make sure the product/pitch is relevant. This takes time.

Some will fit the pitch perfectly, some won’t. Get rid of the ones that don’t, and start to build a relationship with the ones that do. That takes more time.

Then, each pitch email needs to be personalized—no bulk emails. That takes yet more time. By now you’ve sunk a lot of time doing what needs to be done to pitch bloggers on behalf of your client. If you’ve invested 40 billable hours—and depending on the number of bloggers you’re pitching it may be way more than that—well, welcome to the $6,000 - $8,000 press release.

The kicker is that if you’re successful in pitching the bloggers on behalf of the client, and the client comes back and says “great, now do the same thing for this other product,” depending on how targeted the first was—say it was a hair shampoo—and now the client wants you to do the same for toothpaste or hand lotion, you might not be pitching the same bloggers, because many blogs are niche categories. And so the process has to begin again…from the start.

How are agencies tackling this? Are they concentrating on A-list bloggers only, that might not fit the niche for their products exactly and maybe that’s why we see items like this pop up occasionally? How are clients responding—are they understanding of the ramp-up/learning curve that is necessary (and the costs associated with that investment of time), or do they come to agencies expecting that expertise (even within niches) to be already there? Are agencies picking “designated pitchers”—social media experts whose job it is to do the pitching—or does it vary by client team?

 

Technorati tags: PR, pitching bloggers, PR agencies

If Everyone Tweeted Off a Bridge, Would I?

Ah yes, the age-old “but all the kids are doing it!” argument that kids have used to justify foolish undertakings since time immemorial.

(I believe my favorite foolish undertaking was at age 12, as I pulled a balancing act across a not-wide sewer pipe that ran 20-feet in the air across a shallow, rocky stream at a construction site near my house. Although, come to think of it, I never had to use that excuse on my mom, because she never found out. Hi, Mom!)

Maybe that’s not the best example, because in this case, what all the “cool kids” are doing is actually relevant to my career, interesting to me personally, and has the added bonus of being pretty fun. I’m talking, of course, about the various social media platforms that have sprung to life recently (this year especially), infiltrating public relations and permanently changing the face of media and communications.

So why am I so annoyed that I finally broke down and set up my Twitter account?

I avoided microblogging like the plague, and Twitter in particular, ever since it became (as BL Ochman put it) “queen of the prom” at South by Southwest this year. At that time, I was shirking anything that didn’t appear to add any immediate value to my work day. And since, also at that time, Twitter was getting a lot of “so what?” reviews from people who didn’t really need to hear about anyone’s breakfast meat of choice, I decided it wasn’t for me.

Since then I’ve joined and enjoyed Pownce, yet it hasn’t taken off the way Twitter did, with many complaining about its lack of mobility. The more complaints about Pownce I heard, the more I let the “You need to just get on Twitter” voice in the back of my head eat away at me, until finally, during a mid-morning lull today, I relented.

I’m excited to get started, yet I feel like I caved, like I represented some sort of one-woman resistance to the latest fad, and my barricades have been infiltrated by the rebels. (But all the cool kids are doing it!) Maybe my problem is that I know I will thoroughly enjoy Twitter, I’ll end up as hooked on it as I am on Facebook. I am obsessed enough as it is when I’m on my laptop, now I’ll be checking my phone every three seconds as well.

That is, if I can actually get my profile set up properly!

So far, I have been unable to “follow” anyone, for reasons passing my understanding. I keep reading the FAQ, trying to figure it out, using Chip’s page as my guinea pig (which hopefully is not resulting in a million emails to him, informing him of my seemingly desperate desire to follow his updates!).

I also can’t even begin to comprehend why the site does not appear to have a “search” box for finding people I may want to follow. If I can find anyone, I very well can’t follow them.

The result? My very first Twitter update, which will reach no one, as I yet to have any friends to Tweet at: “Hating Twitter already.”

UPDATE: Well, things are going much smoother now. But I still think the lack of a search box is fairly ridiculous.

Is there a (work) benefit to reading fiction?

In an effort to look broadly at how blogging is affecting a wide range of business sectors, I have a variety of blogs in my RSS reader, most of which are outside of the PR industry. I’ve found the blogs of the Wall Street Journal particularly interesting when trying to get an overview of news in specific sectors. When reading the Juggle blog a few weeks ago, a post on getting kids to read caught my eye—specifically, the following quote:

[…] Meanwhile, some reading experts say that urging kids to read fiction in general might be a misplaced goal. Michael L. Kamil, a professor of education at Stanford University, points out that most jobs don’t require narrative reading. Children need to learn to read for information, he says, something they can practice while reading on the Internet.

I disagree with Professor Kamil’s assertion regarding reading fiction, as it seems to assume that the only benefit of reading is to glean information from written material. In my experience, those who read a lot (fiction or non-fiction) are far better writers than those who do not read; and in my opinion those who read at least some fiction tend to be more creative writers in general. Writing well is fundamental, as it is such an important component of communicating effectively. This goes for PR practitioners (obviously), and quite frankly anyone else who needs to communicate with staff, customers, business divisions—you get the idea.

To his point about reading for information: that goes to the core of reading comprehension, something that we were constantly tested on when I was in grade school. I don’t think that there’s a bright line between fiction and non-fiction in that area; you are either able to pull information out of a paragraph or book you’ve read or you aren’t.

As I was traveling at the time, writing a blog post on the subject slipped my mind. Then, I came across this piece from the New York Times that examines the reading habits of CEOs. There is an impressive amount of variety in their reading diets. For example Dee Hock, the founder of Visa, keeps a copy of Persian poet Omar Khayyam’s "Rubaiyat" open on a table in his 2,000 square foot library for daily review.

Does reading fiction and poetry—things that are “made up,”—generate creative thought, or are these CEOs, as creative thinkers, somehow drawn to fiction? I’m not sure that is a question that can be answered definitively, but I do feel that it challenges the notion that encouraging kids to read fiction is a “misplaced goal” simply because jobs do not require that type of reading.

 

Technorati tags: reading, writing, PR

Musical press releases?

In most of the jobs I’ve held over the last 15 years, I’ve been responsible for writing and sending press releases on behalf of either my employers or clients. One of the things that anyone who has written releases struggles with is how to make the information interesting and relevant to both reporters and the target audience.

Usually, I would applaud using creative thinking and content that is imaginative, but I really don’t know what to make of the release that DealBreaker has dubbed "The most ridiculous press release in the history of man".

A pension research and analysis company, Pension Governance, LLC released "The Pension Tension Blues" as “musical commentary” for “fiduciaries and beneficiaries alike.” The company does take care to point out that the song is not meant to deride the hard work of those whose job it is to manage pensions, it’s meant to point out in a humorous fashion where changes could be made.

I’m torn between thinking this is so silly that it will undermine the company’s ability to be taken seriously on pension risk issues and thinking that it’s certainly going to get more attention than any run-of-the-mill release.

I guess the real question is whether the release met its objective. If the objective was to draw attention to the company, then yes. I’m not sure at what cost though, as it certainly does seem to make light of a rather dire topic.

 

Technorati tags: PR, media, press releases, The Pension Tension Blues

UPS and Amazon in Hot Water Over Harry Potter Deliveries?

While many bloggers and forum-dwellers are posting breathlessly on the details of the latest (and final) installment in the Harry Potter series, others are not as pleased, having waited--often in vain--all day Saturday for their pre-ordered copy from Amazon that did not arrive.

I myself waited patiently for most of Saturday, even delaying plans to head to a friend's lake house.

I eventually realized how silly I was being and gave up around two.  I made a quick and painless pit-stop at a Borders on my way to the lake, completing my purchase within minutes--there weren't even any lines.

"I'll just return the book that Amazon sends, once it arrives," I thought. Probably should have been "if it arrives."

I came home late Sunday afternoon to no book, and no note from UPS indicating an attempted delivery, no message from my apartment building's management office that I had a package--nothing.

According to my package-tracking page on Amazon, the book was not only delivered, but was "left at front door." Really? I’ve received several packages from UPS at my current apartment, and they’ve never been left at my door—if I am not home they’re either left with the management office or taken to the post office for pick-up. I'm also suspicious of the time noted, because while it was around the time I may have left, I'm pretty sure I was still home, and sure didn't hear anyone knocking or beeping at my building's front buzzer.

Apparently, I'm not the only one. Consumerist reposts portions of Jason Kottke's post indicating he was home all day, despite UPS' claims that they attempted delivery. Jason wonders if UPS is trying to play CYA to remain on Amazon's good side. After all, Amazon's "release day guarantee" promised a refund to any not receiving their copy--unless UPS attempted delivery at a time when the recipient was not home. Jason and the Consumerist also post links to message boards on Google and Amazon filled with customers experiencing the same issue (also filled with spoilers, so beware!).

A quick search reveals many unhappy bloggers with the same story--package never arrived, bought a copy at the Target/Wal-Mart/bookstore, UPS now claiming they attempted delivery.

Could both UPS and Amazon end up in some public relations hot water, particularly in the unforgiving blogosphere? 

I'm thinking the story will die down pretty quickly, as Amazon appears to be doing a good job of doling out refunds, even to those who UPS claimed were not home at the time of attempted delivery. I have yet to hear back from them, but hopefully they will do the same for me. It also helps that bookstores appear to be almost overflowing with the book, the space left when I picked up my copy was almost instantly replaced by a store employee toting a giant cart full of them.

UPS, however, could take a major hit if the accusations of lying about delivery attempts go unanswered. I will definitely watch this story unfold with great interest.

UPDATE: Amazon took less than 24 hours to process my refund; they are doing a great job of appeasing the disgruntled!

Technorati tags: Harry Potter; UPS; Jason Kottke; Consumerist; Amazon.com

CustomScoop's PR PodJots

I've just posted a new edition of Custom Scoop's PR PodJots over on PR Blog Jots. It was a robust week in PR podcasting, head over and check it out for the comprehensive rundown!

Blockbuster Social Media

As an admitted movie freak, I love summer. As a not-so-closeted lover of all big-budget, terribly cheesey, shoot 'em up badass popcorn action flicks? I adore summer. Right around Memorial Day the best of the blockbusters start to roll through theaters. This summer was the summer of the "threequels," with Pirates of the Carribean, Ocean's 13, Spiderman 3, and Shrek the Third all landing in theatres, along with the fourth Die Hard. Movies this big often hardly even need a marketing campaign (I didn't know anyone who wasn't planning on seeing the last Pirates movie); they practically did all the marketing they needed to when they left the end of the second film as a cliffhanger. But what about social media? Which movies, "summer popcorn movies" or not, launched some of the better social media campaigns?

I picked a few movies and set out to rate their social media savvy in terms of marketing. Who do you think did a great job luring the 2.0 community out of their mom's basements (I kid, I kid!) and into theater seats this summer? Who did the worst?

My take:

The Simpsons Movie: A+

As I wrote in a post on Blogstring earlier this month, I've hardly seen such a clever effort to win over fans with social media. The show's writers and creators clearly had a hand here, not that marketers can't be funny and clever...but some of this stuff has a certain panache.  Simpsons took a relatively traditional and mundane marketing tool, the promotional collaboration with fast-food companies or other sponsors, and turned it into sheer (hilarious) entertainment. You're telling me you haven't gone to the Burger King "Simpsonize Me" page yet? Or, if you don't have a usable photo, you can build your own Simpsons character right on the movie's homepage. Even more delightful, the show's menacing Mr. Burns "hacked" JetBlue CEO David Neeleman's blog, ranting about JetBlue's low prices and friendly customer service.  I'm especially fond of his post urging Neeleman to "limit snack dispersal." The cake taker, however, is the Flickr gallery of photos of a "Kwiki-Marted" 7-11. While maybe not the most extensive campaign I've seen, this one accomplished best what the actual goal is: it made me want to see the movie more.

The Bourne Ultimatum: B

Speaking of airline promotions, ever wonder how many frequent flyer miles spies rack up flying all over the world (I always miss the Indiana Jones style maps showing the little plane icon moving our hero from Belize to Belarus)? Well, American Airlines has teamed with The Bourne Ultimatum and Mastercard to offer a sweepstakes. The grand prize being Jason Bourne's frequent flier miles. Guess how many he has correctly on their interactive map, and take them all home. When I first discovered this campaign (via some spammy mail due to a flight I have booked on American), I scoffed that it wasn't anywhere near as interesting as Mr. Burns "hijacking" the JetBlue blog. Digging deeper, the Bourne people seem to have their social media act together (the film's utter lack of a MySpace page notwithstanding). Other goodies include "Create Your Own Trailer" mashups (cool!), and a multimedia "Search for Bourne" contest, utilizing  a fancy-looking platform with special "surveillance" maps and video footage, "encrypted messages" and other tools to help you track down Jason Bourne. It actually all almost seems too complicated, otherwise their campaign might've gotten a little closer to an A. Again, as you'll see in my next example, sometimes "less is more." This campaign wasn't as far reaching, but it definitely assured my butt would be in a seat come August 3 (well okay, that and Matt Damon).

Transformers - C

First, major tip of my hat to Chris at Movie Marketing Madness, whose extensively detailed post on this movie was where I got most of my info. I also tend to agree with him that the marketing campaign here is so extensive there isn't even any point comparing to anything else, but I think pointing out that the campaign is somewhat lacking in the social media department has merit. Transformers started early, sponsoring a MySpace application a few months back, and of course hosting their own MySpace page (hardly a revolutionary idea) that includes various bells and whistles, content you can download to your own page, wallpaper, profiles backgrounds, etc. Elsewhere, I enjoyed the game available on the movie's sountrack site, matching up performers with the scenes in the movie their songs appear in, but it was a bit "meh" in the end. What's the point? The movie's online presence is extensive, sure, but it lacks the social media element: where's the interaction? Signing up to be either a Decepticon or an Autobot on MySpace doens't really cut it, and the multimedia available on the movie's official website is barely acceptable. There is some good stuff out there from the movie's heavy promotional ties to General Motors, and I was impressed by the "covering an entire LA skyscraper in a poster," but I definitely wasn't bowled over. Am I being too critical? It did seem from the beginning that the movie lacked a certain blogosphere savvy, as Paramount feuded with Movie Blog author John Campea. Oh well. None of this, of course, has hurt the film's box office take; I just hope Michael Bay isn't too upset when he reads this...

Ratatouille: D

I could be being too harsh here...but perhaps my hopes were too high. Disney got a lot of ink this year for its highly anticipated new website design; it used a lot of widgets in some of the earlier promotions for both this film and Pirates. Disney CEO Bob Iger has a close relationship with Steve Jobs. Would a few shiny objects have been too much to ask for here? Maybe Jobs didn't want to help becuase the film premiered the same day as his long-awaited iPhone. The movie's official site has a lot of content, games for kids, photos...but it's all the same stuff you see everywhere (I do admit to enjoying the "Remy Recipe a Day" downloadable app, however, so all is not lost). The MySpace page? Same deal. They do offer a "podcast" on the page (it's really a vidcast) available through both MySpace and iTunes (there you are, Jobs!) that seems to amount to little more than what you could find on DVD extras. Interesting, for sure, but definitely left me wanting more.

So, what do you think? Am I being too harsh, too lenient? What are some of your favorite social media elements as some of the summer's biggest movies launch?

Measuring the many facets of social media

Props to the folks at Edelman, who continue to push for a broader understanding and acceptance of social media within the PR and Marketing fields. Their latest foray into this area is the development of a measuring system that takes into account other social media platforms, such as Twitter and Facebook, when attempting to determine influence. A full explanation of their methodology can be found here.

I think this is an area that those of us who strive to make social media understandable to companies and organizations will continue to struggle with and try to answer for a while—not just the measurement, but an even more basic question of “does it matter?”

It reminds me of one of the hurdles we faced when I was doing work in word of mouth marketing. Clients always wanted to know how to measure word of mouth—“how do we know exactly how many people someone talked to about our product?” Well, we couldn’t always get an exact number. We were typically able to sense buzz from week to week during one of these programs, but the bottom line was we couldn’t always get an exact number, and until a client saw some kind of results (higher sales in one region versus another, coupon redemption, etc.) there was apprehension. If we couldn’t measure exactly how useful it was, was it really worth trying?

At present, word of mouth marketing is everywhere; there’s even an organization dedicated to ensuring that it’s conducted ethically. It took some time, but what we really had to sell as an idea seven or eight years ago is now mainstream.

I’m feeling the same sort of initial apprehension in determining the value of the social media space. Clients and potential clients who come to us have been told or sense that they need to pay attention to blogs and other social media, but many don’t know what exactly it is that they’re trying to accomplish by monitoring this space. They crave the security of measurement, which in social media has been somewhat elusive. For example, commentors to a post on Valleywag today questioned the numbers quoted in the Wall Street Journal stating that according to comScore, Twitter had just 370,000 unique visitors in June. Several pointed out that you don’t need to visit Twitter’s page to use Twitter, so the data collected by comScore are likely so off that they’re useless.

Now, back to the measurement angle that Edelman is proposing. I like the basic format, as it allows for flexibility going forward. The weighting can be adjusted as interest in different platforms rise and fall, and new formats can be added as they emerge. The ability to modify the weighting will in my opinion be an important component to the success of a multi-platform measurement system. With so many different tools out there, it’s inevitable that some will succeed and some will go by the wayside, a point that I will elaborate on in another post.

Effective measurement is a necessary step in making social media relevant and broadly accepted to businesses, and it’s good to see innovation and creative thinking applied to this area.

 

Technorati tags: social media measurement, Edelman, blog analysis, Twitter

CustomScoop's PR PodJots

Welcome to CustomScoop’s PR PodJots, our weekly rundown of the best and brightest of PR and marketing podcasts.

If you come across any especially interesting podcasts, please share them with us! We are always looking for new PR podcasts to skewer review.

This week starts with a recap of our old friend Mitch Joel, whose podcast features a number of interesting ambient noises, but more importantly, valuable insight into Web 2.0.

Six Pixels of Separation – July 8, 2007 – Mitch Joel looks at Social Media Fatigue

Twist Image’s Mitch Joel suggests that podcasters, bloggers, and other members of the social media community are living in an echo chamber. Joel argues, however, that this conclusion paints an incomplete picture and notes that the community is actually building itself up and creating its own individual celebrities. Such celebrities, he argues, can help the community grow and thrive.

SPOS also features a closer look at Jaiku through the eyes of Bernard Goldbach, who touts the micro-blogging service as an excellent way to develop a social network that follows a composite stream of shared information.

Joel comes back to address the social media overload phenomenon, and tells listeners not to hesitate to skip it. He suggests that business people should not blog, podcast, etc. to the point where their business suffers. If it becomes overwhelming, Joel rightly tells listeners, stick with the business-related tasks.

Also discussed:

• iPhone hype.
• Michael Netzley - Singapore Management University.
• PodCamp Boston 2 - October 26th - 28th, 2007.
• Social Media Echo Chamber.
• Greenfields Report #7 - Bernard Goldbach - Podcasting.ie.
• Neil Gorman - Comicology.
  Six Points of Separation - Six Predictions On The Future:
  1. Mobile Social Networks.
  2. Tagging.
  3. Podcasting.
  4. Personal Brands.
  5. Social Shopping.
  6. Virtual Worlds.

Tech PR War Stories – July 11, 2007 – Corporate Blogging

Paul Gaulin and David Strom look at guidelines of corporate blogging in light of the Michael Moore/Google “dustup,” where Big G was embarrassed by an employee blogger who suggested that the health industry should have managed their reputation better by utilizing Google’s advertising tools.

Gaulin and Strom stress that, regardless of disclaimers, the opinions shared in a corporate blog will be associated with the parent company. Strom makes a strong point in noting that basic planning and guidelines need to be in place, with one individual ultimately in charge of the content and authors that a blog employs. Both agree that if a company decides to use a single blog with multiple contributors, rather than establishing a number of individual employee blogs, they need to be especially careful about its content.

Also discussed:

• Cheers for BlogTalkRadio.
• Jeers to Matthew Haughey for “misplaced” advice about how to talk to the press.

Inside PR – July 10, 2007 – The Client Project Postmortem

David Jones and Terry Fallis “bookend” their recent discussion on client relations with a look at "the client project postmortem." The two podcasters encourage PR professionals to sit down with their clients at the end of every project and review the process and results with key metrics in mind. The idea, they say, is to learn from every project and use that knowledge in future campaigns.

Jones highlights three key points that should be kept in mind for any postmortem. First, make sure to at least take the time to do a report of some kind. Second, and I love this phrase, “don’t put lipstick on a pig.” That is to say, do not try to make the project appear more successful than it really was. And finally, present the report as a personal presentation whenever possible – especially with new clients.

It’s an important part of the process that is easy to overlook, but a step that can not only help future projects, but also “celebrate the team” and show value to clients. Both Jones and Fallis acknowledge that PR professionals may not always be able to find the time for a postmortem, but it ought to be a goal for every campaign.

Also discussed:

• Podcasters Across Borders 2007.
• Inside “PRoper” English: split infinitives (it's ok!?).
• Fans of Inside PR group on Facebook.

Around the PR Podcast Horn:

Marketing for Coffee – July 12, 2007 – Chris Penn and John review several interesting topics this week, including Circle Lending and regulating the popular Second Life.

Topaz Partners PRobecast #23 – July 6, 2007 - Adam Zand, Doug Haslam, and Tim Allik cover a number of fascinating subjects.  They review various PR aspects of Michael Moore’s new controversial film Sicko.  They also highlight CustomScoop CEO Chip Griffin's e-book titled, “The New Media Cocktail.”