He argues that Google is essentially the largest publication on the planet and applying search marketing techniques along with PR is the ticket to get noticed or to push a message through.
Tsabar writes in Ad Age: "While getting the attention of a reporter or editor was once the sole way PR "earned" media, today search engines such as Google have made individuals their own editors. And PR has the opportunity to 'earn' their attention by keeping a pulse on public concerns, anticipating the topics people will be interested in, and perhaps most important, delivering messages in ways that people will be willing to take them at face value."
He backs up his belief with a case study from Ketchum client Kikkoman.
Minneapolis PR firm Labreche is rolling out the city's much-anticipated campaign to get residents drinking tap water.The $180K PR contract raised some eyebrows in the Twin city last fall when it was awarded (the criticism continues), but the effort has hit the ground running with a website, social media sites on Twitter and Facebook, and events in the city.
Water sales are big business for Minneapolis to the tune of $20M a year. Organic material in the Mississippi River (the city's source) has been blamed for giving tap water an occasional odor and the city wants residents to feel confident in drinking it down.
Baltimore Sun editor Michael Dresser took at shot at the D.C. transit agency's public affairs team in the wake of the fatal Metro crash yesterday.
Dresser said the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Administration provided different death toll numbers, was slow to update its website and called its use of Twitter "staggeringly ineffective and not up with the news."
He also knocked the agency's press releases for giving "more spin than background" on the Metro's safety record.
"I can understand that folks there are exhausted, but the media affairs shop is not exactly stepping up in a time of crisis," he blogged.
The Daily Business Review in South Florida asked PR pros in the Sunshine State for some free advice for prominent law firm White & Case, which has seen its name tossed around amid reports of a prominent affair between one of its attorneys and a married woman.
The law firm, which issued a brief statement of not commenting on a personal matter, might feel better after reading the take of Sitrick & Co.'s Chris Marlin. An attorney-turned-PR-pro, Marlin said such a flare-up would not have affected his decision to hire one law firm over another when he was a corporate attorney. "This sort of gossip has much more resonance in legal circles than it does in client circles," he said.
PR Bloggers
Ron Torossian of 5W PR is thinking about New York Times reporter David Rohde's escape from the Taliban and keeping clients out of the press...
Steve Cody of Peppercom is reading Bill Bernbach's book on DDB an the "golden age of advertising" and says that large PR firms like Hill & Knowlton, Carl Byoir and Rowland & Co. are either gone or not what they were.
Cody notes: "While it's brutally tough to become a great agency, Bill Bernbach's fate is a great reminder that once they reach the top of the mountain, too many people and too many firms stop doing all the little things that got them there in the first place."
Toni Muzi Falconi thinks the Italian premier has a big PR problem...
Today on odwyerpr.com (sub req'd):
Ketchum Guides PR for U.N. Climate Push
NYT's Morgenson Lauded as Top Financial Journalist
PR School: Dealing with Foreign Press
Two From Florida Seek PR Society Chair-elect
CA Puts Out RFP for Million-Dollar PR Push
Mexico Tourism Bills $1.4M at APCO
Lippert/Heilshorn & Associates Expands Reach with Hire