Public Relations

Enron Hires And Fires PR Firms

Energy trading corporation Enron has hired "two of the nation's most respected strategic communications firms--Kekst & Company and The Brunswick Group" according to the Holmes Report. The firms have been working with Enron to assist with crisis communications as the company begins bankruptcy proceedings. Holmes reports Kekst has handled numerous projects requiring crisis management for Enron over the years, starting with a crisis involving the company's Puerto Rican water operations. This time Kekst was called in when Enron's financial troubles became public.

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Firing Photographers: Media Using More PR Photos

The PR distribution firm PR Newswire is happy to report on its member's only Media Insider website that "mainstream media organizations are making more frequent use of PR-generated photos. ... Some 4,000 photos in PR Newswire's archive are now downloaded every month by media organizations. ... (C)ost-cutting news outlets are looking for ways to stretch their photo budgets, and will rely on free corporate photography whenever they can."

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Ragin' Cajun Goes To Work On Israel's Image

According to O'Dwyer's PR, James Carville, former political advisor to Bill Clinton, and his partner Stanley Greenberg will be working to "spruce-up" the image of Israel in the U.S. Carville and Greenberg met with Israel foreign ministry officials, but are to be paid by a group of American Jews who believe Israel's PR "needs improvement," according to The Jerusalem Post. O'Dwyer's says it is unclear whether the Israeli government will contribute to the PR effort. Carville and Greenberg have worked for former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak.

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TV Journalists Tell Flacks How to Pitch Their PR Stories

The Publicity Club of Chicago's November luncheon featured TV journalists including Jay Foot of WLS, Pam Oliver of NBC 5-TV and Chaz Parker of WBBM. They were the featured speakers, there to tell the assembled PR flacks the best ways and times to pitch them and to get their PR aired as news. Such meetings are typical nation-wide and help explain how so much PR becomes "news."

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Cloning Story Was Offspring of Hype

The bold announcement from Advanced Cell Technology (ACT) that it had taken steps to create human embryos through cloning was more hype than reality. The methods used had already been done in animals, and some scientists insisted it wasn't cloning at all. Also, the few embryonic cells it had created had died. "This was a public relations campaign," said Arthur Caplan, director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.

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High-tech PR a "Ghost Town"

Business has been bad all year for PR firms that represent high-tech products and internet services, and the terror attacks of September 11 made things worse. O'Dwyer's reports layoffs at PR firms including Citigate Communications, Alexander Ogilvy, Brodeur Worldwide, Cohn & Wolfe,Niehaus Ryan Wong, TSI Communications, GCI, Edelman and Ketchum.

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Buzz is Dead, Long Live PR

Building "buzz" was the hallmark of dot-com PR, writes Lois Paul of the PR firm of Lois Paul & Associates. Now that the dot-coms have crashed, she says PR must deliver "real messages" and present "real companies, not personalities or 'vision.' ... The best PR people are invaluable to companies during this type of downturn," she says, because "PR today is all about reputation management."

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Same Questions, Same Answers

President Bush has displayed a phenomenal memory: he has now learnt by rote entire sentences and phrases which he repeats endlessly. But the great wonder is that every word spoken by him about the war or Osama bin Laden or Al Qaeda is greeted by analysts as adding something significant to the course of events. The more cliched the president sounds, the greater the zeal of commentators to dissect his words and hold intensive discussions about the president's thoughts.

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Mark Bingham--PR Hero

Public relations people are not all bad -- a fact that probably gets insufficient mention at PR Watch (sorry, guys). Mark Bingham was CEO of The Bingham Group, a PR firm with offices in San Francisco and New York. He was also aboard United flight 93 when it went down in Pennsylvania on September 11, and he is believed to be one of the passengers who stormed the cockpit and brought down the plane before it could hit Washington. His friends and family have established a website in his honor.

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The Mother of Ads Leads the Mother of PR Campaigns

PR Week profiles the career of Charlotte Beers, once nicknamed "the most powerful woman in advertising," now overseeing U.S. efforts to improve its image overseas. Beers made her name selling Uncle Ben's rice products before going to work for ad agencies including J. Walter Thompson, Tatham-Lair & Kudner and Ogilvy & Mather.

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