Monday, July 9, 2012

The Spin Cycle, 7/9

A round-up of recent happenings in the world of PR, marketing, and other things I find interesting.

Twitter and LinkedIn Split Up: Believe me, my friends, Twitter is doing you a favor by no longer letting your cross-post your tweets onto LinkedIn. Sure, some of what you post on Twitter is relevant to a professional networking site. But a lot of it isn't, and it annoys your LinkedIn connections.

GM and Facebook Might Get Back Together: Am I missing something here? Yes, I realize that GM's announcement that it was ditching Facebook ads was blamed in part for Facebook's lackluster IPO. But is GM really such a trendsetter that it alone can arrest Facebook's slide? The larger problem for Facebook is if companies like GM discover they can get just as much value by utilizing free content on Facebook. Then what does the social network do?

NBC Tells Its Friends It's Dumping Ann Curry: In a rather cynical take on PR, Adele Cehrs praises NBC for minimizing the damage of pushing Ann Curry off The Today Show by allowing rumors about her departure and stories blaming her for the show's ratings tumble to leak out.

NBC made the news regarding Curry’s removal work to its benefit by using the trickle effect. The trickle effect is a strategy in which information is released in small doses over time to reduce the overall backlash of a negative announcement.

Certainly, the slow, steady divulgence of information, done deliberately, is a good strategy for preparing publics, internal and external, for bad news. But leaking information designed to portray a single, identifiable individual in a bad light is downright mean, not to mention unethical. I'm not naive in thinking it's not done a lot. But it isn't the kind of public relations I want to practice.

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