I understand you are siding with the marketing side this time & that’s fabulous.

It’s the use of “spinners” that is offensive to many PR professionals : ” But that responsibility lies with the journalists, not the spinners.”

That being said, it’s a great article.

Why not have a read of it? You may find me using words like “I’ve found myself siding with the marketers against the journalists.”

That’s a clue on where I stand on this subject.

Cheers,

Tim – Mumbrella

PR is not just about spin. Publicity is only one aspect of PR (the dark side even within PR circles) & is a legitimate communications profession.

This is an excellent example of campaign execution, well thought through & considered. Absolutely it is the journalist’s role to check facts & develop an article with objectivity. However in the days of tight news desk budgets & ever shrinking deadlines, PR instigated articles can comprise up to 70% of news, at times. PR is providing content, journalists need to go further & research/interview.

I don’t work for any of these companies. My point is, why put down half your target audience Tim? Spin isn’t what many PR professionals aspire to & is an outdated view of the PR profession.

@Mahia (comment 70): that is without a doubt the most honest, plain spoken, nail-on-the-head comment in this entire thread. Kudos to you.

All parties in this knew exactly what they were doing when they put this together (from the client, to the PR firm to TCO). They all have their agendas and the crocodile tears of theirs, and those belonging to their supporters in the advertising/PR industry, fool none of us. Well, hopefully none of us.

I’m confident that all parties were congratulating themselves on a job well done when the campaign went viral and hit the national media. If they are going to take the money and handshakes, man up and take the criticism of what is (was?) a fairly cynical take on mental disorders.

While TCO’s campaign is clever. There is no denying that part of the direction PR/Journalist based advertising takes is using the weakness of central-hub-plagarism based news media. It makes sense to utilize any weakness in the media for major exposure for a campaign. I get that. Trust me.
But with it comes the responsibility of being accountable to that exploitation. So taking this “Media Watch is picking on us when others do it” and “we don’t deceive” is absurd.

Joke or not, clever or not, the campaign relied on that weakness. And with that spin comes the bashing from Media Watch. Take it like a man.

It is when they’re taking part in the conversation. You can say it, but it doesn’t add weight to what has been a pretty informative debate.

Cheers,

Tim – Mumbrella

The problem is that in cases like this Media Watch themselves are partially misrepresenting the truth. Yes they have a time limit, can’t tell the whole story, etc – however these are excuses that can also be applied to other media. Media Watch quickly becomes a hypocrite, going after a good ‘story’ for their show, while burying the “tell” signs that the campaign was tongue in cheek and the public would quickly see through it.

Yes, some low quality media organisations ran the story as if it were real, losing the sense of the ridiculous along the way – and that *is* a *worthy* story. So call the journo’s who ran with it and ask why they took it seriously, why they put the story on air, when it was so obviously a silly/funny marketing strategy.

But Media Watch doesn’t do that.

Instead Media Watch reports the story as if the marketers were trying to deceive people (which is pretty crazy, since the implication would be for people to cut down on texting, exactly the opposite of what the brand wanted), and portrays the journos as almost hapless victims.

This reminds me of Media Watch’s slam of Hungry Beast when they pulled a press release stunt to point out poor journalistic standards http://hungrybeast.abc.net.au/.....ies-report . Media Watch seems to miss the point, acts self superior at all times (really annoying!), and lacking of anything resembling a funny bone.

“The latest campaign that I have done for Boost Mobile, I have been the creative lead on the project. I have loved every minute of this it. The ability to come up with the ideas and then lay out the whole plan and channels is definitely something that really interests me. I guess I could see myself as a Creative Director for Engagement Campaigns. ” (http://adspace-pioneers.blogsp.....psule.html)

I have to agree with Ben S that there seems to be a notable reluctance in this case to criticise or jump on the Media lynchmob against Cole/TCO as opposed to the Naked incident. Wouldn’t want to upset our mates when we have to see them down at the pub now would we…

Cheers,”……

wow.. saying that you consider someone a bore warrants a ticking off? just wow.

Fact – In contrast with how they presented the research (as being factually correct) the journalistseditorssubeditors didn’t investigate the (bogus?) research well enough.

Isn’t rest just noise?