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All partisan politics aside, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair has always been someone who deserved respect, if only for his uncanny ability to speak to the media. One example dates back to 2005 when, during a live broadcast on England helping to subsidize other countries’ admission into the European Union at a cost of hundreds of millions of pounds to the taxpayers, he took 30-45 minutes of grilling from the media on the steps of Parliament, and answered every question quickly, decisively and intelligently. He did this without a script, teleprompter, or broadcast ear piece with someone feeding him talking points.
Imagine an American politician trying that type of extended, extemporaneous dialogue with the media without mis-stepping. Given the hostile nature of the questions, Blair’s performance made the over-produced town hall meetings that our politicians “endure” look like a walk in the park.
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How safe is HR data in the cloud?
By Aliah D. Wright
Cloud computing is all the rage for some firms. But should very sensitive HR data reside on the Internet?
Cloud computing refers to keeping data on vendors’ servers operating on the Internet or “in the cloud,” and not on a company's computers. Think software-as-a-service (SAAS).
Most experts say the advantages are many. But are they worth the risks?
The Advantages
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It’s a standard principle in every media training playbook; you tell clients never to say “No Comment” in response to a question from an interviewer. The idea is that the spokesperson will come off as stand-offish, evasive, or worse with that reply.
After seeing two recent high-profile, easily avoidable celebrity debacles in the last two weeks, it may be time to amend this principle.
The first debacle involves Brad Pitt commenting about his failed marriage to Jennifer Aniston in an upcoming article in Parade magazine that got sneak-peeked yesterday.
Here, Pitt comments: “It became very clear to me that I was intent on trying to find a movie about an interesting life, but I wasn’t living an interesting life myself. I think that my marriage [to actress Jennifer Aniston] had something to do with it. Trying to pretend the marriage was something that it wasn’t."
Oy.
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I’ve been a life-long lover of language. As a kid, I read the dictionary and Encyclopedia Britannica. As a college student, I read etymology textbooks. As an adult, I read William Safire’s “On Language” column in the New York Times Magazine every week, until he passed away in 2009 (R.I.P.). Now, I’m reading UrbanDictionary.com.
I know what you’re thinking: One of these things is not like the others. True, but UrbanDictionary.com is so educational …. and entertaining! Where else can you learn the latest words and colloquial expressions? For example: “Facebook necrologist”? (A person who never misses a chance to post a "R.I.P. insert name" status update in Facebook as soon as any celebrity dies.) I might know a few people like that.
One of the things I enjoy most about language is that it’s living and changes over time. I also enjoy learning how geography, culture, gender, social class, age group, vocation, and vocational industry impacts language and vocabulary.
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My hands are in contact with digital devices about 10 hours of the day if not more. Every night before I got to sleep, I reach for my cell phone, set my alarm and depend on it to wake me up in the morning. Then, in the morning, my cell phone is the first object I touch – opening my eyes to see a digital screen projecting the time.
Then I'm off on the road in my car. I have to force myself to consciously forget that my cell phone is mere inches away from hands. California laws have banned holding and talking on cell phones while driving on the road. But my addition to check to see if I’ve been contacted for whatever reason still has its power over me. I get to stoplights and quickly check to see if my inbox has received any new messages.
Once I sit down at my office desk, I turn on my computer and spend the next 9 hours staring at a screen, quickly moving between several other digital devices such as my keyboard, mouse, cell phone and landline. I can’t recall a time when I had a digital device “off” by me.
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On a recent new business pitch, a prospective day-to-day contact asked us to pull together a top-line list of why a company should hire a public relations firm. It was an interesting request that served as a clear reminder that agencies must constantly reinforce the value that they deliver to customers and sometimes educate prospects about why they need us.
With this thought in mind, we created a top-10 list. While it may not be as funny as a Letterman Top 10, hopefully it will help you if anyone asks, “why should I hire a PR firm?”
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Return on Investment: Very effective public relations campaigns can be performed for less than $100K annually, which is modest compared to advertising (print, online, mobile, etc.)
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Relationships: Companies can leverage a firm’s relationships and connections, including key editors at top-tier media outlets, business-development contacts, potential investors, and other industry influencers (e.g. member organizations, standards bodies, trade show or event organizers, etc.).
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Back in elementary school we set aside an hour each week to visit the computer lab and learn how to type efficiently. I don’t recall the computer program we used but the name Mavis Beacon comes to mind. The animated teacher on the screen spelled out sentences and students were required to replicate the sentences in the fastest time with the most accuracy. Unfortunately, typing at fast speeds was not my forte.
Then the days of AOL Instant Messaging came around, better known as AIM to my peers. Every day I would come home and log on to AIM to chat with my classmates. Conversing over IM became a fun past time and before I even realized it, my typing abilities morphed into the speeds I never imagined possible. Soon I was carrying on conversations with more than seven people at once and typing messages as quickly as the thoughts came to mind.
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Since Twitter launched in 2006, it has quickly become the second most popular social media site on the market today behind Facebook. While most people use it to tweet about what they’re doing or a random thought that pops into their head, it has quickly become a marketing tool for celebrities, professional athletes, politicians, and companies of all shapes and sizes with many like Kim Kardashian charging a fixed fee per tweet. And for most, this marketing tactic has proven to be very successful. So, when does tweeting become a bad idea? Let’s consider the curious case of a now well known Congressman, Anthony Weiner.
Representative Wiener, who represents parts of the New York city boroughs of Queens and Brooklyn, recently admitted using his Twitter account to send a lewd photo to a woman he was following. Sounds like Brett Favre except instead of using a private cell phone, he used one of the most “public” social media sites in the world. Now he is faced with a national media firestorm and the potential end to his political career. A steep price to play for a poor decision.
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