This is dope - Ikea's Everyday Fabulous

From MediaPost's Out to Launch:

IKEA made "everyday fabulous" for New Yorkers when it went design-crazy on the city. All in preparation for Design Week earlier this year, natch. Some of the stunts over the five-day period included placing sofas and curtains in bus shelters, putting blankets and picnic baskets with bottled water in parks, placing pillows on the bottom of slides to protect kid's bottoms, framing a missing cat flier, and adding padded park benches to Union Square. My personal favorite--oven mitts were placed on the No. 6 train. "Good design can make the everyday a little better," said the tag line. Deutsch created the campaign.

Dont' be stuck in old school PR mode

So, a bit of a shameless plug here, but this is the kind of thing that makes our jobs easier!

Marketwire (competes with PRN and Bizwire) is a GREAT service. It's cheaper than PRN and Businesswire, and it has better service, and some really cool extras that the other wires aren't even close on (to my knowledge at least). Below, my acct person Nick breaks it down in detail, but net net, here's why you might want to consider using these guys:

For like $50 or so, they do a search optimization on your press releases that can take you from no listings on google searches to being on page one. Huge!
For around $100, you can embed video (YouTube style) into press releases, which then get disseminated to all of the outlets that run video.
Lastly, they are connected to sites like Digg and Delicious... if you haven't heard of these, check them out... they are the next wave of how we consume news/do searching, etc.

Super forward thinking, and not too expensive. Just wanted to share the love.

http://www.marketwire.com

Positioning Statement Hell

This is an example of how not to write a positioning statement:

X is one of the key platform developers and solutions providers for mobile technology. A preferred technology partner of major industry players, X offers innovative mobile and Internet services by helping them develop competitive business solutions and turnkey applications.

At X, we have one thing in common with our partners: we both value the consumers as our end-users. Our team keeps a strong focus on offering end-to-end technology solutions and support when and where it is needed.

You could copy and paste almost any company name in here and take out “mobile” and pretty much anyone could use this. Please, my fellow PR people, don't succumb to the sales guy's claims of "IT just HAS to have the word "innovative" and "value our customers" in it!!! Resist! The sales guy may have the ear of the CEO, but you my friend, will have your name attached to a piece of crap that reporters laugh at.

Bad PR People!! No sneaky viral campaigns!

This is the sinister side of marketing in a post-YouTube/Tivo world. Consumer Generated Media can start to look a lot like corporate agenda-pushing.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB115457177198425388-search.html?KEYWORDS=ogilvy&COLLECTION=wsjie/6month

Quick excerpt, in case you don't have a subscription: "Everyone knows Al Gore stars in the global warming documentary "An Inconvenient Truth." But who created "Al Gore's Penguin Army," a two-minute video now playing on YouTube.com?....

In an email exchange with The Wall Street Journal, Toutsmith didn't answer when asked who he was or why he made the video, which has just over 59,000 views on YouTube. However, computer routing information contained in an email sent from Toutsmith's Yahoo account indicate it didn't come from an amateur working out of his basement.

It registered to DCI Group, a Washington, D.C., public relations and lobbying firm whose clients include oil company Exxon Mobil Corp."

Boooo, hisssss.