Posted by Elena del Valle on November 16, 2012
Political Public Relations book cover
Photos: Spiro Kiousis, Jesper Stromback
In Political Public Relations: Principles and Applications (Routledge, $49.95), a 338-page softcover book published in 2011 targeting an audience of students and practitioners with an interest in the developing field, fifteen men and three women, many of them in academia, discuss political public relations. The editors of the book, Spiro Kiousis, PhD*, and Jesper Stromback, PhD, believe that although political public relations plays an important role in society little theorizing or research takes place.
They participated in the book project to encourage integrative theory and research to connect public relations, political communication, political science and related fields. Stromback is Lubbe Nordström Professor and chair in Journalism, and professor in Media and Communication at Mid Sweden University, Sundsvall, Sweden. Kiousis is associate professor and chair of the Department of Public Relations, College of Journalism and Communications, University of Florida.
Spiro Kiousis, co-editor, Political Public Relations
“The recent presidential election campaign highlighted the ongoing importance of effective public relations and communication in winning an election. While the temptation to relegate traditional strategies and tactics as obsolete is high, the success of each candidate at different phases of the campaign rested on their ability to use both traditional channels (such as debates) or social media channels (such as YouTube), said Spiro Kiousis, co-editor, Political Public Relations by email.”
The book includes fifteen chapters. The first two chapters define political public relations and identify its roots. The next two are about news management, agenda indexing and building. The next chapters address political campaigning and presidential elections. The remaining chapters discuss corporate issues, political marketing, strategic framing, crisis communication, relationship management, government communication, digital issues, research and future issues as well as diplomacy, foreign relations and global political public relations.
“Oftentimes public relations in politics is misunderstood as being only about spin och news management, but at heart, political public relations is about organizations seeking to establish, build an maintain beneficial relationships and reputations with its key publics to help support its mission and achieve its goals. As such, public relations has always been an intrinsic part of politics and is key to long-term success both when campaigning and governing, and this book highlights both the principles and applications of public relations in politics,” said Stromback by email.
Jesper Stromback, co-editor, Political Public Relations
The book’s definition of political public relations is “the management process by which an organization or individual actor for political purposes, through purposeful communication and action, seeks to influence and to establish, build, and maintain beneficial relationships and reputations with its key publics to help support its mission and achieve its goals.” A book related website, political-public-relations.com, most recently updated September 2012 and run by the editors, extends the conversation beyond the book.
In addition to Kiousis and Stromback, the contributing authors are Paul Baines, PhD, W. Timothy Coombs, PhD, Mathew Eshbough-Soha, PhD, Guy J. Golan, Kirk Hallan, Robert Heath, PhD, Nigel Jackson, John A. Ledingham, PhD, Paul S. Lieber, Darren G. Lilleker, Diana Knott Martinelli, PhD, Juan Carlos Molleda, PhD, Karen Sanders, Kay Sweetser, PhD, John C. Tedesco, PhD, and Damion Waymer, PhD.
*Elena del Valle and Spiro Kiousis serve on the University of Florida Public Relations Advisory Council
Click to buy Political Public Relations
Comments:
Filed Under: Books
Posted by Elena del Valle on November 13, 2012
Information provided by Event Partner
NHLI 2012 Executive Leadership Training Conference and Mujer Awards December 9–11, 2012 in Washington D.C.
The National Hispana Leadership Institute’s 2012 Executive Leadership Training Conference and Mujer Awards brings together Latinas and NHLI’s accomplished alumnae from across the nation for two days of cutting-edge leadership and professional development, networking, educational and inspirational keynotes and workshops facilitated by top-level Latinas from across the country.
At the Mujer Awards Gala, celebrated since 1993, which will be held on Monday, December 10, NHLI will close the conference by paying tribute to the achievements and contributions of exceptional Latina leaders. Past honorees have included journalist and TV anchor Maria Elena Salinas, NCLR’s President Janet Murguia, and actresses Rosario Dawson and Eva Longoria.
Conference attendees include local and national leaders in corporate America, non-profits, government, media, higher education, as well as entrepreneurs, students, artists, authors and others.
We look forward to seeing you on December 9–11, 2012 in Washington D.C.!
http://nhli.org/conference_register.htm
Posted by Elena del Valle on November 12, 2012
Earlier this year the National Hispanic Media Coalition (NHMC) released the findings of academic studies and a national poll that outline the role of the media in “breeding hate and shaping public opinion about Latinos and other groups.” The organization’s leadership believes the research presented “underscores the need for accuracy and fairness in our media.”
The research indicates that hate speech on commercial talk radio has led to social network interest in the radio program hosts and their guests; and that this social network passes its content to affiliated social media websites, resulting in voices promoting hatred toward people of color, people of certain religions and LGBT people. According to the report, “Media personalities and political figures representing the Republican Party and/or affiliated with the Tea Party dominate the social network, leaving little room for alternate points of view. Media powerhouses such as Premiere Radio Networks, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Clear Channel Communications, and Fox News are key components of this social network.”
A poll of non-Latino Americans found that their source of news is often television. Sixty six percent of respondents to the poll said they watch major network and cable newscasts for information and 30 percent said they trust Facebook, Twitter, and other social networks or online-only news sources. These individuals rely on news and entertainment media in forming impressions about Latinos and immigrants, according to poll analysts. The poll led researchers to conclude that Latinos and immigrants are commonly portrayed negatively in news and entertainment media prompting many non-Latinos to believe that “media-promoted negative stereotypes about these groups are true.”
The poll analysis indicates that conservative talk radio and Fox News audiences while less likely to be personally familiar with Latinos are more likely to hold anti-immigrant and anti-Latino views. Some survey respondents erroneously, according to the executive summary, believe that Latinos and undocumented immigrants are the same, and 17 percent of survey respondents said they believe that the majority of United States Latinos are undocumented.
The results of the studies were published in the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center. They are: Quantifying Hate Speech on Commercial Talk Radio from November 2011, Social Networks for Hate Speech Commercial Talk Radio and New Media from July 2012 by Chon A. Noriega, director, UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center, and Francisco Javier Iribarren and Using Biological Marketers to Measure Stress in Listeners of Commercial Talk Radio by Hermes J. Garban, Iribarren and Noriega.
The UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center supports interdisciplinary, collaborative, and policy-oriented research. The W.K. Kellogg Foundation provided support to make the research possible. Matt A. Barreto, Sylvia Manzano, and Gary Segura of Latino Decisions produced and designed the research study, and implemented the data collection. The National Hispanic Media Coalition was founded in 1986 to increase positive portrayals of Latinos in media, based on a fundamental understanding that the media has the power to shape opinions of and behavior towards Latinos and other demographic groups.
Posted by Elena del Valle on November 9, 2012
The Connected Company book cover
Photos: O’Reilly Media, Dave Gray photo by Maia Garau, Thomas Vander Wal photo by Matt Balara
Many companies today are divided internally according to function which is fine in a stable environment but in an uncertain environment these companies become brittle, say Dave Gray and Thomas Vander Wal. To overcome uncertain times companies need to sort their organizational structure into Holarchies that function independently forming a Connected Company which they believe is flexible, strong and adapts well to change.
Gray is the author with Vander Wal of The Connected Company (O’Reilly Media, $24.99), a 287-page hardcover book published this year. In it they discuss the changes they see taking over the business environment and how they believe companies need to respond to them. Organizational and management innovation are necessary in order for the essential business model innovation and adaptation required to match today’s fast pace, Alexander Osterwalder proposes in the book’s Foreword.
Dave Gray, author, The Connected Company
“The driving principle of the industrial revolution was the division of labor. The driving principle of the next revolution is connection,” said Gray by email in response to a question about who would benefit from reading the book.
Change is essential, the authors say, because customers are embracing disruptive technologies faster than companies are able to adapt. The book is divided into five sections: Why change, What is a connected company, How does a connected company work, How do you lead a connected company, and How do you get there from here.
According to the book, connected companies should be more like organisms than like machines. As such they should learn, have a purpose, obtain feedback from customers, and experiment. They should be made of networked pods with control of their own fate.
Companies that gravitate toward this model will have an advantage, the authors say. To do so they must embrace organic growth, leader driven change, pilot pods and network weaving.
Thomas Vander Wal, contributing author, The Connected Company
Gray, senior vice president of Strategy, Dachis Group, is a management consultant who works with companies to develop and execute winning strategies. His previous book, Gamestorming (O’Reilly), sold more than 50,000 copies and has been translated into 14 languages, according to his bio.
Vander Wal, principal, InfoCloud Solutions, advises companies on social business, digital content, and personal-to-social information. He is on the steering committee of the Web Standards Project, and helped found the Information Architecture Institute, according to his bio.
Click to buy The Connected Company
Comments:
Filed Under: Books
Posted by Elena del Valle on November 5, 2012
Kevin O’Shea, brand manager, Gold Eagle Co.
Photo, video: Gold Eagle Co.
Gold Eagle Company released Chainsaw Psycho, a national television and online ad, a spoof of the 1974 cult chainsaw massacre movie, to promote its brand of fuel-system revitalizers, Start Your Engines! Shot in Conestogo, Canada and produced in one week by five people under the supervision of Matthew Ninaber, a Poptent community member, and his team at High-Rise Studio in Ontario, the ad was designed for a target audience “not limited to but mostly for men” and “people with a sense of humour.” Scroll down to watch the ad video.
“We wanted to do something entirely different with this TV spot to illustrate how Start Your Engines! works and overemphasize its immediate solution to those untimely life moments when your small-engine equipment malfunctions,” said Kevin O’Shea, brand manager, Gold Eagle Co. “This TV spot also marks an exciting new direction for Gold Eagle’s marketing approach.”
In the Halloween-themed spot a chainsaw killer is about to take his next victim only to discover his chainsaw won’t start. The victim, lying on the floor awaiting his doom, gives the killer advice for small engine trouble shooting and offers the killer a bottle of Start Your Engines! The spot concludes with the victim extolling the benefits of the product just before the chainsaw starts.
The commercial appeared on YouTube and aired on national television in October 2012 on HGTV shows, Property Brothers, House Hunters International and Yard Crashers, and the DIY network on Yardcore, House Crashers and The Vanilla Ice Project. Marketing executives for the company estimate landing page traffic went from nothing to 692 views between September 1 and October 28 of this year. YouTube analytics, a spokesperson shared, indicate that viewership of the spot was just under 23,000 views. Gold Eagle Co. is a privately held Chicago based maker of engine maintenance fluids and fuel additives.
Posted by Elena del Valle on October 31, 2012
Seleccion Tequila
Photos: Casa Herradura
Tough economic times are not dampening the spirit of fine tequila drinkers. Just in time for the holiday season tequila maker Casa Herradura recently announced new refined primary and secondary packaging for its high-end, extra añejo Selección Suprema tequila, first produced in 1995, designed to appeal to tequila connoisseurs and aficionados among men thirty years of age and older.
A brand spokesperson described the target customers as “sophisticated males who appreciate Herradura and the desire to share the best life has to offer with closest friends.” The 750 milliliter bottle sells for $350. The new packaging was expected to arrive at stores by the end of October.
Seleccion Tequila – click to enlarge
“The refinements are meant to better reflect the quality and sophistication of the tequila within and align the packaging with the rest of the Herradura brand family,” said Valdemar Cantu, brand manager Herradura.
Seleccion Tequila bottle and box
The new package features an earth-tone box with a bi-fold opening with the brand’s horseshoe on the bottom right panel. The center interior of the box props and cradles the bottle on a fitted pedestal. The new packaging was designed by Johnny Cardenas, design director for Brown-Forman. Once opened, the bi-fold panels display the story of the tequila handcrafted in Amatitán, Jalisco Mexico following “traditional production methods” and aged for 49 months in American white oak barrels. Although the glass container remains unchanged, a copper finish metal die cast horseshoe, a copper neck band, and a brand mark update were added as well as an authenticating strip label signed by Master Distiller Maria Teresa Lara.
Casa Herradura has been hand harvesting, handcrafting and estate bottling tequilas in Jalisco, Mexico since 1870. In 2007, Casa Herradura was acquired by Brown-Forman Corporation of Louisville, Kentucky. Brown-Forman is a producer and marketer of beverages and alcohol brands.
Posted by Elena del Valle on October 29, 2012
Border Patrol officers use All Terrain Vehicles to patrol the border with Mexico
Photo: U.S. Department of Homeland Security
In the first half of this year more people entered the United States illegally through Mexico and fewer migrants returned to Mexico, according to researchers on both sides of the border. Such traffic numbers were unusual in that 2007 was the last time researchers saw growth in border crossing numbers toward the United States.
Staff at The Mexican Migration Monitor, a joint project of The Colegio de la Frontera Norte and the Tomas Rivera Policy Institute at the University of Southern California, estimate there are some 11.7 million Mexican born people living in the United States including documented and undocumented immigrants. That number may increase slightly by the end of the year, according to the two organizations. The principal investigators of the Monitor are Roberto Suro and Rene Zenteno. The academics rely in part on the Border Survey of Mexican Migration said to be “the oldest continuous research program tracking original data on the number of people crossing the U.S.-Mexico border, with the objective of providing unbiased estimates of Mexican labor flows.”
They believe that the numbers indicate the size of the Mexican-born population in the United States has fully recovered from the decreases caused by or following the Great Recession. Recently, unemployment among those migrants, they point out, has dropped and labor force participation rates have held up indicating that the economic performance of the undocumented immigrants from this group may be slightly better than for native-born workers in the United States.
Another indicator considered by researchers of Mexico to United States border crossing and economic trends is the transfer of money from Mexicans in the United States to relatives in Mexico. The researchers have concluded that remittance levels have recovered lost ground following two years of growth post Great Recession.
Posted by Elena del Valle on October 26, 2012
Smart Customers, Stupid Companies book cover
Photos: SmartCustomers.com
In Smart Customers, Stupid Companies why only intelligent companies will thrive, and how to be one of them (Business Strategy Press, $24.95), a book published recently, Michael Hinshaw and Bruce Kasanoff discuss how technology is feeding the needs of smart consumers, requiring companies to stay ahead of market trends to survive.
The 187-page softcover book in color with varied fonts and type sizes is divided into six sections: Smart Customers, Intelligence is Everywhere, A Perfect Storm of Disruptive Innovation, Stupid Companies, Get Smart, and Critical Steps. The project took the authors two years to complete.
The authors believe disruptive forces are affecting business and only companies that respond quickly and efficiently will remain viable in the long term. The four main disruptive forces they describe are: Social Influence, Pervasive Memory, Digital Sensors, and the Physical Web. They believe these forces offer consumers new services, better information, and more choices.
Bruce Kasanoff, coauthor, Smart Customers, Stupid Companies
“Two words: Michael Hinshaw. This was a true collaboration, but Michael was driven to make the book visually arresting, and I was driven to make it strategically impactful. We overlapped, of course, but Michael deserves the most credit for the look and feel,” said Kasanoff by email in response to a question about the color design and layout of the book.
“The book is about innovation vs. inertia. Smart wireless technologies are opening up nearly unlimited opportunities for innovative new services, but many companies are dragging along using the same outdated business models. Michael and I say that one-third of Fortune 500 CEOs are running the next Kodak, but they don’t know it yet,” he said in response to a question about the book and its target audience.
Michael Hinshaw, coauthor, Smart Customers, Stupid Companies
“We wrote the book to let CEOs know that customer experience should be one of their top priorities. Customers have radically greater expectations than even a few years ago, and your company’s future literally depends on your ability to meet or exceed those expectations,” said Hinshaw in response to the same question.
Kasanoff, a blogger at NowPossible.com, has raised $20 million in venture capital and built sales of a new product line to $20 million in three years, according to his bio. Hinshaw, president, Touchpoint Metrics, is also managing director of Mcorp Consulting.
Click to buy Smart Customers, Stupid Companies
Comments:
Filed Under: Books
Posted by Elena del Valle on October 24, 2012
By Nivene Judeh
Blogger, It’s Economic
Nivene Judeh, blogger, It’s Economic
It appears there’s some confusion about the meaning of “poverty.”
According to a new TNS Omnibus study for CashNetUSA (www.cashnetusa.com/do-you-consider-yourself-to-be-poor), 25.2 percent of the 1,000 participants, or more than one in four Americans, consider themselves to be poor. But according to the 2010 U.S. census, only one in six Americans actually lives below the federal poverty line.1 So where does the discrepancy come from?
The U.S. government’s definition of poverty consists of looking at a family’s or individual’s yearly cash income before taxes and comparing it to how much money is required to meet the needs of everyone in the household.
Click to read the entire article Crossing Over the Poverty Line
