Music, marketing, media relations and marathon training. Not always in that order.
Ask me anythingSubmit
May 15, 2013
"This suggest to me that, in situations where safety and health aren’t a concern…leaving the water bottle at home may be a good call."
—
I’ve always done my long runs - even in heat - without water for a few reasons:
I’m too lazy to carry it around with me for several hours
I’m too proud to stop at a drinking fountain and break my stride
I’ve convinced myself that training my body to do more (run longer) with less (hydration/glyco levels) is a ultimately a good thing for my overall performance.
So I was certainly intrigued to read this overview of a study that bore out reason No. 3 for me to an extent; that dehydration training - awful, awful, awful though it may be while in the midst of it - does help boost race-day performance when the body is hydrated at normal levels. Besides, anything that can help back up my laziness and vanity - with science! - is a big plus in my book.
“When I visited New York, one of my favorite things to do was to explore the various flea markets,” says Birgit Schössow, the German artist behind this week’s cover, “City Flair.” “And in the last few years, I’ve even ordered some beautiful costumes and dresses from the forties and fifties from New York’s vintage shops online. These little works of art are simply beautiful to look at from time to time, and to wear every now and then. There’s so much history in a costume that is already nearly seventy years old! It allows you to fantasize each story.”
She concludes: “I love the very feminine styles of that era; my cover was inspired by the fashion drawings of that time. But jeans are much more practical, of course.”
Cover of the May 6, 2013 issue. Get the story behind this week’s cover, “City Flair” by Birgit Schössow as well as a slide show of other New Yorker covers depicting city flair: http://nyr.kr/18827FZ
Qantas Airways is shutting down its PR Twitter account @QantasMedia and is directing customers over to its new online newsroom for information and updates. The Twitter handle, which is run by the Qantas PR staff and has 27,000 followers, is being shut down to streamline information the company shares on social media.
On the one hand, I get this. Sort of. For brands, social media should be a conversational and audience engagement tool, and using a Twitter feed to disseminate press releases is very one-way.
On the other hand, I don’t get this. At all. It seems like a very ill-conceived decision, one I would counsel strongly against had I the opportunity.
One of the most basic and foundational tenets of good PR is to cater to the needs of your audience. Many, many reporters, editors and media people use Twitter, especially as a de facto RSS reader where they can pull in news and updates from companies and brands they cover in one place. Removing your brand from that arena can make it more difficult for media sources to get news, updates and insights from you. Why would you want to take that chance? And if the answer is because you want them to instead visit your snazzy new media page on your website, well, your answer is not a good one. Why does it have to be mutually exclusive? Why can’t you have both?
PRNews says Quantas also explained the move by saying there was a lot of overlap between this account and its consumer-facing account. But that’s hard to see - these tend to be two very separate audiences, especially in terms of what they look for and expect in a brand’s social media channel.
It just seems very shortsighted to cut off what could be a valuable source of information on your brand for your target audience just to drive them to a new page. In PR, we accommodate much more than we dictate - or we should, at least. This seems to go in the opposite direction.
Or, as PR News puts it in the same article more succinctly and effectively, Making journalists proactively root around on a Web page seems like a retreat to passivity, and misses an opportunity to push important PR-related information out into the community to whom it would be most relevant.
Ezra Klein gets at the heart of what running means to people, and, as a consequence, why what happened yesterday in Boston was particularly difficult for those who consider themselves runners.
We don’t train countless hours and log countless miles for any awards or titles or huge paydays. We do it because running a marathon - or any race of any distance, for that matter - is one of the very few things in life where we can make something that seems impossible become, through sheer dedication and determination, quite possible. And because when you actually do that - make the impossible possible by completing a goal race - there is no feeling like it in the world.
There is nothing - literally, nothing - that replicates the feeling of support, community and positivity you experience running a marathon - or any race of any distance, for that matter. And you certainly don’t worry about your safety or security. You only worry about finishing and making your goal time.
But mostly, you don’t worry about much at all. Because these races are joyous, inspiring, affirming experiences. It’s hard to know how much all of that will change now because of what happened yesterday. But, unfortunately, it’s not hard to know that it will change in some way for sure.
Even now, I’m still taken aback by people talking on their Bluetooth earpieces at the airport.
At first I’m always like, “oh that poor dude he’s talking to himself he must not be well” and feel really sorry for him. And then I realize he is just talking on his bluetooth earpiece and then I laugh and feel better because I realize he is “all there” and then I start feeling sorry for him again because he is wearing a bluetooth ear piece and he is using it. In public.
Also, because he is wearing his cell phone clipped to his belt. In public.
“I know that this term is not used in the same way nowadays and I meant no disrespect.”
Bad news, Don Young: If anything, this makes things worse, not better. Claiming you meant no disrespect after uttering such a universally disrespectful phrase only showcases how inherent, how ingrained your racism is. If you came out and said, “yes, I know this is a bad and completely disrespectful term and that by using it a caused many people to feel disrespected”, that’s a bit better and certainly more genuine.
But to say you meant no disrespect communicates either a kind of racism that is completely ingrained into your DNA or a kind of ignorance that is unbecoming a member of Congress. Neither of which is a good thing at all.
"‘Google Alerts was once a very important and efficient tool to monitor mentions of your brand on the web. It is now so unreliable that it has been rendered effectively useless.’"
— This is a big friggin’ deal. In a matter of weeks, two Google services of incalculable value to PR pros - Reader and Alerts - have been in the news for all the wrong reasons. What’s worse is that Google making these services free for so long effectively muscled out any competition, meaning viable alternatives to either service is practically nonexistent.
Congratulations to whomever wrote this product release - you managed to make “irritable bowel syndrom” only the second-worst thing in the headline!
“Synergistic” is not a word. Or maybe it is, but even if it is it’s the worst so don’t use it in a press release at all let alone the headline especially when talking about irritable bowel syndrome okay? Thanks.
Regardless of how you may feel about the proposed NYC sugary drink restrictions, I think we can all agree that Milton Tingling is pretty much the best name ever.
