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PR

Awesome dinner with Brian Solis

by wyliemac on February 22, 2009

Last week, Brian Solis was in town to talk to the Central Ohio chapter of the Public Relations Society of America about ”the new landscape of PR and the emerging new roles and responsibilities which we must embrace in order to successfully and genuinely evolve and ensure our place in the future communications economy.”

While I planned to attend the lunch, I became too busy at work to attend, so I gave my ticket away to the SOLD OUT event. But luckily, I was invited to attend a small dinner with Brian the night before at Martini. I’m certainly glad I went, and just by hearing him talk, I understand why he’s such the rockstar in the PR and Social Media world. 

Joining me at the dinner was Kelli Knowinsky (the person who invited Brian to come to Columbus), Kevin Pfefferle, Nick Seguin, Jim Canterucci, Angela Siefer and Jamie Timm. I have gotten to know these folks from twitter and it’s easy to see why Brian came to the conclusion that “Columbus is indeed a developing social media and new tech hub and is ripe for the next wave of events that spotlight the local social economy.”

Here are some photos from my dinner.

Popularity: 21% [?]

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DSW commits major PR blunder in sueing Zappos

by wyliemac on May 13, 2008

You know I hate to see Columbus businesses mess up. But it looks like Columbus based DSW has a PR nightmare on its hands.

Yesterday, DSW filed suit against online shoe retailer Zappos alleging that Zappos and it’s agents have infringed DSW’s service marks. The PR trouble is multiple.

1) The entity that allegedly infringed the service marks is an affiliate of Zappos, not Zappos itself. In Internet parlance, an affiliate is basically someone that puts a link to an online store and gets a commission whenever someone that clicks that link buys from the online store.

2) According to Zappos’ CEO, DSW never informed Zappos of their problem, and just sued them. Which is a perfectly valid move, except that …

3) Zappos has a HUGE Twitter presence and a HUGE fan base. DSW, your move strikes these folks as:

a) a PR stunt given that you just launched your competing online shoe site, and

b) a douchebag move given your lack of trying to work things out in advance.

Worse yet, there was a guy on Twitter with the screen name of, ugh, SEOColumbus (account since deleted) that bashed Zappos. Turns out, SEOColumbus was associated with DSW.

Run a search on Summize.com for Zappos and DSW. You’ll see that the masses are outraged and pledge to buy from Zappos and not DSW. That hurts.

Is there any way for DSW to contain the onslaught of bad PR? Perhaps some of my PR friends on Twitter can chime in. I for one have shopped at DSW and hope to continue shopping there. It’s just hard to see a Columbus business miscalculate so badly. It makes us all look like yokels. Like when Skybus went bust.

And if I may interject one more comment. For Pete’s sake, if you’re going to try to covertly muck up the social network world, please use another name that doesn’t sully our region’s name.

Update: Here’s the DSW complaint if you’re so inclined to read.

dsw-v-zappos-complaint

Popularity: 16% [?]

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A fine promotional video of the Short North

by wyliemac on February 25, 2008

I just happened upon a well produced promotional video of the Short North. It was done by a company called Turn Here for Experience Columbus. It wants to make you go there. Now.

Popularity: 15% [?]

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