Any good public relations professional or agency knows that good PR is not the result of media relations only, but also the result of building relationships with journalists and publishers, who in turn go on to build relationships with their readers. Similarly, any reputable marketer knows that good marketing is a by-product of vertical and […]
Media
Posted inMedia
Arrested development
The mayhem started at 7am last week Wednesday when a bakkie with eight people loaded on the back overturned. It ended 12 hours later with a crash that saw four women — one of whom was pregnant — killed. In between the crashes, there was an armed cash heist. This all took place in what […]
Posted inLifestyle, Media
May these sheep all run off a cliff
I hate sheep. Afrikaans sheep, to be exact, and more specifically, Christian Afrikaans sheep. Some excellent thoughts have been shared on Thought Leader in the past week on Rapport editor Tim du Plessis’s firing of columnist Deon Maas for sharing his thoughts on satanism, resulting in a vehement SMS and email campaign by readers that […]
Posted inBusiness, Media
The motivation to co-create value
The idea of authentic co-creation is quite obviously the most important shift that is happening in marketing and strategy today. It is a move away from centralised control of communications and branding to a more decentralised, user-oriented approach. At the iCommons Innovation Series last week in Jo’burg, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales stated that any business […]
Posted inMedia, Tech
Google SA: Set to rule
Unfortunately, I was not lucky enough to receive an invite to the Google South Africa event that happened in Johannesburg yesterday. Stafford Masie, country manager for Google South Africa, gave some insight into Google SA’s plans once it has launched in February next year. I think it’s great to see Stafford wanting to leverage the […]
Posted inMedia, Tech
Are the media colonising the blogosphere?
I have been asked by this newspaper to be a contributor to its blogospherical initiative Thought Leader. This is my maiden input. At first, I was sceptical of the newspaper’s invitation. Well, I still am. I thought to myself: whatever it is we call the “blogosphere” is meant to be deinstitutionalised, far removed from the […]
Posted inBusiness, Lifestyle, Media
What the Idols taught me about brands that should blog
Last week I had the good fortune to be on the same kulula.com flight as the last five contestants in the Idols 2007 season. I wouldn’t say it was good fortune to hear them sing Happy Birthday over the intercom to one of the cabin attendants, even if it was very sweet of them, but […]
Posted inMedia
Of ivory towers and diseased black men
Here is why people are so afraid to “debate” Ronald Suresh Roberts. After last week’s post in which I objected to Ronald’s name-calling, I called him and explained why he’d really pissed me off. I know him and believe that he has a great mind that should be applied to weightier matters than personal attack. […]
Posted inMedia, Tech
Interview with danah boyd, social networking expert
danah boyd (she insists on the lower case) is one of the world’s leading experts on social networking sites (SNSs) such as MySpace and Facebook. She is a PhD student at the University of California, Berkeley, and a Fellow at the Harvard Berkman Centre for Internet and Society. I interviewed her to try to understand […]
Posted inMedia, News/Politics
Don’t expect political BEEs to sting
It’s temporarily quiet on the Johncom buy-out front. No doubt, though, there’s movement behind the scenes. And the issues certainly have not gone away. The biggest one is the political interest in owning the newspaper stable. No one believes that this interest is purely business-driven, despite protestations to the contrary by Koni Media (with some […]
Posted inMedia
Spreading the word on satanism
There has been understandable outrage over the axing of Rapport columnist Deon Maas for his column on satanism and religious tolerance. Deon, who for a brief moment must have felt like a Danish cartoonist, was understandably confused about the whole thing seeing as the gist of his article was about being tolerant and accepting and […]
Posted inLifestyle, Media
The secrets of the Order of the Brain
The amount of research being done in the field of neurosciences is staggering at present. More amazing are the discoveries being made each passing day. They don’t command headlines because most of us can’t understand the stuff, let alone interpret these to make them accessible to the layman. I have a strong suspicion they are […]