Tag Archives: mobile

SXSW “homeless hotspot” idea goes tragically (and predictably) wrong

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What was BBH Labs thinking? Michael Sebastien at PR Daily is on the money in saying that “it might go down as one of the biggest PR disasters of the year.”

New York-based marketing firm BBH Labs equipped homeless people on the streets of Austin with devices that made them wireless hot spots. Internet seekers then paid what they wanted—in cash or via PayPal—to access the Web. The homeless men and women kept all of the money.

The media wasn’t amused, and now BBH Labs is licking its wounds. Read more

Qwest/CenturyTel merger: do you, Triceratops, take this Brontosaurus to be your lawfully wedded wife?

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It was announced yesterday that Louisiana-based CenturyTel is buying Qwest, marking the second major takeover in ten years for the Denver telco. I have some history with the US West iteration of the company, having worked there from 1997 until the ill-fated Qwest “merger” in Summer 2000.

I was fortunate enough to be a part of USW’s PR group, which remains the best large corporate communication division I have ever seen (and in that role I got to do some interesting, groundbreaking work). I’ve continued to watch the company fairly closely through the years, especially as the unfortunate Nacchio affair unfolded (and am proud of the repeated stompings we here at S&R have administered to that amoral cur along the way). I have hoped for the best over at 1801 California for a number of reasons. Read more

Business and social media: American companies growing up, sort of

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Ever since the Internet began gaining popular awareness in the mid-1990s, the topic of how businesses can productively use various new media technologies has been a subject of ongoing interest. Along the way we’ve had a series of innovations to consider: first it was the Net, and the current tool of the moment is Twitter. In between we had, in no particular order, Facebook (not that Facebook has gone away, of course), CRM, mobile (SMS, smart phones, apps), blogging, RSS and aggregation, Digg (and Reddit and StumbleUpon and Current and Yahoo! Buzz and Technorati and Del.icio.us and seemingly thousands more), targeted e-mail, YouTube, SEO, SEM, online PR and, well, you get the idea.

We certainly hear examples of businesses getting it right with new media, but in truth these cases represent a painfully small minority. Read more

The Internet is dead! Long live … television?

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So says Mark Cuban. Now, I’m typically a big Cuban fan. But I’m looking at an AdAge report on his remarks from yesterday’s Cable Telecommunications Association for Marketing (CTAM) Summit, and I’m a little puzzled.

Speaking at the Cable Telecommunications Association for Marketing (CTAM) Summit in Washington yesterday, Mr. Cuban declared “the Internet is dead” in an otherwise subdued panel that included executives such as ESPN President George Bodenheimer and Time Warner Cable CEO Glenn Britt.

Read the rest at Black Dog…

Campaign mobile: it’s 1996 all over again

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Every time a new medium catches our attention we have to endure this awkward period where people who have decision-making and spending authority but no understanding of the medium at all treat it like it’s the old media they’re used to. Old assumptions, old practices … failure. It’s like in 1996 when ad agencies discovered the Internet. “I know, let’s digitize our print ads and use those!” Remember how much fun that was on a 9600 baud modem?

Now it’s 1996 for mobility, and nobody is not getting it quite as dramatically as the political sector. Read more

Obama campaign [third] to launch mobile, [third] to screw it up

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[UPDATE: turns out he’s not the first after all – see comments below for details.]

I’ve been yarping for months that no political campaign had yet launched mobile. There’s this massive youth generation that’s setting records for political and community activity, the mobile phone is one of their favorite things in the world, and all these politicians and their high-priced communications groups are doing … nada. I’ve talked to some of them, too.

  • “We’re working on it.”
  • “Yeah, thanks, I’ll pass your name on.”
  • “Sounds great – here’s a list of 30 people you might try.”
  • “Ummm, I have no idea who would be in charge of that.”

Well, finally this week the Obama campaign became the first to launch a mobile marketing campaign. Read more