Shut Down by the Publicist

Last night I was doing my usual nightly perusal of celebrities tweets on my twitter account when I stopped that Ryan Seacrest was at the New Moon premiere interviewing celebrities from the red carpet. Any tweet with the word 'premiere' or 'award show' I'm already interested so I stayed close by my computer to follow what was going on. A little while later Seacrest tweeted this:

@RyanSeacrest: Robert pattison is class act however the rep he was with yanked him off the air and off the mic when I asked him about kristen. Unreal!

Seacrest most have been immediately flooded with @replies, because minutes after he sent another tweet that he would have the video footage online in the morning as well as talk about it on his radio show. I was very eager for the video to drop the next morning, because I wanted to see if the publicist was really being out of control or if she was just doing her job. The next morning Seacrest posted the video of the interview on his website RyanSeacrest.com

Check out the video

After the video, I was shocked at how the publicist acted. From the moment she walked into the room you could tell she did not want Pattison to be doing the interview. She stood by the door and the whole time kept looking at the time and trying to tell Seacrest to wrap it up, even though they had only been talking for 1 minute at most. After complementing Pattison on his fame, Seacrest tried to ask him a natural question about if him and his costar Kristen Stewart were involved. Pattison began to laugh and did not seem uncomfortable until his publicist literally came over to him and yanked him from the interview (not before telling him to say thank you into the mic). Seacrest then says that it was the first time in his career that a guest has been yanked from an interview.

I understand that working the red carpet can be stressful, trying to deal with reporters, and lots of screaming fans, but this was pretty ridiculous behavior. If this is how this woman acts during an interview, I can't imagine how she handles crisis situations. It's the job of a publicist to make the celebrity look good, instead of calling attention to yourself? Just something to think about.

They said what?!

I'll admit I'm a self professed pop culture junk. I love celebrity scandals, outrage interviews, and of course the leaked nude photos or sex tape. While I read and watch all these things go down, I always think, "What is this persons public relations team doing right now?". Which made me think, how involved in a celebrities life should there publicity/public relations team be?

First let me give some examples of what I'm talking about. Last week Britney Spears twitter account was hacked. The hacker sent a few tweets saying like "Praise Satan!" as well as changed her account picture. Now even though it was very obvious to see that Spears' team did not tweet such things, they were quite slow on dealing with the matter. It was a few hours until the team realized what had happened and was able to get on the site and delete the tweets and apologize for the mishap. I know it's nearly impossible for celebrity public relation teams to be monitoring social media 24/7, but a star popular as Spears probably should have a team trying to do just that.

Besides just monitoring social media, how involved should publicist be with celebrities interviews? Yesterday I saw this interview with Miley Cyrus on YouTube. The interviewer asks Cyrus some questions about her chart topping hit "Party in the USA", and her response are less than desired for her publicity team I'm sure. She tells the interviewer not only does she not listen Pop Music but she only choice the song to help promote her clothing line. The interviewer tries to help Cyrus out but she continues to make herself sound ungrateful. Now she could have follow strict guidelines from her team on what to say in the interview but instead she chose to speak freely.

Which leads back to the question how involved should the stars publicity team be in their life/career?

I found this article online at PR Week about how having a publicist can help celebrities careers (in this case Tom Cruise).

Sound off: What do you think the involvement should be for publicists? And how should they go about monitoring social media?

Join Twitter and win free stuff?

I admit, I tweet too much. I have become quickly addicted to the social media site known as Twitter, only joining last winter. After learning in multiple communications classes how Twitter is a legitimate tool for Advertising and Public Relations, which makes me feel more justified about my addiction.

What I want to talk about today is the trend of using contests on social media sites to generate brand awareness. At least a few times a day I receive tweets from various people or companies about contests or giveaways for products, concert tickets, etc. Ellen DeGeneres frequently tweets about giving away concert or movie premiere passes. Orbitz had a contest where a few lucky people won free plane tickets by retweeting one of their messages. I think all of these contests and giveaway are an extremely smart new way of instilling branding to people. Who won't think highly of a company that gives them free plane tickets? Twitter has made companies seem more reachable and personalized by being able to follow them on a daily basis. I wonder if this trend will continue and if by doing so it will increase the use of Twitter.

Sound off: What do you think of companies using Twitter to bring in more business?

Do you vlog?

A vlog, as defined by Urban Dictionary, is a video log. It's a journalistic video documentation on the web of a person's life, thoughts, opinions, and interests. A vlog is more personal than a blog, along the viewer to be face to face with the vlogger instead of just reading text. When I worked in Disney World for a year, my roommate and I used vlogs to keep a diary of our time in Orlando and to keep in touch with those at home. For some reasons the idea of vlogs fascinate me to I decided to do some research to see if companies used vlogs as while. In an article by Gretchen Siegchrist she lists the benefits vlogs can have for companies. Among them are better customer communication, a more personalized image, and an increased presence on the web. The article also suggests using vlogs to talk about company updates, news about the industry, and instructional how to videos.

After reading this I decided to google "Business vlogs" and see what I found. I was surprised to see how many results I received. I wasn't aware that so many companies were using this type of social media. Many of the results were for tech businesses that gave online tutorials via vlogs but also talked about advances in the company. One of the more interesting results I found was this Video Blogging. This site not only lays out the benefits of vlogs for companies but actually will help them create their vlogs for a price of around $200.

I think vlogs are a great way for companies to become a more trusted brand with consumers. I think loyal customers will watch vlogs posted by their favorite companies. But what do you think? Sound off: Would you watch vlogs from companies?

Facebook- No longer a college student's haven

A trend I have noticed lately is every time I sign into my Facebook account I have a friend request from a relative, one of my parent's friends, or that babysitter I had when I was six. When I first joined Facebook it was only open to college students and they were testing allowing non-colligates to join. You had to be invited by a member to join and have a valid email address. As everyone knows, Facebook has made extreme changes since that time. Anyone can now join the social network site and the demographic as surely changed. Now, after further research I found out I am not the only who has noticed this demographic change.

PR News wrote an article called "friend or Foe? Leveraging Facebook to Turn Stakeholders Into Friends". The article gives the statistic from the 2009 Facebook Demographic Report that the 35-45 age group is the fastest growing demographic on the site. "A nod to business executives rapid adoption of the platform as a communication tool" the article states, and this is clearly true. Facebook is becoming one of the most popular social media tools that business are deciding to begin. However, some companies are weary of using Facebook to communicate. Where is the line between promotion and becoming to personal? I think companies should set a standard of using Fan Pages on Facebook instead of using personal accounts. Fan Pages are a great way to use the site without becoming to invading. Check out John Lasseter's (Pixar Studio's) Facebook Fan Page for a great example.

Sound off: What do you think about the new demographic of Facebook users?