Inside the world of Rob Mclean, Author

Well, I'm a few days in to having no (cable) television and I'm absolutely loving it! It's amazing how much content is available online. Basically the only reason I had cable television was to watch Fast Money and Mad Money on CNBC. But to my surprise, both shows are fully available on CNBC's web site . It's amazing how quickly the content is put online - I think it might be almost real-time - but definitely within a few hours of broadcast. So what's the new paradigm that I'm experiencing? I have a little CNBC app on my iPod and with a simple click I can watch both Fast Money and Mad Money on my iPod. The video quality is excellent and there's absolutely no lag or buffering as the video plays. I can choose which segments of the show I want to watch (allowing me to skip segments on say Gold, which I tend not to care about listening to).  If I want Canadian news, the National (and most CBC shows) are available online also on CBC's Web site . ...

One of the biggest factors in whether a PR person is successful or not in raising the profile of an organization is knowing what exactly is news? On the surface this appears to be a simple issue. News is, well, anything that is 'new'. Yet, it's not as simple as that. Many organizations think that anything that is 'new' is therefore news worthy. Opening a branch office, beta testing a product, releasing a white paper... the list goes on and on.  PR folks are often confronted with items that colleagues think are news worthy, that aren't. The media ignore these things and you actually can do damage wasting their time pitching them with non-news items. If you pepper them with non-news items, it will diminish your ability to have them take your actual news items seriously in the future. So what makes something news worthy? News is something that adds to an existing conversation in the media. It's any item that changes the landscape of a given topic that...

I should also add to my post below that with PC-based, Internet only media consumption (using a Netgear box) the need for dvd's and blu-rays are a thing of the past as well. This again is another benefit of the PC media - you can save / store anything you like by simply not deleting it off your hard drive. I don't think the world in general understands what a massive paradigm shift this is going to be when more and more turn to the Internet and their PC for most of their information and media consumption needs. Fun times ahead.

I thought I'd make a quick blog on the fact that today I cancelled my cable television. That's right - I'm going 100 percent 'all internet'. I made the decision for a variety of reasons. The first is that I already get 80 percent of my media from the internet in various forms and fashions. And the 20 percent that I get from television, I can get from the internet. The second is that television is a dirty medium. What I mean by that is that you are forced to absorb all kinds of stimuli that you don't want or need in order to get the content that you do want. Or you absorb lower quality stimuli. The internet almost always has more in-depth content - you'll understand the European crisis a thousand times better by reading the financial times online than you will from watching CNN. The only real thing you miss going to the internet is the news programs - which has been what's kept me using television. But now most news outlets post a lot of content in ...

I love RIM, but man it sucks to see their stock get trashed yet again. Less than one year ago they had a share price of 85 bucks. Today, it's down to 53 bucks. Basically, if you've been a shareholder, your belief in RIM has left you with third-degree burns. I myself got in at 69 bucks and I think I'll be cashing out now (I might wait for a modest uptick before selling, not sure yet). So what's going wrong here? Half the analysts praise RIM saying its shares should hit $90-100 before year end. Then you have analyst houses like Citi saying they see the stock hitting $50 bucks and maybe lower. It's like having one doctor tell you that you're dying and the other telling you that you're getting healthier and healthier - it's crazy. So yet again, what's going wrong here? The simple answer is brand. From a technological perspective Apple, I would argue, actually has less going for it than RIM. The iPhone is a bandwidth hog. The carriers don...

So Ottawa had an earthquake the other day. I've lived in Ottawa most of my life and have never felt an earthquake before.  For many in Ottawa this was a first. I was working at the computer in my apartment on the fifth floor at the time of the earthquake. Suddenly everything started to rumble - and it was more of a rumbling than a shaking if you ask me. So what did I do? I did exactly what you shouldn't do. I bolted from my chair in bare feet and zipped down five flights of stairs and went outside. I'd say from the moment of the rumbling it probably took me 15 seconds to get outside. Lots of other folks did exactly the same thing I did. The funniest story I heard was a lawyer who was in the middle of changing in preparation for court, who ran outside in his underwear. What should I (we) have done? Apparently, you should go and stand under a doorway frame. It's the safest place during an earthquake. The most dangerous place to be during an earthquake is st...

Over the past ten years it's rare for technology to really slap you in the face with true innovation. Generally speaking many of the new solutions are simply form factor upgrades of past technologies.  Flat screen televisions (versus the old clunkers), PVRs (versus VCRs), smartphones (versus cell phones), etc. Is it great to have these things? Sure. Does it blow your mind? not really. But I'm beginning to wonder if we are on the verge of some truly mind boggling feats of innovation. I went on Google books today and was astonished at how many books are now available online.  I had checked out Google Books probably one or two years ago and it wasn't anything that impressed me. A small selection of mostly older books. But now? WOW! You name it and you can get it on Google Books. I mean, for the first time in human history, cost is no longer a barrier to knowledge. Inconvenience is no longer a barrier either. One can literally gain knowledge on any...

Nothing to do with PR, just thought I'd prop a movie I recently stumbled on - Mr. Nobody. If you're a fan of movies like the Matrix, which take philosophic precepts and explore them through story telling, then you'll enjoy Mr. Nobody. One of the best 'intelligent' movies that I've seen in a long time.

First they ask "Why?" (attempt to engage in two way communication) Then they get angry.  (frustration develops over poor communication) Then, they throw cabbage at you and mock your existence in a show of their disgust. (the end of two-way communication). This is the general reaction of the mob. When you get to the mocking phase you're generally cooked as far as public opinion goes. It means that no one takes anything you say seriously anymore. You're ability to communicate anything is gone.... because no matter what you say, you will simply be mocked. This is the mobs way of taking away all your power and leaving you impotent. Welcome to the phase BP has just entered. The following parody of BP has over 4 million hits on YouTube and has branded BP as utterly incompetent.   With BP entering this phase of public opinion, I think I'll stop commenting on this (natural and PR) disaster at this point. From a communications perspective there's really n...

Wowzers. You can read the AP story here if you already haven't read it. BP stock nose dived 15 percent today (long before this story hit the wire... it will be interesting to see what happens tomorrow). I was watching Fast Money tonight and they had a guest on who made the brash call that he believes BP will cease to exist in the near future. I have to say, I wouldn't be surprised.  BP shares are down around 60 percent since 2007. I love a depressed stock, but even I won't touch BP in it's current state. This (man-made) natural disaster is quickly mounting into a PR disaster of truly epic proportions - with the President essentially promising to kick some ass, the oil spill estimates constantly growing, the disaster plan clearly nothing more than a creative writing task to satisfy regulators, talk about changing laws just so they can prosecute BP as harshly as possible and politicians (in response to citizens) calling for blood - I just don't see how BP g...

Kudos to Activision on this commercial. It's not often that humor actually works in a commercial, but I find this commercial hilarious. I also find tag lines are more often than not forgettable, but they came up with a great one in this commercial - "Race like a big boy" - the perfect punch at the end to leave you laughing.

Talk about pouring salt in the wounds. CNBC has a story today that says that Bernie Madoff's view on the ponzi scheme he ran is well.... unsympathetic to the victims to say the least. You can read the story here . It's unfortunate that Madoff, as he closes out his final years on this planet in jail, has failed to learn anything from all this. Now, I take what he says with a grain of salt, after all, he is in prison and is going to tell his fellow prisoners what they want to hear. But what's unfortunate is that Madoff has / had an opportunity in all this. That opportunity was to explain to the world how all this came about. What was it like slipping down that slippery slope? What does it say about our current economic system? What would he have done differently if he had to do it all over again? What is the mind set of the movers and shakers that he ran with, who seem to be such an integral part of Wall Street? What frameworks could be put in to place to moderate ...

So you have a giant oil spill that is the largest natural disaster in the United State's history - so what should BP be doing right now from a PR perspective? Everyone seems to have an opinion on this. Most folks seem to be of the view that they should be more transparent with hourly updates on activities being under taken to clean the oil up. Others think they should say nothing because there's nothing they can say that will make this right. My view is that this is beyond complicated in terms of a PR response. My assumption is that BP's public relations department is the same as probably any other large-cap company. Which means they can't just do what they would like to do to manage the situation with regards to public sentiment. Anything and everything they do will be in consult with BP's legal and investor relations departments. And from a legal perspective, the less you say the better. If you say nothing then down the road, when you're involved in a va...

Another post based on a Thorney Fallis blog entry (they've got some great stuff going on over there). They recently launched a site for the City of Ottawa that encouraged citizens to take pictures in the city and submit their photos to the site. Basically creating a promotional / tourism portal for downtown Ottawa. You can view the site here .  It's also a great example of how you integrate flickr, youtube, and twitter. This brings up the new reality of marketing, that you don't always have to do it yourself. There's six billion people in the world and tons of creative folks who will jump at creative outlets such as contests. A lot of blue-chip companies have tried tapping in to that potential online with contests of various sorts. The results are usually good. I think one of the hard things about going down this road is that an organization's biggest fear is that they get little to no response from their contest. Remember, when these types of ideas are laun...

I came upon this reading Thorney Fallis' blog . The Ottawa Hospital created an online version of their 2008-2009 annual report . I thought it was really well done and it brings up the notion of how communications are changing. I'm a proponent that content is king - which is to say that creating compelling content is the first priority. Once you have great content, then how you disseminate it is your next important step. I think organizations creating Web access to content are ahead of the curve. I don't think the demand by key stakeholders is huge yet and I think most still prefer the basics of print or pdf - basically inclusive packages that don't require a lot of clicking to view content. One of the draw backs of Web content is the amount of navigating it requires the user to participate in. Sounds a bit trite, but people are quick to walk away from something that requires click after click to view content. Not to mention that I'm noticing that as we all spe...