Inside the world of Rob Mclean, Author

Newsweek had an interesting article by Bill Clinton, former US President, on his 14 ideas on how to get the economy moving again. If you follow US politics, or watch the Daily Show or Real Time with Bill Maher, you probably ponder why anyone in America has any interest in the Conservative Party (who seem to embrace a trickle down economic, small government approach to almost every problem facing society). The article by Bill Clinton, I think, sheds some light on why the Republican Party, despite it's refusal to evolve with the times (and the mess Bush created) continues to resonate with a percentage of Americans. I mean, I found Clinton's article kind of scary. He's a smart guy, but the 14 ideas he put forward were ridiculous. Things like 'paint the rooftops white to lower utility costs', the logic being as businesses opex costs decline they will use those savings to create jobs. Or how about... 11. TEACH SKILLS WE NEED I’m trying to figure out why job see...

Yahoo finance ran an article talking about 10 industries in major decline . What I found interesting is that six of the ten industries were tied to digital content replacing more traditional forms of handling video and print content. It was interesting to see that fixed-line carriers were on the doomed list (personally I'm waiting for mobile costs to go down in Canada before I toss out my landline, but it is in my plans to do so).  I already use Skype for all my long distance calling. The only thing misleading in this article is when they post revenue declines over the past decade. It's hard to judge just how much these industries have been 'crushed' based on those numbers when we've really been in a recession since 2001 (with it exploding in to a financial crisis in 2008).  They may simply be industries hardest hit by the recession, but also quickest to rebound if we recover. They also say newspapers are doomed. I'm not so sure about that. Again, since 20...

So Apple will start making televisions soon . I guess it's not that much of a surprise. When you are dominating the market why not continue branching out and dominating other markets? That is after all how you keep profits growing. Short term I think this is a great move for Apple and will generate even further PR glory. The ultimate model is for intelligent connectivity between all digital, internet-connected devices right? Have a television that is designed to interact with all your other Apple products is a giant leap in that direction (although personally I just view a television as a giant computer monitor at this point - at least for those of us who have already gone all-Internet for our digital needs). Long term though I don't know if this is a great move for Apple. The Apple brand has always been that of rogue innovator. Breaking barriers and creating products that march to their own drummer. The problem with branching out in to more mainstream markets (especially o...

So the US and other countries are dipping in to their oil reserves in an effort to curb the strains oil costs are putting on the world. If you have the time the AP article - US and others plan biggest release of reserve oil - is worth reading. There's a lot of skepticism about the move. Many see it as just politics. Others see it as a way of curbing crude futures. Personally, I think it's great. And as always, I say this from a PR position. Will it create jobs? No. Will it curtail inflation significantly? Not really. Does it send a message that the powers that be aren't going to sit on their hands forever while pressures on the common man grow? Ya, it kind of does. I see this as a series of PR-driven moves by Obama. He recently announced the removal of US troops from Afghanistan, with the apprent promise of full withdrawal by 2014. I think back to the post I wrote on what a bad job Obama was doing - Bye Bye Obama - and I think Obama has come to the realizati...

Just thought this was interesting, YouTube now has a film section . It's pretty scarce but definitely a sign of things to come. It's clearly testing the waters for a NetFlix type model. In this vein, the New York Times had an interesting article on NetFlix - Netflix Helps People Cut Cable Cord, Report Says . It's interesting that the stats are showing that the rate of people looking to dump / decrease their cable has more than doubled in the past year. Way back in September of 2010 I spoke about this phenomena . I suspect the trend is going to speed up faster than anyone expects. You look at a stock like Rovi Corporation (the folks behind the DIVX codec) and it's more than doubled over the past couple of years. The reality is that the new model will simply be a single fibre optic connection to the home and all voice and video services delivered through the Internet. It should be the largest replacement cycle the world has ever seen and a huge opportunity for...

Back in March I talked a bit about video editing and said I wanted to play around with a great program called PowerDirector .It's been a while but I finally got a chance to play around with it. It's definitely given me an appreciation for how creative and time consuming playing with video can be. The thing that stands out the most is how much our personal library of knowledge and memory comes in to play. When you are mixing various media together it really requires you to reference all the media you've ever seen in your life - it's the only way you'll be able to creatively match up media with each other such that it presents as a single, unified experience for the viewer.  The video I created mixed together a variety of media. I mixed a track from Alan Watts , movie clips from Inception , Shawshank Redemption , ShowTime's The Borgais and HBO's  Boardwalk Empire and music from Nine Inch Nails . I'm a huge fan of Alan Watts, he was a theologist /...

If you follow my blog you'll know that one of the key factors I associate with this recession is the lack of innovation . I argue that companies are generally embracing replacement cycles, which is to say replacing old products with new products that are basically the same with just a few feature upgrades. Yes people say tablets are innovation, but really they are just laptops in a different form factor. It's not really innovation as much as it's simply an evolution of a traditional form (ie. the laptop). Now this may sound a bit silly, but I think I've found a company that is actually innovatting. The company? President's Choice.  Ok, how do you innovate when it comes to food? I agree, if there's ever an industry where replacement cycles rule it's the food industry, after all, food is food, there's only so much innovation you can do. But hear me out on this. I often get groceries at Loblaws. What I've noticed lately is that President's C...

Wow, what a day for RIM. It got slaughtered on the markets and dropped 21 per cent down to 21.75 a share. Hard to believe analysts were only a year ago pegging this stock to rise as high as 150 bucks a share. I've blogged a fair bit about RIM: RIM takes a beating yet again  RIM disappoints again  RIM quarter disappoints GMP takes a Torch to RIM target As you can tell, I've been pretty negative on RIM. Yet, even I'm shocked to see the stock trading at 27 bucks.  I can't remember for sure, but I think I sold my RIM around the 50 bucks a share level (thank God I did). Anyway, I guess the reason I find RIM so interesting is that I think a huge part of their problem is PR / marketing. Sure, people talk about how they need new products, but I really wonder if that's what they actually need. I mean, they could come out with something equivalent to the IPhone and I don't think it would change anything. I think people would still perceive Apple as 'cool...

So Weiner has resigned. What's interesting about this story now, and which is not well known, is that apparently Weiner doesn't have a lot of money.  From Business Insider : As The NY Post reported “Weiner doesn't have a business or even a law degree to fall back on. He made $156,117 in 2010, and owes between $10,000 and $15,000 on his American Express card according to his most recent financial-disclosure forms.” Anthony Weiner, the man, has never had another job since starting in politics at the age of 21 in 1985. The future career possibilities for the 46 year old “object” Anthony Weiner aren’t too bright these days. From CNN money : Weiner owns a portfolio of 19 stocks worth between $190,000 and $285,000, according to 2010 disclosure forms. From The Hill : Under federal pension rules, Weiner could begin drawing down reduced benefits 10 years from now, when he turns 56. Under that scenario, he could collect up to $32,357 annually, totaling $1.12 millio...

A totally off PR topic post. Just saw Sucker Punch and have to say this might be the best CGI film I've ever seen. Most movies today have a few scenes that are CGI intensive, but often comprise no more than 10-20 minutes of the film. Sucker Punch was amazing on the CGI front from start to finish. I really enjoyed the movie, although it's more of a spectacle event than story-line driven. If you take it as a 'dream like' experience you'll really enjoy it. If you expect linear continuity and realism, then stay away. Hard to describe the movie but I'd say it's what you might get if you mixed Alice in Wonderland, The Cell and Sin City (and toss in a heavy music track and video game like action scenes). It's not often a movie surprises me, but Sucker Punch definitely blows you away with the detail they put in to the CGI work.

As everyone has likely seen, Vancouver went a bit nuts the other day with a riot after the Vancouver Canucks lost the Stanley Cup. I've always found riots to be an interesting phenomena when it comes to human psychology. When it come to a sporting event they generally arise as the result of mixing a large group of (mostly male) idiots, booze, and a negative outcome to the sporting event. They of course spiral out of control because you have an even bigger group of idiots called bystanders. If those not participating in the riot where to simply go home, you'd only have a couple hundred rioters which the police could easily handle. But when you add hundreds, if not thousands, of bystanders, the crowd becomes impossible to control. Those bystanders may think they aren't part of the riot because they aren't throwing things or looting, but they are idiots to think that (if anything, they are what enables the riot to occur). But anyway, what the Vancouver riot ...

So apparently Voltage Pictures , the folks who made the movie Hurt Locker , is going after 23,000+ users who downloaded the movie off BitTorrent. They plan to 'sue' them for the infringement.  From what I gather the studio put the squeeze on ISP's to give up the IP addresses (and hence associated owners of those IP addresses) of those that downloaded the Hurt Locker file. What is this really? In reality this is nothing more than a PR stunt and it goes to show the negative side of PR. These lawsuits are nothing but smoke and mirrors designed to scare people in to not using BitTorrent (which is ridiculous because those who are using it have not responded to previous scare tactics in the past). I'm surprised the ISP's gave up the IP addresses, but at the same time I'm not. The ISP's benefit from users not using things like BitTorrent because if they aren't getting content for free (ie. pirated content) then they (might) are buying it (which is a marke...

Yes, message is a HUGE component to good PR. If you are spending money on PR you are likely spending that money to make people aware of your product / activities. As such, messaging is absolutely critical. Yet, that is by no means all there is to PR. A clear example of this is a recent article written by CNN Money - Even RIM doesn't want their Playbook table t. In this article the writer articulates how he could not return the playbook to RIM and equated the tablet to herpes (as in something that just won't go away). So what happened here? Simple. This is the relationship management side of PR. In my career I can't count the number of times where something negative didn't appear in the press as a result of the way in which I serviced reporters. On the flip side, many of the positive things were a result of how I serviced reporters also (not just as a result of messaging alone). I can't over emphasize how important the relationship management side of the jo...

So from a PR perspective the whole Anthony Weiner fiasco was handled terribly. So he basically had to come out and say he lied about sending pictures of himself to various women via Twitter. As any PR person knows, the worst thing you can do in a crisis is lie. And yet, people regularly lie despite the endless examples where lying was clearly the wrong thing to do. So why did Anthony lie?  Why do many high profile people lie in situations like this? The general public often perceives them as simply being 'liars' (which is to say they lied because lying is no big deal to them) or they see them as being 'stupid'. In Weiner's case, people generally see his actions as those of stupidity versus lying being one of his fundemental character traits. People also assume that the primary reason these people lie is to retain their positions of power and privilege. That they think they can skate under the radar with a convincing enough lie and continue on their merr...

It's hilarious from a PR perspective to watch this Canada Post fiasco unfold. The general consensus regarding postal workers striking is that no one really seems to care. About the only thing people seem to use the mail for is to receive cheques, bills and coupons. So yes, we need mail, but not receiving it for a few days, weeks or months won't bring Canada to its knees. As such, from a PR perspective, striking seems like a pretty dumb thing to do. I say this because the vast majority of Canadians don't care and the ones that do (who have a business that relies heavily on the mail) probably care a lot. So what do you gain by striking? Most people will simply see you as yet another out-of-control union pushing for more pay regardless of whether there is money there or not. And the ones that need you will see you as hurting them simply to get more on your plate. So basically you end up with no love from anyone. I don't know, perhaps the postal union has a positi...

So Microsoft is already leaking (well, marketing) video of Windows 8. You can see such preview here . In terms of PR I've got mixed feelings on this one. On the con side: I think the interface looks like utter crap. At certain times it looks ok (like when they are sliding to the weather view), but overall I just don't like all the boxes and various colors and general sense of information overload. But it's hard to say they've done a bad PR job just because I don't like what I'm seeing in the product. On the pro side: - Very smart putting a video by some rank-and-file Microsoft person. The last thing I want to see is Balmer or Gates promoting another OS. - Very smart giving a walk-through of the product instead of some super flashy marketing video with tons of glitz and music (which can be a good thing, just not in this case). No one trusts MSFT anymore when it comes to operating systems (not after Vista) so don't try to 'hype' somethin...

So apparently the Global Commission on Drug Policy is meeting today to present a report saying that the war on drugs is not working. The report has backing from a slew of high profile ex-politicians. From a PR perspective this is just another event in the 'legal not legal' debate that has gone on forever. What I do find fascinating though is that there's a shift occuring on the PR front, the notion of legalization is become pallitable to many more people than ever before. Perhaps it's an aging baby-boomer population who after decades of a War on Drugs simply don't care much anymore to fight that war (especially not when their 401K and RRSPs are hurting). Or perhaps it's the recession and the potential tax revenue that could be generated by legalizing certain drugs. Or perhaps it's the culmination of mounting distrust (and lack of faith) the public has in government to do the right thing (the Iraq war and the 2008 stock market crash and continued h...