Inside the world of Rob Mclean, Author

CNW put a news release the other day about changes occuring to their Web site and I think they set a new record for hyperlinks in a news release - they had 61 hyperlinks. It made me think, should there be a limit on how many hyperlinks you should include in a news release? I think there is. Ten hyperlinks is a lot and I think fifteen should be the absolute maximum. Also, once you hyperlink something one time, you don't have to keep hyperlinking it. In the CNW release the phrase 'news release' is hyperlinked seven times, with all references pointing back to the same web page. The reason I think you should only hyperlink something one time is because it only frustrates the reader by making them think that there is additional content, only to be redirected over and over to the same page. While promoting additional content associated with your release is a good thing, once you start getting passed 10 hyperlinks I think you risk creating a confusing experience for your

So Steve Jobs has stepped down as CEO of Apple and set everyone abuzz about his legacy and the future of Apple. The consensus seems to be that his departure won't have significant impact given the transition has been in the making for some time. The stock market seems to reflect that sentiment with Apple stock hardly reacting to the news (down less than one per cent on a  day where the NASDAQ is down over one-and-a-half per cent). While the immediate impact of Jobs departure won't effect operations, I think this is actually a pretty big deal with serious ramifications to Apple's future. You should read a commencement speech Job's gave in 2005, with his closing words being "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." In today's business world, strong leaders are rare. Mostly because their ability to make tough calls, some might say 'foolish' calls, are severly restricted by the board and market sentiment. Only an iconic leader has the ability to keep those

As of yesturday my download speed when using Giganews came to a crawl. Clearly, even though I'm with Teksavvy (who does not throttle) and am not a Bell Canada customer, Bell is actively throttling my Giganews service. While Teksavvy is a distinct entity from Bell, because they run traffic through the Bell network, Bell has the ability to throttle such traffic. Now I can't prove Bell is doing this other than to say it can't be anything else. When I contacted Giganews here was their response to me: Please change your Newsreaders port settings to the following: Enable SSL, and input port 443 into the port box. Recently your ISP has made some throttling rules against us and similar NNTP services. Now I can't say for sure that Giganews knows for a fact that Bell is throttling me (or if they are just assuming this to be the case), but suffice to say, after installing a program that enabled my newsreader with SSL security, my speeds went right back up instantly. 

I created a couple of tutorial videos based on embedding Twitter functionality in to Blogger . For those that use Blogger you know that their gadget selection is woefully inadequate and Blogger is not third-party friendly. That said, Blogger is a great platform for SEO because Google seems to gives rank preference to Blogger content over other blog mediums. The tutorials I created were around doing two things: 1) Embedding a retweet button at the end of any given blog post you make. This allows people who are reading your blog to tweet to their network the blog post they just read. 2) Embedding a 'follow me' function so that people visiting your blog can start to follow you on Twitter with one click. I created the videos in Camtasia and let me tell you, that program is very frustrating. It's great (and simple) for capturing your screen, but outside of that it's a giant pain to work with. It also produces fairly small file sizes, which is fantastic as well Th

[ok, I'm going to break my rule and talk about the markets for one post, simply because two big stories broke that I think have larger ramifications than people are aware of]. This commentary ties in to the PR comments I've made about Obama as well] Goldman Sach's CEO, Lloyd Blankfein, and other Goldman Sachs executives have each retained outside legal counsel. Lloyd has hired Reid Weingarten (the lawyer who defended Bernie Ebbers of Worldcom and Richard Causey of Enron). Lloyd Blankfein Apparently the Sachs executives are getting outside counsel after the US Senate prepared a report and sent it to the Justice Department. Obviously the Sachs executives are gearing up to respond to legal issues beyond Sachs as a corporation. They are preparing to defend their own actions as individuals. The other story that caught my attention was the president of Standard and Poor's - the rating agency that recently downgraded the US to double-A - stepped down from his posi

If you haven't heard Jack Layton passed away from cancer. The CBC has a timeline of his accomplishments in politics. Jack was 61. I think the interview he had with George Stroumboulopoulos is a good reflection of who Jack was and his 'can do' attitude. From a PR perspective he did what very few politicians ever accomplish. He took his party from minor relevance to being a serious threat to one day becoming the majority government. The reality is that the NDP's rise was in large part the result of Jack Layton and voters abandoning the Liberal party and Michael Ignatiff in favor of Jack. I think the reason, which is also the reason so many people like Stephen Harper (despite Layton and Harper occupying opposite ends of the political spectrum), is that he had what I always say is so essential in PR - authenticity. Authenticity is rare, in part because of PR itself. Many politicians, once they've been put through the media training and talking points gaunlet

Howard Schultz, CEO and Chairman of Starbucks, is calling on his fellow CEO's to boycott campaign contributions in an effort to force politicians to start fixing things. From a PR perspective this is a great move by Starbucks. It does a number of powerful things: Aligns the Starbucks brand with the sentiment of the people  Positions them as a thought leadership brand not just on the product side, but within the context of America as a whole (which is a hard thing to normally do when you sell coffee products) Protects their brand from populous backlash against emerging resentment towards successful corporations (which, rightly or wrongly, are seen as part of the problem - and could destroy some brands in the future if the economy gets bad enough).  By using their CEO as the catalyst for this they are sending an indirect message to the market that Starbucks is run by a proactive, common sense CEO (which helps support their stock price). The only criticism I'd give

There's a lot of talk about the PC going extinct in the coming years as mobile devices such as tablets and smartphones replace computers. HP just announced that it is getting out of the PC business, creating further speculation that perhaps this is true. Personally I think it's hogwash. The computing power of a tablet or smartphone is such a tiny fraction of what a computer gives you. Mobile devices are great accessories, but nothing replaces a personal computer - for storage, graphics, computing power, etc. - computers are so much more powerful than any other device in the market. Having said that, I can understand why HP is getting out of the business. Computers are so powerful at this point that if you buy a computer today (and you can get a really good one for under 500 bucks) odds are you won't need to replace it for at least five years. Really the only thing on your PC that you might have to upgrade is your video card, and even then, it's only if you play vid

I've been saying it for a while now, Obama is in deep deep trouble from a PR perspective. His brand of Hope and Change is imploding at an exponential rate. The right hates him, the independents think he's ineffective and the left feels utterly let down. Until now though this has only been a theory of mine and it was yet to be seen whether he could protect his brand regardless of his performance (and there are strategies by which he could have done so). But the dam is finally breaking. An onslaught of negative Obama sentiment is now starting to bubble up, and it's not even coming from the right (it's actually come from Democratic-friendly and/or unbiased sources). Gallup Poll recently released findings that show that 71 per cent of Americans disapprove of the job he's doing as it relates to the economy. You've got African-American constituents now apparently telling their Africa-American congress people to go after Obama. It's not surprising i

So Warren Buffett has come out and said that the government needs to tax the super rich more. He expressed this in a NY Times Op-Ed and did a lengthy interview on Charlie Rose on the topic. This is clearly an Obama-driven PR move. Buffett is a close advisor to Obama, perhaps his closest in the private sector when it comes to economic matters. He has been advising the president since he took office. I think one of the first meetings Obama had upon being elected was with Buffett. This move by Obama is both a good and bad PR move. One of the most powerful PR resources you have is customer endorsements. When customers come out and say they love your product, it provides significant strength to your messaging. In this case, when Buffett comes out and says the rich should be taxed more and that the US has a billionaire-friendly congress, it opens the door for Obama to start taking a hardline stance on increasing taxes on the rich. It's hard to argue that you shouldn't incr

The other day all the buzz was about a segment John Stewart did regarding the Ames Straw Poll in which he pointed out that Ron Paul, despite coming in second, was completely ignored by mainstream media. I always find Ron Paul news interesting so I went on YouTube to see the Stewart clip. What did I find? Two things... There were at least three pages of 'spam' posts. These are videos that have the title relating to the topic, but when you click on the video there's either no video or it's a video of something else. A single user can post pages of spam so that to see the actual video you are looking for you have to search pages deep.  This spam tactic can be used by folks or organizations that want to surpress a video upon its initial releasing, knowing that people only really look at the first couple of pages of returns when searching and then give up. Over time the actually legit videos start getting bumped up as their hit rates rank them higher in the returns.

Russell Brand, a hollywood movie star from the movie Get Him To The Greek , recently blogged about the riots in London. I only stumbled on this from watching the Young Turks news station on YouTube where they praised his blog as insightful and getting to the heart of the issue. After reading his blog I have to say, Hollywood stars please let your PR people re-write your blog entries so that people understand what the heck you are saying. I have no clue why the Young Turks found his comments insightful. Brand's entry is filled with confusing statements, like this contradictory statement: As you have by now surely noticed, I don’t know enough about politics to ponder a solution and my hands are sticky with blood money from representing corporate interests through film, television and commercials, venerating, through my endorsements and celebrity, products and a lifestyle that contributes to the alienation of an increasingly dissatisfied underclass. But I know, as we al

As a continuation in my PR Rules desktop wallpaper series, here are the latest three.... 1600x1200 1280x1024 1600x1200 1280x1024 1600x1200 1280x1024  To view #100 click here .

Just finished watching 'The Greatest Movie Ever Sold' . It's by Morgan Spurlock, the guy who made Super Size Me . To be honest it was a real let down. It's biggest flaw (aside from being boring) is that it doesn't really inform the viewer of anything. It's just a series of him meeting with companies (often times over the phone) and the companies declining to sponsor the film. There's maybe 10 minutes total throughout the whole movie where they actually talk about how placement works, why people do placement, how much it costs, etc. About the only funny moment in the film was when he was talking to the marketing folks at Ban deoderant and he asked them what would be one word they would use to describe their product and they sat there in silence with no answer.  You see that kind of thing go on all the time in the corporate world (showing how a lot of people who work in marketing really don't know what the hell they are doing - trust me, they aren

There was a recent post about a pitch someone made to the media that used the London Riots as it's intro. A lot of PR people cringe when they see something like this, and rightly so. It got me thinking though, something no one ever talks about is how not all PR professionals are the same. Unlike other professions which are regulated by rigid processes, PR opens itself up to all different styles of PR. This is the result of the multifaceted nature of the job and the different creative strategies one can implement. When one says they practice PR it's almost like saying one is a football player. Ok, great, you play football, but what kind of football player are you? The quarterback? A linebacker? A punter? And as we all know, while they are all 'football players' their approach to the game is completely different. In light of this, I thought I'd take a moment to identify some of the different PR styles that I've encountered during my career. The following li

Too funny... a Mom hired a plane to fly a banner around Wall Street. The sign said Thanks for the downgrade. You should all be fired.” Great PR stunt that landed her on CNN. Goes to show the results you can get with just a little bit of creativity.

Sometimes I hate saying something is great PR when I don't really agree with the actions being taken. I kind of feel that way about Comcast. Comcast recently announced that it is lauching $10-a-month Internet program for low income families. (BTW, the image above is from the referenced Yahoo article - do they look like low-income kids? Argh, that stuff frustrates me, but I digress). The details of the program are: In order to qualify for the Internet Essentials program, a family must reside within a Comcast service area, have a clean billing record with Comcast, have no current internet service, and have at least one child who receives free lunch through the  National School Lunch Program (NSLP). Comcast is using the NSLP requirement to ensure that only low-income families are able to take advantage of the Internet Essentials option. The service provided by Internet Essentials includes connection rates of up to 1.5 Mbps download and 384k upload. Personally I think