Inside the world of Rob Mclean, Author

Dr. Dre apparently teamed up with James Cameron to create a hologram of Tupac. For those that don't know, Tupac was a rapper back in the 90's who was murdered in his mid-twenties I believe. You can wikipedia him for more details though. Anyway, holograms have never much impressed me. To date the only mental image I've had of a 'hologram' has been the scene from star wars... But the hologram of Tupac is amazing. I mean, it looks about as close to a real person being there as you can get. Later in the video Snoop Dogg is rapping with Tupac and it almost looks like two actual people. [ warning: excessive amounts of foul language in this video clip. Turn off your volume if you are offended by such language] It makes you think, just how far are we from a day when we won't even know if who we are seeing is actually there (in the flesh) or just a hologram, even if they are standing 10 feet in front of us. The implications for PR? Umm... endless. ...

Going 299 km on a motorcycle in traffic... idiotic. Surviving said joy riding... proof that Darwinism truly is just a 'theory'. Posting the video on YouTube so the cops can track you down... priceless.  

This recent story about Greece made me think. Apparently some folks in Greece are by-passing the Euro and/or the Drachma and using a currency they created call Tem, which is used to barter for goods and services. It made me wonder what would the value of PR be in such a system? I suspect at first the system would be built on small operations. Families or individuals selling a specific good or service. Then over time, those who were most successful would end up with surplus 'Tem' which they would probably use to buy other small vendors, forming a corporation of sorts. At this point, to grow market share they would need to develop a brand. In order to develop said brand, they would need to communicate with their stakeholders. This would mean positioning their offering, extolling the benefits to customers and managing negative events that could damage their brand - in essence they would be engaged in PR. But would PR have a role in the  beginning stages? Probably ...

AMC has a new series called The Pitch . It's a show about two creative marketing agencies which follows them as they pitch for a client's business. You can watch the first episode at AMC (see above link) or below via YouTube: Overall I'd say the first episode was interesting and I'll tune in next week for the next. What I found funny was how for the viewer you do get to experience what it's like working with creative concepts. I found myself listening to some of the agency folks' ideas and thinking 'Are you F'n serious? That's the dumbest idea ever.' Which is what real life is like, getting to good ideas usually means having to wade through a truck load of bad ideas first. The series also does a decent job of showing how stressful working in an ad agency is. Everything you think or do is being judged by everyone. You've got to have a hell of a tough skin to pitch ideas and for them to be rejected. From a PR perspective it...

I wish the video were available on YouTube but it's not (dumb Viacom and their copyright rules). Regardless, the best PR move this year in my opinion goes to  Bob Lutz , former Vice Chairman of General Motors. On an appearance on the Colbert Report, Lutz, who is 80-years old, told Colbert that he does 40 push-ups every morning. Colbert then challenged him to a push-up contest, and wow, Lutz can actually do 40 or more push-ups. Colbert ran out of steam BEFORE Lutz did - when Colbert was sucking wind, Lutz was still going. While this is a bit of a PR stunt, it was a brilliant one. The crowd cheered and Lutz comes off as looking like a modern-day personification of everything America use to be about - tough as nails and larger than life. Which is a stark contrast to how he came off when he appeared recently on the Bill Maher show - which was more your traditional current day republican who balks at science  -  arguing that global warming was a load of hot...

The thing about the US military is that it has successfully integrated the concept of patriotism with the industrial military complex. It does this through a very simple slogan of 'Support the Troops'. If you support the troops, you by extension support the generals, politicians and companies that cumulative comprise the 'war machine' that is the US military. For people to psychologically turn their back on the industrial military complex they feel as though they are turning their backs on the troops and by extension their very country. Yet, one has to ask, despite it's incredibly strong brand as described above, just how much can the military's brand take before it is damaged beyond repair? We've had Abu Ghraib . We've had the soldier that attacked women and children in Afghanistan . We've had a recent story on how most soldiers are psychotropic drugs to deal with depression and other disorders. And now, perhaps worst of all, a video ha...

At this point in the republican primaries it's becoming clear that Ron Paul isn't going to win the nomination. Santorum today announced that he's dropping out of the race, which pretty much will let Romney lock up the nomination. Yet Ron Paul's campaign continues to go strong. People are still donating. They are still coming out to hear him speak in droves. So why isn't the Ron Paul campaign dead already? The answer is grassroots PR.  People are keeping the campaign alive through word of mouth and through efforts such as producing YouTube videos that keeps the Paul campaign buzzing (even if not in the mainstream media). Take this video that recently got posted. It's a video that someone created of things Joe Rogan, host of NBC's Fear Factor, has said about Ron Paul. (warning: a lot of swearing in this video, so do not watch if that offends you). You simply don't see followers of Romney, Santorum, Gingrich or even Obama making video...

Raging gynecologist trashes car shop - 'nuff said...

For those of you who don't have cable television, one of the downsides of getting your media from the Internet is that you often don't have access to 'live' content.  It's not really a big deal mind you, given all the content is posted online by the major media outlets usually an hour or so after it aired live. When big things happen, like a terror attack or a presidential debate, the major networks typically open up live streaming to the public, so in those instances you can get live content. But otherwise, you have to wait an hour or so after a program to see the content. And for folks in Canada, sites like Hulu or CNN don't work (with CNN you have to have a cable account with an American provider to access their live internet feed, with Hulu it won't work if you have a Canadian ISP).  Well, leave it to the ingenuity of the Web to get around all this. I stumbled on this site - www.livestation.me - which is a collection of live streaming of ...

Thought I'd taken a minute to check in on the variables I've been using to judge whether the recession is ending, moving sideways or getting better.  The last time I checked in was back in November of 2011. (note: this is a non-PR related post and one I've been doing simply out of personal interest). Previous posts on the topic can be found here: Top 10 Reasons This Recession Will Never End Update 1 Update 2 Update 3 Update 4 So on with the show: 1.  Crashes hurt for a long time   - unchanged - While the DOW has bounced up to 13,000 or so, it's done so on low volumes and anticipation of future quantitative easing. In addition, it's started slipping and word on the street is that it won't surprise anyone if the markets tank in the coming months.  So we are still nowhere near out of the woods with pension funds and retail investors still not recouping their losses from the 2008 crash. Forget all the compounding interest investors were suppose...

Wow, is this what America is becoming? A crowd beats a man in Baltimore, strip him of his clothes, iphone and wallet and left him in the street. (warning: disturbing video) With behavior like this it's no surprise that the government is enacting things like the NDAA or giving police the right to strip search people at will. Not to say this wouldn't have happened five or ten years ago, but when you have a recession go on as long as this one has I think the prevalence of this kind of thing goes up. As 'hope' diminishes within the population as a whole, those prone to immoral and criminal behavior become more ostentatious and brazen in their actions. PR wise this is tremendously horrible for Baltimore's brand. I sure as heck wouldn't visit Baltimore after seeing this kind of thing. The man interviewed on the street hits the nail on the head "Where were the police?" Why the police didn't put forth a spokesperson to comment on thi...

Just got Android 4.0 on my Nexus S. It's an improvement, but to be honest, it's nothing special. All the features that Google added I had already enabled using third-party apps. On the plus side, it's definitely not worse than the previous OS - which is saying something given how often vendors mess things up with 'upgrades' (can't wait to see what happens with Windows 8). I continue to love Android and think it's better than the iPhone simply because it operates more like a PC, allowing you to customize just about everything. The voice-to-text seems to be a bit more accurate and still blows me away. It basically makes no errors, which means you can actually use it and not have to go back through the dictation correcting mistakes that were made.

M&T Bank CEO, Robert Wilmers, wrote an epic letter to shareholders in the bank's annual report. This is the first time I've seen a banker so clearly articulate the issues that caused the collapse. He spares no punches and lambastes everyone who played a role in the collapse. From a PR perspective this is brilliant. You simply cannot regain the trust of the public if you do not first acknowledge what happened. Perhaps we are seeing a shift in the banking sector if bankers are coming out and telling it like it is. You can read the full letter here , but here's the part I thought was great (fyi, this is also a great primer for  anyone who wants to understand what happened over the past few years): All this began to change in the 1970s and especially the early 1980s as these banks grew and began a pattern of investing in areas where they possessed little knowledge – a trend, which culminated in money center banks forfeiting their mantle of leadership and t...