Be Remarkable!

I copied this from Judette's Facebook. Why? - because only last weekend someone asked me about putting merchandise from my company PRMR Inc. in a bag of give-a-ways for a Jazz show.

Not being prepared I insisted that there was nothing I had suitable to project my brand image at the show, and here it is I stumbled on Judette's Facebook post and she says it succinctly for me. Have a read.


By Judette Coward-Puglisi

I swear most marketers have no clue whatsoever what to do. So we do unoriginal things, or stall, or fail to deliver on our brand's promise.

Take this weekend for instance, master designer Claudia Pegus launched her resort collection," Breeze" at the picturesque Crews Inn. Pegus' line was stunning, what was in the goodie bag was not.

I imagine that the designer's team asked the show's sponsors and corporate partners for stuff that could be placed into the bag and guess what they all did? Each (with the exception of one) gave the exact same thing: flyers, brochures, newsletter, all good stuff, sure, but nothing bold or remarkable.

The exception here was the Jamaican milliner whose stuffer included a stunning red and black pin that could be worn on a hat or dress. It was something tangible. Something that the fashion savvy crowd could use. It was cleverly branded.

Marketers need to give deeper thought to how they position their products in the context of each situation instead of rolling out the same things, the same collateral in the same way.

Truly brilliant positioning is hard to quantify or predict. Same is true with marketing.

Free Webinar to Help NGOs Strategy

I have been working for a number of non-profits recently and one thing is true of all of them - they are very budget conscious. Sometimes you find the program you are working on has to be self sufficient.

You may find yourself having to raise the funds to pay yourself. Despite the budget challenges, working with non-profits is always morally fulfilling.

Just got this email from PR Newswire and I thought I would share it for all of you who are working with non profits.

Register its free!


Great Marketing and PR Strategies on a Non-Profit Budget

Wednesday, November 19, 2008
10:00 AM Pacific, 11:00 AM Mountain, 12:00 PM Central, 1:00 PM Eastern
Duration: Approximately 45 minutes

You don't need to have deep pockets to execute a successful marketing or PR campaign, but you do need to have a great strategy. Even big businesses with huge marketing budgets will fail if they don't have effective strategies backing up their campaigns.

Join PR Newswire for a FREE webinar and find out how you can use your resources and creativity to come up with great communications strategies that will help you get results and leave you with money to spare in your marketing and PR budget.

Guest Presenter: Kelley Weir, American Humane Association

IABC Barbados Host Its First Panel Discussion

IABC Barbados is gathering momentum. Members are trickling in and the organisation will host its first event since its launch this September.

It will be a panel discussion on What Is PR's real function and Who should it report to. Yours truly is on the panel which also features Sara Odle of Cable and Wireless, Debra King of First Caribbean International Bank and Greg Hoyos of GHA DDB.

My take on the matter is that PR is a strategic function which informs organisations decision making process with regards to its relationships. It therefore must report to the most senior executive if it is to be effective. Of course a lot of organisations devalues or undervalues relationships as they cannot or refuse to see the correlation between the relationships they have with their various stakeholders and their success.

Not having a pr strategy is like having cancer. You go along oblivious thinking that everything is fine and then a serious crisis come along and your dead.

Come to the Panel Discussion and here more on this, or check out my paper on the topic later on this blog.

No Time To Blog

Since the launch of IABC Barbados I have been too busy to blog. Sacrilege, according to Christal Mc Intosh, President of the Chapter who has recently made a commitment to blog every day.

Wow!

My PR world is wonderful and my client list is growing. I am working on a number of very public projects, including Caribbean Wellness Day which is in Bridgetown on Saturday, September 13. Cannot promise to blog every day by I will try for at least once a week, especially since I have part two of an earlier blog to complete.

Check out the ad below on Caribbean Wellness Day. Hope to see some of you in Bridgetown

IABC Barbados Launch

The Barbados Chapter of IABC was formally launched last Thursday at Herbert House, the home of the Cricket Legends of Barbados .

The majestic old building, beautifully renovated was an auspicious setting for the occasion. The ceremony was simple. Vice President Development, Richard Thomas was the Master of Ceremonies and he provided the forty plus audience with enough humor mixed with the business at hand to keep this session lively and excited.

President of the Association Christal Mc Intosh gave an address which listed the five main goals of the Association as:
1. To create meaningful opportunities for networking while bringing an end to the isolation in which professionals currently work;

2. To create genuine opportunities for professional development;

3. To create a local community of professionals whose members are committed to a single code of ethics;

4. To create a platform in which business communications speak with a single united, credible voice; and

5. To demonstrate to business leaders how public relations and corporate communications practiced professionally, can enhanced all those desirables such as corporate reputation, stakeholder trust, productivity and profits.

The featured speaker was the Corporate Communications and Marketing Manager of the Barbados Light and Power, Stephen Worme. Stephen took an unusual route towards heading the communications area at Barbados' monopoly power company. An engineer by profession, he has become respected as a honest voice for all the island's power crisis. Stephen gave an excellent speech about his experience, his relationship with the media, and his dream for the profession locally.


A delightful wine and cheese cocktail followed the speeches.

IABC Barbados Launch Invitation

Barbados - IABC's Newest Developmental Chapter

Christal Mc Intosh, president of the Barbados Public Relations sent the following note to members this weekend:

Hi everyone,

We've done it!

The IABC international board has formally approved our application to set up a Barbados Chapter.

We have achieved this in the unbelievably short time of about four weeks. I believe it's because of the large number of people who showed up for our initial meeting on May 8 and expressed their interest and support. On behalf of the Board of Directors of the Barbados Chapter, I want to thank you for being there.

For the next two years, IABC Barbados will enjoy "developmental status". This means the IABC appreciates that we are on a learning curve and will give us some time to find our wings. We have to use that time to prove our commitment to becoming a fully-fledged chapter.

You can help us do that by becoming an IABC member now. Membership in this association will be one of the best investments you will ever make as a communications professional. And that membership is yours to keep no matter where you end up living and working.

At this early stage, I want to stress that being a member of BPRA will not automatically entitle you to membership of IABC Barbados with all of its privileges. The two are not interchangeable, and only a paid up membership will admit you to IABC Barbados (iabc.com/join/).

DOWN IN THE TRENCHES

While we were awaiting formal chapter approval, the board of directors you elected has not been idle. We have been meeting every Thursday evening for several hours to come to grips with our various responsibilities and to scope out what we have to do quickly to get up and running.

We have also put together a tentative schedule for professional development and networking opportunities over 12 months, starting this August. However, we haven't got every topic and event nailed down, because we want to hear from you rather than making all decisions on our own.

This is why we have also developed a short survey that you will find attached and in the online forum for download. It will provide us with much needed demographic profiles of our target market and how best to cater to their needs.

Please complete it and return it by e-mail to our co-Vice President of Professional Development, Vicki Olton: vicki.olton@gmail.com. It will help us enormously.

We are also working on how best to market the IABC and to whom. We know that there are many more communication professionals out there besides all of you who showed up for our first meeting.

And there are lots of people in allied professions – such as HR, printing, photography and graphic design – who are valid potential members. We are digging to uncover them, in both the corporate and public sectors and we would appreciate any leads you can provide us.

We plan to hold our inaugural meeting as a registered IABC chapter on July 3 at 6:00 p.m. at Herbert House on Fontabelle. By then, I trust that many more of you will have become IABC members. We will keep you posted about the format and content of that meeting, as soon as we have finalized the details.

Again, thank you for your support. And if you haven't already joined up, do it now!

Membership Fees

Membership in this association, which has been set at US $231 if you include the one-time $40 application fee, will be one of the best investments you will ever make as a communications professional. And that membership is yours to keep no matter where you end up living and working.

The Press Release and The Press Conference- Tools and Tactics

You know the saying the more things change, the more they remain the same. Well I was at a gathering of pr professionals recently and a number of issues came up. None of them were new, which was no surprise. But what did surprise me was that the topics that received the most attention were not new media and social networks on the web, what received the most dialog were the century old press release and press conference.

I was blessed to be a pr professional working at a media house for a very long time so I understand intimately the stance and motivation of the journalist versus that of the pr professional. And all the professionals that thought that I had it easy… well, yes the journalist and I did have the same organisation at heart which was our bread and butter, but each editor had different motivations, tolerance levels, deadlines and egos that had to be pandered to, to get releases in the papers. In other words I had to do some pitching like any other pr professional working on the outside.

Early in the game I studied the newspaper’s style of writing and matched it as best as I could, because I came to understand and appreciate the long hard hours that journalists work and how taxing it is to produce an informative, educational, entertaining, error free publication everyday. Editors are usually working on tight deadlines and a well written story already in their style is more likely to be placed immediately than one that they had to try to interpret and doctor to suit the paper’s style. I have seen a number of press releases that came to the paper and wondered where exactly is this person going with this – no news value and poorly written.

From my experience as long as the news value is high editors may look pass the quality of the writing because at the end of the day, what they want to put out is an interesting product. Press releases are looked on firstly as companies’ propaganda. In more recent times they are being viewed as ads. This has created a new set of tension between the media and pr professionals, especially in those organizations where the measure of the success of the pr is judged only on column inches in the newspaper. Is it then correct to say that if your releases don’t get publish that you are not doing good work? (This sets me off on a totally different road of what is the role of the pr professional and how should success be measured? To be explored in another article.)

Editors try to be fair and impartial in placing releases. Of course with tons of releases hitting their desk everyday and the space in the paper for stories rapidly diminishing due to ever increasing aggressive ad ratios, the onus is on pr professionals to do what I consider to be job 101 of the profession – build relationships.

Relationships should be established with all the persons on whom your success and the success of your company or client depend. It is not enough to write a great press release because it may be shelved because a bus load of people crashed in St. Joseph and seven people died and suddenly all the vacant slots in the newspaper are taken up with all the human interest, eye witness stories for weeks. And hey, this will sell a couple thousand more papers, your release won’t. You need to have a relationship with the editor so that you can pick up the telephone and remind him or her of your great release.

I have spent a mighty long time on the press release because I think that it is a useful tool and should be used in a lot of instances instead of a grand press conference. (To be continued).

Barbados' Business Communicators Board 2008

VP Administration, Petal Barclay Smith; VP Professional Development, Richard Thomas; Executive Vice President, Pamala Proverbs; President, Christal P. McIntosh; VP Membership/ Marketing, Cliona Donohue; VP Finance, Fay Best; and VP Communications, Lynette G. Taylor. (Photo compliments PBS Communications)

Hello IABC

Well we have made the first step! After a successful meeting of a good mix of Barbados' pr stalwarts, mid-career professionals, newbies, and individuals interested in the profession, a board of management have been chosen to do the work to get the Barbados Chapter of IABC off the ground.

Judette Coward-Puglisi, president of IABC Trinidad and Tobago did a fantastic job telling of the Trinidad experience and helping to guide the meeting into making solid choices for the vacant board positions. She told the communicators that her chapter was founded on the principle of the 3 Cs - Content, connections and credibility. She said that Trinidad's membership of 80 in the first instance had grown in two years to about 370 and that the Chapter was actively podcasting, blogging, hosting a website, conducting conferences and ongoing educational forums for members. The Chapter had also received a "Certificate of Excellence" from IABC for its outstanding performance.

Judette spoke of some of the common universal concerns of pr persons which helped forged the backbone of her Chapter's coming together - 1. CEO not valuing our work 2. Building relationships with the media and forming a body to bridge the gap. 3. The issue of measuring ROI and 4. Accreditation.

At that end of the night yours throughly had become the Executive Vice President and President Elect. Our good friend Christal Mc Intosh who was mentioned in the earlier post is the President. Other members of the executive are:

• Petal Barclay-Smith - VP Administration
• Lynette Taylor -VP Communications
• Cliona Donohue - VP Marketing/ Membership
• Fay Best - VP Finance
• Richard Thomas - VP Professional Development
• Vicki Olton -Co-VP Professional Development

The board has its first meeting on Wednesday.

A New PR Chapter In Barbados

T.S. Elliott referred to April as being the cruelest month. He probably was a Bajan hotelier because April signals the end of the booming winter season and the start of the low occupancy period for hotels. April however for the rest of the world is a glorious month ushering in spring - flowers, butterflies and all things bright and beautiful.

For pr professionals in Barbados April also brought great news. The online community which had been gathering for the last six months or so will finally be meeting. The community was occupied for a long time with which international association it should align itself to, PRSA or IABC.

As a member of both organisations for a very long time, I felt the topic did not need much discussion it needed a decision. Both organisations give great value to members, it is really a question of preference. I maybe a little bias towards PRSA, being an accredited member and the only person in this part of the region with the APR for the last six years.

At one stage when my good friend Cheryl Procter-Rogers was president of PRSA I had flirted with the idea of establishing a chapter in Barbados. All the materials were sent to me and I passed them on to another professional but I was knee deep in a MBA and she was a new mother, at a tender stage in a very big organisation. All our good intentions remained just that.

I was delighted to see Christal McIntosh, full of youthful zeal and clearly a web 2.0 junkie leading a serious discussion on the Internet encouraging local professionals to gather. I immediately offered her my full backing although I warned her that having just launched my own company my time would be limited. Of course if you know Christal you would know that this was no deterrent and she is somehow able to squeeze every ounce of advice and work out of me.

The inaugural meeting will be held on Thursday May 8 at 6pm at the Small Business Development Centre on Fontabelle. Judette Coward, the Chapter President of IABC Trinidad will be on the island to tell of the T&T experience and to give us some advice on starting the chapter. Judettte, like Christal, was responsible for the formation of that chapter. Christal has also sought the help of IABC International and has received a lot of support from that organisation to facilitate the first meeting. All business communicators are invited.

Can anyone guess which organisation Barbados will be going with?

The Barbados Polo Odyssey

I found myself in the midst of what most people in Barbados were calling a Polo War in February of this year.

Actually for me on my new solo journey as an independent pr practitioner it was a welcomed assignment - I am an avid sports enthusiast, polo fits the profile of the type of client anyone would like on their books and it was a fantastic opportunity to build my portfolio.

Not a follower of the sport before this I had to learn the jargon quickly. I am proud to say that I am now a 'chukka chic', and although you would not find me on a horse anytime soon, I have fallen madly in love with the sport.

Back to the war
Up until last year Barbados had one polo season where all 30 something polo players in the country played against each other and visiting teams.

Reportedly this all changed with the development of the Waterhall Luxury Estate at Apes Hill by Sir Charles Williams, and of at least two other grounds by other players/developers. There was intense pressure now to host games at these new grounds to promote the properties. In answer to this Sir Charles created his own season with players predominately from his family and workers of Waterhall, while most of the other players on the island continued to played in what I call 'the local league'.

For the first time on the island there was a media blitz for Polo. A full media mix of television, radio, newspaper, magazines and the Internet were used to get the messages across. There was a big fight on for the small numbers of what was predominately white spectators who previously frequented the games.

With the majority of players staying with 'the local league' then it was natural to assume that most of the original spectators who were friends or family would be at this venue. Being a man of the people Sir Charles went after the people. Affluent Barbadians of all colours, most of whom had never before been to a polo match flocked to Waterhall attracted by its contemporary style of advertising.

In a press briefing to announce what was to be Waterhall Polo Club's penultimate and most important match series, Sir Charles said it succinctly - he has sponsored a professional team "Apes Hill" to play in the Queens Cup and Gold Cup in England to promote his condo project at Waterhall. He said that he saw both himself and the sport of Polo benefiting from this.

This is a first class pr strategy by Sir Charles. There is always dialog of pr being an intangible that cannot be measured, but Sir Charles is proving to the hard core pr pundits that sponsorship can generate a tangible/measurable return on investment.

To one of the journalists' question on Polo being played at different venues being a negative for the sport, he made reference to first division cricket which on any given Sunday is played at about six or more different venues across Barbados.

Waterhall's season finished one week before the Holders/Lion Castle's and the Waterhall players were all over at that venue playing and supporting on the final day. The perceived war is clearly not about the polo.

What is at stake however at each polo ground is valuable real-estate that each developer wants exposed and sold to potential buyers who frequent the games.

The two seasons in my estimation is the best thing that could have happened to Polo. Every Sunday polo was live on Love 104.1 FM. It was covered on CBC TV on Sports Locker, and there were numerous stories in both the Advocate and the Nation newspapers. Ordinary persons became aware of the sport and everyone knew that there was a season on.

Three cheers for Polo the eventual winner for having finally arrived on the island!

A good friend and pr practitioner Christal Mc Intosh read my blog post about the Hill rice saga and told me I was bourgeois because I buy Uncle Ben Rice. She said that she loved what I was doing with the blog, but that I could relax a little and not always be formal.

Well right away our age difference showed. Being about fifteen years Christal’s senior I did not see my site as formal at all, in fact I just thought that I was discussing pr issues. Well gosh here’s perception creeping up again ( a major factor in our business).

Well here is my attempt at casual.

This site is a source of infinite pleasure for me, even more than my corporate site www.prmrinc.net. Why so? Because I built it myself from scratch (with the help of Google tools of course). I chose the design, the colours, wrote the articles and woola my site was up. Isn’t it wonderful that there are tools for non-techies to use, and anyone can have a site without knowing a bit of code? My corporate site took about three months to build. Back and forth with my webmaster, brand designer the works. By the time it was finished I realized that I had really just gotten started because a website is not a substitute for a brochure, it is a living, breathing organism, that needs to be fed.

The blog spot because of its simplicity really puts traditional media under treat, and the danger although present is not clear. The web is aptly named because you can get lost here. Your company’s reputation can be bandied about without your knowledge for months before you know a thing, unlike with traditional media. Companies that do not have as standard alerts on their names are behind the times and it up to the pr professional to keep abreast of the technology and keep their clients and organizations on top of its issues.

Oops I may have fallen off the casual wagon there for a minute but I can’t help it, for me pr is no casual affair, despite the façade of glamour, it is vital to the very soul of every living organization.

Green PR and CSR by Pam Proverbs edited by Jane Brome

Making responsible social and environmental choices has not always been a first priority for many corporations, but recent history has changed all that. 

 

Small, but mighty Non-governmental Organizations (NGOs), using 21st century global communications, are nipping at the heels of corporations caught in unethical and irresponsible practices. NGOs have effectively organized market campaigns and are moving these companies toward the higher standard now demanded by their clients, their consumers, and society as a whole. The lever that moves these giants is the risk of destroying their carefully built brands if they fail to recognize their moral liability and clean up their practices. In Barbados, the fight continues. But the challenge to compel our corporate citizens to live up to their environmental responsibilities remains.

In 2000, basking in the success of its Healthy Lifestyle Project the Nation Publishing Co. Limited approached its sister company StarCom Network Inc. about joining together in a national campaign to promote environmental preservation and protection. It was intended to be a millennium gift to Barbados. According to the Systematic Media Survey these were the two most powerful media houses enjoying the majority of listenership and readership on the island. It was felt therefore that they would be best positioned to influence and change Barbadian attitudes towards the environment. 

The Greening Barbados Project was thus born, and the two threw their full media muscle behind the programme. The project, despite large volumes of publicity and the investment of resources into the hosting of two major expos however, has failed to generate the response and interest from the general public, corporations and groups that was anticipated. In fact, eight years on, it seems to have died a natural death. And so the challenge remains.

It moves one to ask- Do Barbadian companies give a hoot about their corporate social responsible (CSR)? Are CEOs of companies reading this article and saying CSR what? It is important to note that corporate social responsibility goes beyond charity and goodwill. The World Business Council for Sustainable Development considers it to be "the continuing commitment by businesses to behave ethically and contribute to economic development while improving the quality of life of the workforce and their families as well as of the local community and society at large." This implies some liability on the part of the company to be held accountable for the social and environmental consequences of its actions.

It is encouraging to note that the local hotel sector is paying attention to its CSR and seems to have gotten it right. One of the island’s environmental champions is Loretto Duffy-Mayers. Duffy-Mayers, Director of Environmental Programmes at the Almond Casuarina Resort, observed, “CSR is a major part of the green certification (programme for Green Globe 2) and what we do at Almond. We look at business holistically. Not just the financial aspect but the environmental, social and cultural aspects as well. Almond sponsors the Holders Season, CIMEX, and the St. Peter’s fair. Individual properties sponsor beach clean ups and programmes in their area. Every year we have Environmental Week and there is a UWI lecture and tours of the property. We believe that for tourism to be sustainable everyone must benefit and it must not impact negatively on the lives of the people in the area”.

It must be said that an organisation’s reputation is one of the biggest determinants of its success. In overseas markets, particularly in Europe, consumers are deliberately choosing to do business and buy products from companies that are environmentally friendly. Companies are responding by greening their processes and letting the consumer know in their packaging and advertising just how environmentally friendly they are. Large corporations like Wal-Mart are teaming up with environmental groups and cosmetic companies are declaring that they are not doing any animal testing. Large oil companies are contributing to save the whale, penguins and seals projects.

But what of the Barbadian company and the Barbadian consumer? Should Barbadian companies see CSR as part of their business strategy or should they wait until consumers demand it? The progressive company examines all the potential areas of crises and plans for them. That means taking CSR seriously and adopting a solid environmental and social strategy. Some of the island’s manufacturing entities are paying attention to CSR issues and are to be commended. Others like export leaders, the Rum Refinery of Mount Gay and Arawak Cement Company Ltd have gone further, seeking international environmental management system certification through the ISO 14000 series. They stand to benefits from increased efficiency and less wastage of energy and raw materials; compliance with environmental regulations and improved public perception, particularly among international organisations who may prefer to conduct business with companies that comply with accepted international environmental standards.

The improved competitive edge which they now enjoy should inspire other companies to incorporate these principles into their processes, not just as an export strategy but as part of the effort to be a good corporate citizen and to build a better Barbados.

Perception Versus Reality

In the PR business "perception is reality". I am not one to enter into political debates but the perception is that in Barbados when the Democratic Labour Party (DLP) is in power that the money interests move their business and money outside of the country which eventually topples the government. Why? Because the "perception" is that the DLP is the poor man's party and that they focus on social reform and people empowerment and do not put incentives in place for the wealthy as do the Barbados Labour Party (BLP) (or so it is presumed). Kind of the same perception that exists in the US with the Republicans and Democrats.

Anyone who watched the 1991 comedy "King Ralph" would have gotten the serious message that it is the creation of jobs that is most important to a successful government. The recent spate of industrial unrest and firings seem to be testing this theory. Can the young government not even quite three months old withstand the pressure already coming from the business sector? Today on the back page of the Nation Newspaper appeared the most ridiculous attempt at pressure thus far. Lionel C. Hill who from perception should be happy to see a DLP government in power because now poor people (perception again) would be able to buy his low-end supermarket brands, is threating to send home 17 persons who (perception again) would have served him loyally. He is sending them home because he had written the less than three months government over a month ago requesting the removal of import duties on bulk rice and has not had a response and his attempts to contact the Minister responsible, George Hutson was futile.

Question 1. Why did Mr. Hill not appeal to the previous government who only dropped duties on packaged rice. Perception again - who buys package rice- the wealthy business interests who stay or exit with the BLP. Hey I must plead guilty to benefiting here because I love my Uncle Ben.

Question 2. Why did Mr. Hill not give the previous government a seven day ultimatum and threaten to put seventeen persons on the bread line? Perception - because he respected the previous administration.

The lesson here is that every company, government, public person or institution needs a good pr professional to manage their reputation, image and perception. The big three human indicators that I have coned RIP. If you do not manage your RIP then someone will rip you to threads. The new government obviously has to get cracking on theirs before the negative messages and stories become so wide spread that they become accepted as truths.

This story is true to me even if it is just a perception.

Social Media Penetrating Popular Culture

I was listening to listening to Mix 96.9 yesterday and what I heard was the preachers of social media and their impact on advertising prophesy come true. The country generally being a little behind on the Internet I was pleasantly surprised to hear a popular night spot, Jumbies, on the even more popular St. Lawrence Gap advertising a Face Book Friday evening bash. The ad was calling on the SUV group and all ‘face bookers’ to bring their Face Book home page with them for a special entry fee. They advertised Vampire shots and Slayer Martinis. My heart sang a song. I have been singing this song to my clients and everyone who would listen for a while now. There is a new information revolution going on around the world.

Traditional modes of information dissemination are under threat. And this may seem a little blasé because we have been hearing this for some years, however there is clear and present danger on the horizon. Around the world a number of traditional media conglomerates have embraced the new dissemination modes but in the Caribbean, I would love to say we are playing catch up but really we have not fully woken up yet so no serious catch up has started.

Everyone has the token website but the use of the social media techniques and other web based services does not even appear to be on the horizon. With our open door policy to the rest of the world our media houses are clearly making themselves vulnerable. The recent bid for Microsoft and Yahoo to join forces against Google is a sign of the impeding storm of mergers and acquisition for the all important advertising dollar. It will be interesting to see the survivors and their corporate strategies.

Social Media Penetrating Popular Culture

I was listening to listening to Mix 96.9 yesterday and what I heard was the preachers of social media and their impact on advertising prophesy come true. The country generally being a little behind on the Internet I was pleasantly surprised to hear a popular night spot, Jumbies, on the even more popular St. Lawrence Gap advertising a Facebook Friday evening bash. The ad was calling on the SUV group and all ‘facebookers’ to bring their Facebook home page with them for a special entry fee. They advertised Vampire shots and Slayer Martinis. My heart sang a song. I have been singing this song to my clients and everyone who would listen for a while now. There is a new information revolution going on around the world.

Traditional modes of information dissemination are under threat. And this may seem a little blasé because we have been hearing this for some years, however there is clear and present danger on the horizon. Around the world a number of traditional media conglomerates have embraced the new dissemination modes but in the Caribbean, I would love to say we are playing catch up but really we have not fully woken up yet so no serious catch up has started. Everyone has the token website but the use of the social media techniques and other web based services does not even appear to be on the horizon. With our open door policy to the rest of the world our media houses are clearly making themselves vulnerable. The recent bid for Microsoft and Yahoo to join forces against Google is a sign of the impeding storm of mergers and acquisition for the all important advertising dollar. It will be interesting to see the survivors and their corporate strategies.

PR Landscape

There is a sweet buzz sweeping the Caribbean about the profession that has me so excited I decided to join in quickly. Having been introduced to pr many light years ago in Jamaica I have witnessed a transformation in the way we do business then and now.

I remember my lecturer at CARIMAC (don't remember her name) telling us of how she and her business partner staked out the Pegasus Hotel at lunch time and how sometimes all they could afford was a glass of water, but getting clients back then meant the perception of affluence and success and being seen in the right quarters.

Today networking is equally important but our networking has gone global through the popularizing of Internet technology. Although I studied television which can be considered a technical field, the Internet and computers is another ball game but here I am creating my own blog, with the help of Google of course, all by myself.

And you maybe anywhere in the globe are reading my thoughts on the profession. The fact of the matter is although web technology is becoming so simple a "dummy" can use it, a number or should I say a lot of persons (with the economic power) and the key decision makers are scared and resistant to the technology, what makes matters even worst are the host of illegal Internet and email scams which drives more fear into newbies and older persons for the technology than Bajans are of the sea.

Take me for example. I was looking for some inexpensive web hosting options for my company PRMR Inc. and of course I Googled web hosting, found the top ten hosts chose not the cheapest but the in between which happened to be Blue Host. No reference nothing, but I figured if it was on the top ten list and middle in price so it should be okay. Then I googled what persons had to say and of course they were some negative and positive but mostly positive comments. I then proceeded to buy my package and go on my way merrily. But the next day what happened threw me in a panic. When I tried to access the site there was a big fraud warning with an identity thief message. Gosh I nearly wet my pants because being a television pimp I had watched the Identity thief movie. Worst yet I tried to contact the company which advertised to having 24 hours, 7 days a week service with no response. I called the telephone line which gave the number of a very suggestive adult service. Of course I did not call the number because I didn't want my telephone credit stolen as well. What could a girl do at this point well I call my bank, canceled the card, unfortunately they told me I had to wait to see whether the transaction could be canceled. The lesson here is that the Internet can really be a very scary place and that we should only do business with recognizable brands or with brands who you can get a credible reference from.

This experience has not dampened my zeal for the Internet as a matter of fact it has made me even more keen and interested. It was like my baptism now I can go forth and preach the gospel.

I am joining all those wonderful Caribbean professionals who are gathering to bring a higher level of professionalism to our craft in the region. I commend those who have gone before me and hope that my two cents will make the region and the profession the more richer.