After staging a grandscale PR stunt off the coast of Estonia, Swedish mobile phone company Tele2 are now under formal police investigation and could face criminal charges for costing the country great and unnecessary expense.

Officials were not amused when military personnel and scientists were called out after Baltic residents reported a flash in the night’s sky. What they discovered was a 20 metre-wide, 10 metre-deep hole with signs of a meteor hit. The PR company admitted to staging the stunt and cooking chemicals in the bottom of the hole to resemble a meteor hit.

What makes me laugh about this stunt is the workings on the inside, the strategy meetings. Imagine the look on the PR intern’s face — because you know this is a job for an intern — when the Big Cheese calls them into their office and says, I have a little job for you. Take this shovel and this chemistry set and this map and…

This is just the first phase of Tele2’s campaign. Next, they plan to hijack a spaceship. No, that’s not true, I just made that up. Can’t wait for phase two though — hey, maybe this stunt worked. I’m invested, but I’m not buying.

This next PR stunt speaks volumes about branding and the infiltration of iconic pop culture. A Colonel Saunders look-a-like managed to sneak past NYC UN security and pose for a photo with the new (perhaps soon-to-be old) president of the UN General Assembly, Ali Treki, before he was detected and ejected.

Let’s think about this for a moment…if someone had shown up in an unknown costume, would they have been so readily accepted into the crowd? How scary is that? I hope the bad guys aren’t watching. Better yet, I hope the good guys are.

Usually, I’m not one to advocate cheap PR stunts, but the Yes Men impressed me with their fake news conference and what has become a public kick up the backside for the US Chamber of Commerce who support clean coal as the only viable energy solution.

The Yes Men step way outside the boundaries of conventional PR. They consider themselves activists who practice identity correction by posing as spokespeople for target organizations. Setting up fake websites to resemble their targets as part of their strategy, they lure interested parties in and receive invitations to speak at conferences, symposia and on TV. This most recent PR stunt drove the point home that climate change policy lays hostage to corporate greed.

Rightly or wrongly, these strategists target the bad guys by employing the same dirty tactics that they use. It’s like karma or justice.

As a side note, if coal was so good, why would Santa give it to naughty children at Christmastime?

September has been a month of bloopers. While I shudder to think that Kanye’s mishap at the MVA Awards was nothing but a publicity stunt, topped off with an appearance on the debut Jay Leno Show and the all-too-familiar celebrity outcry ~ I gotta get away for a while ~ something is rotten in the state of Denmark.

While it’s fun to see the US President candidly talking about something so mainstream and mundane as the MVA Awards ~ pop culture meets politics ~ I have to question the integrity of the communications department behind this blooper ~ was it really accidentally leaked? The cynic in me wants to know.

While the Kanye and Obama bloopers both prove the theory behind the adage, there’s no such thing as negative publicity, this wasn’t the case for the WWF. The release of their September 11/Tsunami campaign before sign-off prompted an apology posted on their website and left them a little red in the face.

Every once and a while you come across a talented artist and you think to yourself, why haven’t I heard this before? Then you forget the “why” and get lost in the music. Rose Reiter is one such talented artist.

Rose writes from a place of true emotion, fuelled by such influences as jazz, rock, pop and R&B. Her music is rich and full of texture like a good sherry trifle — layer upon layer of delicious decadence. She is a singer, songwriter, pianist, guitarist and co-producer, and spends her time between her hometown of Vancouver and New York.

You can tell she’s a generous person, because if you visit her website [and I strongly suggest you do] she will serenade you with song after beautiful song. If that isn’t enough, when you download her songs from iTunes, you will be supporting a select charity like Raising Malawi for the track Can’t Hold Me Back.

One of my favourite tracks is Let Go.

The story is the same, but the picture has changed. Instead of swashbuckling adverturers scouring the seas for countries to rape and pillage, we have Mr. Affluent White-Guy killing the planet with his excessive globe-trotting and expensive taste in cars.

This video is one of three winners of the Germanwatch screenplay competition about Climate Justice. Since 1991, Germanwatch has been actively promoting North-South equity, focusing on the politics and economics of the North and its worldwide consequences. It lobbies for fair trade relations, responsible financial markets, compliance with human rights, and the prevention of dangerous climate change.

What this video does is makes you stop and think. Our actions affect everyone on this planet and right now the scales of justice are imbalanced. If we don’t all start making changes to the way we live today, it may be too late. In twenty years’ time, it’s going to be a very different landscape.

Inspired by: Earth Hour’s Video of the Week

A lot of my friends laugh at me for watching So You Think You Can Dance, poo-pooing it as just another one of those silly reality shows. Usually I just smile to myself, letting them rant, but I’ve kept quiet long enough. It’s time to enlighten you poor, ignorant souls!

What strikes me most about SYTYCD is the passion and compassion of all of those involved. The judges really care. This is a nurturing environment where people are encouraged to grow and evolve. This couldn’t have been more evident last night with choreographer Tyce DiOrio’s portrayal of breast cancer.

Going into its sixth season, SYTYCD has opened doors for so many talented individuals and set up the Dizzy Feet Foundation so that under-privileged kids can study dance with the best. In its own way, it has raised awareness of the importance of the arts and its power to touch us all.

The University of Toronto Alumni Association held their AGM the other day at Hart House with keynote speaker Dr. James Orbinski — President of Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) — talking on Humanitarianism, Citizenship and Global Health.

Dr. James Orbinski is one of those human beings that makes the world a better place. He is an Associate Professor of Medicine at the University of Toronto, a Fellow at the Munk Centre for International Studies, and co-founder and Chair of the Board of Directors of Dignitas International, a medical humanitarian organization performing life-saving work for communities overwhelmed by HIV/AIDS.

Orbinski was there in Rwanda during the genocide of nearly one million Tutsi. He described the landscape as a river of blood and opened with a story of a nine-year-old girl he had operated on. She told him how she had hidden in the latrine and watched as her parents were hacked to death by Hutus armed with machetes. As the blood flowed first from her father and then her mother, she had stifled her sobs, afraid of getting caught, and watched as they hacked off her mother’s arm and it fell into her father’s blood. So terrifying is this death to the Tutsi that parents paid to have their children lined up and shot — anything but hacked to death.

Orbinski described human suffering as the great equalizer, that by sharing her story this little girl had brought them both to the same level of awareness. By speaking out and raising awareness, people start to listen and that is the first act of doing, the first step towards change. One such change is the establishment of an International Criminal Court on July 1, 2002 that persecutes people guilty of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.

In just 15 years, Orbinski has worked to bring greater access to life-saving medicine and treatment for HIV/AIDS sufferers in Africa at a fraction of the cost. In his latest book, An Imperfect Offering, Orbinski cautions that global health is changing as fast as the global climate and disease is no longer contained to one country. Leaders need to be more mindful of this looming situation. If the G20 can spend $13 trillion of public money to underwrite a domestic failure, then they can help 950 million starving, suffering people in other parts of the world. Humanitarianism in the 21st century needs leaders without borders.

Real estate and PR clashed in Ireland last week. This fake queue outside real estate agent’s Templeton Robins proves that successful PR requires integrity and authenticity. First you have to gain the trust of your audience and in so doing, you build a relationship. Today’s consumers are too intelligent to be pulled in with stunts like this. 

Another element that has been overlooked is a connection to the audience. Just because you see a queue outside a real estate agent, doesn’t endow you to buy property. This is more like a hit-and-miss kind of tactic with little to no success rate. 

Souce:  The Irish News

A lot of people I know listen to podcasts on a regular basis, but did you know that Ricky Gervais has his own podcast with Steve Merchant and Karl Pilkington? You can find it all here — RickyGervais.com