What does HTC stand for, anyway? “Hold This Cat,” perhaps?  Could it be “Hipster Troll Carwash?” Or maybe, “Humongous Tinfoil Catamaran.”

These are just a few of the possibilities suggested by HTC’s new spokesman, Robert Downey Jr., in the company’s just-launched “Change” campaign, the tagline for which is: “Here’s to Change.”

See what they did there?

New ads featuring Downey Jr., who has signed a two-year contract to be HTC’s “Instigator of Change,” will debut first on YouTube on August 15th and will also appear on television and in pre-movie spots. The first few ads will be mostly dedicated to playing out some of the far-fetched interpretations of the HTC acronym (yes, “Hold This Cat” will actually be a thing), while later spots will focus on HTC products like the One smartphone and software features like BlinkFeed, Video Highlights, and BoomSound.

The “change” comes roughly six months after HTC retired its “Quietly Brilliant” tagline, and is the company’s first attempt at refreshing its brand since doing so. HTC has invested a great deal in this rebranding, and says that the accompanying social media campaign is the largest it has ever crafted. Read more

This week PR Daily posed an important question: Should brands pay for blog mentions?

Before the requisite “this is a complicated issue that will affect different parties differently and we want to avoid making overgeneralizations” statement, we’ll give you the short answer: no.

Don’t get mad before you read the qualifiers: well over 50% of the public turns to editorial sites for info on products, so if a prominent blogger truly enjoys/approves of your client’s product, any related content is PR gold. But you already knew that.

Here’s the rub: As readers and writers of blogs, we can tell you that if you are a blogger who consumers turn to for “unbiased” insights, they will begin to question your credibility the minute they discover that you were paid to promote something even if you’ve made that relationship clear to everyone who visits your site (which you’re legally required to do anyway).

No, bloggers aren’t held to such strict standards of objectivity as traditional journalists. But paid endorsements can never be 100% “sincere,” so their value is limited. The conflict of interest between blogger and patron ensures this fact.

That’s not to say you shouldn’t try to get bloggers to promote your client, but there are some big caveats:

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For a minute, we were all paying attention to Newsweek again. But just as quickly as our heads whipped around when we heard that the title had been sold to IBT Media, the company that owns International Business Times, our heads whipped back the other way because Jeff Bezos bought The Washington Post.

Newsweek, which was meant to be revived by its association with Tina Brown’s site The Daily Beast, instead seems to be even more of a shell of the notable newsweekly it once was. For one, it stopped printing seven months ago and went all digital. Then, a number of notable staff left, including CEO Baba Shetty and editor Tunku Varadarajan. Finally, you had Newsweek owner Barry Diller saying publicly, “I wish I hadn’t bought Newsweek, it was a mistake.” Diller’s point was that a newsweekly’s time had passed at the rise of Twitter and other instant news. Sales pitching at its finest!

But the companies involved here would have us believe that this is a great sale and a great brand.

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Yahoo hired CEO Marissa Meyer to lead the company into a brave new world of changing technologies and evolving consumer habits—all during a prolonged and crippling global recession. So the public wants her, and the company, to do well. We just do. These have been tough times, and we’re all in the mood for a success story.

However, most the news the public has heard about Yahoo’s resurrection have been on relatively unimpressive issues such as not allowing Yahoo employees to telecommute. For many in the public, Yahoo’s next move had to be substantive, innovative and sweeping in scope. A prolonged and much ballyhooed logo change just doesn’t cut it. Sorry Yahoo.

Yes, as PR experts we understand how critical logos are and how obsessed people in our industry can be about logos, but the truth is logos by themselves are just that: logos, symbols of values and belief systems. Without penetrating and dramatic internal changes, Yahoo—which hasn’t changed its logo since the company was founded 18 years ago—is simply hoping the public will believe in the power of suggestion. Read more

Last week our sister site AllTwitter reported on a story that serves as a great example of a well-meaning social media marketing campaign that got a little too aggressive. Harping on the fact that it supposedly uses only “antibiotic-free” meat in its food, the Panera Bread chain’s team created a campaign pushing the message that only lazy farmers use antibiotics on their animals. This included a micro-site, a Facebook tab, and the satirical @EZChicken Twitter feed (which was more than a little over the top despite some pretty cool art direction).

We get where they were going with this project and the tagline “The Road to Delicious Is Antibiotic-Free”, but it’s hard not to conclude that any farmers who use antibiotics in any circumstance are not very good at their jobs—and that implication extends to nearly every farmer in this country. Now who supplies Panera with the meat for its sandwiches?

The response from the animal husbandry community wasn’t so positive:

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New FDA rules now say that food marked “gluten-free” can’t have levels of gluten that exceed 20 parts gluten per million parts of food. In addition, these foods can’t contain rye, barley, wheat, or any crossbreeds of those items. According to Business Insider, this is the lowest level of gluten that can be detected and the new rule puts our gluten-free standard on par with those in other countries.

This is the first time we have legally binding rules about gluten-free foods in place. They come along with new high standards for foods marked “sodium free,” “sodium free,” and “sugar free.”

For people who suffer from celiac disease, it must be a relief to know that what they’re getting is actually following the most strict guidelines available. There are three million people suffering from celiac disease. About 18 million are gluten sensitive. And then there are those who are going gluten-free to lose weight through regimens like the paleo diet.

This is a $4.2 billion market.  For brands, there’s good and bad with these new rules.

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We usually like to make you smile on Fridays, but I’m afraid the only smile this new musical Mercedes ad will bring to your face is the Oh-God-I’m-So-Uncomfortable-Please-Make-it-Stop kind.

The new Mercedes-Benz Service Song, sung from the point of view of a Mercedes car in desperate need of the sort of…um…handling that only a Mercedes repairman can provide, features lyrics like: “I like them to be strong, that they can catch me when I skid/Like them to turn me on, I thought that some of them did/But just as I needed a helping hand, so many men were ‘out of service,’ not like you … You only give your best, won’t stop until I smile.”

Oh, and in the 5-minute extended version (yeah, that exists AND we listened to the whole thing) nearly a full 30 seconds is dedicated to throaty, over-the-top “oh yeah’s.”

The atrociously cheesy, over-wrought song is accompanied by an equally terrible video, chock full of overly-Photoshopped images of heroic mechanics, smiling families and glistening sunsets. It seems the ad is trying to be nostalgic, sexy and epic all at once, and failing miserably on all counts. Read more

Depending on what kind of family you were raised by, you either have lovingly wonderful or horribly debilitating memories of the iconic board game, Monopoly. If you had the type of sister who lent you money, you probably think life is fair. If you had the type of brother who spit in your mouth, you probably think Monopoly is the root of the global recession. That game brought out the best and worst of our siblings.

Nevertheless, few would argue Monopoly needed to be kicked up a notch, particularly considering the public ill will towards soulless megabrands and the corrupt state of our financial institutions. Making Monopoly any more corporate—particularly now—would just be tone deaf and greedy far beyond taking your brother’s money and fanning yourself with it, right? Well, you may want to sit down for this. Read more

Can a woman really be completely satisfied in only seven minutes? Liquid-Plumr promises she can.

Turning mundane daily routines into hyper-sexualized hunk-fests seems to be the tactic of choice for some female-targeted brands like Kraft’s salad dressing and Clorox’s Liquid-Plumr. The latter’s latest spot, titled “Quickie“, leaves behind the double entendres of their “Double Impact” ad (two sexy plumbers clean out your pipes for the price of one!) in order to market its Urgent Clear formula — for women who “need it now.”

The ad (below) depicts a busy woman selecting a bottle of Urgent Clear from a hardware store shelf, and then immediately lapsing into a fantasy about a hunky plumber arriving at her door as she is on her way out. “I hear you need it now,” says the dreamy handy man. “I only have ten minutes,” giggles the rushed woman, to which the plumber seductively replies, “I only need seven.”

The viewer is then informed by a Barry White-esque voice that the formula “penetrates…to leave you satisfied in only seven minutes.” Read more

In case anyone out there actually had hopes that Abercrombie & Fitch might change its marketing tune after finding itself embroiled in controversy this past spring, the brand’s latest campaign will probably be a major disappointment. If the clothing retailer’s newest effort seems like more of the same to you, that’s because it is — exactly the same.

Rather than make any sort of attempt at re-branding, A&F is doing exactly the opposite: the company is reincarnating its successful “Stars on the Rise” campaign from the early 2000s, which featured then-budding celebs like Taylor Swift and Ashton Kutcher. The updated effort features 11 “up-and-coming” actors including Alexander Ludwig from The Hunger Games, American Horror Story’s Lily Rabe, and Glee star Jacob Artist (we’re particularly sad about this last one, as we sort of thought the whole Abercrombie-is-only-for-cool-kids thing would make for a great episode of the equality/inclusion/self-esteem-themed show).

When asked about the campaign, Abercrombie’s director of marketing and public relations Michael Scheiner told Buzzfeed, “For many of our consumers today, they might not know what we did in 2005, so it seemed relevant to discuss this concept we’ve done in the past.”

It seems A&F is hoping that recreating a campaign from its heyday may also recreate the popularity the brand experienced during the same time period. But this strategy assumes the current audience will be equally receptive to the message, an assumption which — given the recent backlash against the brand and the current anti-bullying/pro-inclusion landscape — may be a gamble. Read more