Generalities

Tangerine tango is not the victory dance for the winner of the upcoming Florida Republican primary. It’s the official color of 2012.

The color was selected as Pantone’s “color of the year,” and is already making a fashion statement in stores, at sports events, and awards shows. Leatrice Eiseman, the executive director of Pantone told the New York Times earlier this month that “the color of the year is not the hot fashion color, but an expression of a mood, an attitude, on the part of the consumers.”

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Create a social media strategy, launch your campaign, and track the results in our Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting February 16. The online event and workshop will feature speakers including The Onion‘s Baratunde Thurston (left), Facebook’s Morin Oluwole, and bitly’s Tim Devane. Register now.

Meetings, tweeting, brainstorming, open floor plans. How much of your work in PR is done alone? From workplace trends in the past 20 years, one would guess very little. This “groupthink,” or herd-style working, could be leading to less creativity, says one author.

Susan Cain, who wrote Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking cites Apple’s Steve Wozniak and Isaac Newton as two famous loners who  prove her point. Some people can be friendly but just don’t like being part of a crowd. They need alone time to recharge. Quiet time, without jabbering or constant interruption, is when they do their best work. Not that I’m projecting or anything.

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PRNewser will be taking the day off on Monday in honor of Martin Luther King’s birthday. We’ll see you back here on Tuesday, January 17.

After CareerCast listed PR as number seven on its list of most stressful jobs, we wanted to know why you think PR is so tough. Well, you had a ton to say on this topic but we boiled it down to the top five reasons.

1. Clients. Can’t live with them, can’t live without them. From “unrealistic expectations” to rudeness to limited budgets, respondents on our Twitter feed and in the comments section of the post talked about how difficult clients can be to work with. Based on our unscientific observation, this was the number one reason for the industry’s tension.

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CareerCast has released its list of 2012′s most stressful jobs. At number seven: PR executive.

CareerCast’s job description says PR pros are often responsible for addressing large crowds, work in public, and keep tight deadlines, not to mention the hostility coming from the media, particularly in a crisis situation. It also says the average pay is $91,810.

PR Daily notes that last year, CareerCast had PR pro listed at number two on the most stressful list.

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We got a couple more interesting tidbits that we’re including in this final installment of “PR Expressions of Holiday Cheer” (unofficial title).

Converseon has created a “Santament Score” to quantify how people really feel about Santa Claus. This man travels around the world and down chimneys delivering gifts and yet, as of this post, nearly a third of tweets about him were negative. Ungrateful bitches!

Converseon is donating $1 to Toys for Tots for each tweet containing the hashtags #santanice or #santanaughty. They’ve raised less than $100 as of this post, so get on it folks. You have until New Year’s to type your philanthropic tweets.

C. Fox Communications, a D.C.-area firm that works with “mission-driven” organizations, has partnered with a local ice cream company, Moorenko’s Ice Cream, on a limited edition flavor — Bone Appetit, a mix of vanilla ice cream, peanut butter, and chocolate covered pretzels. Bone Appetit will be available throughout January, with proceeds from the sales going to The Washington Animal Rescue League.

Visit AgencySpy to see what the ad world is doing for the holidays. Hint: a lot of video.

Andy Warhol – pop art icon, self-promoter and cultural pundit — was as celebrated for his creative talents as for his quotes. His prediction — “In the future everyone will be world famous for fifteen minutes” — was made long before the dawn of reality TV, the Internet, and social media.

Despite referring to himself as a “deeply superficial person,” Warhol’s legacy has survived long after his death in 1987. Warhol’s art still fetches millions of dollars at auction and many of his images have left lasting impressions. His work is currently on display at two museum exhibits in Washington, D.C.: “Shadows” at the Hirshhorn Museum and “Headlines” at the National Gallery of Art.

His last TV project, the show “Andy Warhol’s Fifteen Minutes,” was broadcast on MTV in the mid-1980s and featured interviews with celebrities and cultural figures. Meanwhile, his “Fifteen minutes of fame” forecast from the 1960s is truer now than ever. Countless others have briefly made headlines and then quickly faded from view. After the jump are four artistic examples from this past year.
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In the past couple of weeks since we posted a story about the good works and well wishes coming from PR firms for the holiday season, there’s been a whole lot more, and its getting even more elaborate.

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Occupy movements here and abroad have had a big impact on language this year. Etymologists, both professional and amateur, are having a field day looking back at the terms and phrases that have taken hold in 2011. Many of the terms that they’re highlighting are related to the income disparity topic that has roiled citizens around the globe and driven them to protest.

The New York Times took a look yesterday at the terms “99 percent” and “one percent,” analyzing how they’ve made their way into political speeches, marketing, and everyday talk.

And this week, dictionary groups at Oxford University Press both here and in the U.K. declared “squeezed middle” the global word of the year.

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Yesterday we tweeted a story from TheGrindstone.com that has had more than a few people talking: “Are Women in PR Just Grown Up Mean Girls?”

PR pros of the female persuasion immediately took to the comments of that story to defend the ladies of public relations, emphasizing the stress and hard work that goes into their daily work. Sources acknowledged a  dog-eat-dog mentality among publicists, that is fostered in some ways by the industry.

On our Twitter feed, some answered the question with a definitive “yes”, others with a definitive “no”, and others with more nuanced explanation.

Picking up on one of the sources’ comments, TheGrindstone.com did a follow up asking whether PR needs a PR rep, a question we’ve heard asked before and one that is being addressed by the #PRDefined campaign.

Is this just a reputation issue? Or does the industry have a serious attitude problem? Is the culture out of whack? Share your thoughts.