No two things go hand-in-hand quite like a car and a drive-in movie theater — especially in the context of American nostalgia. The shift toward digital film, however, threatens to send the drive-in the way of the dodo. Stepping in to help keep this American icon from utter extinction is automaker Honda.

By the end of 2013, Hollywood is expected to stop distributing 35 millimeter film to all U.S. movie theaters. While most indoor theaters have already made the switch to digital projection — a move that costs roughly $75,000 per screen — hundreds of drive-in theaters will find it difficult to manage such an expenditure, given their limited ticket sales (most drive-ins close during the colder months, after all).

Part of Honda’s goal is to raise community awareness of the perilous situation in which beloved local drive-ins find themselves. The campaign’s website, projectdrivein.com, features a video (below), which visitors are encouraged to share via social media. Supporters are also asked to pledge to see one movie at their local drive-ins. Read more

Today in CEOs Behaving Badly: We understand why AOL chief Tim Armstrong was a little upset at the unfortunate struggles of Patch, his well-meaning $300 million experiment in hyper-local news content. He promised AOL that the venture would turn a profit by year’s end, and in order to bring this about he seemingly had no choice but to fire hundreds of the writers, editors, and managers at more than 400 individual Patch sites around the country.

But this hardly excuses the commission of a cardinal PR sin: letting his temper get away with him during a 1,000-strong conference call and firing an employee for taking a photo during his speech. It was mild as outbursts go, but it was recorded for the ages and distributed to every media outlet around.

This wasn’t just any employee, by the way; it was Patch’s creative director Abel Lenz. The fact that such a Trump-worthy incident was terrible PR should be obvious to all, but we’ll go into a bit more detail:

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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

The Washington Post: Kris Jenner Takes On President Obama’s Comments

The New York Times: American Express Targets Fans of League of Legends Video Game

The Washington Post: How LinkedIn Connects Human Resources with Big Data

Advertising Age: Fake Web Traffic Proves Costly to Advertisers

CNN: Australian Politician’s Blunders Go Viral

‘Hunger Games’ Themed Park Raises Eyebrows

Will the Public Believe Yahoo’s New Logo Equates a Rebrand?

Reputation Management at Amazon: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

With New FDA Rules, Gluten-Free Actually Means No Gluten

The Return on Jeff Bezos’ Investment In ‘The Washington Post’ Could Be Huge

It’s hard to prove that something hasn’t happened because of your efforts. But a lot of high-powered Wall Street types are quick to thank George Sard and his PR firm Sard Verbinnen for all the stories  that don’t get written about them.

Both Sard and Verbinnen (Paul is his first name) declined to comment, but Bloomberg Businessweek wrote a profile that names the following clients: SAC Capital Advisors, Dell and Air Products and Chemicals (both involved in multi-billion-dollar deals), and Goldman Sachs’ Fabrice Tourre. The quote in the headline comes from the story, which says “the man with the gray wavy hair” was virtually the only person in the courtroom during Tourre’s trial not to get any media attention.

For its efforts, the article notes that the firm is the number one M&A firm by deal count, according to Mergermarket, “lending its expertise to 45 transactions worth $71 billion in the first half of 2013.”

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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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“So Bill, what you’re telling me is that Napoleon was a short, dead dude.”

He was! But he may also be the founding father of PR as we know it today—at least according an article in Investors Daily this week.

After the French revolutionaries overthrew the monarchy in the late 18th century, Napoleon was just one of many generals leading armies as they fought to take control of land throughout Europe. But he came up with a great idea to further his own power: commandeer media outlets and use them to his advantage.

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German filmaker Werner Herzog, a living legend who founded his production company in 1963 has put his heft behind a brutal, 35-minute public service announcement as part of AT&T’s It Can Wait campaign. The multi-facet initiative is designed to get people to stop texting while driving.  Herzog pulls you into personal stories of personal tragedy remarkably fast–there’s no action, no breaks and no way to hide from the issue when you watch and listen to his chosen subjects tell their stories.

“From One Second To The Next” will be distributed to more than 40,000 high schools in time for the school year.  Here’s the kicker from TechHive gleaned a Newsday story: Texting while driving has now surpassed drinking while driving as the top cause of teen driving deaths, resulting in some 3,000 deaths a year and 300,000 injuries. That’s just one segment of the population.  We applaud AT&T’s efforts to draw attention to this horrible growing problem.

You can view the entire documentary on YouTube:

This is the most important news you’ll read all day. Actress, Julia Roberts niece and accused boyfriend beater Emma Roberts didn’t feel like standing in a ridiculously long line to get one of those mythical “cronuts” at Manhattan’s Dominique Ansel Bakery, so she (allegedly) dragged her publicist to the door and tried the “don’t you know who I am” trick.

Anyone who went to kindergarten knows that no one gets to bully his or her way to the front of any line, especially when a doorman waits at the end. Before you ask: yes, the bakery has a doorman—and yes, he told an “embarrassed” Roberts to go to the back of the queue, where she smiled for paparazzi and signed autographs before leaving due to boredom, or something like that.

Later she appeared on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, where she claimed that she hadn’t even realized there was a line. The host took a break from laughing at his own jokes to graciously grant her access to the deep-fried goodness she not-so-desperately wanted.

Note to publicists: this is why they hate us.

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