Pitches

About an hour after TMZ.com first reported the news of Michael Jackson's death yesterday, PRNewser received the following statement from Michael Levine, founder of agency Levine Communications Office:

As someone who served as Michael Jackson's publicist during the 1st child molestation incident, I must confess I am not surprised by today's tragic news. Michael has been on an impossibly difficult and often self-destructive journey for years. His talent was unquestionable but so too was his discomfort with the norms of the world. A human simply can not withstand this level of prolonged stress.

The Twitter reaction to the statement has been overwhelmingly negative. As Four Corner Communications founder and president Drew Kerr noted on his blog:

Instead of doing the classy thing and taking the high road, he belly-flopped right into the mud. Wow. Couldn't the guy just stick with nice things to say about his former client instead of playing backstabbing armchair shrink?

Nonetheless, Levine certainly achieve his goal of getting some ink, as the statement was picked up by the Associated Press, NPR and Perez Hilton, among other outlets. Levine has not responded to a PRNewser request to elaborate on his comments as of the time of this post.

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PepsiCo is reviewing PR agencies for a "global, multimillion-dollar corporate reputation campaign," according to PRWeek's Aarti Shah.

The company's website currently only lists internal contacts for all media relations requests. Porter Novelli recently assisted PepsiCo with their Internet Week social media efforts and is in the running for this work. Other heavyweights including Edelman and Hill & Knowlton are also among the mix.

Time Out New York dating columnist, "lifecaster" and girl about town Julia Allison is now a featured blogger for IZEA, the social media company that pays bloggers to post about products or services. The practice is controversial and the debate around it has been consistently evolving over recent months.

PRNewser interviewed the company's founder and CEO Ted Murphy at this year's South By Southwest conference.

One of the main tenets of the company's service is based around disclosure, before a blogger posts about any product or service. And so far there haven't been any incidents, as far as we know. Until now.

Per Gawker:

...Allison has started working hard for one of its [IZEA] featured clients, Sea World, which is inviting bloggers to a press junket this week. Today on her NonSociety blog, Allison gushed about her upcoming trip to the marine park with no fewer than five exclamation marks. On Twitter she was a bit more restrained, with just one "!" (the microblogging service limits users to 140 characters, after all).

Neither of those posts included any disclosure of Allison's relationship to Izea or Sea World - even though such disclosure is required by Izea.

Allison went on to disclose, and a rather thorough and candid IM exchange between her and Gawker's Ryan Tate is outlined in the post. We contacted Ted Murphy, who stood by a comment he also left on the Gawker post: "This is our first engagement of any type with Julia. I believe she made an honest mistake." He also stressed that SeaWorld isn't paying any of the bloggers but rather giving them, "airfare and hotel, the same as their mainstream media counterparts." However, Allison is being paid by IZEA. Said Murphy, "Julia has been hired by IZEA (not SeaWorld) outside of this event to provide consulting services. She will be working with me to share her insight and ideas on a variety of social media and marketing topics."

It's no surprise that medical bills are just one of the large expenses crippling many American families who are more and more in debt due to the current economic landscape. Now, drug maker Pfizer is hoping it can lend a helping hand to these families, while generating a bit of good will and positive brand advocacy via word of mouth.

Write AdAge's Marissa Miley and Rich Thomaselli:

In a PR masterstroke for the world's largest drug maker, Pfizer today said it will provide free select prescription drugs to Americans and their families who lose their jobs and -- as a result -- their health insurance. Pfizer's program, called Maintain (an acronym for Medicines Assistance for Those who Are in Need), will provide newly unemployed Americans and their families more than 70 primary-care drugs manufactured by Pfizer, including cholesterol-lowering agent Lipitor, at no charge.

Some are already praising the program, including Porter Novelli partner and director of global health care Peter Pitts, who told AdAge that the program, "shows great courage and heart to step forward and provide people with the health care they need in times of national distress..."

Pfizer works with a number of agencies, including Edelman, MS&L, Burson Marsteller and Weber Shandwick.

File this in the creative, fun - and maybe somewhat disturbing promotions department. A minor league baseball team, the Lake Elsinore Storm, is offering what can be described as "fart disguisers" at their "weekly all-you-can-eat Tuesday home games."

From the press release (via Deadspin):

"You can probably deduce that All-You-Can-Eat ballpark food might lead to substantial gas subtle emissions, which is where corporate sponsor, Subtle Butt, enters the picture. Made of activated carbon fabric, each disposable 3.25" square shield is held onto the inside of the underwear with two self-adhesive strips. Subtle Butt effectively filters flatulence, absorbing and neutralizing its odor."

Therefore, the first 250 fans in attendance at every "Fat Tuesday" ballgame (the first is on April 14), will receive a free product sample of Subtle Butt.

Fart all you want, baseball fans, no one will know!

The "Flying Pig" (pictured above) comes courtesy of Jack Hayhow, President and Chief Executive Servant of Opus Training, and author of The Wisdom of the Flying Pig, Guidance and Insipiration for Managers and Leaders. (Get it?)

Jack tells PRNewser we point him "in the right direction" with his PR/publicity efforts. Well, we've never advised sending battery operated flying pigs, but thanks for the kind words Jack!

Worth noting: this swag is just for PRNewser, so you can imagine what Today show producers receive on a daily basis.

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One of the core tenets of any PR program is pitching your client or company executives to speak at industry conferences and events. However, besides the CEO, who should you be pitching? Weber Shandwick surveyed 50 program directors among the world's top conference organizations for their "2009 Global Five Star Events" report.

The C-level executives most wanted as speakers by conference organizers (besides CEO) are:

-Chief Sustainability Officer: 48%
-Chief Financial Officer/Treasurer: 46%
-Chief Marketing Officer: 42%
-Chief Technology/Information Officer: 42%
-Chief Operating Officer: 32%
-Chief Risk Officer: 30%
-Chief Ethics Officer : 22%
-Chief Communications/PR Officer: 10%

It's telling for us PR pros that we came in last place. Also, as one would suspect, things are not getting any easier: 70% of resondents stated that there has been an increase in speaker acceptances and submissions to speak over the past three years.

How about a pitch straight from Google on this cold winter afternoon?

The search giant is working with NORAD (North American Aerospace Defense Command), so that "children around the world will again be able to follow Santa's journey in Google Earth and Google Maps this Christmas."

Per the pitch:

When Santa and his reindeer do take off at 6:00 am EST on Christmas Eve, a Google Map with Santa's current location will appear at www.noradsanta.org and will be updated as his journey progresses. Users can also track Santa in 3D in Google Earth by downloading a special NORAD Tracks Santa KML http://www.noradsanta.org/en/track3d.html). They can add the NORAD Tracks Santa iGoogle gadget to their iGoogle page anytime. Be sure to visit www.noradsanta.org to catch hi-res Santa Cam video of the sleigh zooming past various locations around the globe over the course of the night, and for locations without video, photos from Panoramio can be viewed in Google Maps. There are also a few new ways to track Santa this Christmas: users can track Santa on their mobile phones with Google Maps for Mobile, and can also follow his whereabouts on Twitter by adding @noradsanta.

While NORAD has been involved in Santa tracking for quite some time, some of the Google services are new this year. If anything, the idea has caught on. "Last year the NORAD Tracks Santa Web site received 10.6 million unique visitors from 212 countries and territories," according to WebProNews.

Remember that TechCrunch "war on PR" that we hinted at about a month ago? Well it's here, and we were right, it is about embargoes. The Web 2.0 bible's editor Michael Arrington published "Death To The Embargo," a long post that very basically can be summed up as, "we've been burned on too many news embargoes so we're not going to honor a single one any more."

But, as with all rules, there are exceptions. Writes Arrington:

There will be exceptions. We will honor embargoes from trusted companies and PR firms who give us the news exclusively, so we know there won't be any mistakes. There are also a handful - maybe three - people who we trust enough to continue to work with them on general embargoes (if you are a PR person and wondering if you're on that list, you're not). But for the vast majority of news we get in our inboxes, we're just going to fire it off to our readers ad hoc whenever we please.

Most reporters we talk to hate embargoed news. One reporter at the Wall Street Journal told us PR pros should avoid them at all costs. Many reporters would obviously prefer to have an exclusive. So is it better to just give a group of core reporters a heads up that news will be released at a certain time and the first one who calls gets the story? Right now Arrington may not even care. The post is his most popular of the day and is sure to be a solid page view generator throughout the week.

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Blogs and Twitter were abuzz this weekend, and still are, regarding the topic of "sponsored blog posts." The debate over sponsored posts is nothing new, but was re-hashed when well known and respected social media consultant Chris Brogan wrote a sponsored post for K-Mart on a blog he writes for, Dad-o-Matic.

Forrester Research Senior Analyst Jeremiah Owyang contacted Brogan and Izea (formerly Pay Per Post), the company that set up the sponsored post. He outlined the pros and cons, and came to the following conclusion among his thoughts:

Sponsored blog posts will grow...Two years ago, I never imagined that I would write a positive post for anything coming out of Pay Per Post, but I think this model is getting refined.

From a PR perspective, the interesting messaging point here is the fact that Izea used to be called Pay Per Post, hence they are trying to move the conversation from "paid posts" (sounds sketchy) to "sponsored posts" (sounds more acceptable).

Sponsored posts seem to be in favor more with bloggers who are not affiliated with so called "mainstream" media outlets or larger publishers. (Try telling a reporter at USA Today that they're doing a "sponsored column" or post.) However, they have found their way into somewhat larger blog networks such as Lockhart Steele's Curbed Networks.

One example of a sponsored post that works well is the first part of every email on Peter Shankman's Help a Reporter Out list. Each email begins with something akin to a sponsored post, Peter talking about the email's sponsor. We're willing to deal with it, because Peter provides what we deem to be a valuable service to us, for free. What would you think if one of your favorite bloggers started writing sponsored posts?