Happy 37th birthday, Breakout. You’ve come a long way. You helped develop the first generation of kids with the best hand-eye coordination the world had seen (up until that point). You were the biggest deal in childhood until Star Wars was released a year later and changed the world forever. You were the son of Pong, the father of Pac-Man and the future DNA of Halo. You were technology at its most innocent, before it became associated with porn and violence. You, Breakout, helped millions of children break out of their realities at a time when divorce was skyrocketing and our parents began cooking our meals in microwaves.

Once again, Google makes an excellent PR move by celebrating a milestone in our culture that everyone else would have overlooked. And to recognize Atari Breakout’s birthday with a coveted Google Easter Egg is just perfect considering it’s a gesture from one storied technology entity to another. (To see it yourself visit Google Images and type in “Atari Breakout.”)

Happy Birthday Breakout!

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It’s Mother’s Day on Sunday, but you already know that. We know that you know because you, like us, realize how important moms are to everything that is good in life.

In fact, Mother’s Day is so respected by our society that it’s one of the few holidays we haven’t savagely and unconscionably pimped out like a Las Vegas billboard. Do brands capitalize on Mother’s Day and leverage their marketing assets? Of course they do, and who can blame them. But let’s face it: Valentine’s Day is an abomination, Christmas is even worse—it’s an entire season of superficial marketing efforts—and you can’t even get through a President’s Day without someone trying to sell you a used car or mattress.

The public knows better than to reward brands that crassly attempt to exploit Mother’s Day. We don’t like it. There is something about using Mother’s Day to turn a profit that doesn’t sit well with the public. (Ok, Hallmark, you get a pass on this one.) Mother’s Day is a holiday we take personally. So that means any brands that dare to come near Mother’s Day must do so with reverence and a deft touch. Some do this better than others. We like the video above made by Google to honor moms across the globe. It’s touching and tactful. Well played, Google.

Any PR folks out there encounter outreach from brands that nailed it or were complete failures? Let us know.

And Happy Mother’s Day!

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Public relations is a wonderful industry because it encompasses so many compelling aspects of human beings. One of those, of course, is our appreciation for aesthetics, and legendary American graphic designer and filmmaker Saul Bass brought plenty of beauty into our lives. From logos to movie posters to films Saul Bass was part of our lives whether we knew it or not. And Google is scoring its own PR victory by paying tribute to a creative force that deserves recognition. Applause all around.

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We thought Microsoft had put the series to bed earlier, but they brought it back to life this week with a couple of spots attacking the Android phone for providing Google with an unfair advantage and, again, collecting users’ private information without their knowledge or consent. It’s all a bit more complicated than that, but the message is clear: Google is evil, because Microsoft would never in a million years use customer data in underhanded ways.

This is more about branding and reputation management than technology or the business practices of tech companies. The campaign is obviously working in some way or the company wouldn’t keep pumping out these ads. But Microsoft casting itself as David to Google’s Goliath? We don’t see that message as a long-term winner. It all makes the runner-up look more than a little desperate.

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Google redirects concerned parties to this page that helps them separate their content in order to make the bots’ jobs easier. Yes, it’s a few seconds of extra work for each piece — but this is the price of the “pay to play” model.

What does this mean for PR people? Probably not a whole lot. We may, however, need to start reminding clients that sponsored content and editorial are not, and will never be, the same thing (no matter how much they want the opposite to be true).

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Is it only me but I have this strong feeling thinking that Google Nose Beta is April Fool jokes

— Yahya Bin Zakaria (@YahyaImran) April 1, 2013

On the other hand, that is a little sad.

So back to our point: we kind of like Sprint‘s Sprint Specs campaign, not because it’s so incredibly clever but because it manages to make fun of a trending tech story (Google Glass) while simultaneously promoting its service’s key differentiator: unlimited data. It’s really every bit as forced as every other April Fools’ joke, but it somehow manages to be a competent promo as well.

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Why? Because it will help them better understand exactly how their mobile ads influence sales — and it will help client teams use real-world data to demonstrate the success of Google ads and cost-per-action (CPA) campaigns. According to Google’s blog post/announcement, a recent study showed that nearly 3 in 10 web searches lead consumers to visit a store, contact a business or make a purchase. So this is a big deal to any client who sells products online.

If you have any clients in the food/brick and mortar retail sectors, Yelp‘s announcement should be of interest as well: the site’s “revenue estimator” will show the owners of small businesses how many “leads” come directly from their Yelp pages and related promo campaigns — and make estimates as to the ultimate dollar value of that traffic.

So will we be using either of these tools? What effect might they have on our relationships with clients?

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Yesterday our sister site AllFacebook (like them on Facebook!) reported on a study conducted by the social network and Carnegie Mellon University that looked to answer an intriguing question: how do your Facebook habits affect your likelihood of finding a new job? Its key finding:

Facebook users who talked more with close friends regarding job hunts and job opportunities were much more likely to find employment than those who tended to reach out to acquaintances.

Other findings:

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What’s the name of that guy, again? Oh, yeah: Google.

Google has agreed to pay $7 million in a suit filed by 38 states and Washington, D.C., accusing the “Do No Evil” brand of cruising through local neighborhoods in its Street View cars and downloading information from unprotected wireless networks. Yikes. That’s bad.

As industry experts we constantly beat the PR drum on personal privacy, that one aspect of daily life that the public absolutely refuses to trifle with. In short, if you threaten the public’s personal privacy then you’d better be prepared to assemble your crisis communications team at 3am, because you’re asking for trouble. Considering its extensive reach into our lives, Google has maintained a safe distance—or at least the appearance of a safe distance—from achieving a degree of power that would allow it to ruin our lives by pressing a few keys on the keyboard.

But that image is fading.

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Today everyone’s favorite pinning site launched Pinterest Web Analytics, a free data management tool that mirrors the ever-popular Google Analytics and Facebook Page Manager tools. What will it do? It will give page runners (not personal pinners) the numbers that matter most: how many users re-pin your pins, how many view each pin and how many visit a given company’s site from its Pinterest page.

This is all part of Pinterest’s long-term plan, and it’s a natural next step after the service introduced company pages last November. In fact, if we had to guess we’d say the Pinterest team is laying the groundwork for a public offering–and they’ve learned from the great Zuckerberg’s mistakes. Last month company founder Ben Silberman told The Wall Street Journal about his plans to “monetize”, and facts like “Pinterest leads to more referrals than Twitter, StumbleUpon, Bing and Google” and “Pinterest users are 10% more likely to make a purchase from an ecommerce site” than surfers who arrive via other sources are sure to make the service even more attractive to all those Wall Street all-stars who are still trying to get rid of all their Facebook stock.

Here’s the most important question, though: will you, as a PR pro, be more likely to use Pinterest to promote your clients now?

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The primary players in this sordid saga are two firms called Yage Times and XinXun Media. What did these firms do, exactly? They specialized in getting negative news stories about clients removed from prominent websites–but it all goes much deeper than that.

Not only would these companies bribe site runners to delete “unflattering” posts–they also paid their friends in IT to have related search terms blocked on Baidu, the Chinese equivalent of Google. Imagine entering “Beyoncé lip sync” or “Burger King horse meat” into your browser and coming up with a big fat nothing and you’ll get the general idea.

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Google was the first big brand to call itself the victim of cyber hackery back in 2010, and since then others have joined the growing chorus: Earlier this month it was Twitter, followed by Facebook, Apple, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post and The New York Times. (Burger King and Jeep had their Twitter feeds hacked this week, but that’s a different thing entirely.)

Some brands, like Bloomberg, continue to issue less-than-believable denials. We understand the desire to avoid saying “Yes, we were hacked by China”–but this kind of stubbornness can make brands look worse, especially when third-party sources confirm the reports.

Should companies go public after being hacked to get ahead of the story? Or should they hide in the shadows and issue no comment until the time is right?

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Other than sex, nothing connects with the public better than exclusivity. What better way to engage the masses than to create a product that’s out of reach? We all want what we can’t have, especially if someone else can have it. It’s not just a PR strategy–it’s a quirk of human nature. And Google knows this.

The “Do no evil” brand is launching a clever campaign that will promote its new Glass “smartglasses” (sorry spell check: you’re going to have to learn that one, too) via a very select group of “explorers”. What’s the price of admission? $1,500 (taxes not included) and a gift for words.

Intrigued?

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The new features mentioned by Mayer in interviews this week include “an infinite, Twitter-like news feed” and a collection of content recommended by users’ Facebook friends. Mayer signed content deals with the three major networks, switched from Microsoft to Google for ad services and announced plans to focus more heavily on Yahoo’s original properties like Yahoo Sports, movie listings and gossip site OMG.

Will Mayer’s plan to make Yahoo relevant again succeed? We don’t plan on making the site one of our chief web destinations or using its email platform anytime soon, but we will say that she is the best thing to happen to the brand in some time.

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The problem? Google’s search algorithm really hates duplicate content and looks to punish those who distribute it (for good reason) because, while providing your own spin on someone else’s content is acceptable, passing their work off as your own is not. So Google marked the company’s homepage as spam and removed it from all relevant search results. This story ended well only because the client’s web firm was able to file a request with Google explaining the PR team’s mistake.

The lesson here? Use SEO guidelines and write your own damn content! Don’t fall into this unnamed firm’s “do as little work as possible” stereotype!

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