Is it really epic? Maybe, but that’s for you to decide. However, Help A Reporter Out founder and all around well-networked PR guru Peter Shankman has gotten into it with another well-networked PR consultant Kami Huyse, after Huyse pointed to a tweet from Shankman that read, “New rule: If your email starts off with ‘I want to pick your brain,’ my reply starts off with ‘at $400 per hour,’” and used it as an example of how “micro-fame breeds arrogance.”

Huyse didn’t mention Shankman’s name in the post, but it wasn’t hard for people to almost immediately connect the tweet back to him. And of course, Shankman unleashed back on Huyse in an open letter on his blog.

This PRNewser knows both Shankman and Huyse personally, and thinks this whole thing is one big waste of time. However, there are a few points to be made.

Read more

Three prominent players in the public relations and social marketing industry have banded together to start a new agency that will focus on nonprofits and companies with corporate responsibility or sustainability programs. Dubbed Zoetica, the agency will provide, “communication consulting, training, and strategy to help mindful organizations affect social change.”

Beth Kanter will serve as the CEO, leading in strategy and training; Kami Huyse will run account services and operations as President and COO, and Geoff Livingston will lead the sales and marketing effort as CMO.

Livingston, who sold his previous agency Livingston Communications to CRT/Tanaka in April of 2009, told PRNewser Zoetica is a completely different venture because, “We have a specific market, with a specific purpose: affecting social change. That’s what I want to invest my skills and time on now. Livingston was just a general communications firm.”

“Social media has gotten so big, it’s time to start focusing on the verticals that really matter. No one can own all of it. If this is my last, then this shoemaker wants to affect change,” he said.

Huyse said the agency will rightfully use their combined “track records of success and successful campaigns” to pitch new business. Huyse has previously served as a contractor to Livingston Communications. “We want to offer clients a brain trust,” she said, adding the agency will be working with a “cadre of freelancers.”

Livingston Communications announced late last week that it has been acquired by agency CRT/tanaka. After an (almost) merger with Social Media Group late last year that never quite panned out, CEO Geoff Livingston seems to be happy to have his agency in new hands.

Kami Huyse, a sometimes contractor for Livingston Communications published a Q&A with Livingston on the deal, and asked the “why now” question, to which he responded:

I don’t want to be the man, or the most popular guy on the Internet, and so having a CEO title doesn’t mean anything to me. What means something to me is becoming more available to my family, and doing great things that impact our society through clients, through openness and transparency, and through the embracing of public responsibility for our society’s issues, and the charitable efforts to resolve those problems.

Livingston also posted his own take on his blog here, which is certainly worth the read.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed, although we do know that CRT/Tanaka now has ownership of Livingston’s popular blog, The Buzz Bin. The company will also not become a subsidiary of CRT/tanaka but instead will merge under the existing corporate brand. CRT/tanaka clients include Sprint, Altria, and Charles Schwab & Co.

[image: Geoff Livingston, courtesy Beth Harte]