Love sports? Love event planning? We’ve got a course for you. One of our newest offerings, Sports Event Marketing, begins on Wednesday May 1, 2013. In this intensive course, you’ll get hands-on experience creating a mock sports marketing campaign portfolio from an agency, corporate sponsor, or team franchise perspective. Interested? Learn more and register here. Use the promo code SPORTS50 to save $50 at checkout. This special offer expires April 30, 2013.

Instructor Michele Lago (left) is an event planner and sports marketer who has worked at five Olympic games, six Super Bowls, and two Masters. Her client list includes The Coca-Cola Company, SportsMark, Special Olympics, and The Sports Authority. During an interview with Michele, we asked what her most exciting event was. She said:

“My favorite event during that time (and my husband would likely agree) was the 2007 [Sports Illustrated] Swimsuit Issue Launch Party. That was the year Beyoncé was on the cover, and we hosted a 750-person VIP party in Hollywood with all the swimsuit models. The party was logistically and creatively challenging and was one of my first large high-profile events that I managed, so I always think back on it and smile.”

You can read the rest of our interview with Michele or visit the course site to learn more about the program and register.

Dear Readers,

It is with a somewhat heavy heart that I revert to the first person this afternoon to let you know that Friday will be my last day editing PRNewser. I’ve accepted a position at a digital agency (think Peggy Olson circa season 4), and while I didn’t expect this career shift to arrive quite so soon, you know what they say: when it rains it pours, and when raindrops keep falling on your head you make lemonade. Or something like that.

I know, I know: It hasn’t even been nine months since I started, which is why this goodbye feels exciting, bittersweet and even slightly premature at the same time. As a dedicated cynic I would generally refrain from making boring generalizations about how fortunate I’ve been to work here, but in this case it’s all true. This has been a dream job for me, but even as I’ve developed a much greater appreciation for the topsy-turvy world of public relations, I’ve also come to realize that I’m not quite cut out to be a flack. I’m really more of a Milford Man…

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Here’s an interesting piece of news via PR Week: UK firm Dynamo, which specializes in promoting consumer tech, mobile and digital brands, has launched an internal division exclusively dedicated to projects launched via crowdsourced fundraising platform Kickstarter.

The company decided to create this division (homepage here) after its success promoting the 3Doodler, or the “world’s first 3D pen”. The project raised $2 million in less than a month, and Dynamo hopes to help other tech innovators reach their goals via media exposure.

We have a feeling that many Kickstarter entrepreneurs are too economically challenged to afford proper PR services even after they raise the money they need, but we think you’ll agree that this is a very cool idea.

Now here’s the 3Doodler’s promo video:

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Today AdAge brings news that 360i, the digital agency responsible for all those creative Oreo tweets you’ve read so much about this year, will now handle social media marketing for HBO — and this right after we posted on how Game of Thrones always has the best promo swag!

The premium cable giant, which brought its social operations in-house in 2007, chose 360i to create campaigns designed to stir the buzz among fans online. The agency’s team will rep HBO at the same time as the folks at Campfire, the NYC firm responsible for creating several innovative fan engagement campaigns on the channel’s behalf. According to an internal release, Campfire’s latest work for HBO involved the second annual “pledge your allegiance” campaign promoting the release of season 2 on DVD this February.

Click through for a case study video of the release date event, complete with awesome ice sculpture:

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We missed this social media branding win last week, but when the words “Oreo” and “social media” showed up together on our Twitter feed this morning we knew we had to check it out. Seems like the team at 360i (see below)** won again in a friendly exchange between the cookie guys, sort-of rival Kit Kat and a fan who can’t get enough of either. It all started with this:

Can tell I like chocolate abit too much when I’m following @kitkat and @oreo hahahahahah

— LauraEllen (@Laura_ellenxx) March 11, 2013

Kit Kat saw an opportunity and grabbed it two days later:

The fight for @laura_ellenxx‘s affections is on. @oreo your move #haveabreak twitpic.com/cb1g84

— Kit Kat (@KITKAT) March 13, 2013

That evening, Oreo came back and killed it:

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Yesterday our friend and PR veteran Peter Himler wrote a Forbes article with an intriguing headline: “The Journalist and the PR Pro: A Broken Marriage?” Given the chatter over Monday’s guest post by a former journalist turned PR master, we thought we’d explore the idea a little further.

Himler’s main point: a significant number of the students in the journalism program where he spoke last week don’t want to write for The New York Times or The Wall Street Journal–they want to go into PR and advertising. They want to write sponsored content, not investigative journalism. Of course this makes sense, because journalism can be a very tough and often underpaid pursuit.

Himler, like many in the industry, believes that the always-challenging relationship between hacks like us and pitchmen/women has taken a turn for the worse. Yet we agree with his conclusion: this marriage may be strained, but it’s hardly broken.

On Monday Lindsay Goldwert called on her journalist friends to make a list of “do’s and dont’s” for PR pros. Himler’s piece includes both sides of the equation, so we’d like to flip the script: how should journalists and bloggers interact with PR folks? Himler’s suggestions and our comments after the jump:

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And now a quick note to all readers, friends, blog trolls and forgotten boarding school roommates in the greater New York metropolitan area who don’t have incredibly important business to attend to next Tuesday night (that means all of you): PRNewser will be throwing its first party of 2013 with the help of the Mediabistro events team, The Empire Room and our fine sponsors at Horn Group.

Some details, ’cause you know you want ‘em: the event will take place Tuesday, March 19th from 6:30 PM to 8:30 PM (yes, that’s one week from today). The venue will be The Empire Room, a “Deco lounge” at the base of the Empire State Building on 33rd Street between 5th Avenue and Broadway on the island of Manhattan. The host will be your truly humble editor, who will say a few awkward things into a microphone before impressing everyone in attendance with his growing tolerance for hard liquor! (Ed. note: I don’t do Scotch though, sorry. It’s a flavor thing.)

Most importantly, the first 100 guests to arrive will receive a ticket for a free drink–once again courtesy of our sponsors at Horn. Everyone on our mailing list should receive an official invite soon, but here’s the online RSVP in case you want to make sure you’re registered. Oh, and feel free to file your complaints via email if you haven’t received an invite.

Again, that’s the Empire Room, one week from today, RSVP here. No excuses!

Today we may have witnessed a first: a press release delivered via 6-second Vine mini-video. The makers of Sonar, a “social discovery app” that allows users to find others by geographical proximity (which Mediabistro profiled in this Elevator Pitch video), just received a big investment from Microsoft‘s Bing Fund–and they chose a unique way of letting the world know about it:

Welcome aboard to our new investors, team @bingfund! ow.ly/i89Nz World’s first announcement via @vineapp: vine.co/v/bXZa5BQj7e2

— Sonar (@sonar) February 28, 2013

TechCrunch hopes this move doesn’t become a thing. What do we think? Can you imagine companies announcing new hires or clients with little clips like this one?

Because we know how much our readers love football, ads and making fun of things, we’re excited to announce Monday’s extra-special Google+ hangout event: a live discussion/review of all the new campaigns set to hog the spotlight on advertising’s biggest night.

Attendees will include your gracious editor, Kiran Aditham of sister site Agency Spy and David & Goliath advertising founder David Angelo (whose agency has an ad airing during the game).

The Facetime chat will commence live at 12:30, but in case you do miss it due to some kind of personal emergency, the video will be available on the Mediabistro YouTube channel…

Tune in right here on Monday afternoon for the exclusive post-Bowl ad review. You’ll laugh! You’ll cry! You’ll find out which brands came out on top! You’ll mock us for our facial hair!

So Manti Te’o, who most Americans believe to be a big old liar, visited Katie Couric‘s office for his first official post-scandal interview, set to air tomorrow. While we’re interested in the fact that he admitted to “briefly” lying about the fake dead girlfriend hoax for six weeks after learning that he’d been duped (yeah right), we’d like to examine the “Inside PR” aspects of the story.

We love Katie and all, but no one would call her a sports journalist–and we don’t feel like the scandal is quite big enough to justify a trip to Oprah-land (though the Te’o family apparently considered Oprah and Dr. Phil before settling for Couric). So how did she score this top interview? Well, the fact that the two parties share a publicist certainly didn’t hurt. That’s right–Matthew Hiltzik of Hiltzik Strategies (MediaBeat interview after the jump) now performs crisis comms/damage control duties for both Couric and Te’o, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that Te’o chose Couric over both Oprah and ESPN.

Is this standard operating procedure? Or does it raise even more questions about the players involved in this sordid tale?

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