Today in Classic PR Infighting news: we’ve all heard of Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg‘s book Lean In, which is all about how women need to assert themselves more aggressively in the workplace.

Of course Sandberg’s been making the media rounds to promote the book. This week Kate Losse, an early Facebook employee who once wrote speeches for Mark Zuckerberg and published a memoir about her experience there, posted a critical review of the book in Dissent magazine.

Here’s how current Sandberg rep and former Facebook PR chief/Losse coworker Brandee Barker responded:

Wow. twitter.com/fake_train/sta…

— kate losse (@fake_train) March 27, 2013

Alright then!

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Note to Taylor Swift: if you’re looking to improve/maintain your reputation or get more sympathy from the public regarding your perpetual boy troubles, engaging in bitchy spats is probably not the best way to go about it.

Responding to Tina Fey and Amy Poehler‘s (completely appropriate) Golden Globes joke warning her to “stay away from Michael J. Fox’s son” lest he turn up in thinly-veiled caricature on her next album, Swift dropped this bomb on her Vanity Fair interviewer:

“You know, Katie Couric is one of my favorite people, because she said to me she had heard a quote that she loved, that said, ‘There’s a special place in hell for women who don’t help other women.’”

Yes, those two are such Regina Georges, aren’t they? Oh, and that quote was from former secretary of state Madeline Albright, who doles out wisdom in between her free jazz drumming sessions.

Poehler and Fey’s responses displayed their superior media relations savvy.

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Last week we criticized the recent trend in which big-name brands hire seemingly random celebrities as “creative directors”. While we still don’t understand exactly how Justin Timberlake will help “… define Bud Light Platinum’s identity in the lifestyle space”, another big brand unveiled some honest-to-God physical products designed by its new “creative director” today. Infamous fashion designer Marc Jacobs created these Diet Coke cans as part of the company’s latest rebranding campaign, called “Sparkling Together for 30 Years.”

Diet Coke certainly picked the right time to show its new face to the public: yesterday Jacobs marked the end of New York’s Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week with the debut of his new collection. This small reveal indicates that, for Coke, “creative director” does not mean “celebrity who had some time on his hands and will now show up at public events to hawk our products.”

What’s next for this creative partnership? We’re not sure–Jacobs has already gone topless in “pin-up style” ads for the brand, but there’s been no word on whether the “three bottles and three ad campaigns” to follow will include any of his trademark models or ridiculous outfits.

Most importantly, Taylor Swift is nowhere to be seen.

A few weeks ago we gave you a list of the 10 brands Americans hate most and tried to figure out why. Today we’re taking the opposite approach with the help of Harris Interactive‘s latest public opinion poll gauging the most (and least) trusted brands in the country.

Here are the brands held in highest esteem by the 19,000 random people who participated in the poll (along with our attempts to figure out how they got there):

1. Amazon: It could be the fact that Amazon remains the first and biggest online retailer with a reputation for security and an endless inventory. It could be the brand’s truly innovative recommendation system. Or it could be Amazon’s plan to create its own “virtual” currency–because no dishonest individual would ever make his own money, right?

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Yesterday Coca-Cola finally addressed its nemesis PepsiCo by laying its promotional cards on the table and declaring: “We’ll see your Beyoncé and raise you a Taylor Swift.”

Like the Beyoncé deal, Swift/Diet Coke will be a “long-term” relationship between everyone’s favorite low-calorie soda and everyone’s favorite musical memoirist that will integrate Swift “into all key marketing efforts” for Diet Coke’s Stay Extraordinary campaign. Her latest album title, Red, even complements the brand. It’s almost like she knew this would happen…

We think we get Coca-Cola’s strategy here: Swift, despite being one of the world’s biggest pop stars, has a reputation for being close to her (overwhelmingly female) fan base. The video she released announcing the partnership and encouraging supporters to visit Diet Coke’s Facebook page is a good example of this personal branding aesthetic in action:

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Friendly’s Ice Cream selected Regan Communications Group Inc. as its public relations agency of record. The Boston-based restaurant chain emerged from Chapter 11 bankruptcy in January after closing 100 shops and laying off thousands of workers.

Sun Capital Partners, a Florida-based private-equity firm co-run by Marc Leder (who hosted the fund-raiser where Mitt Romney made his infamous “47 percent” comment) took the 76-year-old ice cream chain into bankruptcy in October 2011, shed its pensions and downsized and then repurchased the chain through an affiliate.

ShopPR has been chosen as AOR for Keds, the American lifestyle brand established in 1916. ShopPR will be responsible for social/digital marketing and public relations; for its first assignment this October, the agency helped Keds introduce its multi-year partnership with six-time Grammy winning singer-songwriter and style icon Taylor Swift.

“We’re so thrilled and proud to be working with Keds”, said Vanessa Pesce, Managing Director of ShopPR. “We’re inspired by the way Keds is encouraging girls to reach their full potential, and we also look forward to promoting the brand’s iconic styles.”

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While we focused on superstorms and elections over the past month, a certain famous American business made a big change right under our noses.

Billboard magazine, long seen as the ultimate tastemaker in American pop music for its top singles list, decided to join the 21^st century by revising its algorithm to include digital sales and online streaming services like Pandora and Spotify when determining which songs are most popular in a given week.

Sounds like progress, right?

Quite a few people in music don’t think so, because these changes give “stars with a pop-oriented sound and broad crossover appeal an advantage over other artists”. We have to agree: the fact that Psy’s “Gangnam Style” ruled the “rap” charts for more than a month while Taylor Swift continues to dominate the “Hot Country” category tells us that something in this new equation is a little off.

This excellent infographic demonstrates the fact that a mere six artists have all but dominated the Billboard charts over the past five years. According to most predictions, these new algorithms will result in more number one hits for Rihanna, Katy Perry, Maroon 5 and Flo Rida while making the climb to the top of the charts even steeper for independent artists and those who work in “niche” genres like country, rock and roll and, you know, pretty much everything but “pop.”

Billboard’s editorial director Bill Werde defended the changes on his tumblr page, but the whole story is ominous news for the vast majority of those who work in or care about the music business. Some have created petitions urging Billboard to abandon its new model, but based on the puny number of signatures collected so far we can’t see that working.

What do we think? Will these changes make it harder for music reps to promote their clients? How will the industry adjust?

(As a bit of a bonus, here’s Werde talking to Mediabistro’s Donya Blaze about the challenges of music journalism): Read more

You may not have noticed, but Instagram (undisputed king of online “food porn“) made a big announcement this week: the service has begun moving away from its status as a purely mobile application to establish a major web presence with Instagram “profiles.”

These new web pages very closely resemble Facebook profiles, which should surprise no one considering Mark Zuckerberg‘s recent acquisition of the nascent imaging service. In place of the Facebook “cover photo”, visitors will see a rotating lineup of recent images posted by the Instagram user in question.

Instagram on the web is, for all intents and purposes, a purely visual version of Facebook.

One potential problem has emerged, and it will be familiar to many Facebook users: Within a week or so, everyone with an Instagram account will also have a page with a default “public” setting, which means that anyone online can visit a given user’s profile and view his or her images. Does this amount to an invasion of privacy? The service will almost certainly need to address the issue in the days ahead.

But we expected Instagram to encounter a few bumps in the road as it expands. The big question: what does this new feature mean for brands?

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We know it’s hard to let go. The public loves its pop stars.

We, the public, feel that entertainers like Taylor Swift belong to us, to our families and to our Rockwellian image of what a young American woman should be: smart, pretty and forever 17. Sure, it’s unfair, but we don’t care; “the public” does not subject itself to petty concerns like ethical consistency. We’d never criticize our own daughters or nieces for growing up, but Taylor Swift? How could she?

Swift doesn’t just boast legions of young fans who idolize her; she also attracts a large adult demographic more interested in glorifying youth itself. To disillusioned grown-ups, being young like Swift means being unbridled, healthy, passionate, and open to everything that a bright new world can offer. The reality of being young, of course, is different–while it may at times prove sublime, the act of becoming an adult remains fraught with disappointment, divorce, bulimia, bullying and acne (the horror!).

Swift, now 22, just released “Red,” her fourth album. It is, of course, a departure from her previous albums, the first of which reached our impressionable ears just six years ago. But will we accept it? In a fascinating application of herd mentality, young and talented female artists like Swift often encounter a public backlash when they move into adulthood.  The public feels–despite all logic–that the artist they learned to love as a precocious teen has somehow betrayed them by becoming an adult. Read more

Sometimes the ones we love the most end up breaking our hearts—first we learned about Lance Armstrong’s big dive, and now we hear that Taylor Swift may no longer be the official spokeswoman for innocence and wholesomeness in pop music!

On the positive side, Swift scored her first Billboard #1 hit this week by breaking sales records with the awkwardly-titled single “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together” (wonder what that song is about?). Yet the sun-starved starlet apparently took her first walk on the PR wild side over the weekend by “crashing” a wedding involving a member of the family whose name starts with a “K” and ends with an “ennedy.” Read more