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November 08, 1999 Issue of PRWeek

H&K hunts for New York GM, again

NEW YORK: Hill & Knowlton’s New York staffing woes took another turn for the worse last week when GM Jeff Raleigh quit the post after only nine ...

Fortune, Roper team up for reputation tool

NEW YORK: Looking to leverage the clout of its ’Most Admired’ list, Fortune magazine has teamed with Roper Starch on a new reputation management tool.

Candidates move to fill vacant jobs

WASHINGTON, DC: With the presidential election now officially under a year away, the George W. Bush and Al Gore camps have started to scurry to fill vacancies ...

Ameritech ejects in-house PR pros

CHICAGO: The recently completed acquisition of Ameritech by SBC Communications has prompted an exodus of PR pros, leaving the merged dollars 6.7 billion company’s in-house PR in ...

ONDCP to unleash huge anti-drugs RFP

WASHINGTON, DC: The White House Office on National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) is about to unleash a multimillion dollar RFP as part of its war against drugs.

NEWS BRIEFS

FORT WORTH: AMR, the parent company of American Airlines, has promoted William Ris to SVP of government affairs. Based in Bethesda, MD, Ris has led American’s Washington ...

Car dealers bring giant GM to its knees with PR push

DETROIT: A National Automobile Dealers Association PR campaign has accomplished what few organizations have succeeded in doing over the years: it has made General Motors blink.

Ameritech vet in Monsanto move

CHICAGO: Monsanto has tapped Joan Walker, a refugee from Ameritech’s recent PR purge (see story, page 1), to head its communications charge.

No subpoena for Morrissey in Lewis trial

BOSTON: The judge presiding over the Donna Harris-Lewis medical malpractice lawsuit has ruled that PR firm Morrissey & Company, which has been providing PR counsel for the ...

British tech shop opens SF outpost

SAN FRANCISCO: UK-based Bite Communications, Text 100’s consumer technology sister agency, has opened its first US office in San Francisco.

GOP grabs vet for 2000 convention

WASHINGTON, DC: The organizers of next year’s Republican National Convention have returned to the tried-and-true by putting Mike Miller in charge of media operations.

Brodeur sheds Porter Novelli label and ventures solo worldwide

BOSTON: As a further proclamation of its independence from Omnicom sister agency Porter Novelli, Brodeur Porter Novelli last week announced that it has changed its name to ...

Leo creates union with MS&L owner

NEW YORK: The Leo Group and The MacManus Group - parent of Manning, Selvage & Lee - announced plans to merge last week, creating a dollars 1.7 ...

FitzGerald steals from H&K, Weber

CAMBRIDGE, MA: FitzGerald Communications has pulled off another hiring coup, this time stealing from the nests of Hill & Knowlton and Weber to grow its management team.

US Mint seeks ’hip’ image with new dollars 1 coin campaign

WASHINGTON, DC: The United States Mint last week announced plans to pull out all the stops in marketing its new dollars 1 coin, promising a ’hipper’ image ...

B&O sets up shops in Austin and DC, adds employees

SAN FRANCISCO: Blanc & Otus is moving eastward, opening outposts in Austin and Washington, DC.

Hi-tech PR question online inflames pros

WASHINGTON, DC: A simple question about hi-tech PR posed to an Internet discussion group exploded late last month into frenzied debate and self-promotion, once again illustrating the ...

Edelman hires NY media pro as SVP

NEW YORK: Edelman took a giant step last week toward boosting its profile in the New York media by hiring former Rudy Giuliani spokesman and director of ...

Whirlpool laundry brand picks PR21

BENTON HARBOR, MI: Whirlpool has chosen Edelman offshoot PR21 over two top-10 agencies to handle PR for its Whirlpool brand of laundry appliances.

INTERNATIONAL NEWS: Ex-defense official attacks NATO effort

WASHINGTON, DC: Former Deputy Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs Michael Doubleday has publicly criticized NATO’s PR efforts during the Kosovo conflict, describing them as ’imprecise and inept.’

INTERNATIONAL NEWS: Argentine president keen to keep Morris

BUENOS AIRES: Following his successful contribution to the election of Argentine president-elect Fernando De la Rua, disgraced Clinton adviser Dick Morris has been asked to stay with ...

INTERNATIONAL NEWS: Lambert nets new Microsoft UK role

LONDON: Microsoft has plundered Westminster Strategy for its first UK government relations chief.

INTERNATIONAL NEWS: Anglo American seeks global chief

LONDON: South African mining group Anglo American, which backed out of its bid for rival Tarmac on Monday, is seeking a global head of corporate communications.

Online health site taps Blaze for PR

SAN FRANCISCO: Healthshop.com, the leading Web retailer of natural health products, has tapped Southern California boutique agency The Blaze Company to roll out a national consumer PR ...

TSI shuffles resources, creates new parent dubbed GlobalComm

NEW YORK: In keeping with the spate of recent hi-tech agency reorganizations, Technology Solutions, Inc. (TSI) last week announced a reshuffling of its personnel and account teams, ...

Nashville moves beyond music in rebranding effort

NASHVILLE: Despite being known worldwide as ’Music City USA,’ Nashville is hoping to move beyond its music-centric image with a four-year branding campaign that will devote 50% ...

NEWS IN BRIEF

NEW YORK: Online consumer electronics retailer Roxy.com has chosen HWH Public Relations as its agency of record. Backed by catalog giant Fingerhut, the site was founded in ...

Brodeur lands research pro for issues role

WASHINGTON, DC: Brodeur has recruited research specialist Jerry Johnson to spearhead the agency’s new issues management practice.

Computer center company on hunt for head PR exec

VERNON HILLS, IL: CDW Computer Centers, a dollars 2 billion, 15-year-old company that only last year decided to create a PR department, is in the market for ...

Tech shop grabs dollars 150k client work

ATLANTA: Calysto Communications, a shop specializing in PR for telecom and networking companies, has signed two new hi-tech clients over the last two months: Telephia, a San ...

Coke reshuffle distances head of PR from chairman

ATLANTA: A reorganization within the Coca-Cola executive hierarchy has moved the head of PR one step farther away from the chairman within the company’s hierarchy.

Healthcare PR firm Presence Euro RSCG enlists help

NEW YORK: Healthcare PR firm Presence Euro RSCG has brought in a professional sharpshooter to take a shot against a dangerous children’s disease. The firm has enlisted ...

Start-up Critical Path taps indie firm McGrath Power

SAN FRANCISCO: Critical Path, an Internet start-up that went public last March, has selected Santa Clara-based McGrath Power over a field of more than a dozen PR ...

Playboy prowls for Net manager

CHICAGO: Playboy Online, the Internet division of Playboy Enterprises, is searching for a PR manager and may possibly be taking on an outside PR agency as well.

Hill & Knowlton Atlanta lures away key cog in BellSouth PR machine

ATLANTA: Hill & Knowlton has swiped Deborah Spicer away from BellSouth and installed her in its Atlanta media relations practice.

Ketchum catches dollars 2m in tech jobs

WASHINGTON, DC: Ketchum has bolstered its DC tech practice with up to dollars 2 million in new accounts, including five dot-coms.

EDITORIAL: Are you listening, Bell Atlantic PR?

This column does not normally concern itself with personal gripes, but there are surely many PR lessons to be learned from the abject incompetence and appalling customer ...

COMMENT: The Big Pitch - After separating from his wife, how would you handle Howard Stern as a client?

BRIAN GAUDET - Manning Selvage & Lee, Washington, DC

ANALYSIS: Labor unions - AFL-CIO rolls the dice with Web PR initiative. The AFL-CIO is betting heavily on an Internet portal that would create an online community of online workers. Steve Lilienthal looks inside the union hall of the 21st century

Shortly after John Sweeney became president of the AFL-CIO in 1995, an open letter from labor ally Thomas Geoghegan to the new labor leader was published in ...

THINKPIECE: With the plethora of poorly produced VNRs, how do you create one that will get aired?

Every morning, newsrooms across TV land are flooded with videotape.

INSIDE THE BELTWAY: In political campaigns money talks - or does it? The issues speak louder than dollar signs

Those of us in the lobbying business (now politely translating into ’public affairs’) may be about to witness a tectonic shift in political values. Before our very ...

ANALYSIS: Crisis Communications - Metabolife vs 20/20: did guerrilla PR win? Crisis guru Michael Sitrick made headlines with an aggressive pre-emptive strike against ABC’s 20/20 on behalf of diet-pill maker Metabolife. The buzz has faded, but the

Metabolife International recently faced a potential PR disaster: the on-air grilling of CEO Michael Ellis by ABC’s 20/20 and an investigative report questioning the safety of the ...

ANALYSIS: Profile - Falbaum: cycling across ethical landscape.Born in Nazi Germany and raised in China, Berl Falbaum has been a wanderer most of his life. But he recently found the time to pen a novel, exploring the ethical dilemmas that PR pros face dail

Detroit is Motor City and cars here are generally more personal statement than mere utility. But Berl Falbaum is into cycling. Ducking across a busy suburban boulevard ...

WEEKLY WEB WATCH: Super model egg-auction site plays heavenly joke on media

As Internet hoaxes go, Ron’s Angels was quite a good one. After all, The New York Times can now be a case study in one of ...

MEDIA: Digital Duo: it takes two to make a tech review right Looking for an unbiased forum to have your tech product reviewed? Try PBS’s Digital Duo, a smart and witty team of journalists who enjoy giving the latest gadgets a total workout. Claire

Judging by the amount of e-mail sent to TV show Digital Duo, its two hosts have a following that could fill the Pasadena Rose Bowl.

MEDIA WATCH: New Pizza Hut ad leaves bad taste in Hillary’s mouth

Pizza Hut’s new TV commercial lampooning Hillary Clinton as a carpetbagger has left the first lady with a bad taste in her mouth. Billed by the media ...

MARKET FOCUS: TEXAS - Lone Star PR shines. There was a time when you thought Texas, you thought oil. But - by necessity - the Lone Star state and its PR pros have spent the last decade diversifying. Sherri Deatherage Green reports

If the prime-time soap Dallas had debuted in 1988 instead of 1978, we might have seen JR Ewing holding his Stetson in an unemployment line.

PR TECHNIQUE: VNRs - Launching your VNR into cyberspace. Although Web video isn’t yet broadcast quality, companies are beginning to put their VNRs on the Internet. Why are they doing it? Jonathan Blum uncovers some good reasons

Companies are beginning to place their video news releases on the Web - even though current technology can’t offer anything even close to TV quality. But, still, ...