Social Media Buzz

My recent interview with Cougar Town star and comedic actress Busy Philipps has generated a lot of social media PR buzz for both, PR.com  and for Busy.

During my interview with Busy for PR.com on February 2, 2012, Busy Philipps discusses her love of Twitter as a means of controlling her own voice on the Internet and setting the record straight about her work and her life. During our chat I asked Busy who convinced her co-star Courteney Cox to finally join Twitter, and Busy told me it was her and Cougar Town‘s creator Bill Lawrence, along with Cougar Town fans who finally convinced Courteney to start Tweeting.

Using PR.com’s strong online presence in teh search engines and our media contacts within the online entertainment space, PR.com gained public relations media coverage at the following entertainment news blogs for this celebrity story:

http://www.contactmusic.com/news/busy-philipps-pestered-cox-to-join-twitter_1290512

http://www.busy-philipps.org/tag/busy-philipps

http://culdesaccrew.net/ – scroll through

http://www.new-magazine.co.uk/latestnews/view/38155/Philipps-pestered-Cox-to-join-Twitter/

http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/300659/Philipps-pestered-Cox-to-join-Twitter/

http://www.star-magazine.co.uk/breakingnews/view/37513/Philipps-pestered-Cox-to-join-Twitter/

The actress even tweeted about her interview with PR.com, emphatically stating, “Allright dudes- Read this: http://www.pr.com/article/1197 THAT is basically who I am.”

This story was brought to you by Allison Dawn PR

Would you go from Congress to the offices of Hustler Magazine?

Would you go from Congress to the Beverly Hills offices of Hustler Magazine if you were Anthony Weiner? According to his blog at The Huffington Post, Hustler founder Larry Flynt sure hopes so. Flynt took to his Huffington Post blog yesterday to issue an open letter to disgraced soon-to-be-fomer Congressman Anthony Weiner to offer him a high paying executive position within Larry Flynt Publications and the Hustler empire, pleading to Weiner that “this offer is not made in jest.” The pornography king even offered to pay Anthony Weiner “20% more than your former Congressional salary,” and is offering Weiner a kushy relocation package to relocate to Beverly Hills, California for the position.

So, is this a well crafted public relations and media stunt by Larry Flynt (it’s been effective), or does Flynt truly want Anthony Weiner as part of the Hustler brand? Just the name alone gives Weiner some credibility in the porn industry, wouldn’t you say?

Larry Flynt goes on to plead, “I cannot emphasize enough the genuineness of this offer.”

Larry Flynt fancies himself something of a political activist, after going several rounds with the United States Supreme Court to defend his rights to freedom of speech under the 1st amendment of the American constitution. In this open letter posted on Huffington Post, Larry Flynt goes on to draw a commonality between the values of the Hustler corporation and Anthony Weiner’s political work, citing, “We are a serious corporation, which as you know, has been heavily involved in the political environment of this country for over thirty-five years.”

If you were a married politician who was caught on Twitter with your pants down in a political scandal, completely humiliated, and compelled to resign from Congress, would a move out to LA LA Land and a high paying position at Hustler be your next move?

Congressman Anthony Weiner Seeks "Treatment" For Sex Addiction or Scandal?

I’m not exactly sure why House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi and many others in the Democratic party are trying to pressure Congressman Anthony Weiner to resign his post, or why on earth he is going for “treatment” for cheating on his wife via sexting. Do all of these public figures who get caught in all of the various forms of cheating that technology now affords us belong in sex rehab? And are they battling a legitimate sex addiction or an afflication of the ego and a sense of entitlement, mixed with a pathological desire to be forgiven and to retain their status in society?

I would say that all of these guys: Congressman Anthony Weiner, Tiger Woods, Jesse James, and yes, even former New York State Governor Eliot Spitzer with whom I had the pleasure of conducting an interview, are more interested in image rehab than they are in any treatment for sex addiction. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, being a famous or powerful man is akin to being a good looking woman. As women, we’ve been dealing with being hit on and propositioned since puberty, and we’re used to it. We also know that sex always has been, and always will be, readily available to those of us who are single. For men, it’s not always this way. When a man achieves a certain level of power, notoriety, fame, wealth, what have you, suddenly his options are a little too vast for his testosterone to process. The result is often disasterous, but what to do?

Do I think that all men in power cheat? No. There are some men who possess the insight and emotional maturity to keep those urges in check for the sake of keeping what they have, a loving family. But I’m not here to judge, only to observe. The public relations and media fallout from these cheating scandals is an embarrassing hot mess, but sex treatment is not necessarily the answer. I would buy into, on the other hand, ego addicition treatment with a side course in curbing one’s narcisism. That’s a treatment program I can get behind for Congressman Anthony Weiner.

Beauty (PR) Public Relations and getting media exposure for a beauty brand is all about what sets a beauty brand or beauty product apart, not what makes the product fit into the fold of other beauty products that are currently on the market.

If you take a moment to think about what makes it into the news in general, it is not the norm. What makes a beauty product newsworthy? The same thing that makes any product, service or person newsworthy – something about that product that is the exception to the rule. A beauty product can be the exception to the rule because of its price point, its ingredients, packaging, customer base, owner/creator. But, there must be something about it that is different, thus making that beauty product worthy of news coverage.

The news, in general, is all about too much, too weird, too expenseive, too cheap, too pretty, too sexy, too out of reach… the news is never about run-of-the-mill. The beauty industry is never a place where you want to fit in. With every account I handle I learn just as much as the client does, and with one beauty public relations campaign in particular I remember that the retail price point and the packaging were both so over the top and ludicrous that every major media outlet as well as every minor media outlet just had to blab about how crazy and ludicrous it was. They couldn’t help themselves. the more they blabbed the more the phone rang and it just kept feeding on itself. That was a lightbulb moment for me as a publicist and believe me, I have ad many!

Many of my public relations clients throughout the years have tried to insist that I sell their steak because their steak just tastes so good, but they don’t always understand that I need to sell the sizzle, not the steak. It’s the sizzle that sells in the media. Media is not about reality. It is about fantasy and selling an image. The quality of the product will sustain the attention once that attention is achieved.