PR Back Talk

Bloomberg BusinessWeek Article Validates Another Prediction

2012-03-01T12:11:00.000-05:00

In reporting on Feb. 16th about Easier E-Books with Inkling, Bloomberg BusinessWeek validated a prediction we made Feb 1st: "E-books will improve their experience by providing new interactive and multimedia content." Check out our prediction here.

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Three Social Media Lessons Not to Copy: Claire's disengages in face of charges that the retailer copied designs

2012-02-28T08:45:00.003-05:00

Claire's Stores, a U.K./U.S. retailer with 3,000 outlets and revenue of $356 million in Q3 2011, has become embroiled in a social media scandal. An an independent U.K. designer, Tatty Devine has accused Claire's of ripping off its designs in this blog post. For more context, check out this ZDNet article, "Claire's Stores ignores Twitter criticism over copycat design claims." When it comes U.S. intellectual property laws, designers cannot, apparently, copyright or trademark their designs....

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WSJ validates another of our predictions

2012-02-22T11:00:00.000-05:00

The Wall St. Journal validates our Cutting the Cable prediction. In an article published yesterday, "Over-the-Air TV Catches Second Wind, Aided by Web," The Journal reported the same driving factors we cited: With an increased array of online-video programming now drawing viewers' attention, companies are starting to pitch consumers on complementing online video streamed from the Web with broadcast-TV signals as a way to save money on cable subscriptions....There are signs that consumers...

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New York Times continues to reprot on security/privacy bills validating our prediction about ongoing stories

2012-02-16T10:24:00.002-05:00

The New York Times continues to cover the legislative fight over anti-piracy legislation (Stop Online Piracy Act aka SOPA and Protect Intellectual Property Act aka PIPA). Check out this sample article. We also predicted that China and cyberwarfare: against the US, including corporate espionage. The New York Times reporter that Vice President Biden took up the cause of predicting US businesses from Chinese corporate espionage: U.S. to Share Cautionary Tale of Trade Secret Theft With Chinese...

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The New York Times validates our prediction about big data

2012-02-14T09:03:00.021-05:00

Longtime New York Times tech reporter Steve Lohr, recently reported on the impact that big data will have on the US. The US "need 140,000 to "190,000 more workers with 'deep analytical' expertise and 1.5 more data-literate managers," he wrote in an article entitled, "The Age of Big Data." The article is an interesting one, well worth checking out. You can check out our prediction about big data here.

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Recording Industry Still Does Not "Get" Technology

2012-02-13T15:19:00.000-05:00

At last night's Grammys, they kept calling it "music's biggest night." But for those who wanted to check out some of the performances the next day, you're out of luck. The reason: despite providing live webfeed, despite scheduling a per-telecast event to hand out the, um, less interesting awards so that the actual telecast can serve as more performance than award-giving, the Recording Academy has not posted a lot of videos of the actual performances. Instead, they have posted video...

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Birnbach Communications' Top Predictions for 2012, Part 10

2012-02-10T08:30:00.006-05:00

Here's our last set of predictions for 2012: 1. Social media will play a bigger role in the marketing mix for B2B companies. More than eight years and nearly 900 million Facebook users later, B2B businesses will embrace social media, following the lead of B2C companies…though they may not focus on Facebook to reach their customers. B2B companies will recognize the need to generate their own multimedia content, and that there are active and engaged business consumers...

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Birnbach Communications' Top Predictions for 2012, Part 9

2012-02-09T08:27:00.006-05:00

Here's Part 9 of our predictions: The role of CES will diminish next year. The Consumer Electronics Show (CES) has been the tech industry's most important conference, having eclipsed Comdex a decade ago. CES is a mashup of consumer gadgets and the tech that powers those gadgets (like semiconductors), and it's been considered so important that non-tech outlets feel compelled to cover the latest cool gadgets launched at the show. But that is changing -- and not just...

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Birnbach Communications' Top Predictions for 2012, Part 8

2012-02-08T08:23:00.008-05:00

Here's Part 8 of our predictions: The press release will not die in 2012. Companies still need press releases to communicate news about the company. Twitter is good as a kind of short broadcast of news, but tweets get lost on the timeline – whereas press releases can easily be posted on a corporate newsroom, which is important from an SEO perspective and to demonstrate the company is still alive. Additionally, reporters, who are overworked (they’re now creating multimedia...

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Birnbach Communications' Top Predictions for 2012, Part 7

2012-02-07T08:19:00.017-05:00

Here's Part 7 of our predictions: 1. Data will be bigger in 2012. At least the approach known as “big data,” software that enables users to capture and visualize huge amounts of data on their desktops, will be big in 2012, and will overtake Business Intelligence (BI) as the approach large companies will take to sift through and make sense of their data. These days, companies gather a tremendous amount of data, and it is only getting larger and larger. The challenge: how to...

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Birnbach Communications' Top Predictions for 2012, Part 6

2012-02-06T08:10:00.006-05:00

Here's Part 6 of our predictions: 1. Converging technology, like the “paperless office,” won’t live up to its hype. Converging technology was supposed to result in single devices that could handle multiple functions. The problem: we still need too many chargers and have too many devices to sync. Although smartphones have killed the wonderful Flip camera, and damaged sales of standalone cameras, dedicated GPS units and watches; convergence hasn’t delivered...

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Non-apologies and Non-answers Don't Help Non-profits

2012-02-03T10:28:00.002-05:00

The well respected nonprofit Susan G. Komen for the Cure foundation is now embroiled in a scandal of its own making. The reaction to the news that the foundation had decided to cut funding of $700,000 of grants to Planned Parenthood has generated a storm of front-page coverage, angry editorials, tweets and Facebook comments. The organization, which has built up tremendous goodwill and strong brand recognition with its iconic pink ribbon, has a right to distribute its $93 million in grant...

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Birnbach Communications' Top Predictions for 2012, Part 5

2012-02-03T09:06:00.008-05:00

Here's Part 5 of our predictions: Companies will use fees to offset declining revenue in 2012. With revenue still not approaching 2007-2008 levels and with costs continuing to increase, look for all types of companies to start adding fees for things that had once been included in the price. Airlines and hotels are charging for baggage, onboard food and other things, like Wi-Fi, that used to be included in the price of a ticket or a hotel room. Banks are charging consumers to use their...

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Birnbach Communications' Top Predictions for 2012, Part 4

2012-02-02T08:52:00.003-05:00

Here's Part 4 of our predictions: Ongoing stories we’ll see covered in the media The 2012 election, healthcare, taxes and tax reform, and job creation. The candidates, the process, the election as horse race, Super PACs, the strength and weakness of the Tea Party and the Occupy Wall St. movement (as well as the 99% vs. the 1%), and sometimes the actual issues. The euro and euro zone economies and the debt crisis -- particularly troubled Greece and Italy and stable...

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New Study Reported in WSJ Validates Predictions

2012-02-01T11:06:00.002-05:00

A day after we published two related predictions -- "The desire to be connected 24/7 may change in 2012" and "We may be immersed in social media, but we’ll spend less time with actual people" -- the Wall St. Journal published an article, Study: Face Time Benefits Preteens. (You can check out those predictions here.) Stanford University researchers found, according to the Journal, that "media multitasking can hurt social and emotional development in preteen girls. And the researchers...

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Birnbach Communications' Top Predictions for 2012, Part 3

2012-02-01T08:45:00.002-05:00

Here's Part 3 of our predictions:More viewers will cut the cable cord. Americans have complained about the service of cable companies for decades. Now, consumers have another reason to grumble: Cable fees are rising so much that even cable providers are taking content providers to task over the cost of content – specifically sports channels, (Wall St. Journal: “Cable-TV Honchos Cry Foul Over Soaring Cost of ESPN,” Dec. 6, 2011). This year, expect more people to reduce their monthly expenses by...

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Birnbach Communications' Top Predictions for 2012, Part 2

2012-01-31T08:21:00.006-05:00

Here's Part 2 of our predictions: Shifting to more efficient light bulbs in 2012 will not cause the end of the world. Last year, there were a lot of published complaints about the fact that legislation signed by President Bush would replace the traditional 60-watt incandescent light bulb with more efficient compact fluorescent bulbs or LED fixtures. The New York Times and Wall St. Journal both ran stories about consumers stockpiling traditional 60-watt...

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Birnbach Communications' Top Predictions for 2012, Part I

2012-01-30T16:44:00.008-05:00

We've been issuing annual predictions going back a decade now. Our goal is to help our clients more effectively understand and engage on topics of interest for social media. We will be rolling out our 2012 list of trends over the next two weeks. Here are the first few: The desire to be connected 24/7 may change in 2012. You almost never have downtime anymore, and people are beginning to notice that’s not all good. Sure, if you are waiting in line at the post office or bank...

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2011 Trends Report Card, Part III

2012-01-16T08:53:00.002-05:00

Here's the final part of our report card: The rules for social media will continue to evolve -- rapidly. Our point: Companies are still learning how to navigate social media, which gives newbies the opportunity to jump in, and to learn from what others are doing well as well as from mistakes others have made. One challenge remains: staying ahead of the range of sites, which can rise and fall in popularity...like the once dominant Friendster. Google-Plus launched in 2011 after some...

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2011 Trends Report Card, Part II

2012-01-13T08:51:00.003-05:00

Here are more grades on some of the trends we predicted for 2011. 2011: The year of the app-based media subscriptionsPricing for app-based subscriptions were a big issue for publishers, but many now produce free apps that enable either per-issue (for a fee) access or free access for print subscribers. Some publishers have not figured things out, charging more on a per-electronic copy than for a per-print copy. Slowly more subscriptions are available on the iPad's Newsstand, ...

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2011 Trends Report Card, Part I

2012-01-12T18:51:00.000-05:00

Before we issue our annual list of trends and predictions of media and social media issues next week, we think will be relevant in 2012, here's our annual report card of how we did with our 2011 predictions. The Battle between the iPad & the iPad Killers The battle we predicted between the iPad and the "iPad Killers" did not turn out to be much of a battle, as most of the wannabe iPad Killers were quickly considered misfires. HP's TouchPad was launched and taken off the market...

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Johnson & Johnson Misdiagnosis of its Crisis

2011-11-11T08:49:00.003-05:00

Perhaps it depends on how you define "crisis," but there are more than 200 articles by the third day of the month about the concerns about Johnson & Johnson's baby shampoo as well as a movement to boycott J&J. (Not every call for a boycott is a crisis -- on Facebook, there's a list to boycott those who boycott Arizona, so you can have counter-boycott boycotts.) In fact, this is a big crisis for a brand that last month ranked by Forbes as the most trusted brand in America. This is...

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Some Good YouTube Tips

2011-10-07T08:31:00.000-04:00

Just a quick post for those interested in YouTube tips. Check out Katherine Boehret's article, "Hidden Tools Find What You Want on YouTube." Among the tools she mentions is the Quick Key, which allows you to generate a URL that enables you to share the video from exactly where you want to share it...meaning you can spare friends the long, pointless introductions before they get to the LOL cats. Also check out "Tips on Taking Advantage of The YouTube Juggernaut."

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Amazon Validates Our Prediction about 2011: The battle between iPad and the iPad Killers

2011-10-05T08:00:00.000-04:00

With the announcement last week of the Kindle Fire, its color e-reader based on the Android platform, Amazon has validated our prediction that an important trend/story this year would be the battle between the iPad and the iPad Killers. (Check out: Birnbach Communications' Top Predictions for 2011, Part I.) In the wake of perceived and actual failures like RIM's PlayBook and H-P's TouchPad, the iPad competitors have not lived up to the "killer" designation. Which explains some of the...

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Fee, Fie, Foe -- 3 Lessons learned when companies mishandle how they communicate their new fees

2011-10-03T13:53:00.003-04:00

In the wake of Netflix's mishandling its new pricing structure and sub-brand (Qwikster, in case you misspelled it), Bank of America recently also blundered in announcing a new charge for debit card customers (check out the Time Magazine about it here and a Financial Times article here). With a US economy that continues to fluctuate wildly, and continued bad global economic news, it's probably a safe bet that more companies are going to look to raise prices and implement new charges to boost...

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