He speaks English and his wife is hot.

A “Syria expert” who worked for a charity associated with the brutal dictator of Syria. Bashar al-Assad and his wife have reportedly used American and British PR firms in their efforts to make us like them, up until Assad began his brutal crackdown that’s claimed thousands upon thousands of lives.

Notes from what happens after businesses ask us to forget about the things they said when they were drunk.

Nwk hearts this so much it hurts:

lindsayrobertson:

[This is long and obvious, but it’s been driving me nuts for years. So here is my Guide to Online Publicity (For Dummies).]

There’s a question that has been bugging me for years: why are 99% of publicists and promotion/marketing people complete useless failures when it comes to blogs and online outlets? I keep waiting for the industry to figure things out and catch up, but it never seems to happen. So I’m taking the time to write this guide. If you work in online PR or know someone who does, this is a must-read — NOT because my observations here are anything other than obvious to the bloggers and editors you’re targeting, but because they’re clearly not obvious, or even known, to seemingly most of your industry. So here are some things that are true, at least right now, and if you incorporate these concepts into your work, I promise, you will have far greater success. And also we will stop laughing at you and forwarding your emails around to each other in awe of your complete ineptitude (yep.) (Note: as someone who blogs mostly about pop culture, this guide is probably very skewed toward that field, but most of this advice is, again, so obvious to bloggers that it will probably ring true for all topics. Also, I use my own experience as examples, but not because I think I’m some sort of expert - this advice is pretty much on behalf of all bloggers.)

First, the Don’ts:

1. FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE means FOR IMMEDIATE DELETE to any blogger with any influence. Period.

Read More