Yep, the Six Flags "spokesgeezer" apparently has been canned.

Well, at least now the bloggerati won't have to argue over whether he should have a "character blog" -- we're still debating over Jack in the Box and others.

Technorati tags: Character Blogs, PR, Mr. Six, Marketing

BusinessWeek's Stephen Baker writes today in Blogspotting:

I'm reading more and more about the market value of blogs -- and believing very little of it. Maybe I'm blind to opportunity, but I think the overwhelming majority of our blogs have little or no market value unless the blogger is included. And that's less a sale of a blog than a blogger getting a job.

Others, Stephen notes, see things differently. He cites Peter Brady (no, not that Peter Brady), who writes on Performancing that business-minded bloggers should ask themselves:

1. Do you as a professional blogger have an exit strategy?
2. Where do you want your blog business to be in, say, 2 years time?
3. Are you positioning your blogs with an eye to a big payday or for long-term organic growth?
4. Who might be likely purchasers of your blog business?
5. Have you considered the potential for a stock market flotation at some point?

Stephen then suggests Peter is getting ahead of himself.

Having read Peter's entire post, I can't say Stephen is being particularly fair. Peter is only making the point that "there will eventually be consolidation in the blogosphere as there has been in every industry before it. Casting a cursory eye towards that future will do you no harm."

He's absolutely right.

That's a far cry from the speculative silliness of the "How Much Is My Blog Worth?" tool on the Business Opportunities Weblog (which is nonetheless very fun, Dane. I'd love to believe Media Orchard is worth that much.)

Technorati tags: Blogs, Blog Valuations, BusinessWeek, Stephen Baker

PR as Customer Ombudsman (Naked Conversations)

Painless tagging: great tool (Desirable Roasted Coffee)

Volvo site got 1 million visitors from blog ads (Media Culpa)

NevOn joins Corante Network (NevOn)

Optimizing your content for more Google AdSense revenue (Stephan Spencer)

Are blogrolls bound for the scrapheap? (Morgan McLintic)

Portable Entertainment Devices Top Gift Lists This Season (paidContent.org)

Technorati tags: Web 2.0, PR, Blogs, Websites, Public Relations, Marketing, Advertising, Media

TagCloud has a cool folksonomy tool that "searches any number of RSS feeds you specify, extracts keywords from the content and lists them according to prevalence within the RSS feeds. Clicking on the tag's link will display a list of all the article abstracts associated with that keyword."

Here's the TagCloud for the Media Orchard feed. If nothing else, it's a reminder of our enduring fascination with Technorati (as well as the fact that we include the term "Technorati tags" at the bottom of every post.)

TagCloud offers a useful way to organize feeds. Still, it might be more fun to build a cloud to display all the different search terms that people use to find a site.

For example, here are some terms that people have entered in search engines in the past few weeks to find Media Orchard:

"finnegan the squirrel hoax"
"katie holmes navel"
"smurfswar"
"anderson cooper fan club"
"sexy teacher blogs"
"demonic condoleezza"
"50 cent billboard"
"eva herzigova billboards"
"clayton christensen disruptive"
"CNN caller listen"
"burundi child soldiers"
"celebrity airbrushing"
"kate moss fat line of cocaine"

Now, that would make for an interesting cloud. Useless ... but interesting.

Here's info on which Media Orchard posts have been most popular with search engine users.

Technorati tags: Search, Search Engines, TagCloud, Folksonomy

Playboy will feature its "Top 10 Party Schools" in the May 2006 issue. The list was announced as part of a casting call for coeds, and photographers have been snapping pics at the selected campuses for the past six weeks.

The schools, in no particular order, are:

Arizona State University

University of Wisconsin - Madison

San Diego State University

Florida State University

University of California, Santa Barbara

University of Georgia

University of Tennessee

Indiana University

Ohio University

McGill University

As Playboy rolls into town, news outlets in Phoenix, San Diego and elsewhere are interviewing sheepish administrators and university PIOs over the selections. A typical reaction comes from ASU president Michael Crow, who talked with The Arizona Republic:

In ASU's case, the party-school ranking is "a gross simplification that doesn't have anything to do with who we are and what we are," Crow says...

A few weeks ago, Mark Jacobs, dean of the school's Barrett Honors College, boasted to high school recruits and their parents that ASU had dropped off the Princeton Review's list of best party schools.

Now comes Playboy's list.

"How do they really know?" Crow asks. "How do they really assess that? ASU is a very serious school with very serious students. It's also a place where people have a great time and is a great place to be."

My view is that the Playboy acknowledgment can be a good thing. It's certainly nothing to get defensive about.

First, some background. Contrary to popular belief, Playboy does not publish an annual list of top party schools; this is an urban legend. From Playboy's Web site:

Since about 1955, rumors have floated around every campus in the country that Playboy had at one time run a survey of drinking on campus and that a particular school was listed as number one. But we've ranked party schools only twice, in January 1987 (top school: California State at Chico) and November 2002 (top spot: Arizona State). As the old saw goes, if your school isn't included, it's because we didn't rank professionals. Two caveats: In September 1968, we listed the University of Wisconsin at Madison as the most permissive campus in a sample of 25 universities. We also called it "the party school," primarily because it served beer in the student union. We repeated the exercise in October 1976, naming UCLA tops in "campus action."

When I was considering colleges, I looked at the University of Virginia and William and Mary. For a liberal arts education, the schools are comparable academically. What tipped the scales for me is that my friends told me that U.Va. was more fun -- that it was a better party school. In fact, U.Va. made Playboy's 1987 list.

Social life is also why many Ivy League students choose Princeton over Harvard; Harvard has a rep of being too serious and intense.

Damage from the Playboy accolade only comes when a school hasn't established its brand academically -- so it becomes known only as a party school. That's not Playboy's fault; it's the school's fault.

It's this larger problem that university administrators and PIOs should focus on addressing. Defensiveness is weakness.

(Oh, and that devilish logo doesn't help you, either, Arizona State.)

Technorati tags: Playboy, Arizona State, SDSU, Colleges, PR, Public Relations, Marketing

As we have noted before, PR people love holidays for announcing bad news -- which is why Media Orchard had to get up from the Thanksgiving table to inform you that Jessica and Nick had announced their split and that Savvis had accepted the resignation of its stripper-loving CEO.

Now, Women's Wear Daily reports that Jessica and Nick's timing has made some celebrity pubs look downright silly:

To be sure, Us editor in chief Janice Min -- and her counterparts at the other celebrity weeklies -- would have preferred to get the news a few days earlier, in time to include it in the print edition. Did Min believe Simpson and Lachey timed the announcement to inconvenience the entertainment press? "It'd be naive not to think that was a consideration," she said.

No one got tripped up worse than Celebrity Living. The American Media-owned title published a cover story last week claiming Simpson and Lachey were set to adopt a baby. Worse yet is this week's issue, on sale beginning Wednesday: Its main cover line reads "Jessica's Baby Weight Battle: She's Finally Pregnant!" The blunder is a product of Celebrity Living's protracted production schedule, which requires the magazine to close almost a full week before it goes on sale. Sister publication Star also has a cover story on Jessica's "pregnancy" in the current issue.

Not good. Jossip has more here.

Technorati tags: Journalism, PR, Public Relations, Celebrities, Jessica Simpson, US Weekly

When Media Orchard has posted on the topic of video-game sex and violence in the past, we have been cruelly labelled an old fogey by our younger readers.

Call us what you will. We still believe that:

1. Some video games, played repeatedly over time, desensitize children to violence.

2. The ESRB's current rating system leaves something to be desired.

Family Media Guide warns parents that this holiday season, "some of the most ultra-violent video games ever created are being made available." The guide goes on to rank the 10 most violent, "utilizing a proprietary audit process (to) capture and document instances of profanity, sex, violence, and substance abuse using a database-driven technology employing approximately 4000 rules and algorithms governing millions of potential rule combinations."

This certainly sounds meatier than the ESRB system, which rates titles based upon the opinions of three individuals who don't even play the games.

And the guide's "winners" are --

Resident Evil 4 -- Player is a Special Forces agent sent to recover the President's kidnapped daughter. During the first minutes of play, it's possible to find the corpse of a woman pinned up on a wall -- by a pitchfork through her face.

Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas -- Player is a young man working with gangs to gain respect. His mission includes murder, theft, and destruction on every imaginable level. Player recovers his health by visiting prostitutes then recovers funds by beating them to death and taking their money. Player can wreak as much havoc as he likes for no reason without progressing through the game's storyline.

God of War -- Player becomes a ruthless warrior, seeking revenge against the gods who tricked him into murdering his own family. Prisoners are burned alive and player can use "finishing moves" to kill opponents -- like tearing a victim in half.

Narc -- Player can choose between two narcotics agents attempting to take a dangerous drug off the streets and shut down the KRAK cartel while being subject to temptations including drugs and money. To enhance abilities, player takes drugs including pot, Quaaludes, ecstasy, LSD and "Liquid Soul" --which provides the ability to kick enemies' heads off.

Killer 7 -- Player takes control of seven assassins who must combine skills to defeat a band of suicidal, monstrous terrorists. The game eventually escalates into a global conflict between the U.S. and Japan. Player collects the blood of fallen victims to heal himself and must slit own wrists to spray blood to find hidden passages.

The Warriors -- Based on a 70's action flick that set new standards for "artistic violence," a street gang battles its way across NYC in an attempt to reach its home turf. Player issues several commands to his gang, including "mayhem," which causes the gang to smash everything in sight.

50 Cent: Bulletproof -- Game is loosely based on the gangster lifestyle of rapper Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson. Player engages in gangster shootouts and loots the bodies of victims to buy new 50 Cent recordings and music videos.

Crime Life: Gang Wars -- Player is the leader of a ruthless street gang, spending time fighting, recruiting new gangsters, fighting, looting, and of course, more fighting. Player can roam the streets and fight or kill anyone in sight for no apparent reason.

Condemned: Criminal Origins -- Player is an FBI serial killer hunter in one of the first titles for the Xbox 360. Game emphasizes the use of melee weapons over firearms, allowing players to use virtually any part of their environment as a weapon. The next generation graphics provide a new level of detail to various injuries, especially "finishing moves."

True Crime: New York City -- Player is a NYC cop looking for information regarding the mysterious death of a friend. Player can plant evidence on civilians and shake them down to earn extra money.

Whatever happened to Pac-Man?

Technorati tags: Video Games, Media, Media Violence, Grand Theft Auto, Gaming

Can PR drive the uptake of social media? (Corporate Engagement)

The PR Agency Mindset Needs To Change ... Not Just The Tools (John Wagner)

Nokia Launches a Blogger Relations Blog (Micro Persuasion)

Best Laid Plans (POP! PR Jots)

Book Review: (Don't) Read All About It... (PR Opinions)

Does Target Need a Blog? (Strategic Public Relations)

Separated at Birth (The Flack)

Technorati tags: Web 2.0, PR, Blogs, Websites, Public Relations, Marketing, Advertising, Media

Day after day in the blogosphere, right-wing pundits are unearthing shocking evidence of liberal media bias -- most recently, a poorly Photoshopped newspaper photo of Condoleezza Rice and a mysterious "X" that appeared over Dick Cheney's face during a televised speech.

Now, you and I -- as reasonable human beings of any political stripe -- would probably assume these incidents were inadvertent errors or, at worst, the unendorsed actions of lone pranksters within the news organizations involved.

But you and I don't see what the pundits see. They see the grand scheme. (Or at least, they see the tremendous Web traffic their conspiracy theories attract.)

As I pondered this trend in punditry, I came upon this item via CyberJournalist.net:

The (Danbury, Conn.) News-Times accidentally ran an offensive caption on its Web page under a photo of a girls' high school soccer team.

The newspaper's Web site published a photograph of the team after a championship-clinching win, but the caption said it was celebrating a teammate's decision to "come out of the closet as a lesbian."

The copy editor who wrote the caption was "goofing around" and didn't realize the caption had gone online, editor Paul Steinmetz said.

Can you imagine how Michelle Malkin or Matt Drudge would have reacted if, instead of lesbians, the punchline of the editor's prank had been fundamentalist Christians or another conservative constituency?

I enjoy political debate -- particularly as it concerns the media. But could we please add some rationality to the equation?

Technorati tags: Journalism, Michelle Malkin, Media, Gays

From Romenesko via New York Magazine:

Koppel might do an HBO show called "The F-ing Media"

Ted Koppel and producer Tom Bettag are hoping to launch their HBO series with a critical look at TV news. (The cable-channel deal isn't signed yet.) "This is something you can't do at ABC," says Bettag. "You'd be accused of fouling your own nest or criticizing your competitors. We have an opportunity in a new venue. TV never looks at itself hard. We want to answer such questions as, 'Why is 24-hour cable news "blondes reporting on missing blondes"?'"

Technorati tags: Journalism, Media, Ted Koppel, Cable

In his Dec. 5 U.S. News & World Report column, Mort Zuckerman proclaims that blogs have become the "fifth estate." In doing so, he at once elevates blogs while separating them from traditional media, known as the "fourth estate."

Zuckerman writes:

Given the fact that the disseminators of blogs, such as Google, have a unique protection from legal liability for what is posted, the blogs often resort to blood sport in their commentaries on politics and life, with many repeating and reporting without fact checking. (Alas, the idea that Jews plotted the 9/11 attacks began as a blog and took hold in the Muslim world as fact; in fact, it was a lie put out by Hezbollah.)

This new age of journalism is challenging the "trustee model" of journalism, where journalistic professionals served as gatekeepers, filtering the defamatory and the false. Today, a large segment of the public believes the new media are flavoring their reporting so as to tell us not so much how the world works but how the media believe it ought to work. No wonder only 44 percent of the public now say they are very, or fairly, confident of the media's accuracy.

The blogs, while fragmenting our mass audience and carrying many more inaccuracies than mainstream media, have nonetheless democratized journalism by giving citizens daily and immediate access to different opinions and, sometimes, to purveyors of truly expert knowledge...

The opinion blogs have, in effect, become a "fifth estate," a barometer of attitudes not just in the United States but in the world. Now, we must learn how to make the most of a flow of fact and opinion unimaginable just a decade ago.

Interesting. Two comments:

1. Blogs are a supplement to, not separate from, the fourth estate; efforts by professional journalists like Zuckerman to keep the two from merging in the public's mind will inevitably fail.

2. I had always associated the term "fifth estate" with the poor and working classes -- which bloggers definitely do not represent.

(Via Romenesko)

Technorati tags: Journalism, Zuckerman, Blogs, Media

Alice Marshall and Mike Bawden decided to run their agency Web sites through SiteScore after reading this post.

Inspired, Media Orchard rated a number of popular PR blogs from 1 to 10 using Silktide's free tool. The results are below.

I know many great blogs aren't on this list. My apologies; my fingers got tired. If you run your blog through SiteScore and send me the result, I'll be happy to add it to the list in an update later. (Steve, I tried Micro Persuasion but SiteScore kept freezing up and never returned a result.)

Congratulations, Elizabeth!

CorporatePR ... 8.4

Naked Conversations ... 8.2

NevOn ... 8.2

NewPR Wiki ... 8.2

BlogWrite for CEOs ... 8.2

mediations ... 8.0

Richard Edelman -- 6 A.M. ... 7.7

POP! PR Jots ... 7.6

Bilder im Kopf ... 7.6

Media Orchard ... 7.5

Desirable Roasted Coffee ... 7.5

On Message from Wagner Communications ... 7.2

For Immediate Release: The Hobson and Holtz Report ... 7.2

Yes, there are too many caveats to mention here -- so I won't bother. Take it with a pillar of salt.

Technorati tags: Rankings, PR, Public Relations, PR Blogs

Media Orchard usually highlights the work of other PR bloggers in "Pick of the Orchard," but because everyone is just getting back from a long holiday weekend, we thought today we'd instead post a few random links to cheer you up. All come to you via Fark.com -- but are not naughty. Happy Monday!

Readers flummoxed by runaway headlines

Rare whisky lovers pay for a taste of the future

Turkey Cars: Great Pictures of Un-Great Cars

Swedish post office aims for "Santasfaction"

New shop's use of live models draws mixed reaction

Trio Turns Office Building Into Giant Harp

Technorati tags: Real Estate, Sweden, Santa, Cars, Models, Newspapers

Media Orchard should pay Steve Rubel of Micro Persuasion a consulting fee for showing us this simple tool to illustrate "The Conversation Gap."

Instead, we attempt to use the tool against him by charting our progress in catching up with Steve.

As you can surmise, we aren't getting there anytime soon.

We bow humbled before you, PR Blog God.

Technorati tags: Micro Persuasion, PR, Public Relations, PR Blogs

Media Orchard respects the political opinions of others. I'm no wild-eyed liberal; I've voted for members of both parties (as well as independents) in the past.

But there's something about the nonstop "liberal media conspiracy" theorizing of certain right-wing pundits that makes me go nuts. It's goofy stuff that I would normally find amusing -- but then I realize that millions of people actually fall for this demagoguery, and I lose it.

Two recent conspiracy blogstorms involve the mysterious "X" that appeared over Dick Cheney's face during a Nov. 22 CNN telecast, and the Photoshop bedevilment of Condi Rice by USA Today on Oct. 19.

This evening, Matt Drudge has the following late-breaking development in the CNN conspiracy:

A CNN switchboard operator was fired over the holiday -- after the operator claimed the 'X' placed over Vice President's Dick Cheney's face was "free speech!"

"We did it just to make a point. Tell them to stop lying, Bush and Cheney," the CNN operator said to a caller. "Bring our soldiers home."

The caller initially phoned the network to complain about the all-news channel flashing an "X' over Cheney as he gave an address live from Washington.

"Was it not freedom of speech? Yes or No?" the CNN operator explained.

"If you don't like it, don't watch."

Laurie Goldberg, Senior Vice President for Public Relations with CNN, said in a release:

"A Turner switchboard operator was fired today after we were alerted to a conversation the operator had with a caller in which the operator lost his temper and expressed his personal views -- behavior that was totally inappropriate. His comments did not reflect the views of CNN. We are reaching out to the caller and expressing our deep regret to her and apologizing that she did not get the courtesy entitled to her. "

Listen to a full tape of the call here.

Obviously, the switchboard operator was in that all-employee meeting where Jonathan Klein revealed the true meaning of the Cheney "X." I can't believe his loose lips!

Thank goodness they fired him before he could start telling everyone about the secret handshake.

Technorati tags: Journalism, Drudge, Cheney, CNN, Conspiracies, Blogstorms, Dick Cheney

Media Orchard was on Barbara Ehrenreich's Web site today (we'd heard she'd become a blogger), and we found it quite amusing that she's now launching a "local career networking" campaign in association with her new book, Bait and Switch.

Barbara's a talented writer, and we share her views on a number of issues. But Bait and Switch is a non-starter, as we explain in our post, "Barbara Ehrenreich Can't Find a PR Job; Therefore, the Economy is Crumbling."

For the book, Barbara assembled a fake resume documenting non-existent public relations experience; then, she spent months searching (unsuccessfully) for a PR job in the $60-100K range. She concludes that the white-collar middle-class has been sold a bill of goods, and that because of downsizing we'll soon all be working at Wal-Mart for $8 per hour.

The reality is that most fakers can be smoked out in a job interview. In fact, Barbara's whole search process is pretty laughable. As The Christian Science Monitor puts it:

Is it any wonder that she can't find someone to hire her? Ehrenreich can't turn to a large network of former clients for job leads because her imaginary PR consultant doesn't really exist. In another potentially fatal flaw, it takes her forever to realize that it might be a good idea to hobnob with actual PR people instead of a hodgepodge of the jobless.

Most amazing of all is Ehrenreich's naivete about the job market. She's surprised that white-collar workers massage the truth out of their resumes, that they focus intensely on what they wear, that they must deal with bosses who care more about people skills than job skills. She's even taken aback when someone suggests she delete the date of her college graduation from her resume so she won't come across as too old.

This stranger-in-a-strange-land attitude wears thin, especially coming from someone who should be more aware. Where has she been?

So now -- after failing miserably to find a job, even with the benefit of a falsified resume -- Barbara's going to organize "grassroots support groups" for job seekers?

Isn't that kind of like O.J. conducting anger management workshops?

Technorati tags: Human Resources, PR, Barbara Ehrenreich, Books

That's the title of a new course that will be offered at the University of Kansas next semester -- and intelligent-design advocates are fuming.

Unfortunately, the person quoted first in the Kansas City Star's story on the controversy is Bruce Simat, an intelligent-design supporter and associate biology professor at Minnesota's Northwestern College. The Star fails to point out that Simat represents about the same number of scientists it takes to fill a broom closet.

The newspaper's approach does a disservice to its readers by suggesting that there is real debate in the scientific community over intelligent design. There isn't.

Technorati tags: Creationism, Intelligent Design, Evolution, Media, Newspapers

Teen People came close to publishing a story on the white-supremacist singing duo Prussian Blue that did not mention the words "hate," "supremacist" or "Nazi." The writer had agreed with the teen duo's mother not to use these terms, but instead the more palatable "white pride."

Sounds like the story was going to be pretty similar to this interview with the girls that appeared on the Web site of National Vanguard, a white-separatist group that includes the girls' mom as a member.

The Teen People story was pulled after a protest at Time Warner headquarters earlier this week by citizens who saw a teaser for the article on the magazine's Web site.

And you thought my "Anderson Cooper Interviews Hermann Goering" post was an exaggeration?

When the media begins covering Nazis in the same "he said, she said" way it now covers the "scientific" debate over intelligent design, we're in big trouble.

(Image from NationalVanguard.org)

Technorati tags: Journalism, Media, Prussian Blue, Evolution

A while back, Steve Crescenzo asked this question on his blog: "Is corporate video a waste of money?"

I have a sneaking suspicion that many of the people who do corporate video do it because it's fun. Because it's so different than uploading copy to the intranet or producing a print publication. But that if you held a gun to their head, they'd admit that, while the corporate video is fun to do, it's probably not worth the money it costs to do it.

Galloping to video's defense came my old friend Dave Gardner of Visions West Productions, who responded that the format is better than prose for --

1. Inspiring and motivating. A well-crafted video is just like a feature film. The messenger controls the pacing and mood. Artful combination of music, voice and image can elicit an emotional response in an audience. Rarely do hearts race or hands clap after reading a memo. Through video, employees, investors, the public or other audiences can really catch the excitement of an executive's or company's vision or product.

2. Establishing credibility. Employees are the most skeptical audience around, and they know spin when they read it. Any company can direct a writer to pen rhetoric, even lies, and then print and distribute same. Only careful fact-checking can establish their veracity. Certainly an executive can appear on-camera in a video and deliver the same spin, but it is much more difficult to conceal a lie when your audience can look you in the eye. That's the most common reason clients ask me to put their executives on tape for employee consumption -- believability. Executives who are natural-born communicators are trusted by audiences when they can be seen and heard.

Dave, forgive me for editing you a little -- after all these years, I just can't help myself -- but I'm going to add a third thing:

3. Telling a complex story. That whole "picture's worth a thousand words" business is true.

Example:

Dave and I last worked together in 2003, when I was searching for a more (1) compelling, (2) credible and (3) accessible way to communicate Belo's strategy of media convergence. Convergence had become an overused buzz word in our industry, and investors' eyes were beginning to glaze over when we told our story with the conventional PowerPoint.

Dave and I responded by writing and producing a video that won the IABC Gold Quill in 2004. Called A Day in the Life of Belo [wmv download], the eight-minute video shows how Belo's media companies work together to make synergies happen.

A MediaPost reporter who turned up at a screening of the video wrote this review:

LIGHTS, CAMERA, ACTION - Kudos to Belo, the Dallas-based multimedia company, which showed an eight-minute video, "A Day in the Life of Belo," during the CSFB conference. Belo's got an interesting story to tell, how its TV, cable, newspaper and Internet properties work in connection with each other in places like Dallas and the Pacific Northwest. The video was pretty powerful, even if it would make newspaper traditionalists go into shock. The overnight news-gathering functions in Dallas, for instance, are handled by one central desk serving the newspaper, TV station, Internet and cable news channel. Say what you will, but it's a smart way of using resources in a -- how shall we say it -- truly media agnostic way.

A well-conceived video can achieve things that other corporate communications vehicles simply cannot.

Dave also points out that video needn't be pricey or time-consuming today:

Effective video still requires the hand of an experienced pro, but no longer is it a necessity in every case to schedule a large crew, dubbing and editing facilities weeks or months in advance. Today I can make a quick revision to a video and burn a new DVD for a client between morning coffee and breakfast. I'm actually taping a CEO at the O'Hare Admirals Club tomorrow during a stopover. I'll edit and author the DVD when I get back to my office on Friday (a day delay because I have a shoot in Boston Thursday), and employees across North America will have access to his message on the Intranet next Monday and have DVDs on Tuesday.

If you're considering a corporate video, here are some useful tips from Marie-Claire Ross.

Oh, and for grins: Here's a fun corporate video from a Dutch company called MindShare, sung to the tune of Donna Summer's "She Works Hard for the Money." Some have trashed it as the "worst corporate video ever," but I think it works. I can guarantee the audience loved it.

Technorati tags: Video, PR, Public Relations, Corporate Video, Corporate Communications, Video Production, Marketing

SiteScore is a free tool by U.K.-based Silktide that rates "how well-designed, popular and accessible your website is." So far, SiteScore has graded more than 72,000 Web sites on a scale of 1 to 10.

Top-ranked sites include HaloScan and The Register, with scores of 9.6. The rankings vary widely and sometimes inexplicably: MSN rates a 9.2, but CNN.com rates a 2.5, for example.

Among its idiosyncracies, SiteScore penalizes sites heavily for failing to meet the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, which are geared to make Web content more accessible to people with disabilities.

We wondered which top PR agency maintained the best site -- so we took the eight largest firms (by U.S. revenues) and ran them through SiteScore. Click the scores to see a detailed explanation of each agency's results.

Here's how they ranked:

1. Edelman ... 8.4

2. Porter Novelli ... 8.0

3. Hill and Knowlton ... 7.9

4. Ketchum ... 7.5

5. Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide ... 7.4

6. Weber Shandwick Worldwide ... 7.2

7. Burson-Marsteller ... 6.9

8. Fleishman-Hillard ... 6.8

Congratulations, Richard and Phil.

The Idea Grove, by the way, scored a middling 7.5, tying Ketchum.

Technorati tags: PR Agencies, PR, Public Relations, Web Sites, Web Design, Graphic Design, Design, Edelman, Burson-Marsteller, Ketchum, Ogilvy, Fleishman-Hillard, Hill and Knowlton, Weber Shandwick

Black Friday is the No. 1 shopping day of the year in the U.S., a time when the trials and tribulations of bricks-and-mortar shopping are at their most acute.

(We know -- "bricks-and-mortar" is so 1999. What we meant to say, in Web 2.0 lingo, is that Craigslist has a "lightweight" business model while your local newspaper, with all its big ugly printing presses, does not. And now, back to our post...)

Why, we ask ourselves, do people still endure the post-Thanksgiving shopping ritual when Google, Yahoo! and MSN stand ready to help them find what they're looking for online?

We have no idea.

But in honor of this mystery, Media Orchard thought we would share with you some of our most popular posts (and categories of posts) for those who have visited us via search engines:

1. Smurfs Get Blown Up (thousands of downloads, and still coming every day)

2. Everybody Loves Lists (of PR blogs, WSJ-recommended blogs, celebrity blogs, Texas blogs, Dallas blogs -- you name it)

3. Bill O'Reilly (the single-most-downloaded MO post -- and a few ... also ... rans)

4. Stripper-Loving CEO (Call them Savvis -- not savvy)

5. Provocations for Journalists and Flacks

6. PR Blogger Wars (here and here)

7. Fired and Almost-Fired Bloggers

8. Attractive Celebrities (Rose, Evangeline, Jennifer)

9. Technorati Musings (like this, this and this)

10. Marketing Ps and Qs -- and ZZZs

Thanks for shopping at Media Orchard!

Update: For more reason to keep your shopping virtual this holiday season, check out this video of crazed consumers at a Florida Wal-Mart.

Technorati tags: Journalism, PR, Public Relations, Marketing, Celebrities, Bill O'Reilly, Bloggers

From Japan's Mainichi Daily News:

A [male] paramedic fined for assaulting and injuring his [paramedic] girlfriend, who had hired a hitman in an unsuccessful bid to kill his wife, was dismissed Friday from the Tokyo Fire Department on disciplinary grounds, officials said.

"We'll tighten discipline among workers in the department in an effort to restore the public's trust in us and prevent a recurrence," said Yoshiaki Ishii, an official of the department's public relations division.

Yes, please tighten things up a bit, Yoshiaki. We wouldn't want a recurrence of the paramedic-hiring-a-hitman-to-kill-the-other-paramedic's-wife scenario.

Media Orchard will assume something got lost in the translation.

Technorati tags: PR, Public Relations, Japan

Savvis has accepted the resignation of its stripper-loving CEO. Savvis distributed its announcement at 5 p.m. Central Wednesday.

At least Savvis' communications team is better at timing bad news than letter-writing or brand standards.

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