Article 19 Making Progress

Article 19, which I watch for activity in Latin America, has been lobbying for a special visit to Mexico, looking at Human Rights.

The press release they issued today shows they’re making progress: Mexico: Special mandates make landmark visit to Mexico

Vocus Acquires HARO

Claire Thompson, freelance PR Consultant, Waves PR

Vocus, the PR management software company, has acquired HARO (Help a Reporter Out) a service through which journalists can ask for help with stories – everything from experts to case studies.

HARO  is a useful PR tool, albeit primarily US based. Its community is around 100 thousand members, mainly 30,000 PR and marketing professionals and  small business owners. Vocus is one of the giants of the PR software industry.

Financial details weren’t revealed in the Vocus release.

Why is this worth commenting on?

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World Cup Fever

Rio Ferdinand supporting 1Goal

Claire Thompson, Freelance PR Consultant, Waves PR

Here we go, here we go, here we go…

World Cup Fever has already started. The jokes are flying, and scarcely an hour goes by without a World Cup/England supporters joke passing on of my many ‘in’ boxes.

For PR consultants, it’s a double edged sword – for print media, and to some extent broadcast, scarcely a news story will be published unless it has some link, somewhere to the World Cup/England’s chances. Even the most tenuous of links will go further than anything without the ‘WC’ mention.  Not until England’s chances are thwarted will normal service resume.

Press meetings and conferences will all be carefully times to avoid clashes. Branded goods will be punted and in scarce supply – until that is, England is no longer competing, at which point any World Cup story will find itself spiked quicker than a news story about paperclips in new colours.

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Election communications: who’s faring well?

Claire Thompson, Freelance PR Consultant, Waves PR

Election fun stuff: one person’s view of how the various parties fared at the first election debate.