Change always accompanies a New Year, and 2010 will be no different.  Join us again in January as we analyze new trends, reveal new methodologies, and examine the overlapping worlds of technology and communications.

All of us at Eastwick wish you a happy, healthy 2010!

Anyone who’s written for an audience can attest to the humbling experience of having one’s work edited. A Ragan.com feature titled “Black and white and red all over” is an assortment of communicators’ recollections about the first time they experienced the wrath of the red pen.

The advice ranges from the stylistic, like avoiding Gonzo journalism and questionable metaphors, to the emotional - not falling in love with your own words.

That may be the toughest advice to take, as that love can be as enduring as your very first crush. (In my case, “baseball Brad.”) Painful as it may be, though, it is still vital instruction to follow in order to communicate effectively with your audience by using language that is meaningful to them rather than your ego.

This leads us to another item of interest: Americans are consuming more information overall.

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Having started my career in journalism, I can relate to how painful it can feel for a reporter to deal with PR people. They can be overly demanding, pitch things that they know nothing about, and on top of that, pitch topics to reporters that are completely NOT relevant to the reporter’s beat – all major no-no’s in the PR industry.

However, there’s something more to working with the media than just doing your basic PR job right. As the landscape has shifted a bit, and we start to deal with entities outside traditional media (such as bloggers and influential customers) it is even MORE important to step it up in the niceness factor with these guys. Not only are you talking to a reporter who could end up writing a story about your company, you also could potentially be talking to the actual end-user who will ultimately buy your product – and well, that’s the bottom line to success.

We’ve all heard these tips before, but I think it is a good reminder to keep these things in mind as you work with reporters, influencers, bloggers, analysts, customers, etc. – these days, it could be anyone!!

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Embargoes aren’t for everyone. Last year Michael Arrington made that very clear. Here we are almost a year later, and it’s still a topic that spurs much debate. Yep, more outlets have abandoned embargoes, but it’s definitely not an extinct practice. It’s also not a one-size-fits-all approach.

Source: xuhara hamid

From a communications perspective, you’ve got to consider your client, their story and audience, and develop a strategy that makes sense for the individual situation. Does it even make sense to employ an embargo? It might not, especially for a private company. What may have been standard practice in the past may not apply anymore.

If it does make sense to embargo your client’s news, talk them through the risks involved and do your homework…know the policies of the outlets you work with, and be sure you develop and maintain trust with your contacts. You should also be prepared to move quickly in case the news is leaked.

As the dynamics of the media world continue to change, I expect there will be many more conversations about how to effectively evolve our methods of communication and news dissemination. Will we still be talking embargoes this time next year? Maybe so.

No, I can’t speak a lick of Latin, but I can convey a thought or two in 140 characters. When it comes to tweeting about their news and events, that’s all the real estate your clients will get to convey their message. To bring that size, or lack thereof, into perspective, my first two blog sentences are a total of 216 characters, well above the Twitter limit. That means you should put a lot of thought into making those 140 characters as impactful as possible.

Consider the title of this post. Let’s take the first part of the original Latin phrase and dissect it to add meaning and value: “Cogito,” which when translated into English means “I think.” I presume you care about Twitter since you’re reading this blog post, either for personal or professional gain, so I ask you to open a separate Internet tab and take a look at your personal Twitter feed. Of the dozen or so tweets on your page, what percentage shows a lack of foresight, care, or dare I say “thought”?

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It is a curious fact that people are never so trivial as when they take themselves seriously.” - Oscar Wilde

As anyone remotely familiar with Eastwick knows, we are big on Halloween.

Though our Black & Orange bash is on hiatus this year, our Halloween spirit is still in full effect. For the Eastwick office party, the one requirement was that people come in costume. Otherwise, all bets were off.

Everyone took the opportunity to exercise their individual creativity, sense of humor, and personality.

A passel of Eastwickers: (front row) Annemarie, Elizabeth, Katie, Sam (holding Dexter), Andrew & Tina; (back row) Elaine, Barb, Elisabeth, Lyda, Rachel, Kevin & Mo

We had:

The pop-culture phenoms: Adrian Monk and Jon Gosselin

The classic archetypes: Witches, Cat, Goddess, Valley Girl, Cowgirl and Gypsy Princess

The rockers: Def Leppard and Alice Cooper

The witty: A White Lie

The totally rad: A Chiquita Banana

Despite calling themselves “witches” for almost 20 years, two of our founders dressed as witches for the very first time.

Jon (Kevin) minus Kate, and the fastidious Mr. Monk (Andrew)

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Apparently, social media is on the rise.  Haven’t you heard?  According to Inside Facebook, more than 12,000,000 users are active on the popular social site. Among the demographic of users, those between the ages of 18 and 34 constitute the largest group on Facebook in the United States. If you’re between these ages, you’re probably dialed into the world of social media already. But how do you apply that knowledge to make you more valuable as a PR professional in the eyes of your clients, company and colleagues?

Come join us on Thursday, Oct. 15, for the PRSA-SF (Public Relations Society of America – San Francisco chapter) Young Professionals program: “How to Leverage Social Media to Advance Your PR Efforts.”  Hosted by PRSA-SF and Eastwick Communications, this free event will provide attendees with the latest tips, tricks and tactics for integrating social media into your public relations initiatives. Eastwick’s very own Senior Director Rachel Shelton and Senior Associate Lyda Velez will discuss how to select the right social channel for effective communications. Learn firsthand how to monitor conversations, engage with audiences and build a community of brand evangelists.

This Thursday night mixer for young professionals will be held from 6 to 8 PM at Eastwick’s San Francisco office, located at 444 De Haro Street, Suite 112. We recommend registering in advance to ensure your space is reserved (friends and colleagues invited too, of course). For directions to the event, click here.

See you there!

We’ve never been on the bandwagon that has declared brands are dead but we do understand why the claims are being made.  There is now a lot more that goes into buying decisions by consumers and business buyers than just brand awareness.  But to claim that brands don’t matter is naïve.  I guess Yahoo agrees based on its latest search offering.

And yet the Yahoo search filter seems to suggest that, just possibly, the idea of the brand isn’t dead after all. With branded search filtering, Yahoo is acknowledging that many searchers don’t want results from just anywhere, regardless of how algorithmically relevant those results may be. Searchers want results (from trusted Web sites) — which is to say, from trusted online brands.

Source: c__

We’ll be talking a lot more about the need for looking at communications and marketing in an entirely new light–one where search, branding and word of mouth need to coexist for companies to really take advantage of all channels to create awareness and preference for their offerings.  I get a chuckle…and some times totally annoyed…when I see dramatic claims about PR being dead, social media being free and branding irrelevant.  Glad to see that others agree.

We couldn’t let tonight’s premiere of the new TV series “Eastwick” go by without a little fanfare.

For those of you who don’t know the story behind our name, here goes:

When Patrick Corman (former Regis McKenna colleague of Elaine Cummings and Nancy Blake, two of the three original founders of Eastwick) found out about our plans to start a new agency, he couldn’t help but comment: “Oh my, sounds like ‘The Witches of Eastwick.’ ”

Nancy Blake

Needless to say, the comment stuck and, lo and behold, Eastwick Communications was founded.  While it was clear that I was the Susan Sarandon character (redheads unite!) Elaine and Nancy always had to fight over who was Michelle Pfeiffer (both blondes) and who had to dye her hair for the Cher character.

In the early days, our clients endearingly called us “the witches.”  Here are five things that the current coven of witches and warlocks has in common with our TV counterparts:

1. We don’t always behave ourselves…meaning, we like to break the rules.
2. We’ve been known to turn some frogs into princes with the right spell.
3. We see a change coming and are looking forward to it!
4. In the words of the Houston Chronicle TV reviewer who recently reviewed the new show, we have the “potential to be great frothy fun.”
5. And in a similar review from The Detroit Free Press we can be “a charming and beguiling show(agency) that has enough estrogen and star power to keep viewers (clients) coming back for more!”

Life’s a “witch” and we love it!

Elaine & Barb on Halloween

The hoopla surrounding Kanye West’s latest “foot-in-mouth” moment (or should I say “mic-in-mouth”?) was yet another reminder of the speed and power of the social media machine. While I hate to perpetuate these discussions that give the man more air time than he deserves, the breadth of awareness on this singular incident makes for an interesting example of social media engagement.

Source: MTV

Companies, still reticent on putting integrated social media strategies in place, will soon realize that people are online and, whether you decide to engage or not, are talking about you. Case in point…as soon as Kanye self-righteously stepped on the glittering MTV stage and grabbed the mic out of young Taylor Swift’s hands the response was swift (pun intended)…and the bloggers, twitterati, video deejays, talk show hosts, etc. were weighing in.

While some leveraged morning talk shows or evening entertainment news programs, most took the fight online. And fight they did, with Kanye receiving a smackdown unseen since Perez Hilton’s faceoff with former Miss California Carrie Prejean. According to Trendrr, which tracks buzz on Twitter, there were a total of 293,024 tweets in the hour immediately following West’s outburst.

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