PR Rock Star Award: Dayton's Arms Wide Open

And the January PR Rock Star Award goes to . . . Mark Dayton.

Regardless of whether or not you support Obamacare, Minnesota’s new governor yesterday did the PR world proud. Inviting tea party protestors into the signing of the state Medicare expansion into law and then going even further and giving them the podium, set a perfect tone for his new administration.

Kudos to the Governor and his PR people. We know it’s hard to give up control, and we enjoyed watching their bold move pay off.

The best of The GH Spin

For many media outlets, New Years is an excuse to reminisce about the previous year and create hundreds of lists announcing the top stories, events, and people of the year. At The GH Spin, we agree – it just wouldn’t be New Years if we didn’t have a “best of” list. Here are some of our top blogs from 2010:

• Looking back on the ‘00s: A look at how social media changed reporting over the past decade.
• Rock star PR move – January edition: Grand Forks turned a printing error into a well-placed plug for the area.
• The reality disconnect in American politics: New evidence: Chris Georgacas predicted that 2010 will be an anti-incumbent and anti-establishment year.
• Newspapers rethink Internet anonymity: Newspapers debated about regulating online comments.
• The ultimate retweet: The Library of Congress archived all public tweets.
• A lesson in journalistic ethics: A reporter outed an openly gay senior pastor in the Minnesota-based magazine Lavender.
• Putting the hyper in hyper-local news: Community-specific websites battled mainstream media to cover the suburbs.

Happy holidays from Goff & Howard

Goff & Howard is wrapping up 2010 with our traditional mix of interesting client projects, solid teamwork, and rewarding community involvement. We look forward to a successful and fun 2011 and hope the same for you.

Happy holidays!

In case you missed it

It’s been another busy week in the fast-changing social networking world. Here are a few updates from The GH Spin’s “In case you missed it” file.

• Time Magazine’s Person of the Year: Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg was named 2010 Person of the Year by Time Magazine. Time credits Zuckerberg with wiring together a “twelfth of humanity into a single network.” It is clear that Zuckerberg has made an enormous impact on the way we communicate, and Facebook’s popularity is not expected to wane soon – more than 250 million people (or half of Facebook’s members) use the social networking site daily.

• Mobile phone use increases: While this may come as no surprise due to the increasing popularity of smartphones, a recent eMarketer survey found that people spend as much time on their mobile phones as they do reading a newspaper and a magazine combined. The average user spends 50 minutes a day using his or her mobile phone, 30 minutes reading a newspaper, and 20 minutes reading a magazine.

• Myspace integrates with Facebook: Myspace is now letting users log into their Facebook accounts through their Myspace pages. Myspace will import users’ likes and interests listed on their Facebook walls and stream entertainment content based on these interests. According to Myspace, this move will deliver an “even richer entertainment experience” to its users. Learn more here.

Passing the digital tipping point

Some of us may remember the first time we saw a Web browser and started our journey down the information superhighway. The Internet and its impact on our lives have since exploded, and we’ve reached a “digital tipping point.”

Americans now spend as much time online as they do watching TV, according to a recent Forrester study. The average U.S. household watches an average of 13 hours of TV per week, equaling the amount of time spent on the Internet.

While people ages 18 to 30 have watched TV and surfed the Web equally for a few years, this is the first time Gen Xers (those ages 31 to 44) have joined the trend. It’s not that we are collectively watching less TV; it’s that Internet use has gone up 121% since 2005.

With more people making the Internet a growing part of their daily lives, it’s even more important for anyone who needs to reach customers and other audiences to have a strong digital strategy to complement traditional communications.

Those who integrated blogs, social media, and other new channels into their existing communications early on may not be surprised by this information. Others who are waiting to see if the Internet “trend” will sustain itself need to accept this new reality. The digital Pandora’s Box is not going to close anytime soon.

Faster networks, smarter phones, and more access to the Web regardless of where you are will expand Internet use and data consumption. What will never change is the need to have a smart plan in place that connects all of this to goals that matter to your company or organization.

G&H announces strategic partnership with McClung

Goff & Howard and McClung Communications & Public Relations are forming a strategic partnership to work together on public affairs and public relations projects in Minnesota and across the country.

The partnership brings together the experienced team at Goff & Howard, a full-service public affairs and public relations firm founded in 1994 with a staff of 13, with McClung Communications & Public Relations, started this June by former gubernatorial spokesman and deputy chief of staff to Governor Tim Pawlenty, Brian McClung.

This partnership will strengthen Goff & Howard’s position as a leading public affairs and public relations firm in the Upper Midwest. Our alliance with Brian brings another experienced, highly regarded, and well-connected person to our already fantastic team.

Goff & Howard and McClung Communications & Public Relations will remain separate entities that will work together with clients on a project-by-project basis.

I’ve known Brian personally and professionally for more than 13 years. Others at Goff & Howard have also known him for many years. Our history with Brian makes it even more exciting that we have the opportunity to partner with him on future projects.

The death of advertainment in Minnesota

Television news operations have long been looked at as a hybrid between journalism and entertainment. Happy talk between anchors, reporters standing outside in a hurricane to help us better “understand” the significance of a storm, and features full of gift, shopping and dining ideas are just a few examples.

From its call letters to the “focus” of stories within its newscasts, KARE-11 has been a leader in blurring the lines between news and entertainment. The station created a backyard for weather broadcasts, made desks of ice to cover the Winter Carnival, and got people to wave to the camera at the end each newscast.

Five years ago, KARE-11 pushed the journalism-entertainment envelope even farther when it launched “Showcase Minnesota,” a show that combined entertainment segments with paid advertising segments – advertainment.

When “Showcase Minnesota” was launched, KARE-11 general manager John Remes said, "This is an opportunity for advertisers to connect with audiences in a way they haven't done before.”

Critics said it was “paid advertisements masquerading as programming” and that “guests will pay to be on the new show and the anchors will act like inquisitive hucksters.” Critics were concerned that audiences wouldn’t notice or care about the difference between real news and advertainment.

The age of advertainment may be over in Minnesota – KARE-11 announced last week that “KARE-11 Today” would replace “Showcase Minnesota” in January. KARE-11 has not said if the decision was based on a lack of interest from advertisers who wanted to “connect” with audiences in a new way or if it was based on other factors.

"It's a great opportunity to highlight our strong news teams at KARE-11," said Remes. "Whether its early mornings, midday, evenings, late news, or weekends, we are proud of the commitment of our journalists and their connections with our community."

For now, the thin wall between news and advertising has been restored, and advertisers will have to find another way to connect with audiences.