For Immediate Release

By Neville Hobson and Shel HoltzBusiness News Marketing Business News Tech News

For Immediate Release episodes

December 29, 2022 FIR #306: Brand Name Pronunciation As A Marketing Ploy
It's not unlikely that you have been mispronouncing some well-known company and brand names like IKEA, Hyundai, Porsche, Bayer, and Adidas. Some brands use common mispronunciations as the foundation for a marketing campaign, as Hyundai has undertaken in the UK. Neville and Shel explore some of these campaigns and examine the broader issue of hard-to-pronounce brand names in this short midweek episode of the "For Immediate Release" podcast.
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17 min
December 26, 2022 FIR #305: We See You And You Can’t Come In
A petulant venue owner is using facial recognition software to keep people with whom he has issues from entering his spaces -- including a mom with a Girl Scout troop. Also in this monthly long-form episode of the "For Immediate Release" podcast, Neville and Shel discuss the value of virtual goods and whether brands should start taking them seriously; business schools are exploring the potential for teaching in the metaverse -- especially classes about digital technology; it hasn't been a great year for metaverse activations, but at least brands are learning; it has been a year since Lush closed its Instagram and Facebook accounts, which means it's time to see how that decision turned out; and the better ChatGPT (the AI text-generating chatbot) gets, the more worried some people get about its impact on truth; and Dan York shares a year-end Tech Report with a range of updates including using WordPress for newsletters, WordPress's State of the Word 2022, and Tumblr Live.
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1 hr 26 min
December 23, 2022 FIR #304: Reaching Employees Through Social Media
Social media consultant Arik Hanson wrote recently in a LinkedIn article that companies should consider devoting some of their LinkedIn activities -- 20 percent is the volume he suggests -- to matters of interest to employees. That's because data shows that 30 percent of a brand page's engagement comes from the company's employees. In this short mid-week episode of "For Immediate Release," Neville and Shel discuss the opportunity for communicators to reach employees on LinkedIn, along with the challenges and possible pitfalls.
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17 min
December 20, 2022 FIR #303: The Quest for a Twitter Alternative
One list includes 50 potential Twitter replacements -- none of which will offer every one of Twitter's features and none of which includes everyone you're currently following on the bird site. How do you decide where to go when you conclude that maintaining your current Twitter activity is no longer feasible? Neville and Shel sort it out -- with a focus on Mastodon -- in this short mid-week episode of "For Immediate Release."
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21 min
December 13, 2022 FIR #302: Blockchain’s Widely Exaggerated Demise
New York Times columnist and Nobel economics laureate Paul Krugman wrote recently that the crypto crash is far worse than even the direst descriptions and that it is proof that blockchain was never a viable technology. At the same time, Goldman Sachs Chairman and CEO David Solomon sees value in blockchain technology, but only if companies like his control it. The truth is, blockchain is thriving outside of speculative crypto investing. Neville and Shel explore blockchain's future in this short midweek episode of "For Immediate Release."
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18 min
December 08, 2022 FIR #301: A Communicator’s Look at ChatGPT
ChatGPT is the latest buzzworthy Artificial Intelligence tool. Released just this month by OpenAI, ChatGPT has stirred up a considerable amount of conversation, much of it about experiments people have conducted, while others now seriously question how much longer writers will be employable. In this short midweek episode, Neville and Shel look at ChatGPT from the communicator's perspective.
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18 min
November 23, 2022 FIR #300: Communicating Pay Transparency
In New York, pay transparency is required by law. It will also be a requirement in California after January 1. There's a lot of good that can come from pay transparency, but for organizations with cultures unready for it, the consequences could be dire. Are companies enlisting their internal communicators to help lay the groundwork for this level of disclosure?
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13 min
November 21, 2022FIR #299: From the Metaverse to the Fediverse and Back Again
Despite the forecasts of some pundits, it is still too early to predict Twitter's complete collapse. Still, it is not outside the realm of possibility. (Since we recorded this episode on Saturday, November 19, CBS has halted its activity on Twitter, blaming Elon Musk's "turbulent and potentially devastating moves following his takeover of the company," according to Variety. It is worth considering the consequences of Twitter's demise. How big a loss to society at large would it be? We can take that idea one step further. With Facebook experiencing its own declines and Gen Z demonstrating a preference for smaller social networks over broadcast-style social media, what would happen if social media completely faded into the background? Also in the November episode of The Hobson and Holtz Report:
Thousands of Twitter users are migrating to Mastodon, a Twitter-like interface with some important differences, the key being that it is not owned by a single entity. Instead, it is a federation of Mastodon "instances" (including one Shel has launched for communicators). The fediverse could be awesome, one report suggests, assuming we don't screw it up -- and average users are able to figure it out.
Gallup has released a study on how connected people feel to others, whether it's in person or online. It's a field of study that has gotten scant attention in the past and the results could be useful to marketers.
There's some nation-building going on in the metaverse, with one Pacific island country building a digital twin to preserve its heritage as global warming raises sea levels, threatening to completely submerge it. Another country -- a physical entity not yet recognized by the global community of nations -- is working with an architectural firm to build a metaverse version that it hopes will be the primary place its citizens interact.
Whether you believe it is ethical or not, there is a fair amount of ghostwriting going on in the social media space, notably with ghostwriters cranking out LinkedIn thought leadership posts for executives. But there's more than that, with one social media ghostwriter, for example, earning close to $200,000 so far this year writing mainly Twitter DMs for employees. We'll dive into this emerging cottage industry.
Dan York's Tech Report is a buffet of topics this month, ranging from the fate of Twitter Spaces to Walmart's Augmented Reality effort, and from enhancements to TikTok Live to Google's "Live View in Maps."
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1 hr 47 min
November 17, 2022 FIR #298: Social Listening in a Post-Twitter World
While things are not looking good at Twitter, it is not yet time to characterize it as the social network's death spiral. Still, speculation is fun (and inevitable), and one of the prospects about which some people are speculating is the impact a Twitterless world will have on social listening activities. Neville and Shel explore the possibility -- along with some other potential fallout should Twitter shut down -- in this short midweek episode of "For Immediate Release."
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18 min
November 15, 2022 FIR #297: A Stirling Example of Augmented Reality
The Scottish city of Stirling is investing in the creation of Augmented Reality (AR) layers throughout the city, available on a free dedicated app, to become what they claim is "the first augmented reality city."
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13 min