I have never hunted, but I did handle public relations for the International Sportsmen’s Expo for a few years and I learned a lot about hunting. For example, elephant hunting in African countries like Zimbabwe is strictly regulated and part of wildlife management programs that are vital to the protection of both humans and animals. There are quotas and, in fact, elephant populations are growing in Africa. Additionally, the costs associated to go on these elephant hunts are enormous so Mr. Parsons likely paid tens of thousands of dollars for the right to go on the hunt — money that has become a critical component to the economies of these countries. And, as I mentioned above, most of the elephants become food for an entire village once they are killed. It may not be your taste, but hey, some folks consider cow meat to be disgusting. To each his own.

Why do so many people think it’s wrong to hunt one animal but not another? We eat salmon but would never eat dolphin — too cute huh? Well, surprise surprise…some cultures do eat dolphin. And monkeys. And insects. Hey, I don’t eat meat beyond a little seafood here and there, but that’s my choice. I don’t begrudge you your hamburger.

Parsons does indeed have an image to uphold and hunting an elephant is not out of character. I’d have more sympathy for you if you boycotted Go Daddy because of its sexist advertising campaigns. You shouldn’t be surprised Parsons shot an elephant — you should be surprised he didn’t shoot one sooner.

If you’re not convinced on the merits of hunting, check out the Politically Incorrect Guide to Hunting by Frank Miniter. You’ll learn a few things, like:

• Hunters do more for conservation than environmentalists
• Professional hunters keep our airport runways safe
• Hunters have saved deer, elk, bear and waterfowl from extinction
• Hunters are major suppliers of meat to feed the homeless

Hunting may not be your cup of tea — it ain’t mine — but it’s part of who we are as a species.

Local comedienne and former Gannett Local employee Amy Donohue recently donated a kidney to a woman she’d never met. She took time off work to do so, but needed a bit more time than planned for testing to make sure Anuradha Dwived wouldn’t reject the organ that saved her life.

Local comedienne and former Gannett Local employee Amy Donohue recently pledged to donate a kidney to a woman she’d never met. She exhausted her sick and vacation leave, but needed more time for tests to make sure Anuradha Dwived didn’t reject the organ meant to save her life.

Amy almost used up her sick and vacation days, and donations will help cover the rest of her unpaid time off after the operation. But that wasn’t enough for Gannett Local, who let her go yesterday because she wasn’t able to make her sales quota. While this certainly was completely within Gannett Local’s rights, it seems a very crappy thing to do.

When I had to have surgery to remove a pilonidal cyst a few years ago, I took two separate leaves of almost five weeks apiece from Pearson Education. They, and I’m very grateful to them for this, paid for all my surgeries and 75% of my salary while I was on leave. While my case was a little bit different than Amy’s, I can’t imagine why a company would let someone go who willingly risked their life to save another’s. Seems they should be given an award for such.

As a freelancer, I definitely don’t have the luxury for paid time off, nor do most small business owners. But if I HAD employees, I don’t see why I wouldn’t at least keep an employee on payroll, even if I wasn’t paying them while they weren’t working. Also, doesn’t a company like Gannett Local have the resources to cover this? While they claim to be a startup, their parent company surely isn’t hurting so badly they need to lay off an employee recovering from life-giving and life-threatening surgery.

Sounds like Gannett Local needs a good PR team. I bet someone here knows a PR company willing to represent companies like this.

If you’d like to make a donation, please check out Facebook.

Roll In For Japan is over two hours of two dozen restaurants and local businesses helping raise funds for the Grand Canyon Red Cross and the crisis in Japan.

Roll In For Japan, to be held March 30 from 6-9pm, is asking $20 at the door, to be given directly to the Red Cross Disaster Relief Fund. The event, run entirely by volunteers and donations, is the first of its kind in the area.

To be held at the new Madison Events Center in downtown Phoenix, Roll In For Japan is a truly collaborative event, with help coming from the local community, press and businesses alike.

Restaurants participating (so far):
Asahi Bakery
Barrio Café
Butter & Me
Citizens Public House
Espresso Italia
Hana Japanese Eatery
Liberty Market/Joe’s Real BBQ
Popchips
Robeks
Tammie Coe
Sens
Xing Tea

Door prizes:
NBA shirts from Sportiqe
Red Hot Robot gift bags
House of Rice
Samurai Comics

Raffle prizes from:
Arizona Wines & Vines
Clarendon Hotel
Edible Phoenix
FnB
Matt’s Big Breakfast
Posh Restaurant
Switch

Guests can RSVP on Facebook.

And I usually don’t care. Bills need to get paid, and when it comes to events, websites and tons of TV shows, advertising pays them well. I’m so okay with advertising that I’d honestly rather see product placement than most ads. Product placement isn’t anything weird or intrusive and it’s far more like real life, where we say “Coke” and “Kleenex” instead of the generic alternatives.

Morgan Spurlock, of Super Size Me, makes a living pointing out obvious things just like this. His “movies” do much to point of the hypocrisy of the American public and force us to either accept or change the man in the mirror.

Most advertising sucks
His new flick, POM Wonderful Presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold, looks to hit an industry that’s been besieged by reduced spending, has seemed stale for years now and really hasn’t figured out how to make product placement feel unobtrusive. Most ad agencies seem to have two settings: high production quality with poor story telling bordering on crappy sitcom or poor production quality with amateur plot lines that results in content that’s barely fit for YouTube.

Are ads obsolete?
Maybe they’re running out of ideas, maybe they just don’t care or maybe advertising agencies just refuse to accept that brands aren’t really sold the same way they’ve always been. Maybe interruptive advertising is on it’s way out. Maybe we’re starting to take more cues on what to buy from what those around us use and endorse.

Social media will (not) save the day
This is not to say that anything like social media will save the advertising industry. Hell, using social media likely won’t save any industry. But the ideals that make social media great – sharing between friends, low publish barriers and conversational attitudes – can help the advertising industry pivot from an interruptive model to an immersive one.

You are what you…wear?
POM Wonderful Presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold looks like a movie about what it’s like to make a movie about ad agencies while being funded by loosely associated brands. That may very well be what it is, but I do hope that most people look past the gimmick and into the real message: SAYING you’re advertising to someone is a lot more normal than pretending you’re not, no matter how obvious it is.

Friends would tell each other if they’re endorsing a product. Friends would trust each other to recommend they use products that they themselves like.

Isn’t it time we admit that movies should be like that too?

For those able to avoid the Internet for days at a time, Rebecca Black’s music video (in only the most literal sense) Friday has blogs, geeks and music fans in quite a tizzy. Produced by Ark Music Factory, who claims to have more “undiscovered talent,” the song, the dance moves and the entire idea is little more than a very shiny, very polished turd, but the quality of the piece is irrelevant.

The idiots claim the internet fame game has changed. Anyone, anyone that is with $2,000 to spend with places like Ark Music Factory, can fund their child’s way into fame and fortune. Ignore the fact that the online backlash surely is absolutely too much to subject any teenager to, popularity often has a price. The single is sitting at #46 on the iTunes top music chart and has surely earned its initial $2,000 investment back a few times over.

So a young kid sang a fairly stupid song and then had/asked her parents to help her make a music video, right? I understand that part. I also understand Ark Music Factory’s role in all of this, as they see “undiscovered talent” as a great way to make money for everyone.

What I really, really don’t get it the horrible, vile and just mean public backlash over this. Gawker, Techcrunch and just about every geek/tech/gossip site out there has seen, publicized and trashed this video and I’m not exactly sure why. Granted, it’s bad, but is it so catchy bad that it deserves this level of scorn? Ke$ha sucks, but even she didn’t get raked across the coals this way.

Jealousy? Envy? Disappointment?

I can’t quite put my finger on it, but I do know this: I hope she has access to a helluva PR team, because her time in the spotlight surely can’t last the much longer.

I mean, who would want to watch someone embarrass themselves?

Now he’s looking for an intern. PR pros, including our very own Len Gutman, emphatically say no. He and Peter Shankman both explain that trusting social media to an intern is a terrible idea in nearly every case and that even if intern does a good job, Gutman says they’ll still be working for “a drug addict and a psychopath.”

Had I read their article yesterday, I may have hesitated another second before applying to be on the Sheen Team. This marks the second social media contest I’ve entered this week (vote me for VP!) and I have the feeling that these type of contests do absolutely nothing for anyone anywhere. But I digress.

I’m not sure I see the issue in Gutman and Shankman’s warnings about working for Sheen. Compared to most driven PR firm owners, there’s no way, even in his drug-induced craziness, Sheen is THAT much worse than many of the people I’ve worked with or heard about. Hell, we all know about the intern who didn’t want to do intern work, but what we seldom hear about is the long, tedious hours and menial work given to nearly every intern everywhere, none of which guarantees any national TV/radio/internet exposure.

I certainly don’t agree that social media, or anything important, should be left for an intern to handle, but if the PR/Marketing/Advertising/Social Media industry took an honest look at what they’re REALLY offering interns, you could do a lot worse than working for Sheen.

And I bet he won’t ask you to sort pens.

I find myself saying “seriously” quite often these days. Saturday Night Live’s Seth Meyers and Amy Poehler regularly lampooned the term so I don’t claim to have invented it.

But still, what word better conveys the sudden, staggering state of disbelief you feel when a client makes that last second request?  Or when a prospect thinks the creative for an ad campaign should cost $2,000? And the infamous intern who didn’t like sorting the highlighters? Not to mention the geyser of venom spraying from our elected officials.

Writing is how I process all which defies logic, reason, common sense or basic human empathy.  My goal is to evoke thought, discussion and change. To rattle the gilded cages of those who want nothing more than to keep people who think, look or love differently than them, out of their cage.

Everything in the world relates to marketing — and all the specialties, strategies, disciplines, tools and tactics we  fill our days with.  Sometimes you might think a post isn’t relevant to you. Look closer, it’s in there. The Mona Lisa is nice, but I’m more of a Jackson Pollock guy. There won’t be any guardrails like, “the reason this matters if you’re in PR is…”

• While maniacal about verbal grammar, in print I have no AP Style whatsoever. That’s one of the many reasons I surround myself with smart Cronkite alumni.

• Life is about perspective. I have been the client much longer than the client services provider.  I was another brick in the wall much longer than I’ve been the owner.

• People should always come before profit. Sam Alpert and I have walked that walk at DSPR for the last five years. I will challenge every boss in town to hop on the treadmill and sacrifice your $200 rounds of golf so you don’t have to lay someone off.

• I think the word boss is repugnant and, contrary to popular opinion, all millennials are not self-entitled slackers. I have dozens of case studies to support both views.

• 80% of my life, career and education has been spent outside Arizona. The Grand Canyon is beautiful. But if you profess that it’s the most beautiful place in the world and you’ve never been east of the Rockies or south of Rocky Point, I’m gonna call you on a major parochial violation.

• Humor is the greatest gift there is. When, not if, my words piss you off, remember that other readers at that moment are laughing — hopefully anyway.

• We all need to do a better job of sharing our oxygen, whether you think the climate is changing or not.  You can believe in whatever you want as long as you don’t believe you have the divine  right to extinguish mine.

• Life is too short to eat vanilla because you’re afraid what people might think if you like Phish Food.

• A positive attitude is nice but not when it’s delusional. As Arizona prepares to celebrate its 100th birthday isn’t it time we stop acting like we’re in our terrible two’s? Last I checked, horses stopped galloping down Central Ave decades ago.

• People in Phoenix are mostly nice — except behind the wheel. Our highways are more toxic than the roads of Istanbul, Boston and Bangkok.

• Agencies like Ogilvy and Edelman would have offices in Phoenix if they saw us as a viable investment, in other words, a world-class city. That requires a sophisticated economy with a highly educated work force and socially progressive culture.  Who’s starting that creative brief?

At the end of the day, most of us marketing communications professionals just sell stuff, services and space.  It’s the teachers, public servants and ace reporters at TMZ who make the world a better place, not us.

So laugh more. Enjoy the ride. It’s the only one you get.

That’s my perspective. Seriously.

D

Not for pay or really anything besides free books, but rather because I, and I’m sure many other budding writers, feel that the current publishing system could be better. It doesn’t seem like it should be all that complicated to write, publish and market a book today. Thanks to the Domino Project, which selected me and Jeff Moriarty as part of their Street Team, self publishing is about to become a little easier. And not a moment too soon, as recent self-published author Ann Videan can attest:

“There’s an awe inspiring talk which Seth Godin gave to the Independent Publisher’s Association last August. He basically shoots holes in the old method of publishing — shoving a book out to the masses — and shows the indies the value of becoming niche tribe leaders who publish books within and for the tribe. He says they’ll have only four steps in the publishing process — curation, leadership, connection, and creation of a movement – and in 10 years they’ll kick themselves if they don’t follow these steps now.”

Neither Jeff nor I have completely grasped what exactly our involvement with the Domino Project Street Team will look like, there’s no question that a lot of people in AZ could well use more information and options on getting their work published.

We also know that there are plenty of storytellers in AZ that may not publish written work, or simply want to improve their writing skills. Inspired by the Domino Project, we’d like to gauge interest in a larger workshop-type event that brings together people with different skills (say, a podcast producer and a PR pro specializing in client communication) to share ideas and improve each other in a meaningful way. The first meeting for such will be at Gangplank from 7:30-9pm on March 1. This workshop is very different than the Friends of Chandler Library I mentioned yesterday and I hope, that as people who are paid to tell all kinds of stories, that one or both may interest you.

I’d love to attend a TED conference one day, but it’s invite-only and the price tag (in the thousands of dollars) is far too much for most of us. Past years, I’ve always heard about the events and have then waited patiently for the presentations to make their way to me weeks or sometimes months later.

Thanks to TEDxScottsdale Organizer Bob Diehl, metro Phoenix residents can now watch a livestream of the TED event for FREE in downtown Phoenix. To be held at the Trinity Episcopal Cathedral just off the Roosevelt and Central Light Rail stop, the event is broken up into 90-minute segments from 9:30am to 7:45pm.

The event, also known as TEDxScottsdaleLive (the “x” denotes a locally organized TED event that is loosely affiliated with the TED moniker), is completely free.

Details, including the speakers schedule, and registration can be accessed here: http://guestlistapp.com/events/44742.

If you’ve never heard of TED or TEDx (we’ve had TEDx in Phoenix and Tempe so far), I urge you to check it out. These presentations are from the doers that are truly both capable of and actually changing our world.

For more information on the TEDxScottsdale event in April, like their Facebook page.

As millions of American and international fans sit and watch the most popular TV event of the year, featuring highly paid athletes who we treat like prima donnas, the most exciting and most talked about happening seldom occurs on the field. It happens between those times.

Len has a terrific take on the best ad from yesterday’s game and I fully agree. Any ad that can give people hope and give us a beat we can awkwardly nod our heads to is an absolute winner in my book. Not that I’m going to go out and buy a Chrysler tomorrow, but at the very least I have a renewed excitement for American-made automobiles from the manufacturing heart of our country.

This fairly traditional ad from a fairly traditional company did more for me than all other feel good ads combined (save for the Coke ad with the guys at the border) and made me proud to know a guy like Erik Proulx who is making a documentary about the Motor City. His film is a movie for the people, financed by the people and created by people just like you and me.

And then we have upstart startup GroupOn. Full of clever ad copy, great regional deals and a valuation with seemingly no ceiling, this Chicago-based company has taken the geek world by storm. GroupOn feels cheeky, irreverent and, even though they’re now many levels up on the net worth scale, like one of us.

But they’re not. They have absolutely lost touch with the people that made them as huge as they are, and somehow assumed that saving money is more important to people than pretending to care about social causes. For that, I unsubscribed to their service, but not with the huge weight of hypocrisy bearing down.

I bet most of us have no idea what’s happening in Tibet or in any other country that GroupOn managed to make light of last night. Hell, I’ve been following the Egypt saga and I still can’t figure out exactly what’s going on there. I’m a sadly uninformed American who has gotten really good at being offended without having any real reason to be angry.

Next time we claim to be offended, I hope each of us will actually take the time to find out why.