Media Bullseye

Welcome to another edition of CustomScoop's PR Pod Jots, our weekly rundown of the best of the PR and marketing podosphere. If you're wondering why our title this week is a bit more salacious than usual, it's that our favorite Dunkin Donuts dwellers dedicated a portion of their podcast this week to discussing sex and marketing. Find out what they and everyone else has to say this week, after the jump.

Welcome to another edition of CustomScoop's PR Pod Jots, our weekly rundown of the best of the PR and marketing podosphere. If you're wondering why our title this week is a bit more salacious than usual, it's that our favorite Dunkin Donuts dwellers dedicated a portion of their podcast this week to discussing sex and marketing. Find out what they and everyone else has to say this week, after the jump.

I'm pleased to welcome Jason Falls to the program this week. Jason, Jennifer Zingsheim and I cover number of great topics, but I was especially interested in Jason's reaction to the Gina Trapani PR Spam Wiki incident that caught fire earlier this week. Also: Women in PR and social media; and Twitter featured in Business Week.

Spam stories interest me because I don't get as up in arms about spam in general the way so many do. Is spam annoying, intrusive, and sometimes downright offensive? Absolutely. Is there much we will ever be able to do to put a stop to it? Probably not. So can't we just try to get along while we work on it?

While PR traditionally works as a behind-the-scenes entity, Joe Thornley argues that the future of PR is in the spokesperson as the public face of the company, and as a public figure. Social media has forced that into being. Also: Finding an audience in the Tivo era, media databases and PR spam, that blasted Kindle and Zappos on Twitter.

A huge percentage of the blogs in my feed reader were buzzing about the story of Gina Trapani of Lifehacker choosing to publish a wiki of PR pros who have sent bad pitches to her personal email address. So, today's jots are dedicated to some of the reactions to this latest bloggers vs. flacks kerfuffle.

Online shoe retailer Zappos and CEO Tony Hsieh have developed a dedicated following online, particularly on popular microblogging platform Twitter. Soren Jacobsen delves into the company's culture, ideas on transparency, and customer service to discover how they became an online force to be reckoned with.

There are two camps on Twitter: those who follow back everyone that follows them, and those who are a bit more choosy. Mitch Joel (and myself, for what it's worth) falls into the second camp. Which one are you? Also: personal branding issues on social networks, and getting blog placements (or not).

As the New Communications Forum continues out in California, Geoff Livingston gives us a peek into one of the sessions. Shel Holtz presents on the importance of understanding employees as a big part of a company's brand. Also: how far is too far when dealing with online ethics; and is this the worst pitch ever?

Comcast made some major waves this week, responding to a customer service complaint in record time. Even more notable? The complaint originated on Twitter. The cable giant is actively scanning Twitter and other social media communities for customer service issues--why isn't everyone?