Jif is being proactive

You get this message when you go to the Jif Peanut Butter homepage at
http://www.jif.com/home.asp

A Special Thank You to Our Consumers:

The J.M. Smucker Company appreciates the trust consumers place in our
Jif® peanut butter brand and peanut butter products. We respect this
trust and are fully committed to ensuring that each jar of Jif® that
you open will be both safe and delicious.

Please be assured that our Jif®, Smucker's®, Adams® and Laura
Scudder's® grocery products are not involved in the PCA recalls.

The company wrote the following press release on January 19, 2009:

No products made by The J. M. Smucker Company are included in the Food
and Drug Administration recall of foodservice peanut butter and peanut
butter products. Our peanut butter products and brands are safe for
consumption, including Smucker's®, Jif®, Smucker's Uncrustables®,
Adams®, Laura Scudder's®, Eagle Brand® and Pillsbury® brands.

The J. M. Smucker Company does not purchase peanuts or any ingredients
from Peanut Corporation of America.

We are confident that our comprehensive product safety and quality
assurance policies and procedures, which include testing for the
presence of Salmonella, ensure the safety of all our products,
including our peanut butter and our products containing peanut butter.

Consumers may contact 1-800-283-8915 with any questions regarding this issue.

Alex Rodriguez apologizes

Alex Rodriguez apologized for taking banned substances. Today in PR
Cases we watched his apology on ESPN. He read the apology from a
script. Although I thought the apology sounded sincere, the students
felt he should have apologized without reading it. "He knows his
story. Why does he have to read it," they asked.

This video shows shows an analysis of an earlier apology by Rick
Cerrone, former PR director MLB's Commissioners office. "Let's hope
he's telling the truth now," said Cerrone. "That's the most important
thing he can do." Rodriguez also needs to do something to make up for
his mistake, says Cerrone.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eSivJn2C0nk

Superbowl advertising

At lot of the entertainment of the Superbowl is its commercials. Two
ads didn't get playtime, even though their sponsors were willing to
pay the $3 million for each spot. One for PETA, showed exotic women
in various stages of undress. They rubbed vegetables across their
barely clad bodies. "Vegetarians have better sex" was the message.
PETA uses shock to gets its message across. According to NBC, the
shock value of this ad "depicted a level of sexuality that exceeded
their standards."

The second ad that didn't make it to the Superbowl was pro-life.
Sponsored by the group CatholicVote in Chicago, the commercial
features a fetus, swelling violin music, and the message that if
Barack Obama's mother had aborted him we would not have had the first
African American president. (Some writers suggested that the ad
insinuated that Obama's mother would have aborted him had it been
legal. I didn't see that message in the ad.)

NBC made the right decision in banning both of these ads. Advocacy
ads didn't belong in the Superbowl. However, in banning them both ads
got press and coverage as well as viewers that might not have actually
seen them. So you be the judge. You can go to YouTube to see both
ads.

Day of Faith: Personal Quests

Day of Faith: Personal Quests for a Purpose - 3. Rachel Esplin from Harvard Hillel on Vimeo.

Get a Voki now!

Voki is a program that can be used for promotion. Have your character present a message. Change the message as often as you want.

Managing communication in crises is key to international relations

In 2008 terrorists killed 200 hundred people in an attack in Mumbai,
India. According to Harjiv Singh, "Mumbai was not only an
intelligence failure but, in some ways, a much more damaging failure
of managing communication in a crisis. The nearly 17 hours that it
took the government to formulate a response clearly highlighted the
lack of understanding of the practice of crisis communication and
generally an understanding of how to communicate."

In today's world perceptions matter, writes Singh. A generation ago
India lacked linkages to the outside world, but today the increase of
mass media, particuarly on the Internet, make it important for a
country "to proactively manage their brand and reputation."

India needs to persuade other nations that its interests are their
interests. According to Singh, "The key to this is that we need to
understand how our brand and reputation are impacted by our ability to
effectively communicate our messages to the world, both in times of
crises and otherwise. Audiences and news are no longer local. We are a
Google away from finding out the latest breaking news, or a Twitter
away from a mobile alert of a breaking event in any part of the world.
The disaggregation of the global media industry and audiences that
began with the advent of the Internet has accelerated with new
technologies such as the mobile phone."

This proliferation of the Internet has created a "global audience"
which makes it even more important to communicate in a crisis.

Read Singh's whole article at
http://www.livemint.com/2009/01/21215222/Managing-India8217s-image.html?h=B

Ketchum develops crisis Survival Kit

Ketchum network, with presence in 50 countries has drafted a series of best practices lines in crisis communication, gathered in a Survival Kit. It's this document and the companies expertise in the area of crisis management that has allowed it to expand into countries such as Greece and Romania. See the complete story in the Wall Street Journal.