The Top Ten College
Pranks of All Time

The staff at the Museum of Hoaxes studied hundreds, if not thousands, of examples of the genre of the college prank to find the ten most worthy of immortal fame. The pranks were judged according to three criteria: creativity, fame, and shock value.

I found this list out there on the web and thought it was so clever/funny, I wanted to share it.  My favorite is pretty sick but it's "#10: Bonsai Kittens" What's your favorite?

As Coyne’s resident mommy blogger, I have a unique perspective about how to communicate with this hugely popular and ever-growing demographic. According to Katie Couric, who contributes to the New York City Moms Blog, 36 million women read or write a blog every week. Mommy bloggers are among the most politically active online groups as well, with more than 46% having contributed to a cause or a campaign. Combine that with the fact that moms spend more than two trillion dollars on their children annually, and it’s no wonder corporations are infiltrating the mommy blogosphere at warp speed.

I started my personal blog in 2004 as a means to share stories and pictures of my sons with family and friends who didn’t live nearby. My traffic has always been modest because I rarely write anything of particular interest to anyone outside my inner circle. It wasn’t until I became a contributor to the New Jersey Moms Blog, a sister site to the Silicon Valley Moms Blog, that I fully understood the magnitude of mommy blog networks. As someone who writes for a site that gets tens of thousands of visitors and attracts lots of attention from PR agencies, I get a sneak peek into how other companies communicate with mommy bloggers. The invitations and product review requests come in at a dizzying pace, and as more and more companies discover the power of mommy blogging, there’s no sign of slowing down.

I’ve also discovered a unique and tight-knit relationship between mainstream media and mommy bloggers. As the bond between mainstream and new media continues to strengthen, it’s essential for PR professionals to recognize and respond to the evolution. For example, the network I belong to includes some heavy hitters in broadcasting as well as reporters from high-profile print outlets. Additionally, mainstream media frequently reach out to mommy bloggers to find interview sources for parenting stories. In fact, shortly after writing a post about dads who refer to watching their kids as "babysitting" a reporter from MSNBC called and interviewed us about the topic. It was thrilling to be on the receiving end of a media phone call for once!

Need more proof that mommy bloggers are gaining clout with the mainstream media? Click below to view Katie Couric's video blog entry made exclusively for the Silicon Valley Moms Group.

 

The past five years working for Coyne PR have been unbelievable. I am convinced that I have the best job and work for the best company...possibly in the world. To start: My office atmosphere is relaxed and friendly. My colleagues are insanely creative and encouraging - by far, the best in the PR industry. Not once have I ever been reprimanded by my managers - they are ridiculously cool. The president/CEO is one of the most generous people I know. On top of that, he is mind-blowingly hilarious! (He is probably the only CEO to get genuinely upset when people aren’t drinking enough at the Holiday Party!) On top of all that, I handle an account that is PERFECT for me. I am a huge music fan. I love it all - you name it - pop, rap, blues, hippy stuff, classic rock, alternative rock, soft rock AND (here comes the nerdy PR line), of course, Hard Rock. There are not many people that can say what I’m about to say. I love my job. OK, that being said, I’m now going to tell you just why my job is so much cooler than yours! About four years ago, Coyne won the Hard Rock account and we started with projects here and there, maybe a few local cafe events. Every once in a while, a big artist or celebrity would perform or appear at a Hard Rock Cafe and I’d be working the event. There was the Jersey Girl premiere party in New York. The Foxwoods cafe opening, where I was mingling with The Sopranos, Juliette Lewis and Jada Pinkett Smith. There was also Howard Stern’s Sirius launch party in New York with the entire crew from the show, even the Wack Pack. For being only a year or two out of college, I thought I was pretty damn cool! Little did I know, four years later, I would turn out to be so much cooler than I thought I was when I started!! Working on the Hard Rock account has been unbelievable. I have seen legendary artists like Motley Crue and Aerosmith perform for a crowd of less than 500 people. I have been backstage when A-list artists, like The Edge from U2, are onstage. I have shaken the extremely shaky hand of Ozzy Osbourne, the "Godfather of Heavy Metal." I was at the world premiere of one of Melissa Etheridge’s albums. I was at the 50th Anniversary of the GRAMMYs, watching Tina Turner sing "Proud Mary." Like I said before - UNBELIEVABLE! If this stuff isn’t cool enough, the past 2-3 years with Hard Rock have definitely been the best. Each summer, I get the chance to go to London for Hard Rock Calling, a two-day concert festival in Hyde Park with some of the best bands and artists in the world. In 2006 at Hard Rock Calling, I was front and center for performances by Roger Waters and The Who (Baba O’Reily - hell ya!). One of my favorite moments was when I was walking backstage with Rita Gilligan, the original Hard Rock Cafe waitress from 1971, who served a ton of rock stars in her day. All of a sudden, we hear "Rita, Rita!" I turn around and Pete F-ING Townshend comes running out of his trailer to say hi to Rita. This was about the time that I had to pick my chin up off of the floor. Then, in summer 2007, Johnny Gogo and I traveled to Hyde Park in London again. This time, the headliners were Peter Gabriel on the first day and Aerosmith on the next, along with a dozen other bands. Hard Rock had also brought DMC of Run DMC to London as one of their special guests. As soon as DMC arrived, rumors of an Aerosmith/DMC "Walk This Way" reunion started swirling around the U.K., and, as any respectable publicists would, we started pitching this to the U.S. media until word spread to Steven Tyler himself. One hour before Aerosmith was set to perform on the final night of the festival, Steven Tyler called DMC into the band’s green room and said "Let’s do this." "What happened next?" you ask. An amazing, surprise, impromptu, finale performance of "Walk This Way" by Aerosmith and DMC - their first performance together in more than two decades - and my team played a big role in making it happen. Like I said two times before - UNBELIEVABLE! Ok, so, if you’re not convinced yet, here is the defining moment where I truly realized how much cooler my job is than yours. On June 28 and 29, 2008, we make our way one more time to Hard Rock Calling in Hyde Park, which proved to be the best one yet. One of the cool things about this year was that I arranged for a crew from MTV U.S. to fly out and cover the weekend’s events. Every PR person has their one greatest "hit" - and this is definitely mine. Saturday’s back-to-back all-star lineup included Robert Randolph, Jason Mraz, Sheryl Crow and John Mayer, followed by guitar god Eric Clapton. (I try to act like I’m cool and not star struck, but when Eric Clapton walked by me backstage, I almost passed out.) Later, Jennifer Aniston even showed up to watch her boyfriend John Mayer rock the stage. To top it all off, Eric Clapton, Sheryl Crow, John Mayer and Robert Randolph joined together for a finale performance of Clapton’s hit "Crossroads" in front of 50,000 screaming fans (which included me). Sunday’s lineup was no disappointment either, with concerts by The Bangles and KT Tunstall, followed by The Police’s final concert ever in the U.K. Also, when The Police started playing "Roxanne," John and I were playing the "Roxanne" beer chugging game against our client! ENOUGH SAID.... My job is cooler than yours. If you still don’t believe me, watch this clip from MTV....

The Los Angeles Times' Top of the Ticket blog has an interesting comment on Obama's response to the New Yorker cartoon supposedly satirizing his image, saying that while he had the right impluse to decline commenting on it because he thought it was trivial, that message didn't come across until he said it on a Larry King Live interview two days after the story hit. By then, spokespeople for both the McCain and Obama campaigns had released statements denouncing the magazine cover, which featured no caption but an article focusing on Obama's early political career in Chicago. The blog points out this late response as a major PR gaffe, because it drove press to the cartoon instead of dampening the story:

If the cover is so tasteless and offensive, why purposely call it to the attention of millions of Americans with a strong denunciation on an otherwise slow news Sunday afternoon? It turned a mere magazine cover that the Obama campaign would rather no one see into a must-see for millions. Say, the magazine prints a million copies. A million covers. But there are nearly 305 million Americans.

But as a result of the campaign-induced uproar, that image has now been reproduced and received countless millions more voter impressions than the magazine itself could ever dream of. It's been viewed hundreds of thousands of times already just on this blog. And, by the way, what was the Obama campaign doing calling the magazine, trying to get an apology, or intimidate someone?

[...]

Ignoring the magazine would have been ideal. But if that's not possible, what if  [Bill] Burton [his communications director] had made himself available -- that's not hard to do with reporters circling like hawks -- waited for the inevitable New Yorker question and said something like, "C'mon, guys. It's a magazine cover, for Pete's sake. A cartoon. They think it's satire. It's a free country. It's sure not funny. We think there are far more important issues to put on the cover of a magazine, like the looming mortgage crisis that the Bush administration and its McCain cronies have ignored so long."

[...]

Without an explosive response, that magazine cover story would have been a minor one-day story in far fewer places than it was. In fact, even assuming the McCain camp's denunciation was genuine, both campaigns joining in added more gasoline to the fire, which to be honest doesn't exactly hurt McCain's cause. It sure got all the chatter off the Phil Gramm whiner stuff quickly, an Obama gift to the GOP.

Would that really have worked? Controversial political stories and provocative magazine covers have a way of grabbing attention and sticking around for a bit. It's interesting to note that while Obama didn't want to release his statement his advisors felt someone had to, and ended up releasing a statement that didn't exactly jibe with the message the candidate wanted to send. But even if Obama had ignored the cover, this is a story that bloggers would pick up and it would slowly burn its way to the mainstream media. How does one deal with a situation when responding would only bring negative attention? Many times the absence of a comment is seen as damming, even if the story is more complicated than that, and a long explanation would only make it worse. I don't think this is as big a gaffe as the blog makes it out to be, but his response time and style is something to watch, especially when added to what may look to be delayed responses to the Jeremiah Wright fiasco and those persistant internet rumors.