“Attn: BP Employees- Office supplies do not belong to you. Please have some respect for other people’s property. #bpcares” is just one of the more than 400 scathingly funny barbs the prankster has posted over the past three months. On the day the cap was finally put in place, the author wrote, “Well, that wasn’t so hard.”

@BPGlobalPR has amassed a following 10 times larger than @BP_America, which is the oil company’s real Twitter account. What’s more, it now overwhelms BP’s real Twitter presence in search results.

This isn’t the only case in which Twitter squatters have embarrassed major brands. @ATT_Wireless_PR is doing the same thing with less success, at least so far. We discuss what challenges this creates for public relations departments and debate whether the world needs an independent authority to regulate user IDs as well as domains.

Play:

Download (right click and save) : http://gillin.com/Podcasts/MB-105.mp3

Scott Monty left a job at the conversation monitoring agency Crayon in 2008 to take on the challenge of helping the Ford Motor Co. reinvigorate its image with new media. In the intervening 14 months, the US auto industry has undergone a near meltdown, but Ford has escaped the carnage that drove rival General Motors into bankruptcy.

Monty is Ford’s ubiquitous online presence, with over 30,000 followers on Twitter alone. Among the initiatives he’s worked on is The Ford Story, a multimedia showcase of Ford’s work in fuel efficiency, design and engineering innovation. As he notes in this podcast, Ford has been rewarded for its openness by being hailed as a leader in social media adoption.

Monty manages to find time to tend to his popular blog, but has had to set aside, temporarily at least, another labor of love: His fascination with all things Sherlock Holmes. With the first new Holmes movie in years set for release this fall, now’s a good time to follow Scott Monty.

Click the arrow below to listen now 

Or download the podcast (22:18)

You can download and listen to the podcast here.

Download the podcast (13:52) (right-click to save)

Krista Gleason

Eastman Kodak Company has been transforming itself from a maker of film-based products into a comprehensive maker of imaging products and services. With a growing line of digital photography, output and online services, the company has been trying to remake its image through multiple channels, including social media.

Kodak maintains blogs devoted to products, photography and the business of graphic communications. It’s also active on YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and other direct-to-the-customer channels. The social media conversations are based on contributions from some 70 corporate bloggers, who provide a constant stream of information about the company, its markets and its customers. Krista Gleason joined the company a year ago after a career in government and she is learning to apply blogging to the company’s public relations efforts. In this interview, she talks about how Kodak manages multiple blogs, chooses people to represent it online and the remarkable freedom it provides its staff bloggers to write about what they choose.

Listen to the podcast (11:30) Right-click and save to download

David has been writing for The New York Times, among other outlets. He tells the story of a Dutch auto company that ignored his repeated requests for an interview. Why a small company would turn down an opportunity to be featured in one of the world’s most important newspapers befuddles him. Paul has had similar experiences recently. Has traditional media lost that much luster? Paul and David doubt it. They think the level of PR professionalism is sinking.

Stick around for outtakes at the end of this program.

Download the podcast (19:10)

Download the podcast (13:39)

Shel Israel

When Paul and David were reporters working for major tech publications, they used to occasionally get pitches from a PR guy named Shel Israel. Israel’s been around the business a long time and knows the ins and outs of pitching reporters. He also understood very early that the rules were changing and that power and influence were moving into the hands of individuals.

In early 2006, Israel teamed up with superblogger Robert Scoble to publish Naked Conversations, the first book to dramatize the increasingly powerful effects that bloggers were having on markets. The book’s success catapulted Israel into the category of industry thought leader. Suddenly, people like David and Paul were calling up asking to interview him!

Which is precisely what they did for this episode. In an interview set up via the great democratizing agent called Twitter, our hosts spent a half hour with Shel Israel talking about the continuing evolution of markets into conversations. In a session that really is more conversation than interview, Israel spoke about the impact that Naked Conversations has had on his career, but more importantly about the changes that social media are engendering in the public relations field. It’s not a matter of if PR pros should engage with online influencers, he said, it’s a matter of how quickly they can rush to learn the new rules.

Shel Israel is brash, funny and very opinionated. This half-hour clip should give you an indication of why he’s become such a prominent voice in new media.

Download the podcast (30:58)

Download the podcast (15:00)

Jason Calacanis

This week Paul and David discuss some of the strategies that serial entrepreneur Jason Calacanis mentions in his subscriber-only mailing list (note: our recording is mistaken about where to find it) about PR strategies that have resonated with him. As he says in his post:
 
“You don’t need a PR firm, you don’t need an in-house PR person and you don’t need to spend ANY money to get amazing PR. You don’t need to be connected, and you don’t need to be a ‘name brand.’”
 
He talks about how you can be the brand, and be totally involved in what your company is doing. And always pick up the dinner check. They also talk about others who have succeeded in garnering positive press for little dough. Two jeers this week for Konica Minolta printers from David and Gannett’s reaction to the Gannett blog from Paul.

You can download and listen to the podcast here.