Mark Hurd’s out at HP, but why?

The week before last tech industry giant Hewlett-Packard announced its CEO, Mark Hurd, had resigned.  A little digging revealed that he had falsified an expense report–clearly a transgression, but the consensus in the industry seems to be that it should not have cost him his job.  A little more digging reveled a claim of sexual harassment. 

Nonetheless, it was still just a claim.

This post from Engage PR, a boutique tech-focused agency in the bay area, breaks down a couple other factors to consider when evaluating the strategy of this announcement. 

• Announcement came on a Friday afternoon
• The New York Times “blamed” the PR firm in the lede of its story
• HP needs to control the message by being proactive
• Part of being proactive is telling the whole story up front, lest you become a PR grease fire

Disclaimer: I wrote this post for my new agency’s blog. Rather than duplicating content here, I extracted my main points here and linked to the full post.  Comment there if you wish, but this post is intended solely to spark discussion here on the PRSA-YP blog.

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Social Media Business Case Studies

We’ve all had it beaten into our heads that we need to use social media as a platform for advancing the business goals of our clients, but what does that really mean?  How do we integrate these platforms into business plans?  How do we track results?

While this emerging ecosystem of digital media is like a wild west land grab with miles of open space and no rules, some companies have carved out strategies that have set their brands apart in this largely untamed frontier.

Social media/marketing/business blog Penn-Olson has compiled a number of real-world case studies in which businesses have leveraged these platforms successfully.

Read the full article here, and think about how you can take bits and pieces of this to drive your own clients’ brands.  Let us know what you think!