Holtz Communications + Technology

You gotta read Frank Barnako’s column today about the email pitch for an energy drink he received from Beverage Marketing USA President Richard Davis. The pitch included the email addresses of everybody else to whom it was sent—and there were hundreds—in the “To” line, including the likes of Andrea Koppel and Anderson Cooper.

Send it to the Bad Pitch Blog, Frank.

I’ve been waiting and waiting to make this public, and the time has finally come. No more hints. No more teasing. This is the real thing. I’m leaving the world of sole practitionership and independent consulting to join a startup that features a killer team of communicators and a laser-like focus on New Marketing.

The company is called crayon. The name derives from an…

I passed the mike around at the geek dinner convened at Big Daddy’s in Toronto. Participants were invited by AIMS—the Canadian Association for Internet Marketing and Sales—the night before I spoke at a meeting of the group. (I wrote about this last week and included a pic of Mitch Joel, Michael Seaton, ed Lee and David Jones.) Each participant offered a bit of…

Text 100, the first PR agency to establish a presence in Second Life, has done a masterful job explaining the virtual world’s potential for public relations in a machinima video it has uploaded to YouTube. The brief video covers everything from brand extensions and customer interaction with products to virtual meetings and presentations. I would hope anybody still doubting public relations’ role in…

Episode two of the new “Second Life Podcast” features an interview with new-media wizard Eric Rice that makes it easy to understand why Second Life is worth paying attention to. In Rice’s view, it’s not about a “second” life at all, but just an extension of this one, along the same lines as instant messaging. Chris Clarke and Owen Lystrup in particular ought to give this a…

Talk about a smart move. Caribou Coffee has turned a Starbucks gaffe into an opportunity to promote itself.

In case you missed the story, Starbucks hastily canceled a promotion it had launched to get people to try its iced coffees. A coupon for a free iced coffee was linked to an email Starbucks sent to employees to share with friends and family in…