If there was to be a publicity hall of fame for greatest stunts ever, Sacha Baron Cohen would absolutely have a place for some of his various shticks.  This weekend, at the medal ceremony at the Arab Shooting Championships in Kuwait, Cohen’s version of the national anthem (from Borat) played – instead of the real one.  Naturally, Kazakhstan officials (where Borat was banned) were very upset, and the foreign ministry said that the incident “is, of course, a scandal and demands a thorough investigation, which we intend to conduct.”

I’d imagine that someone checked Google for the national anthem and this came up and they didn’t bother to check if it was real (and how many would know what the real anthem sounds like anyway?). The clip is hilarious (and looks like a scene that would appear in Borat), with the Kazaki medal winner listening to lyrics like: “Kazakhstan, greatest country in the world/All other countries are run by little girls….Kazakhstan, Kazakhstan, you very nice place, from plains of tarashenk to northern fence of jewtown.”

Of course with Cohen and his gimmicks you never know if he was somehow behind this, and with his new movie, The Dictator taking place in the Middle East, maybe this was another one of his shticks. This PR agency owner says Cohen is a genius.

Ronn Torossian

5WPR

Donald Trump is someone who always has great quotes, and two of his quotes really resonate with me:
“If you love what you do, you will work harder.” “The harder you work, the luckier you will get.”

Two recent arrivals to New York City are people who really epitomize both of these quotes and they are hard, driving ideological successes – Tim Tebow and Jeremy Lin. One of the greatest things of owning 5WPR is the mix of great people we get to interact with- and a few I spoke with or met within the last 48 hours epitomize successful entrepreneurship:

• Ed Mermelstein – Best Real Estate attorney in NY, the lawyer for the oligarchs in US (Russian Lawyer in NY) – By far youngest attorney named to Observer Lawyers You Call List
• Mark Schulhof, CEO of Quadriga Art – Tremendously driven to succeed for clients in all aspects of direct marketing and other arenas
• Michael Malik – leading entrepreneur and developer from Detroit – Self-made multi-multi millionaire – almost 60 years old he is nonstop movement and energy
• Mark Birnbaum – Nightclub impresario of EMM Group.  Chances are if you go out in NYC, you have visited his venues, whether Abe & Arthurs, Catch, TenJune or elsewhere – and in his mid 30’s, he’s just getting started

I love it every day.

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Amongst the holding company owners, one of my favorite people, both personally and professionally has always been Lord Chadlington – aka Peter Gummer. The founder of Weber Shandwick, the largest PR agency in the world, Chadlington today runs Huntsworth, one of the largest publicly traded communication companies in the world.  We have spent time together and I never left not learning a tremendous amount – and thoroughly enjoying myself.

Courtesy of Odwyer’s PR I learned today of a speech he recently gave at the Public Relations World Congress, and of characteristics he looks for in his  senior employees and just had to share it:

• “I want that aura of certainty which comes when you are sitting with the client chief executive and he feels that you have been there before and that this is your rightful place. A person cannot be “tongue-tied” or appear “out of depth.”
• I agree. So much of Public Relations is understanding business – and being smart.

• “Digital is the great opportunity for the next ten years.” PR people are “content specialists” and “must think digital first and analogue second.”
• PR is about creating content and managing communications – in whatever format it is, whether digital, online or off.

• Chadlington hires PR pros who are confident but not arrogant – people who can write and speak yet argue coherently and persuasively. They can “put forward a case at the highest client level and be strong enough to know and admit when you have got it wrong.”

• Someone who succeeds in PR must understand “travel, unsocial hours, managing family and personal commitments.”
• Public Relations is a business for the young & young at heart.  Its non stop urgency and always moving. Not an easy lifestyle and especially working at a PR firm anyone who works in PR has to love their job to be great at it.

• In every meeting I have ever had with Peter, he has spoken of hunger and passion and his speech says employees must be “for success and driven by the desire to do a great job and make money for the client, agency and himself.”
• He’s absolutely right – goes back to business and understanding business. Passion counts.

• People must be able to “create order out of disorder”, and “trust and loyalty are paramount.”
• Winning in PR is about constant problem-solving.

Thank you to the brilliant Lord Chadlington for these comments – they will be taken very seriously by all of us at 5WPR.

Ronn Torossian

Credit Coca-Cola with a great PR stunt with their plans to put Coke ads in Chinese on the rotating courtside signs at Madison Square Garden. Obviously it’s a blatant (and brilliant) exploitation of Jeremy Lin – and Coke gets the association without even having to sign Lin to an endorsement deal and pay him.

It’s a traditional case of added publicity with an ad buy – as clearly MSG isn’t the place to reach a high volume of consumers who read Chinese – it’s a chance to get tons of free publicity around an advertising buy.  The ads wont be up more than a few months maximum – and the cost of the ad buys has already likely been recouped with all of the free publicity they have received already.

As a Coke spokesperson said “Given that the NBA is a global association for our company and that we do a lot of cross-cultural marketing around the NBA, we agreed.”

She also could have said “It’s a great stunt, sure to get us a ton of free media coverage, and we can be mentioned in a ton of articles about Jeremy Lin, and not pay him. It’s a brilliant PR stunt.”  I would have agreed had she said that.

Ronn Torossian

5WPR