Edelman PR

RTE reports on the changes to GAA Championship Sponsorship. Neither of the current sponsors, Bank of Ireland (Football) and Guinness (Hurling), will have naming rights to either Championship. Instead, the GAA will move to a Champions League format with the branding rights split between three organisations for each competition, resulting in a total of six sponsors. The net result will be that the GAA’s sponsorship income will increase to approximately 6.5 million euro per annum. It remains to be seen whether either of the current sponsors will remain on board. Earlier in the year the GAA were criticised for the delay on announcing the new sponsorship format.

In addition to the shakeup to its sponsorship rights, the GAA looks set to benefit from the competition for the TV rights to the next three years of Gaelic Games. The Irish Independent reported last week that Setanta, TV3 and RTE all meet with the GAA in recent days. The article claims that industry sources estimate that the TV rights could be worth as much as 120 million euro. The figure sound quite reasonable given that earlier in the week it was revealed that RTÉ Television beat all dedicated sports channels drawing a massive audience of 1.603 million viewers for its GAA Championship coverage over the weekend.

An article in the Sunday Independent about the CEO salaries paid by two leading Irish charities underlines the importance of transparency for charitable organisations in Ireland due to public concerns about where their donation goes.

Bubble Hits is abandoning its ‘no commercials’ business strategy according to the Irish Independent. While the article highlights that the station made a loss in its first year, the Irish Times pointed out later in the week in The Ticket that the stations format is going to be exported to a number of different countries.

In other news, Damien Mulley reveals that the Irish Independent has started blogging.

Edward Fidgeon-Kavanagh discusses an interesting report on the effect of advertising on children by Stanford College researcher Dr Tom Robinson. “The study concentrated in particular on the brand strength and effective marketing of fast food giant McDonald’s, and the effect it had on the participant’s perception on the taste of the food presented to them.In the study, over 60 children between the ages of 3 and 5 years of age were presented with fries, burgers, apple juice and carrots some accompanied by McDonald’s packaging and some in plain blank packaging. Bearing in mind the products were completely identical it was interesting to see that the children far preferred the “McDonald’s’s” food to its plain equivalent across the board.”

Mediaforum.ie reports that John Horgan has been appointed as Ireland’s first Press Ombudsman. The statement from the Press Council states that “the key function of the new Press Ombudsman will be to investigate and adjudicate complaints made by members of the public against newspapers and magazines. A new Code of Practice has been agreed by the press industry, and this code will be the framework against which all complaints are considered.” Discussing the appointment, Cian Ginty points out that the Press Ombudsman “should be able to take complaints about the print media in Ireland from November. Members of the public with still be asked to contact newspapers or magazines first. If unsatisfied, the next step will be to contact the Office of the Press Ombudsman, only major complaints or complaints unsatisfied at ombudsmen level will be passed on to the Press Council of Ireland. The ombudsman will have no powers to fine newspapers only to make them publish his decision.“

Finally, a number of media outlets reported on Wiki Scanner. John Collins points out in the Irish Times (subscription required) that the tool’s creator Virgil Griffith’s aim was “to create minor public relations disasters for companies and organisations I dislike“, and “to see what ‘interesting organisations’ (which I am neutral towards), are up to“. Reporting on the story, Silicon Republic state that the tool claims to”unveil the identities of organisations who have changed Wikipedia entries lists the Vatican, the CIA and the BBC among those whose computers allegedly were used to access and change details on various topics including Tony Blair and George W. Bush.”

Technorati Tags: Bubble Hits, Cian Ginty, Damien Mulley, Edelman, GAA, Irish Independent, Irish Times, John Horgan, Mediaforum, PR, Press Council, Public Relations, RTE, Wikiscanner

This entry was posted on Monday, August 20th, 2007 at 7:20 am and is filed under Links, Trends. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.