‘Stifling speech is a losing strategy with bloggers’

Salil Tripathi in the Far Eastern Economic Review:

“Most Indian businesses are growing accustomed to criticism from bloggers. Yet there are still some that, instead of mounting a PR offensive, send in their lawyers and try to stifle speech on the Internet. What they’re finding is that this approach is counterproductive—they may succeed in silencing an individual blogger, but a hundred more then take up the cause. Like Western companies before them, Indian companies must learn that trying to stifle speech instead of winning debates is a losing strategy.”

Read the full article: Learning to live with bloggers

Also read: Will NDTV and Barkha Dutt sue Facebook next?

Spread the news, Brabender is a good PR man

He sends out press releases for SummerSleds which work on grass and for Litecubes which glow in the dark. His most latest release is for Fish n’ Flush (in picture), a toilet fish tank designed to turn your bathroom into the most-talked-about room of the house. And, as if all that was surprising enough, his name is Todd Brabender.

All of 41 years of age and a former media person himself, Brabender is the kind of PR guy journalists hate to love—but love nevertheless. An old-fashioned press agent with newfangled powers.

“It’s all Todd, generating PR for us,” says David Parrish of AquaOne Technologies Inc., in Orange County, Calif. AquaOne designs leak-control hardware and uses a clear-plastic showroom toilet tank to display it. “We were standing around one day,” Parrish recalls, “and I said, ‘Wouldn’t it be fun if we had fish in it and you flushed it and the fish didn’t go down?’”

Read the full story: Are your clients happy now, Mr Brabender?