Other times, there are just so many things you read online that make you think that Sparky should either jump on the tracks, or that we need to reserve a bunch of seats for people today. So, just wave to today’s passengers, and don’t get too close – it might be catchy!

First on board: Arizona State University. The University has a pretty good business school. It’s not top 10, but it does quite well for itself. But, apparently it has decided to target online universities in its latest billboard advertising campaign – the Phoenix metro area is home to both ASU and University of Phoenix – with a statement to get a “real MBA” that implies the online MBAs aren’t worth anything.

This made no sense – when you make comparisons, you compare up, not down. But, being a Wildcat, I thought I was being too harsh, so I asked a friend who does development for the business school at the University of Chicago. After she stopped laughing – and choking – she confirmed my thought: always compare up, to give yourself a sense of worth and class. Get comfy in that chair on the Cluelesstrain for that ad campaign.

Second on board: TiVo

In my past PR lives, I have worked on reviewer programs. And, during that time, reporters asked us if they could purchase the products. And, since these products were part of our review group, we said that they could after – and wrote down their name in a handy-dandy Word spreadsheet, with their request. Nice and simple, as we kept that spreadsheet database to know when reporters and analysts were sent product, when they were due back, and when we called them for follow-up and to ensure everything was running well.

TiVo might want to think of setting something up like that, instead of their mass email to reporters. According to an article in TVPredictions.com, “TiVo sent an e-mail to journalists on Friday saying they could get a special $200 discount on the new TiVo-Humax Digital Video Recorder.

However, a TiVo spokesman told TVPredictions.com on Monday that the special price was not intended to influence the media’s coverage of the company.”

C/Net also picked up on the story. Not fun for TiVo, who is a company in transition and didn’t need this type of press. Plus, it’s not hard to create tables in Word.

The third seat is nice and warm for NexTag. NexTag, a shopping comparison site that is a distant competitor to Shopping.com and PriceGrabber – and let’s not even forget Froogle and the next generation Become.com – had a nice write-up in the San Jose Mercury News.

All which was ruined by the publicist for NexTag and his mouth. In the article …

the fast-talking Chouteau, who carries purple shades on his head. “I wanted to blow the doors off. I told them, `I could lie, cheat and steal a little bit for you, you know?’ ”

So, all the goodwill built up in the story is ruined because a publicist either thought he was off the record – which any good PR person knows does not exist – or he lacks a filter. Either way, NexTag gets a call for the Cluelesstrain.

The two last seats on today’s train are for an unknown LA company and Jean Chatzky. In the LACP Newsletter, there’s a Q&A with a person asking a question that no PR manager has the right to ask:

I just started a new PR job as a manager and am having a frustrating time building rapports with trade media. Nobody ever responds to my press releases and my phone calls are never returned. What can I do?

If you have reached the plateau of PR manager, you should know what to do. It’s as simple as that. Company X – shame on you for not vetting out a competent PR person, or getting what you pay for. Sit down.

Now, Jean is a great expert in finance – and she’s a Michigander, and we all know they rock. But, she gets a one-stop trip on the Cluelesstrain for part of her answer in a recent column for the Today page on MSNBC.

The reader asks, “I really want to be a stay-at-home mom. At the same time, I need to make some money! Are there any legitimate stay-at-home jobs?”

Part of Jean’s answer is “for example, if you have great communications skills, perhaps you could take on a public relations client or two from home.” Yep, PR is just that simple – you have a phone, a computer, you’re a “people person” and you too can do PR! Jean must work with PR people occasionally, but it appears she does not respect them. That’s just sad.

Hope you enjoyed this week’s ride!

Jeremy Pepper is the CEO and founder of POP! Public Relations, a public relations firm based in Arizona, USA.

He authors the popular Musings from POP! Public Relations blog which offers Jeremy’s opinions and views – on public relations, publicity and other things.

… jumped the shark with the Business Week article – this is pretty cool to me.

For the Target manager/senior manager of media relations job for Target, one of the requirments is “Strong knowledge for Internet journalism, e.g., blogs” – think about that for a minute.

The fact that one of the largest retailers in the country – and, personally a favorite of mine – is doing this is quite interesting. Think of all the online shopping that goes on at Target.com, the past issues with Amazon/Target and the items for sale. Now, they are actually proactively looking for someone to deal with blogs, including the crisis communications that is sometimes needed when things are unleashed in the blogosphere.

This is a major shift in corporate awareness, understanding that online media and blogging are part of the communications mix, and need to be tracked, monitored, and yes, responded to sometimes. Let me reiterate that – Target is not buying the cluelesstrain pitch that blogging practices need to be separate, but rather is looking for a PR person that understands blogs, how to track them, and how to work within the blogosphere.

And, well, the person has to be a PR person with other PR experience. From the ad, it looks like Target stills want the other skill sets that have always been sought, but just want that added expertise to be in the mix for their new hire.

A round of applause for Target. And, a round of applause to Robert French, who likely has had to deal with the doubters, the nay-sayers and the cynics (and, well, just the cranky academia) when he made his Auburn students blog.

One downside: I bet Target gets a TON of bloggers with no PR experience applying, because, well, PR is easy and anyone can do it (eyeroll).

Jeremy Pepper is the CEO and founder of POP! Public Relations, a public relations firm based in Arizona, USA.

He authors the popular Musings from POP! Public Relations blog which offers Jeremy’s opinions and views – on public relations, publicity and other things.

Then, in 2001, the train pulled into the Homeland Security Practice station. In 2002, the station was the Sarbanes-Oxley Practice. The Cluelesstrain is tired, but thankfully it has a stop in the Blogging Practice station for the next year.

Engineer Jeremy is here to help you understand the point: just like most agencies dropped online practices in 2000, and Homeland Security and Sarbanes-Oxley practices disappeared the following years, Blogging Practices will be either swallowed up or killed in the next year.

Here is why. Most firms realized that the differences between online and print media was moot. If the online team pitched a WSJ.com reporter, but the article showed up in the Wall Street Journal, who took the credit? Sadly, some agencies still split the practices, but most agencies get that an integrated campaign – online, print, and blogs – makes the most sense. As for Sarbanes-Oxley and Homeland Security practices, the pratices had short shelf lives.

I have posted about this in the past: the inanity of blogging practices, but it came up again for a few reasons. Recently, Holmes Report reported the launch of MS&L Hass Blogworks. Unlike the MWW Cluelesstrain Blogging practice, at least MS&L Hass has blogging experience with GM’s Fastlane Blog, and the firm is planning to launch its own blog.

But, shouldn’t this practice just be part of the overall integrated campaign? Did they really need to spin it off with its own cutesy name?

Another passenger on today’s train is Denver-based XStatic Public Relations. I came across its press release announcing a blogging service. In fact, the first line of the press release touts:

As the number of Internet Weblogs surpasses 4 million, Xstatic Public Relations, a Denver-based communications agency, has added blog relations to its list of services for companies looking to share company information and manage their reputations online.

How hard would it have been to verify the number of blogs being tracked? They could have easily gone to Steve Rubel’s post on IceRocket revamping its blog search engine, and found out how many blogs are being tracked by IceRocket (10MM), Technorati (9MM) and PubSub (9.5MM). When I did call the firm to ask where they got the 4 million figure from, I mentioned Technorati. The site’s name was met with silence.

A special seat near the conductor, though, is saved for the Big Blog Company. The company

is a place where you go to get a blog for your company, for your project or just for fun. If you want to engage your customers, show off your expertise, tell your side of the story, handle a PR crisis, or make your web-presence a walk in the park, let us give you a hand.

So, what they do is do blogs for corporations. Just like the good, ol’ days during the dot-com era where you couldn’t throw a stick without hitting a Web/Internet consultant. They get the special seat, though, for claiming to be blog experts, and then refusing to be transparent in a post on supposedly a PR firm setting up fake blogs. The first thing that PR bloggers tell a client that wants to blog is ABT – Always Be Transparent. If the firm consulting on blogs can’t be transparent, how can they hold the clients tothat level of honesty?

There are some tickets being held for this Cluelesstrain – for Blogging Planet and for Steve Rubel – just in case I need to give them out.

In their interviews, both Lord Chadlington (EU and UK) and Jeffrey Sharlach (Latin America) noted that blogs are very US-centric, and that is why, while their firms are aware of them, they have not been been actively targeting blogs.

That is why Blogging Planet has not yet been given their ticket for the Cluelesstrain. Blogging Planet is concentrating on the EU and the UK. Most of that market is still very young – maybe even immature – when it comes to blogging. Blogging Planet has at least a two year lead time, and in that time can build a nice business.

In the past, I wrote about CooperKatz launching Micropersuasion as a separate practice. A comment by Rubel on his anniversary post made me wonder, though, if Micropersuasion might be leaving CooperKatz as a whole, and just becoming a blogging consulting firm. Maybe I’m reading into his comment – Thanks everyone. Stay close for some big news in the coming weeks – but it does make you wonder. I’ll hold onto his ticket until he announces his news.

On a side note, recently, someone that I respect brought up an issue, that some of my posts could be construed as anti-agency. No, it’s more an anti-stupidity, hence the launch of the cluelesstrain. If I were anti-agency, I would not be using to interview the top PR people in the world, who tend to either be with firms, or founders of firms.

Now, if “yo hablo espanol” or “falo Portugues” I would be targeting Jeffrey Sharlach to hire POP! PR as a blog consulting firm for his clients in Latin America – showing my love for the agency life….

Jeremy Pepper is the CEO and founder of POP! Public Relations, a public relations firm based in Arizona, USA.

He authors the popular Musings from POP! Public Relations blog which offers Jeremy’s opinions and views – on public relations, publicity and other things.

We’ve all heard or read about the Cluetrain. It’s a very big, hot-button term for the blogosphere. It’s a holdover from the dotcom era – check out the Wikipedia post on it – and pretty much part of the famous buzzword bingo.

Go to any Web 2.0 style conference, and you will be sure to hear at least half the companies use a bunch of buzzwords that have no real meaning. Think longtail, and you can develop your own Web 2.0 drinking game.

So, in honor of the Cluetrain, I have decided to debut the . All aboard, as I pull back the curtain on clueless issues.

The first cluelesstrain leaving the station is this week’s New York Times article on blogs. And, no, it’s not the New York Times that needs to get a clue – it’s the bloggers that have attacked the paper of record.

BL Ochman asks why it took the NYT so long to write on bloggers being fired, and asked her readers to send in other instances of the mainstream press following bloggers.

Steve Rubel jumps in and links to her post. Shame on Rubel for not taking a stance, but he is bringing attention to Ochman’s post.

I sent in a comment to BL to post on her blog, which has yet to see the light of day. BL chooses to moderate comments to her posts. So there are instances where my comments have not made it up onto her posts. In the era of blog transparency – and PR transparency – either post comments or don’t post comments. Don’t be arbitrary about it.

Ochman is criticizing the New York Times for actually calling and interviewing the people involved, rather than ranting about EFF and other crap. So, she’s criticizing the NYT for responsible journalism. Let’s attack responsibility – and have journalists act more like bloggers. It would make for better reading, and well, the legal teams at the papers would get more work.

As for stories that the mainstream media picked up after the blogosphere went hyper? Yes, we have all seen stories first covered by blogs, then picked up by mainstream media – like the Trent Lott story, or the Dan Rather story.

Oh, wait, until mainstream media picked up those stories, Dan and Trent were fine and wouldn’t have likely stepped down. It wasn’t until mainstream media, like the NYT, picked up the story did it finally get legs.

All Aboard! Welcome to the Cluelesstrain!

Jeremy Pepper is the CEO and founder of POP! Public Relations, a public relations firm based in Arizona, USA.

He authors the popular Musings from POP! Public Relations blog which offers Jeremy’s opinions and views – on public relations, publicity and other things.