I will not watch any televised game of a team that signs Michael Vick.

I will not buy a ticket to any game featuring a team that signs Michael Vick.

I will not buy a Michael Vick jersey, t-shirt, hat, keychain or any memorabilia from a team that signs Michael Vick.

Hell, I may never buy Vick’s cough drops ever again.

I’m an animal lover, owner and charity supporter — but that’s not why. I’m human, and I know that every human being makes mistakes. And while I believe in forgiving mistakes, I don’t believe in paying for them, too. That’s why I’ll never give a dime to a team that pays Michael Vick. And I can’t believe I’m alone in that.

There’s no reason to go into how disgusting Michael Vick’s crimes were. They’re repulsive. This is a blog about communication, marketing and the brands that speak to consumers. And as of now, # 7’s brand says “I electrocuted and drowned dogs for my own enjoyment…and to make a few bucks with my friends.” Any team that signs Vick takes on that brand, risking the backlash and boycotts that have followed him for more than two years. That means a loss of licensing dollars, sponsorship revenue and priceless brand equity.

And PETA’s not the only one who’s barking mad over this.  Legions of anti-Vick websites, Facebook groups with tens of thousands of anti-Vick members and online pledges calling for boycotts of any Vick sponsors have literally sprung up overnight.

So, to all you teams who are thinking about taking on this “bargain basement” QB – you better do the math. It’s probably going to cost you a lot more. In this case #7 isn’t a lucky number when it comes to brand equity.

MuckRack.com, the self anointed hot spot for journalists on Twitter, recently launched a paid service for disseminating one-line press releases to its community.

The cost, at $1 per character with a minimum fee of $30, and based on Twitter’s 140 character limit, is a maximum of $140.  The reach? Well according to Muck Rack they have more than 3,800 journalists who will see your one line release instantly, as soon as they hit send. The value? It’s tough to say. We’re not sure how many of those journalists actually use the Twitter community as a means of getting information for stories or how many even pay any attention to it beyond signing up.

So, I’m not sure if I’ll be jumping at the chance to drop a c-note on the prospect of getting one sentence out to a group of journalists who may or may not be paying attention. But one thing is for sure, you can’t ignore the impact social media is having on public relations, journalism and communications in general. If you trick yourself into thinking this is a passing fancy for the crazy young kids you will be left behind — and that will be no Tweet.

We’ve been doing a lot of work here lately helping our clients establish and leverage blogs.  Everyone from a consumer retailer to a b-to-b technology company wants to get in the game, but they’re scared of the time commitment, negative comments, and the “where to start” factor.  They’re all barriers that can stop a blog before it ever starts, but there are ways to get around all three.  Here are some tips for how it can be done well:

Engage different parts of the company – because blogging can be time consuming, the more voices you have on a company blog the less of a burden it will be on one or two people.  It’s true for this blog – we each write about once a month, which is easy.  And we still have enough content to (hopefully) keep readers coming back.  If a company wants to be involved in blogging, they need to open the medium up to multiple members of their internal team.

Be a thought partner – most of our clients think they need to write a white paper or novella for a blog entry.  Clearly, we all know that’s not true.  So to combat the “where to start” dilemma, we’ve engaged our client/authors one-on-one in 20 minute calls where we walk them through some possible ideas for a blog.  We start where all blogs should start – with their audience.  “What have you been talking about with customers?”  It’s simple enough.  And with the right follow-up questions, we can easily get all the raw material we need for an interesting and insightful post.

Encourage conversation – once we get a blog up-and-running, clients are often concerned about whether anyone is reading it.  The truth is, that’s a shared responsibility.  Since they have regular contact with a large portion of their audience, we give each author 5 tips for promoting their blog entry.  It goes a long way.  And once they start to see real dialogue, they’ll stop worrying about the stray negative comment and treat it as the opportunity it is.

Picture this.  You’re cruising down a highway in a chic new car.   You’ve got your music pumping, your shades on, and people on the street keep stoping to see what kind of car you’re driving.  What kind of car comes to your mind?  A BMW?  A Lexus, maybe?  If it’s up to the owners of GM, you’ll actually start thinking about Buick.  That’s right, a Buick.  Sure, you probably think of a Buick as a grandpa car.  But this is just the perception GM is trying to change.

As part of GM’s attempt to rid itself of more than a dozen unsuccessful models, this month it is attempting to reinvigorate the Buick, a line that is still somewhat profitable but always slow-selling.  With the average U.S. Buick owner over 70 years of age, GM is trying to figure out how to attract new, younger, more affluent buyers—and how to do it quickly.

GM’s first attempt to draw in younger buyers will occur later this month when they launch the new LaCrosse.  In addition to the restyled LaCrosse, GM is working on a new, smaller Buick as well as the Enclave crossover which has already recieved critical acclaim and a far younger customer base than other Buicks. And in a somewhat fitting move, the company is pursuing a more current marketing direction, limiting past ties to the golf world and instead planning a high-priced Internet ad campaign, focusing on national advertising and on services like Twitter.

It appears GM realizes if they want to draw in a younger audience they need to utilize the technology the younger audience is using.  Whether or not this will work is a whole other ball of wax.  And so far, GM is getting off to a rocky start.  It just launched a new commercial featuring a mock fashion shoot around two Buick models, an Enclave crossover and the new LaCrosse sedan, and a fussy, narcissistic director who is obsessed with the cars and himself.

Bob Lutz, GM’s vice chairman who was brought back from pending retirement by CEO Fritz Henderson, thought the new television ad campaign for Buick was so awful that he went public with his dismay.  Now Lutz, 77, has been put in charge of all of GM’s advertising and public relations in an effort to fix things.

Even if they can internally agree on the direction of marketing, ultimately engaging a younger audience will come down to breaking brand perceptions and creating a new understanding of the Buick as a hip, luxury car.  Good Luck GM!  Like many of your predicaments, rebranding the Buick clearly has a long, uncertain road ahead.

As newspapers whither and die, the debate has raged – can they charge for their content?

“No,” says Chris Anderson, the very forward thinking editor of Wired magazine and author of 2006 best-seller The Long Tail. It’s too late, the genie is out of the bottle and newspapers need to find new revenue streams if they’re going to survive. He makes his argument in his new book Free: The Future of a Radical Price. (As an aside, the book retails for $26.99 – a lost opportunity at turning this into performance art.)

Anderson writes that the digital age is exerting unstoppable downward pressure on the prices of things “made of ideas.” Since it is now possible to create content for practically nothing (key word – practically), Anderson argues that it therefore makes business sense to grow your audience by eliminating the barrier of making people pay a couple pennies. Give it away, and people will follow.

With that in mind, Anderson recommends treating all content, especially the expensive journalistically developed stuff in newspapers, as a loss leader. He says content providers need to find ways to generate revenue along the edges of their core purpose, which might mean selling t-shirts, or holding seminars, or whatever.

Quite predictably, publishers and reporters cannot fathom giving away the diamonds produced by their hard work. And another brainiac, Malcolm Gladwell, points out that creating an article for a couple of pennies multiplied by a lot of articles ends up costing a lot of money.

But it seems to me that Anderson is more right than he is wrong. Just because the folks who work in the newsroom think their work is valuable, doesn’t mean that it is. All the evidence points to the fact that people are no longer willing to pay for content. So newspaper providers can hold their breath and cling to the past, or they can find a new way.