Scholz & Friends, me, and the PR for EuroparlTV

"Your blog is one of the most interesting throughout Europe. The variety of pan-European topics presented and the diverse perspectives your contents reflect go hand in hand with europarltv's contents."

This is what I got yesterday from Scholz & Friends. This is the second "honour" of the week, the second pretence of importance in the context of PR, something that, inter alia, made me write this little post.

For those of you who don't know: Scholz & Friends is the PR agency that runs the information campaign of the European Parliament for the EP elections in June. And, they are also the ones promoting EuroparlTV, an EP sponsored online "television" (better: video spot platform) that received harsh criticism when launched and was heavily lacking interest from its start until the beginning of this year.

On their website, Scholz & Friends are telling now that

After a short period of time, the communication measures already lead to a considerable increase in europarltv’s user figures.

Still, they need to address... me. I am told that linking EuroparlTV on my blogroll or embedding videos would be a good thing for my readers.

In a move of rebellion, I went as far as publishing one video from EuroparlTV. And I have now subscribed to their RSS feed (which didn't work without some corrections in the links...). Because you have to go where the PR agencies want you to go.

So I might be able to contribute to more visitors seeing what taxpayers' money is spent on, in order to legitimise more taxpayers' spending in the future, including PR measures to get more attention.

For instance, I could tell that since today the parliamentary groups have videos with their priorities for the next five years on the platform: IN/DEM, Greens/EFA, GUE/NGL, ALDE, PES, and EPP/ED. And then hundreds or thousands of you coming to this blog every minute will go and watch it.

Or, maybe, I am just overrated.

And maybe, if nothing interesting comes up on EuroparlTV, this has been the last time I have been "promoting" something published there. In fact, the videos I have linked today are the most interesting things I have found on EuroparlTV for the time of April.

In the end, the only important criteria for the success and legitimacy of EuroparlTV will be:

Is it truly interesting - not just to me and to some of my readers, but more important to European citizens who are less eager to follow EU politics on a daily basis by now!

Update (19 April): And I've just seen in the comments that I wasn't the only one being addressed. And to be honest, I didn't honestly think I was the only one, because the email I got sounded too much like a standard text.