In public relations, as in life, timing is everything. Find your brand in the wrong place at the wrong time, and marketing is looking for a Plan B, while the finance folks dial back revenue projections. Hit that sweet spot of timing with market demand and pop culture trends, and all the tumblers click magically into place.
Even though our sense of timing was ravaged in 2020 by pandemic...
A friend recently tagged me in a Facebook post with a comment that I looked like someone in the photo. That someone was Ira Glass, host of ‘This American Life.’ I’m a big fan of Ira, but never thought we looked alike, at least not until seeing this photo. There was indeed a resemblance and it made me smile.
Some find it flattering when someone says they look like a famous individual....
The stereotype of the pushy, aggressive and untrustworthy car salesperson remains in the minds of many consumers to this day. Despite significant progress by dealers and car companies to improve the experience, nearly 90 percent of consumers dislike buying a new car according to recent surveys. Purchasing a new vehicle with the latest design, technology and safety features should be something...
While we have seen how threatening disinformation can be to democracies and elections — cue the 2016 U.S. election — little attention has been paid to preventing and combatting it in the public relations industry. Disinformation (I prefer this term over fake news) is defined as deliberately misleading or biased information. This is different from misinformation, which is erroneous information...
Never before have we seen corporate public relations embracing racial justice with both arms. A once-touchy subject reserved for annual Martin Luther King Jr. Day ads and ethnic media, racial justice and anti-racist messages now flood the airwaves and social media. Journalists have a lot to do with the astounding flip.
Twitter this year gave its employees Juneteenth as a company...
It’s not a coincidence that Gen Z, those born after 1996, is leading the fight for social change. They are the most diverse generation — nearly half (48 percent) are racial or ethnic minorities, compared with 39 percent of Millennials and more than double the percentage of early Baby Boomers, according to Pew Research. They will surpass the Millennials as the most populous generation on the...
George Santayana, a philosopher and essayist of Spanish-American heritage, once observed that “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” As we review U.S. history over the past several decades, Asian Americans have been marginalized repeatedly since the first Asians arrived on our shores.
Chinese and Japanese laborers arrived in the late 19th century, seeking jobs...
Words have a magical power. They can either bring the greatest happiness or the deepest despair. Sigmund Freud made this statement over a century ago however his words remain relevant today.
I recently spent 20 minutes in a faculty meeting explaining to a well-intentioned white colleague why he couldn’t say the n-word in class, even if he is quoting someone else. I told him the more...