“The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.” So said Mark Twain in a cable from London soon after learning that U.S. newspapers had mistakenly published his obituary.
A similar message could be sent to pundits who have, for many years now, predicted the demise of big-box retail. Over the past several years there have been a handful of retailers whose misfortunes have reinforced...
We can anticipate many things that could go wrong during a production shoot, but melted chocolate was definitely not first on our list.
As shelter-in-place orders swept the U.S. in March, we relocated our production studios to the homes of our studio leaders. Our newly hired creative in LA started on a shoot for a candy client, but it didn’t take long before we needed to make more...
While much has been written about the devastating impact that COVID-19 has had on the $80 billion U.S. sports and live music industries, the one thing that everyone agrees on is that it is impossible to replicate the excitement of live events. As human beings, we are hard-wired to share our stories and affirm our life experiences through face-to-face interactions that provide us with a sense...
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...