
How Jeff Bezos Scored A PR Win
Not every billionaire CEO needs a big public relations team, apparently – just ask Elon Musk. But many successful founders do have an innate grasp of PR and media strategy. Sure, communications skills are learned, and years of experience really count in the PR biz. But when it comes to the hand-to-hand combat of media […]
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Big Tech Has A PR Problem. Can It Close The Trust Gap?
A new survey of 31,000 people in 27 countries has documented what most of us in PR know – Big Tech has a reputation problem. For years, the enormous role technology plays in our lives and our reverence for brands like Apple and Amazon shielded the sector from greater taxation and regulation. But things are […]
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PR, Clubhouse, And The Coming Social Audio Wave
People in PR and media circles have been excited about Clubhouse for at least six months. That’s partly because it represents something new – an audio-only platform for real-time conversations within groups of up to 500 people. But the real appeal was Clubhouse’s exclusivity. As the name implies, it launched as an invite-only social media […]
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Amazon’s New PR War Isn’t Working
Picking a public fight with powerful legislators isn’t a typical PR strategy for a giant corporation, but that’s Amazon’s latest move as a crucial union vote deadline arrives. Over the past few days, the retail giant has turned into a Twitter troll. Amazon has tweeted childish insults about Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, who […]
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International Women’s Day: When Good PR Backfires
The tweet that launched a whopper of a PR backlash for Burger King on International Women’s Day wasn’t really that bad. The initial post from @BurgerKingUK read simply, “Women belong in the kitchen.” Clearly, it was meant to get our attention. What followed was a thread announcing a BK-backed scholarship program for female professional chefs […]
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Another Reason Tech Startups Need PR
For a new technology business, the decision to commit to a PR agency or in-house PR consultant is a consequential one. It’s also occasionally controversial. Celebrity entrepreneurs like Mark Cuban have warned ambitious startups against spending on an outside PR firm. Cuban sees PR spend as wasteful and premature for most early-stage companies. He figures […]
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Post-Trump, Can We Bring Back The Apology?
When he caught heat for escaping the frigid Texas weather for a few days of R&R in Cancun, Senator Ted Cruz fell back on family excuses. He was just trying to be a good dad, he explained. He was dropping off the kids at the resort, implying that he never intended to stay. Allies jumped […]
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7 Occasions When PR And Marketing Must Work Together
Between the PR and marketing functions of any organization there can be creative tension or even competition. Sometimes that’s because each team struggles for their rightful piece of the same budget pie, especially during lean times. But the conflict typically runs deeper. PR and marketing are perceived very differently, especially in a corporate environment. Marketing […]
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Big Business Must Help Us Unify
Pundits and politicians have bemoaned our country’s cultural and partisan divisions for years. Yet things have gotten worse. There’s just not much that brings us together these days. We’ve seen an erosion of confidence in our major institutions – government, faith groups, and media, among others. I’ve long thought that this perfect storm of disunity […]
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