Seth Godin - A True Linchpin

Seth Godin is a prolific author, a brilliant marketer, a visionary and one of the kindest human beings walking this planet. He makes the world a better place. And his makes my life better and he can do the same for you. He embodies the modern day work force. He gets how we tick and what motivates us as workers, consumers and bossess. And he is our biggest cheerleader. He’s a linchpin – he’s indispensable. And he wants the same for [...]

A New PR Title-An Apologist

Man, every time we turn around – it seems like some public company or public figure is apologizing. If you are skilled in crafting apologies that can be read well, but don’t have much meaning then you’ve got yourself a highly sought after career. [...]

Fatgate - A Lesson in Social Media Crisis Communications

Since Saturday, Smith and Southwest (SWA) have been going back and forth about the situation. Each have blogged extensively about it and it’s become quite the mess, but it’s an excellent lesson for us PR professionals in how to handle a bad situation from an [...]

Valentine's Day PR Crises - Edwards, Pitt, etc.

The Edwards situation I simply do not understand. I don’t know who’s handling their brands and with so much personal info publicly known thanks to Young’s book, I don’t know if they can ever rub the tarnish off the family silver so to speak. The damage has been done and there’s not one side that is looking good at this [...]

Google Super Bowl Ad - Simplistic Brilliance

At first blush, I tweeted that I thought the Google Super Bowl ad was a blah commercial. But, after much thought, I was in awe of its simplicity and how well it described its true function. The commercial was on point and perfectly described what it did and then some. For if you really think about it, how else would you describe Google other than its an amazing search engine. It’s made to search and search everything. Thus, this commercial was spot on. Perfect. It was true to its product and use. [...]

Toyota's Accelerating PR Problem

Toyota’s recall media plan is steeped in corporate jargon. Where’s the personal touch-where’s the assurance that this problem will be 100 percent fixed by installing a shock absorber to the pedal. More importantly, where’s the assurance that the vehicles on the recall list are safe to drive until they are fixed. People are skeptical that this is the cause. There has been some finger pointing between Toyota and the pedal manufacturer which has been raising eyebrows. This needs to be cleared up in the public’s [...]

Conan O'Brien's Exit Statement

One of of your first days in out placement services, you attend workshops to finesse things like your resume, career objectives and more importantly, your exit statement if your position was redundant. I was just thinking about what in the world Conan or his staff say about their job [...]

Conan O'Brien's Package

As one who is familiar with severaces of late, I did a little math for I wanted to see how his staff made out for seven months work in Los Angeles. Basically, his 190 person staff would each receive $41,000 (after taxes) if the $11 million was split evenly among them, which I’ m sure it will not be. [...]

Sarah Palin's Well-Managed Brand

Kudos to whoever is managing Sarah Palin’s brand. Her latest foray into becoming a Fox News analyst was brilliant for a number of reasons. She’s on her way now and getting well-paid for it too. She certainly is a lady of luck. There’s nothing rouge about her branding, it’s all calculated and they are doing an incredible job. [...]

My Take on the News 1-12-10

If you were chatting with me today, here’s what I would be talking to you about – NBC (The No Brains Corporation), Conan O’Brien and Jose [...]