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The tragic death of a trainer last week at SeaWorld brings up a tricky PR question: How do you convince visitors to come to a business by promising risks and excitement, but safety for everyone as well? No one is comparing SeaWorld to Jurassic Park, mind you. But a killer whale mauling an employee is not what families come to see.
comment | 03/01/2010
It has been one year since I joined Facebook. Since that time, I have learned a few tips personally about social media that I would like to share with you, in case you have not yet used it or are just getting ready to employ it.
comment | 02/17/2010
Recently there has been a rash of what I call “so-so public relations,” where the parties involved addressed the issues at hand without resolving the matter to satisfaction. But a halfway successful PR response is better than none at all, right? Or is it?
comment | 02/03/2010
Less than a month into 2010, we appear to have the PR disaster of the year – or decade, maybe the century. NBC President Jeff Zucker’s decision to force Conan O’Brien off The Tonight Show in favor of old host Jay Leno has not only prompted derision (a former NBC producer has called it “one of the most shameful fiascoes in the history of modern broadcast television”), but also has resulted in Zucker receiving death threats.
2 comments | 01/20/2010
Time has called 2000 through 2009 the worst decade ever. Business Insider reviewed the period and wound up with the 15 biggest PR disasters of the decade. Yet there was good news in public relations during the aughts, or whatever people finally choose to call this time, and I thought we would look back at what I believe were the best advances in PR over the last 10 years.
comment | 01/06/2010
PMK/HBH and BNC probably mean nothing to you, but if you enjoy movies or television, they should. They are two of the biggest PR firms in Hollywood, and their recently announced merger has resulted in resignations, layoffs, and fears and confusion among the entertainment community in general. It’s like a summer thriller, only in real life!
comment | 12/16/2009
One film I had in my queue on Netflix that I neglected to view until recently was Street Fight , the Oscar-nominated documentary about the 2004 faceoff in Newark, N.J. between incumbent Sharpe James and Cory Booker. What a great movie! It also serves as a primer of what not to do for good PR in a campaign for public office.
Producer/director Marshall Curry wanted to cover both men, but the suspicious James camp not only denied access but acted against Curry, making James come off pretty much as a villain despite rather even-handed treatment. The ramifications were … well, let’s review what James and company did wrong first.
comment | 12/02/2009
According to The New York Times, the announcement by mega-bank Goldman Sachs that it is setting aside $500 million to help 10,000 small businesses recover from the recession is in no way motivated by criticism of its greedy reputation. Right. And Bernie Madoff is a misunderstood altruist. No bigger firm generates worse PR than Goldman Sachs does right now.
comment | 11/18/2009
There are proper ways for a PR firm to lobby for a client, and then there is what the Hawthorn Group did this summer – hired a lobbying firm, Bonner and Associates, which sent 13 forged letters to three members of Congress imploring them to vote against the Waxman-Markey climate bill.
comment | 11/04/2009
“You are free to interview to country music singer Eddy Arnold, just make sure you do not ask him anything about his former manager, Col. Tom Parker, OK?” I am paraphrasing here, but that is what a certain PR person informed me about what to discuss with his client for a book I wrote a decade ago. I obeyed the advice – in fact, I had no plans on talking about that subject – but it raises a good question: Should PR firms place limits on what their clients will talk about during interviews?
comment | 10/16/2009
On the news that his series was having the best ratings in more than a decade, and celebrating its 5,000th late night broadcast (wow!), it must have been bittersweet for late night talk show icon David Letterman. This week Letterman told his audience that he had been a victim of a $2 million extortion that would disclose affairs he had with female staff members. Considering the circumstances, he handled it like a textbook case of crisis public relations.
comment | 10/02/2009
Anyone who has ever worked on a Web site knows it is rarely a one-person job. That certainly was the case when we revamped ours here at MMI, and now is as good a time as any to give you the inside story on its creation as well as thank the considerable help of our partners in the project, VisionPoint Marketing and Clean Design.
1 comment | 09/23/2009
The (deservedly) beleaguered TV network NBC received some great news Monday when the debut of the new Jay Leno Show reached more than 18 million viewers, its highest ratings since the 2008 Summer Olympics. More importantly, however, was the fact that the network learned from its mistake this summer and did not crow about the showing like it did with another recent debut.
comment | 09/16/2009
The University of North Carolina reaped some of its best publicity Monday when Oliver Smithies became its first full-time faculty member to receive the Nobel Prize, specifically for physiology or medicine. Smithies was honored for his work in genetic targeting, which he has pursued for nearly a quarter century in efforts to find out how changes in the genetic makeup can affect an animal. Some of his findings have been used to further research on human cystic fibrosis, among other treatments.
comment | 10/09/2007
When you say you work in public relations, you are covering a broad range of job possibilities, probably wider than you might think at first glance. The Public Relations Student Society of America lists the following as just a few examples of what exist – we have added to each one a person or group representing the job listed.
1 comment | 09/19/2007
One of the most popular sources of breaking stories on the Internet is Google News. As a planned improvement for the Web site, Google announced that “We’ll be trying out a mechanism for publishing comments from … those people or organizations who were actual participants in the story in question. Our long-term vision is that any participant will be able to send in their comments, and we’ll show them next to the articles about the story. Comments will be published in full, without any edits, but marked as ‘comments’ so readers know it’s the individual’s perspective, rather than part of a journalist’s report.”
comment | 09/13/2007
An excellent way for anyone interested in breaking into the PR field is to do an internship at a firm. If it is a reputable one, you will learn the basics of what is involved in the field, from writing press releases to setting up media events.
1 comment | 09/05/2007
Let's say you want to enter the PR field. Good for you. Are there certain traps you should avoid? Definitely.
comment | 08/22/2007
