Archive: 2019

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Applying the Seven Basic Plots of Storytelling to Business Comms

By Chris Owen, UK Director   After working on the book for over 34 years (we have people in this office who haven’t been alive this long), Christopher Booker published Seven Basic Plots in 2004. It’s a seminal piece of work; taking a psychological and analytical approach to literature, it identified seven core themes to which …more

PR Agency Turns to Advertising for Storytelling

The headline is our attempt at inserting incongruence into the story. As you would suspect, PR agencies typically don’t use advertising as part of the marketing mix. When they do, the creative often lacks inspiration (to put it kindly). I’d like to think we’re an exception to the rule. Which brings me to our initiative …more

Bloomberg Pushes for Diversity in Sources and Expert Spokespeople

By Alannah McDermott, Intern     Imagine yourself sitting at a table, staring down at a pile of puzzle pieces. With determination and a hint of intimidation, you push aside the pile and place one small piece in front of you. This is where you’ll begin. As you reach for another piece, you notice it’s …more

What Happens When a PR Agency Chooses the “Wrong” Client?

The agency ends up in the New York Times with a bad look. That’s what happened to Edelman last week. The NYT devoted 29 1/8th inches — I counted using the hardcopy version — to Edelman landing a private prisons company called The GEO Group and then deciding to not move forward with the client. …more

Homework Behind Open-ended Questions Can Lead to Storytelling Gold

We know the story is always there. Yet, bringing the story to the surface often requires the right questions. And no one is better at probing and cajoling a source than Terry Gross, the maestro of the NPR podcast “Fresh Air.” She recently interviewed the actor Patricia Arquette. Having done her homework, Gross knows Arquette’s …more

Communications Lessons from a Politician

I asked Silicon Valley veteran Dave Kellogg for his OK to republish this post. I met Dave some 10 years ago when he was CEO of MarkLogic. Here was a CEO who not only understood PR but seemed to enjoy it. Unfortunately, his internal communications team didn’t command the same understanding, and our client relationship …more

A Stately Trump?, Journalist Office Hours, and a TikTok Mug

The Grab Bag post returns for a second 2019 installment. Again, the story lines in these posts can’t quite shape stand-alone posts. Yet, I hate to see a shard of a story go to waste. .   TIME Cover Photo Depicts a Stately President Trump Take a gander at the cover of TIME Magazine August …more

This Is How Many Executives View Anecdotes

Particularly in Silicon Valley where most executives started their careers on the engineering side. Coming from a technical orientation, they tend to think of anecdotes as inconsequential and yes, a bit fluffy. Yet, the science suggests that PR should be sourcing anecdotal content as part of media outreach. We leaned on a couple interns to …more

Top PR and Storytelling Posts in H1, 2019 (Part 2)

Monday’s post captured five of the 10 top posts this year (so far). Here are the remaining posts.   6. Game of Thrones Depicts the Best of Persuasive Language The final season of Game of Thrones played out this year. Rather than focus on the Iron Throne, we turned our attention to persuasive language, specifically …more