Our 2019 mantra “The story is always there” points to the importance of the discovery process in business communications. Anyone can sit down with Apple’s Tim Cook after Elizabeth Warren has made her case for greater regulation of the tech industry and come away with a story that triggers clicks. It takes much …more
Reporting on the storylines in a given Game of Thrones episode doesn’t require much creativity. Littlefinger overplays his hand and gets his due Daenerys Targaryen impersonates Abe Lincoln and frees the slaves The White Walkers were this close to taking over when the Night King makes a tactical error. Instead, the real storytelling comes through …more
While the communications world increasingly tilts toward digital, there are opportunities to play the contrarian card with an analog tactic. Executed right, the payoff can generate more than your fair share of attention. That’s what SHETRANSFORMS.US strove for last week. As background, SHETRANSFORMS.US advocates for taking the gender bias out of online search. The organization …more
This headline from Bloomberg showed up in my Twitter feed yesterday (h/t Dorothy Crenshaw): “Public Relations Jobs Boom as Buffett Sees Newspapers Dying” Let’s start with the headline, which is technically accurate. The PR industry is healthy, and newspapers aren’t. Yet, throwing in Warren Buffett’s name as click bait makes it sound like Buffett is …more
Implementing a media relations campaign in Japan is not an exercise for the squeamish. It requires on-the-ground experience and relationships. In the U.S., PR cold-calls journalists on a daily basis. In comparison, PR in Japan would rarely reach out to a journalist without a proper introduction. I remember years ago working with our Japan …more
Virtually all innovation traces back to the semiconductor industry and the roughly $463B that will be spent on chips this year. It stands to reason that the trade publications serving such a critical industry and one perpetually in the throes of change would thrive. Yet, like their trade brothers and the overall media …more
Roughly two years ago, I wrote a post about then-candidate Trump and how he used conversational language as a differentiator. Given his communications since moving into the White House, I decided to dust off the point of view that riffs on a Wall Street Journal column. Unfortunately, skipping to the end, bombastic did win the …more
Elon Musk kicked up a Twitter storm last week, essentially saying (among other things) that the media unfairly picks on Tesla because Tesla doesn’t advertise. He went on to infer that the makers of gas guzzlers and fossil fuel companies get more favorable media attention because they pump millions of advertising dollars into the media’s …more
For those who toil on the front lines of media relations, it’s easy to drift into a Jim Carrey-like optimism. . PR: “What are the chances that you’ll write about this pitch?” Journalist: “Not good” PR: “You mean not good like one out of a hundred?” Journalist: “I’d say more like one out of a …more
