Top PR Crises of 2007
2007 has been filled with big crises that presented PR challenges, from the Virginia Tech massacre to Don Imus to the NBA’s gambling referee.
PRWeek has done a nice job summing up the year in PR with its 2007 Book of Lists, including 10 PR Crises that “tested PR pros” during the year. Here they are:
Jet [...]
Mortgage Lenders Should Be Doing Better PR
As the mortgage crisis rolls along, I’ve been surprised at the relative lack of positive PR from the mortgage industry. Maybe they are just too busy righting their ships to worry about PR, but it seems to me that they ought to have been out there with some positive messages about a) what they are [...]
Does $5 Buy You Any Goodwill?
You’re a company with $2.3 billion in annual revenues and one of the most storied brand names in history. But your business model is antiquated and you lost more than $100 million last year. What should you do to celebrate the holiday season?
If you’re Reader’s Digest Association, you send a $5 bill to all 3,000 [...]
It’s Christmas Week. Do You Know Where Your PR Department Is?
It’s Christmas week, traditionally a slow time of year for most businesses. Time to take a few days, be with the family, recharge the batteries, and eat too much.
You’ll notice that the news media is not one of the businesses taking the week off. They have space and air time to fill everyday from here [...]
Ad Age’s Predictions of 2008 Marketing Trends
The 2008 predictions are starting to roll in. Advertising Age posted some good ones, including these from the Association of National Advertisers:
DIGITAL, DIGITAL, DIGITAL (AND PORTABLE TOO): As Steve Ballmer proclaimed at the 2007 ANA Annual Conference, all media ultimately will be created and delivered digitally. Can anyone legitimately argue with that? Naahhh. And the [...]
The Donald Trump School of PR
Here’s a quiz: an unfavorable story about your business appears in a major metropolitan newspaper. You should:
A) Phone the writer, call him names and threaten to sue him.
B) Analyze the article, note any inaccuracies and seek corrections and possibly a follow-up article.
C) Do a better job articulating the positive aspects of your story to other [...]
Should You Pay for PR Placements?
One of the more vexing elements of being a PR client is figuring out what you are paying for. The vast majority of PR firms charge clients monthly retainer fees that cover the entire scope of their work, whether or not that work resulted in any media placements that month.
It takes a special client not [...]
Chrysler Buries PR in the Corporate Bureaucracy
Chrysler’s top spokesperson resigned this week, and going forward, the PR department will report to the head of HR.
Does this make sense to you? It doesn’t make a lot of sense to me.
Chrysler was recently acquired by Cerberus, a private equity firm with a history of being tight-lipped (most PE firms are). And Cerberus brought [...]