Memo to CEOs: Get Serious About Media Relations
Author Bill Holstein has a provocative new book out for CEOs called “Manage the Media (Don’t Let the Media Manage You).” It’s a slim primer for CEOs from Harvard Business Press designed to get them thinking about taking a more active role in media relations. For anyone in PR, Holstein’s advice should sound pretty familiar. [...]
Planning Ahead Is the Key to Crisis Communications
If you think your organization is safe from having a PR crisis, think again. More likely than not, you’ll face the unexpected and you’ll need to respond quickly and effectively. Here are some tips gleaned from this week’s Bulldog Reporter PR University Audio Conference: How to get buy-in for creating a crisis communications plan: Pitch [...]
Time to Ditch the Annual Report?
It’s probably too late for this cycle, but if you’re still doing a printed Annual Report, it’s time to stop. The Internet has rendered them all but obsolete, as Daniel Gross reports in Slate. I do know one vital investing constituency that still values them, however: non-Internet-enabled seniors and other older investors. Basically, if you’re [...]
Pentagon Plays the PR Game To Win
I’m having a hard time getting terribly worked up about the New York Times story that the Pentagon used media training tactics to prep retired military officers for appearances as military analysts on TV talk shows. This has nothing to do with my position on the Iraq war. The tagline for this blog is “smart [...]
Sports Leagues Struggle With Online Media Relations Too
The NCAA is far from the only sports rights-holder to fret about how to control online media access to its games. The New York Times has a long piece today about how the major leagues are struggling with the issue, too. The problem, in a nutshell, is that sporting events are the kind of content [...]
Pope’s PR Man is a J-School Graduate
Will wonders never cease: it turns out that Pope Benedict XVI’s press secretary, John Patrick Cardinal Foley, is a Philadelphia native and a 1966 graduate of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. I’m not sure what to make of this piece of news, except to say that as a 1981 graduate of the same [...]
American Airlines Needed a Much Better Crisis PR Effort
I’ve been flying American Airlines my whole life, and I’ve had an American frequent flier number since they started the program. Like any passenger with a brain, I’ve certainly had my issues with them regarding scheduling, delays, prices and frequent flier seat availability. But I had never really questioned my brand loyalty — until now, [...]
Tibet Supporters Use PR to Outfox China
The New York Times, of all places, gives a shout-out to the “value of PR” in a business section story today about how Tibet supporters leveraged the upcoming Beijing Olympics to shine a spotlight on China’s treatment of Tibet: “The protesters quickly established a communications plan, focused their message and ran camps where they taught [...]