During the ten years I spent at global PR firm Ketchum, one of the things I benefited from was the firm’s commitment to professional development. In addition to gaining the experience of working with some of the world’s leading companies and organizations as clients, on some of their more challenging problems, if you worked for Ketchum, you knew you were an investment.… Read the rest
When interviewing for what would have been one of my first PR jobs, the CEO of a hospital asked me who I knew in local media. She wanted to find out if I brought a network to the job that would help her organization. Because I had worked in radio, TV and newspapers prior to this, while I knew most everyone in town, I also knew that didn’t matter.… Read the rest
March is a month of birthdays in my growing family, so much so, that we now combine the celebration of a bunch of birthdays into one day. Of course, March 17th is Saint Patrick’s Day, always an important day on the calendar in my family since I was a kid. But as I’ve said before, not as important as July 4th, from a love-of-country point of view.… Read the rest
With all of the recent media attention on Silicon Valley, layoffs, economic troubles and oftentimes rogue employees talking to reporters, I came across something called the Tech Worker Handbook, which apparently is an online guide to help tech workers navigate media relations, legal issues, surveillance, and telling their own stories to the media or others.… Read the rest
Back when I worked at The Big Agency, I as in charge of the executive visibility program for the CEO of a major national consulting firm. We had established a general strategy, a message platform, complete with over-arching themes, and had built the program primarily around two tactical areas: speeches and bylined articles.
To any experienced public relations pro, this is nothing fancy.… Read the rest
For as long as I’ve been in the business of public relations, the Holy Grail of communication is being able to change someone’s mind. To persuade that person.
To be sure, there are no full-proof techniques or magic tricks, but it is possible. As you might suspect, there are a couple of foundational ingredients you need before you can do so.… Read the rest
Recently, I was talking to someone who’s about to start his own business. He needed legal advice and decided to get it from a friend who’s also an attorney. It didn’t matter to him that the attorney mostly deals with intellectual property matters, and my friend’s needs centered on start-up issues and contracts. A lawyer’s a lawyer, right?… Read the rest
One of the more common problems I’ve seen when it comes to public relations messaging is that while many messages tend to contain all of the right information and make all the right points, they don’t resonate with people.
More to the point, their creators are great at articulation, but they don’t know how to make those same messages relatable to the targeted audiences.… Read the rest
When you are faced with the need to manage an issue on behalf of your organization, choose your words carefully. This may sound like I’m telling you to be careful not to use certain words that may offend, which is partially true, but if this is all you take away, you’re setting yourself up for defeat.… Read the rest
The landscape for pitching local news stories has shrunk dramatically in recent years. Not only have newspapers transitioned to mostly online platforms, drastically cutting newsroom staffs, but the platforms and newscasts have changed as well.
There simply isn’t the space, the airtime or the available newsroom staff to cover all of the news they may have covered as recently as three-to-five years ago.… Read the rest