Thursday May 9, 2024

Hype

It takes a celebrity for hype to get publiciity.  Here is an example of a celebrity businessman throwing his half-baked idea to the world and the world gives him an audience.  This kind of gee-whiz, futuristic thinking sometimes pans out, but most of the time doesn’t.  Think of Buckminster Fuller.  It is not that his […]

Violating A Crisis Rule

One of the first rules of a crisis is to avoid speaking until you know the facts.  Otherwise, you risk loss of credibility and embarrassment.  It looks like the President of Xerox’s office and solutions systems group doesn’t know the rule.  He has had to eat his words from last week and inform customers this […]

Big Dreams

California’s politicians like to dream big — projects that change the future of the state.  Now they are dreaming of huge electricity storage from renewable energy sources such as sunlight.  The problem, of course, is that such storage is expensive, far more costly than natural gas generation plants that are used today for supplementary energy. […]

Speculation

This and this are examples of speculation over why Jeff Bezos bought the Washington Post.  Such idle thinking in print is not something PR practitioners should do.  It is the province of reporters who don’t have to defend their assumptions like we do in PR.  That reporters do it at all is a part of a fundamental […]

Fighting A Lost War

It is hard to be a steely-eyed realist as a PR practitioner.  One isn’t in charge and telling people what they don’t want to hear can shorten a career.  On the other hand, letting them live in a world of make-believe doesn’t help an organization or anyone’s future.  So what would you tell the few […]

Lousy PR

It’s bad enough to fire people.  It’s lousy PR to dismiss them over the phone without giving them the courtesy of a face-to-face meeting.   That, however, is what a communications medium has done.   The Cleveland Plain Dealer laid off 50 editorial staffers by calling them at home and telling them to pick up […]