Tuesday March 19, 2024

Smart PR Move

 Retailers are giving employees paid time off in order to get vaccinated for COVID-19.  It is a smart PR move.  No one wins if a store worker comes down with the virus and spreads it to both colleagues and customers.  The cost of the time and transportation is but a fraction of the loss of […]

Smart Move, Smart PR

IBM announced it is getting out of the business of facial recognition technology  It is a smart move and smart PR.  Facial recognition software is not perfect and has both gender and race biases built.  That was part of IBM’s concern but the remainder was the corporation doesn’t want to enable increased surveillance of the […]

Smart Communication

Apple has taken a smart approach to looted cellphones during the ongoing protests.  It is letting thieves know their phones are disabled and being tracked by the company with authorities notified.  This is a fitting response to a minority of protesters who are on the streets for opportunities to rob retailers.  News reports have detailed […]

Smart Advice

This column offers smart advice for PR practitioners who might be thinking of going out on their own.  Avoid debt and acquisitions that don’t directly increase your revenue from clients.  One doesn’t need a fancy desk, an office suite and a receptionist until big enough to need them for client service.  I recall a practitioner […]

Smart Marketing And PR

This is smart marketing and PR.  Even drivers with automatic toll payment in their cars would like to know what driving a road will cost.  In fact, they have more of an incentive than those who stop and pay a toll taker because automatic payments are deducted from one’s account without a receipt.  Waze is […]

Smart Publicity

Young Russians have no memory or understanding of the notorious Gulags that incarcerated 20 million people under Stalin.  The Gulag History Museum set out to change that.  Rather than writing history targeted to youth, it chose the graphic novel to tell survivors’ stories.  This is smart publicity — reaching an audience through familiar and universal visual media.  […]

Smart Food PR

Panera restaurants are engaging in a practice of smart food PR.  The chain is listing the calories for each soft drink it offers on the side of the cup.  That way consumers can know just how much sugar they are ingesting.  The practice might hurt the company’s business in the short run.  Margins on drinks […]

Smart

This is smart environmentalism and smart PR.  Bees are under global stress as it is with the sudden colony collapse syndrome decimating hives.  Building a natural path for them through a city in the form of flowers not only helps them migrate but is prettier.  Humans benefit as much as bees.  Even smarter is that […]

Smart Marketing

It takes marketing insight and creativity to solve long-standing consumer headaches.  Here is a successful example.  Every householder has a need for maintenance services demanding capabilities beyond the householder’s skill level.  And, therein is the headache.  One doesn’t know who to call except by asking neighbors or clicking through web sites.  The problem with web […]

Smart Move

Jeff Bezos of Amazon is in the middle of a smart move online.  He is preparing to make a subscription to the Washington Post, which he owns, a part of the Kindle, the reader Amazon invented.  This will provide content to news consumers nationwide and extend the Post’s reach far beyond the Beltway where it […]