Category: Strategic Communications
Lack of Plain Language, Clarity, Delivering
For weeks, we have been receiving mailings at our home several times each week from Verizon, announcing “FiOS.” We believe that FiOS is fiber optic cable service but Verizon has never explained what the four-letter acronym means, relinquishing “FiOS” as just another meanless and made-up word, like “Verizon.” I find Verizon’s marketing approach for a [...]
Steve Jobs Is Not Dead
Bloomberg, the financial newswire service, accidentally published its 17-page obituary for Apple Co-Founder and CEO Steve Jobs. The news service said it was updating the document when it was inadvertently published online. “An incomplete story referencing Apple Inc. was inadvertently published by Bloomberg News at 4:27 p.m. New York time today,” Bloomberg said. “The item [...]
Wall-E for President
I was watching CBS Face the Nation this morning and veteran newsman Bob Schieffer who kept using the phrase, “flip-flop,” to describe a politician who seems to change his mind. Schieffer should know better than to repeatedly pick up on such simple-minded politicking jargon. Heck, everyone changes his or her mind. The origins of the [...]
Corporate Blogs: the Realities and Purpose
A business acquaintance was telling me that he hoped his company might emulate the style of Dell Computer’s corporate blog. Not wanting to throw cold water on his hopes, I kept silent. But Dell’s blog is not my concept of a contemporary transparent and open interface with customers. Rather, it is more focused on product [...]
Good Headlines, Bad Headlines
A acquaintance writes on Facebook today, “Dear Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer: Vista sucks! Vista is slow on my fast Lenovo x61 with 4GB RAM! [expletive deleted] Driving me to Mac!?” The opinion he expresses is but the latest in a chorus of complaints and news headlines about the significant shortcomings of Windows Vista, the [...]
Handbook for Bloggers and Cyber-Dissidents
In today’s world of intense message chaos, blogs have provided an effective online channel for expression of voice and words. But, what are the rules, best practices and ethical boundaries in the vast blogosphere? Paris-based Reporters Without Borders has made available online and for free download its “Handbook for bloggers and cyber-dissidents.” It is the [...]
Self-Inflicted Damage, New Opportunities
Over years of consulting on strategic marketing communications issues, I have observed that one of the core reasons that organizations, business and governments suffer financial and other hardships and sometimes fail is because of self-inflicted damage. Losing market share or shareholder value or any other benchmark of success, especially revenue, is rarely as a result [...]
Ether
Washington, D.C., is conference city. Each day, there are countless conferences and forums held in the city. Seven days a week, year-around. People fly in, attend conferences and fly out. We don’t hear about most, even though many conference organizers hope the spotlight of media attention will shine brightly on their event, if only for [...]
Recession in PR: Perception or Reality?
My column today in the Daily Dog online newsletter, the leading PR industry site: Here’s a reality I learned long ago as a correspondent at CBS News: Perception can be the highest form of reality. The media has always managed to create stories out of perceptions that sometimes carry enough substance to become reality. We [...]
New Media World: All About Transparency
General Motors is trying to patch up whatever reputation it had as an environmentally aware corporation. The company is holding a series of online chats with environmental critics after GM’s blog was slammed with comments that were critical of the company’s environmental efforts. The environmental activist group Rainforest Action Network said some things that GM [...]
