@havaspr: Grounded in Media
We’ve always said that we’re grounded in media, strategy, client service and community (it’s right at the bottom of this page), and our latest award triumphs wrap up that phrase in neat little packages. In Bulldog Reporter’s Media Relations Awards competition, we won silver for PR Innovation of the Year for our work in bringing [...]
Turning a Tragedy into an Inspirational Legacy
Last week, our pro bono clients and friends Robbie and Alissa Parker sat down with Norah O’Donnell of CBS News to talk about their 100-day journey since the tragedy in Newtown, Conn., where their daughter Emilie was killed. When we discovered on the day after the terrible event last December that a former Havas PR [...]
What Does Lance Armstrong’s Scandal Teach Us About Personal Branding?
[Originally posted on Forbes.com.] Even though Lance Armstrong has been in the news for months—the United States Anti-Doping Agency’s incriminatory report was released in early October, though speculation was raging well before that—he’s really just at the beginning of his problems. From a crisis management and personal branding standpoint, he has a long road ahead [...]
Helping Newtown
I, like everyone else, was horrified as I watched the tragedy unfold in Newtown, Conn., on Friday. My colleagues and I crowded around our office TVs and watched the news, feeling utterly helpless. I stayed glued to my TV late into the night on Friday and Saturday, watching Anderson Cooper and other newscasters struggle to [...]
Next Year’s News
[Originally posted on PRWeek.com.] This is the first in a series of three posts that will discuss what I see as a PR émigré managing in a world where evolution meets revolution. You’ve heard it said that the future is now. That’s much closer to the truth than it was even a half-decade ago. I [...]
The Value of Creativity
As a PR professional, I know how crucial creativity is to success in business today. As a socially networked person (is there anybody out there who isn’t?), I’ve watched as network friends draw something, write something or video something. As a trendspotter, I’ve read at length Richard Florida’s thoughts on the importance of the creative [...]
Trendspotting: Equal Distribution
How does a stand-up comic make $200,000 in four days? For American wisecracker Louis C.K., it was all about cutting out the middlemen. The popular performer took distribution of his fourth television special, “Live at the Beacon Theatre,” into his own hands, offering it from his website as an unencrypted, high-definition download for the low, [...]
Grabbing the Bull by the…Balls
Originally posted on the Holmes Report. We’ve watched protests around the world all year, but where were the 24/7 television cameras when a little sit-in began in my neighborhood, right at the site of what many in the U.S. identify as the biggest petri dish of injustice? Occupy Wall Street (@OccupyWallSt) began two weeks ago [...]
Watching the Weather Channel Crush It
[Originally posted on the Holmes Report.] I never liked the name Irene. Growing up in New Jersey, I had a crazy aunt with that very name, a religious zealot of sorts who would occasionally swoop into our suburban promised land from Brooklyn (when it wasn’t cool) and frighten me with her views. I have a [...]
Corporations: Pillars of the Community?
Originally posted on the Huffington Post. There’s a real paradox today in the meaning of the word community. On one hand, we’re building our communities online and forming tribes with like-minded, digital folks who share our likes and dislikes, our restaurant recommendations and, in the case of places like Egypt, our desire for democracy. But [...]
From Fashion Blogger to CMO: Daniel Saynt on SoMe and More
Now more than ever, fashion bloggers are gaining credibility within the fashion industry. Many are serving as trendsetters, influencing readers’ shopping decisions with their content and recommendations. A few bloggers have even earned acclaim from industry veterans—Tavi Gevinson of Style Rookie styled shoots for BlackBook magazine, Swedish blogger Elin Kling produced a collection for H&M, [...]
NYT Best-Selling Author…Snooki?
Between the launch of her first novel, A Shore Thing, and the premiere of Season Three of MTV’s “Jersey Shore,” it seems that everywhere you turn, you see Nicole “Snooki” Polizzi. (Even my uncle saw her out his window the other day, as she and her castmate JWoWW looked into buying the house across the [...]
Too Much, Too Soon
In the wake of so much bad news 24/7, most of us cheered up a bit at Ted Williams’ rags-to-riches story. We all know the details: After a viral hit YouTube video, the golden-throated homeless man in Columbus, Ohio, became a guest on all the best couches (“Today,” “Late Night with Jimmy Fallon,” etc.) and [...]
The Power of a (Soon-to-Be) Princess
Since news of the royal engagement of Prince William and Kate Middleton hit the airwaves in November, there has barely been a day that’s passed without some sort of news coverage about the princess-to-be and her wedding plans. Euro RSCG Worldwide PR’s president, Marian Salzman, even named Middleton twice on her “Hot 100” list of [...]
Who’s in Control?
This is the tenth in a series of 12 posts expounding on the 2011 forecasts in the annual trends report from Salzman, president of Euro RSCG Worldwide PR and an internationally respected trendspotter. Remember “The Gong Show,” where there was the loud bonnnnnng to save contestants from catastrophe’s bottomless pit? Hello, Central Casting…. Has anybody [...]
What I’ve Learned from Wyclef Jean
Originally posted on the Huffington Post. When Wyclef Jean hired my agency about six months ago, I knew that our mission would be to help him pursue his mission: tirelessly working toward Haiti’s recovery. I and my team were to take care of the details so Wyclef could look to the bigger picture—that of making [...]
Young Love? Or a Made-for-TV Romance?
This week Bristol Palin and Levi Johnston announced that not only are they back together, but they are also (again) engaged to be married. Unlike most couples, Bristol and Levi didn’t relay the exciting news to their families first. Instead, they landed an Us Weekly cover and told the world. The news set off a [...]
Who’s Watching the Kids?
Many people breathed a huge sigh of relief when 16-year-old Abby Sunderland was rescued on the open seas. We immediately knew she was OK because when her quest to become the youngest person to sail around the world ended, the media covered it extensively—and Abby blogged about it…in real time. Was anyone surprised, then, at revelations that [...]
Bad News from Europe
The European financial headlines have been nothing but bleak: defaults, a $1 trillion bailout, speculation that the euro might disappear, and discontent and strife in countries from Greece to Germany. The news is definitely not good, but the tone of the media messaging might be making it seem even worse. SmartMoney warned investors that “market [...]
Where Does the Future Lie?
This is the fifth in a series of six. When Barack Obama swept into power, he promised the American people change. Consciously or not, Americans are experiencing a wholesale change, even if its sources are not the landmark legislation and brand-new institutional ideas that, some believed, would quickly usher in a new era. Although there [...]
Social Media in America
This is the fourth in a series of six. During the protracted health-care debate, it quickly became clear that the media put a premium on accessing information: Even C-SPAN, the cable industry’s nonstop outlet for televised government affairs, had to challenge the Obama administration to open the doors to the process. In the meantime, Americans [...]
It’s a Small, Small World
What does your e-mail, website or other digital communication look like on a small screen? Is your clairvoyant, precise message buried under indecipherable HTML text that didn’t translate on a BlackBerry, iPhone or Google Nexus One as you’d hoped? These questions are more important than ever for today’s digital communication strategies. By 2013, mobile phones [...]
Down the PR Measurement Rabbit Hole
Until someone identifies an innovative new way to put a hard dollar value on PR results, it is time to give the endless discussion about measurement a rest. There is nothing more to say. As PR professionals dive deeper and deeper into the swirling abyss that is the debate over measurement, we see all the [...]
Comedy Gone Too Far
I’ll start off this commentary by saying that I have a love/hate relationship with the television show “Family Guy.” While it is very often clever and absurdly humorous, I almost always wind up shutting it off because the humor usually goes too far and crosses the line into offensive…for me, anyway. So it was no [...]
