Branding the Pope
[Originally posted on Forbes.com.] I’m writing this just after the conclave of cardinals announced the successor to Pope Benedict XVI, who last month became the first modern-day pontiff to abdicate the throne. They charted some new ground, choosing 76-year-old Argentine Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, the first non-European to fill the role in more than 1,200 [...]
The Deal Is Off: What to Learn from the Fall of Groupon CEO Andrew Mason
[Originally posted on Forbes.com.] Andrew Mason’s unsurprising ouster from Groupon last week wasn’t entirely about his personal brand. As anyone who has been paying attention knows, the group-discount company has been performing spectacularly badly. Its fourth-quarter earnings report was awful, with a GAAP loss of 12 cents per share—that’s 10 cents more (or six times [...]
Would Mindy McCready Have Agreed with Her Final Branding Statements?
[Originally posted on Forbes.com.] A colleague of mine recalls a time when a new boss had taken over her department and everyone was anxious. One of his first acts: handing out New York Times obituaries of distinguished people. “Read these,” he said, “and think about what your obituaries would say.” His gambit worked. The ice [...]
Livestrong Tattoos, Kardashian Fashion, Brangelina Wine: Using a Celebrity Brand to Define Your Own
[Originally posted on Forbes.com.] Last weekend, I came across an interesting article in The New York Times about people who had Livestrong tattoos and how they felt about them now. The upshot is that most of them—at least most of the people quoted in the article—don’t have a great deal of regret. They got the [...]
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 [...]
Football: Not So Super
[Originally published on Stamford magazine's website.] Last year, I took the risk of being blackballed by a nation of rabid fans of the pigskin (and more than a few friends of my own) to ask the question: What is the future of football? In light of all the life-threatening injuries and dangerously destructive playing across [...]
Turning Your Name into a Brand
[Originally posted on Forbes.com.] To a certain extent—in this age of marketing ourselves, finding our niches and explaining how our distinctive personal backstories make for unique selling propositions—all our names are brand names. But some have gone above and way beyond. That’s especially true in the world of fashion, where some of the most iconic [...]
Get Savvy About What’s Next
[Originally published on the blog of the Council of Public Relations Firms.] Great trendspotting creates great consumer marketing campaigns, terrific innovative new products and savvy newscrafting. I know: The most famous brands in the world have hired me over and over for my trendspotting methodology, ensuring that their multimillion-dollar (sometimes billion-dollar) ideas, products or services [...]
Sandy: What’s in a Name?
[Originally posted on Forbes.com.] Hurricane Sandy was a sucker punch, all right. The storm’s devastation reminded us all—even those of us who feel invincible, because we live in this capital of industry and commerce—of how vulnerable we are. A week after she struck, I’m still in the midst of it, coping without electric power (also [...]
Is There a Future for the Brand Who Bashes? (Or, What’s Next for Greg Smith?)
[Originally posted on Forbes.com.] Greg Smith, the disillusioned Goldman Sachs employee who left the firm in March with a scorched-earth op-ed in The New York Times, is back in the news as his tell-all book hit shelves last week. Whether he really pulled back the curtain on the Goldman brand or he’s just a faddish [...]
Trendspotting: Early Bloomers
Recent studies show, alarmingly, evidence of widespread “precocious puberty” among daughters all over the world. The average age of breast budding has fallen significantly since the 1970s, and 7 is now considered within the normal range for pubic-hair growth. As if to prove out those reports comes news of a 10-year-old girl giving birth in [...]
Trendspotting: Healthy Flex Life
The headline “How Yoga Can Wreck Your Body” jumped out recently from The New York Times, just as startling as a boldfaced typo. Generally regarded as one of the mildest athletic pursuits, yoga has been used therapeutically for healing after injury, for relaxation and for rejuvenation. Other purported benefits: a spicier sex life and a [...]
The Color of Fall Is Pink
[Originally posted on Mommy Lens.] When many think about the changing of the season, they picture the greens, red and golds that make up the beautiful fall foliage. But with October being Breast Cancer Awareness Month, it’s gotten awfully hard not to think pink. Numerous companies have jumped on the pink bandwagon and, according to [...]
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 [...]
Alexander McQueen Continues to Inspire
While couture fashion has always been considered an art form, the success of the Alexander McQueen exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art has taken that thought to a whole new level. Before his death from suicide last year, McQueen was one of fashion’s most revered designers. His designs were eclectic, to say the least, [...]
Mastering the Message
As a PR professional, I’m fascinated by the messaging from both sides of the political aisle in the United States about the Navy SEAL mission that resulted in the killing of Osama bin Laden. Personal politics aside, most Americans would agree this was an incredibly important moment in Barack Obama’s presidency. News reports of the [...]
March Madness
Like most of America, I spent approximately 75 percent of the time I was awake last weekend watching college basketball. I got in a run, went to the gym, had a bridal shower, but otherwise was in front of the television watching basketball all weekend long. It’s a well-known fact that the men’s NCAA college [...]
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 [...]
Hetail Therapy
This is the third in a series of five. See Euro RSCG Worldwide PR’s latest white paper, “Male in U.S.A.,” for more analysis about the state of men in America today. As I continue to do some serious “CSI”-style forensics on gender roles, I’m discovering that—almost a decade after Euro RSCG Worldwide helped introduce metrosexuals [...]
Dummied to Death?
As I reflect on the brain more than ever this year, I’ve been thinking about how dumb we’ve all become in the hopes of getting smart. It all started with those Dummies books that used to be wildly popular (although there are 753 of them listed on Amazon and they keep coming, so someone must [...]
Gabby Giffords and the Resilience of the Brain
Like the rest of the world, I watched with horror as events unfolded in Tucson, resulting in the death of six people and critically injuring Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. As talk swirled of right-wing conspiracies and out-of-control anger, people of all backgrounds prayed for Giffords and wondered how she could possibly survive after a bullet had [...]
Oprah OWNs It
I’m not ashamed to admit that on Jan. 1 at 11:59 a.m., I was sitting on my couch watching the countdown to Oprah’s newest venture, the Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN). Apparently, I wasn’t alone, because word is that the brand-new network is already a hit, averaging 1 million viewers on its first evening. The New [...]
Tapping Minitrends
This is the 11th 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. How does a trend get legs? Some trends start small and grow elephantine as if by force of nature, like the rise [...]
Elizabeth Edwards, They Hardly Knew You
Not even in death can Elizabeth Edwards escape the label of a woman wronged by a philandering husband. In the tributes and obituaries published since her passing this week, major media outlets continually define Edwards through her husband’s actions, despite her long list of personal accomplishments. The New York Times spent 40 words describing Edwards [...]
