When a firm stumbles, it is usually not one faux pas but several. Burson Marsteller is learning that lesson with an inexcusable mistake last Friday — deleting negative comments about it from its Facebook page. Of course, Burson didn’t get away it. In an era of transparency, Burson was caught almost immediately and had to […]
Posted on May 17th, 2011 by admin
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It’s an interesting phenomenon that once engaged in battle, it is hard to control its expansion. At least that appears to be what is happening in Libya where the British commander is setting the scene for a broader campaign to topple Colonel Qaddafi. America knows this phenomenon well since Vietnam, incursion into Iraq and now […]
Posted on May 16th, 2011 by admin
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Here is a brief essay on the craft of business writing. It is opinionated, and I welcome rebuttals. The heart of the paper is a plea for better thinking and logic rather than more studies of grammar and communications techniques. One can argue that my view is simplistic, but in my experience, poor writers are […]
Posted on May 14th, 2011 by admin
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So many people have kicked Burson-Marsteller today that we won’t add to the verbal pummeling. I’m sure there is a review of ethical PR standards underway at the firm, and just maybe, one or two people are looking for jobs. It has been a bitter reminder that a PR firm should never be part of a […]
Posted on May 13th, 2011 by admin
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It is too much to expect that conviction of a Wall Street magnate will deter others from illegal activity, as prosecutors apparently hope. Where there is a chance to make money, someone will take it — legally or not. One doesn’t have to work in business for long to realize that situational ethics abound. Normally […]
Posted on May 12th, 2011 by admin
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Perception is reality in housing, and the reality is that housing prices continue to be crushed under the weight of millions of foreclosures. This, of course, is devastating to the real estate industry — the hundreds of thousands of brokers, developers, financiers and builders who can only work if people believe it is a time […]
Posted on May 11th, 2011 by admin
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This report from Pew Research Center concludes that most news site visitors are casual users, or media grazers who show up once or twice a month, spend one to five minutes then move on. The challenge that presents to the media in defining its audience to advertisers is the same as that faced by PR practitioners responding […]
Posted on May 10th, 2011 by admin
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This is interesting — a CEO who admits that he has taken a message too far. General Electric’s CEO Jeff Immelt now says he shouldn’t have talked about saving the environment as much as he did. The problem is that some investors started to believe he was more committed to the environment than to […]
Posted on May 9th, 2011 by admin
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As this story relates, even reasonable people have blind spots and suffer from incredulity. It is an issue the President is facing now by deciding not to release photos of the deceased Osama bin Laden. Part of his justification is that even with a photo, some people will refuse to believe — and he is […]
Posted on May 6th, 2011 by admin
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Sometimes a PR pitch is so wrong-headed, clueless and crass that one can only stand back and wonder. Here is one. Whoever wrote and distributed this release has so little understanding of the media that one can only conclude he or she (probably he) had never dealt with the media before. If so, why did […]
Posted on May 5th, 2011 by admin
Filed under: Uncategorized | 183 Comments »
