The Federal Aviation Administration has approved the first drone delivery service to work as an airline. The company will now start testing in Virginia and elsewhere. It strikes one as a technology in search of a mission. There is little to show so far that drones will add enough marketing power to a business that […]
Posted on April 24th, 2019 by admin
Filed under: Uncategorized | 142 Comments »
Companies sometimes try to get away with things in marketing that PR can’t abide. Consider AT&T. It has branded its 4G mobile network 5G E in an effort to make the public believe it is already offering 5G speeds. It isn’t even though sophisticated users have been fooled. The media are bashing the company for […]
Posted on April 23rd, 2019 by admin
Filed under: Uncategorized | 136 Comments »
A 19th Democratic candidate for President has made his intentions known and the field has turned into a cattle call. There is no way that most will be able to rise above anonymity with voters, and the field will shrink as candidates run out of money and time. From a PR perspective, it is an […]
Posted on April 22nd, 2019 by admin
Filed under: Uncategorized | 109 Comments »
Once an organization gets on the wrong side of an issue, it often takes a long time to correct course. Consider Facebook and privacy. The company has been under public censure for more than a year over the issue and now it seems to have botched its path forward again. The repeated mistakes give the […]
Posted on April 19th, 2019 by admin
Filed under: Uncategorized | 131 Comments »
It has been more than 300 days since the Pentagon has given a press briefing. That is not smart PR. The public should know what the military is thinking, not the least because it is such a large part of taxpayer funds. Press briefings also humanize the military — put faces to names and provide […]
Posted on April 18th, 2019 by admin
Filed under: Uncategorized | 148 Comments »
The internet has made celebrity a peril. It opens a sluice for trolls, haters and the disgruntled to vent at a notable person. It doesn’t matter whether the individual deserves recognition or not. Consider the case of Katie Bouman, a young computer scientist from MIT who led a team that developed software to develop the […]
Posted on April 16th, 2019 by admin
Filed under: Uncategorized | 134 Comments »
Israelis made the mistake of celebrating a moon landing too soon. The spacecraft, Beresheet, crashed onto its surface while the world watched. The vehicle carried the hopes and dreams of the nation, but it was not to be. There was probably little that could have been done to tamp down expectations. The best that can […]
Posted on April 15th, 2019 by admin
Filed under: Uncategorized | 134 Comments »
There has been enormous hype and publicity surrounding self-driving cars, and companies around the world are pursuing the technology. But one corporation, Ford, has come clean and is now saying we won’t see them anytime soon. The reality of the complexity of self-driving vehicles has set in. Even Waymo, which has spent billions pursuing the […]
Posted on April 12th, 2019 by admin
Filed under: Uncategorized | 148 Comments »
NASCAR used to be America’s premier motor racing sport. It isn’t anymore. The series has taken a long fall in popularity. Fans have stopped coming to its giant ovals and TV viewership is off. From a marketing perspective, what can NASCAR do to win customers back or is it doomed to be a niche entertainment? […]
Posted on April 8th, 2019 by admin
Filed under: Uncategorized | 141 Comments »
Sometimes the best way to handle a PR disaster is simply to gut it out, to continue on course and wait for the uproar to settle. That is what politicians in Virginia are doing. Two were insensitive in their youths by using blackface. One has been accused by two women of sexual harassment. There were […]
Posted on April 5th, 2019 by admin
Filed under: Uncategorized | 147 Comments »
