Wednesday November 27, 2024

This Is Dumb

Companies are suing and fining customers for bad-mouthing them online.  Threats are designed to muzzle them through intimidation.  How dumb is that?  All it does is tick off the unhappy person who will make an extra effort offline to give the company a bad name, and the more people who find out about such aggressive […]

This Time Is Different

This is amusing and acrid advice to a wealthy man who has purchased a publication.  In this case, the magazine is New Republic and the owner is Chris Hughes.  Whether you agree with the writer’s view or not, there is in the opinion piece a cautionary note for PR practitioners.  That counsel:  Avoid saying, “This time […]

Can’t Buy This Kind Of PR

Apple’s disaster with mapping for its iPhones has been addressed by… Google, the company whose mapping software Apple dropped earlier this year.  Critics are raving about Google’s app to the point of embarrassment for Google’s engineers and cartographers.  Although Apple is working hard to correct its mistakes, the massive acceptance of Google’s solution makes one wonder […]

How Did It Last This Long?

Now that the Encyclopaedia Britannica is no longer going to be printed, one asks how it lasted this long in the internet age?  Old technologies have inertia.  They don’t disappear right away.  Like tops at the end of their spins, they wobble on their axes for a while before they tilt.  The next candidates for […]

How Did This Happen?

How did this happen?  An investor spends billions to build a digital network only to discover that his radio spectrum overpowers GPS and the Federal Communications Commission axes the network.   The size of the failure is so stunning that one wonders who was talking to whom throughout the development.  Predictably, LightSquared says it will […]

We Interrupt This Blog…

So I’ve been playing with the blog’s design as well as the content feed. As I’m perfecting this, you’ve gotten one or two email posts without context that include my photos and my curated links. The end result is better, more frequent content from me. Your patience is appreciated. Tweet This Post

Is This A Business?

Reports have come out that Microsoft has spent $5.5 billion to date in an effort to establish its search engine, Bing.  From an economic perspective, one must ask if Bing is a business.  Thus far, it is a money pit.  Microsoft has enough cash to continue losing a billion a quarter for some time to […]

How Can This Be?

Another year, another good upfront market for television advertising.  How can this be with the web, social media, YouTube, Hulu, video games and all the other alternative entertainment media?  It appears that marketers buy TV because they understand it, and feel they can measure it.  Doesn’t that strike you as rock-ribbed conservatism?  Meanwhile, the rest […]

Maybe This Time

Steve Jobs of Apple is taking another medical leave but not giving up his post as CEO.  The last time he did this, he did not tell anyone why he had stepped away, and he had a liver transplant — a serious and life-threatening operation.  He owed at least investors an explanation for his absence. […]

Respect the brand this Christmas/Holiday Season*

I love seeing creativity. Mixing creativity with humor to poke fun at an institution is better again. It’s why I love the Santa Brand Book. Serious kudos to Quiet Room on their magnificent work in support of one of the world’s truly enduring mega-brands. I will never use unapproved Santa® related vocabulary again.   *I […]