The early weeks of 2022 have proved one thing: Sports marketers should always have a back-up plan because as Robert Burns wrote in his poem To a Mouse, “The best laid schemes o' mice an' men / Gang aft a-gley.” Burns wrote this sage advice in 1785, long before there...
After several years of being a freelance reporter for a number of New York daily newspapers, I was offered a full-time job at one of them. But it wasn’t as a reporter. I was assigned to a news desk, where I had to read all of the competing newspapers to see if they...
Even though I covered sports for about a decade as a journalist prior to entering the PR business, and was also the sports marketing specialist for many years at Burson-Marsteller (in addition to playing key roles on none sports accounts), I always cautioned clients...
As the Super Bowl and Beijing Olympics nears early in 2022, the sports reports will be filled with glorifying past and present “heroes.” But during my long career when selecting athletes as brand publicity spokespersons, I much preferred using athletes who have not...
Every public relations program has the risk of turning sour and producing negative publicity for the client. There is no way to prevent this from happening. The reasons are many: A new product might not stand up to the claims of the client that it is superior to...
The year 2021 has provided some important lessons for PR practitioners. Unfortunately, all of them are the result of sad events. In the order of the most recent, as of December 15, here are several that I consider provide PR lessons that relate to our business. ...
Being in a crisis situation is nothing new for Aaron Rodgers, the star quarterback for the Green Bay Packers. But usually the crisis is caused by rushing National Football League lineman attempting to sack him. Occasionally, Rodgers, arguably the best at his position...
My dislike of trite words and phrases is personal: When I was a reporter for several years prior to jumping over the journalism fence to the PR side, a “kindly old editor” told me, “Son, if you want to keep working for me, stop using trite phrases in your copy.” And...
Sponsors of the 2021 Summer Olympic Games in Tokyo had to cancel promotional plans because of the Covid-19 outbreak. Sponsors of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics did the same—but the cutbacks were not limited to the continuing Covid pandemic. Accusations of human...
My first job in the media business was as a sports reporter. But after a few years covering fun and games I knew, as did many sports reporters before me, that there were much more important subjects to cover—like war and peace and politics. But my chance of covering...
You can be sure that after the November 2 elections and the Atlanta Braves defeating the Houston Astros in the World Series, the top brass of the Democratic party and of many Major League teams are acting the same way that top executives of public relations companies...
One thing is certain. There are many PR lessons that President Joe Biden’s evacuation strategy from Afghanistan have provided. Another thing that is certain is that there have been many PR crises thus far in 2021. Arguably the most important one occurred not in an...