I’ll never forget the request from the advertising production company for the Michael Jackson/Pepsi commercial in which the iconic performer took the stage as part of a simulated concert. The shot required recruiting thousands of extras off the street to serve as the audience, yet all were strictly forbidden to record or photograph any aspect […]
Transformative Movie Marketing Read More »
Sometimes change is good, sometimes it’s not so good. One thing however is certain: change is inevitable. In my world, the inevitable doesn’t get much bigger than the recently announced departures of communications pros from three of the biggest “brands” on the planet: Ford Motor Company, Apple Inc. and The White House. What? You were
Apple, Ford & Obama Read More »
On the surface, it seemed like a good idea: leverage the highfalutiness of the Hamptons brand to bolster the low brow Kardashian brand, and especially the latter’s TV reality show coming to E! this fall. Yet, unlike the MTV’s Beach House or Jersey Shore, these two brands are as about incongruous as they get. It’s
Facebook co-founder and publisher/editor-in-chief of The New Republic Chris Hughes proclaimed his distaste for the term “media” on the I Want Media-sponsored “Future of Media” panel held today in Cooper Square as part of Internet Week New York. Given the many flavors, formats and deliver mechanisms the “media” comes in nowadays, I don’t blame Mr.
I Hate The Term Media Read More »
Ahh. The yin-yang of it all. Today, the Twitter trumpet Launchticker touted the $80M round of financing for Oscar Health Insurance, founded by New Jerseyan Joshua Kushner of Thrive Capital who’s the brother of Jared Kushner, owner of the NY Observer and husband of Ivanka Trump, daughter of The Donald, the perennial faux GOP presidential
An Unhealthy Funding Event Read More »
Landing clients for speaking gigs at industry conferences is often a key deliverable for PR firms. Some events are more prestigious than others. For example, these last couple of days we’re swimming in the breathless doings at TechCrunch Disrupt, taking place in the Big Apple. Yahoo! chief Marissa Mayer took the stage this morning with
Google Exec Bolts Keynote Read More »
Nearly six years ago, I penned a post titled “Leaders Who Lie,” mostly about the blatant misinformation campaign propagated by one Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. I followed it up several years later with a similarly themed post titled “PR Rogues Gallery,” which broadened the meme to include Yasser Arafat, Syria’s Assad, Libya’s Qaddafi and Russia, which could
Russia’s Media Trolls Read More »
I recently caught up with an old friend and former client who’s steeped in the world of tech startups, digital media and information technology (IT). Neither my friend nor I are coders, but at 50 years+ apiece we can still hold our own when it comes to assessing, articulating and advancing the commercial prospects of
22 New Yorkers Over 50 Who Get I.T. Read More »
During a recent Bulldog Reporter webinar I moderated on the subject of media relations 2.0, a senior communications professional from the Public Broadcasting System (PBS) noted that when the organization wanted to announce news, it simply posted the story to its Facebook, LinkedIn and Pinterest pages, Twitter and Instagram feeds, and probably one or two
The Pleasure & Pain Of Branded Social Media Read More »
A week doesn’t go by without some news org touting one city or another as the next Silicon Valley.  Here’s a random sampling: Singapore Aims to Become Southeast Asia’s Silicon Valley (Wall Street Journal, Feb 26, 2014) Some day Silicon Valley will move north. Here’s why it should settle in Oakland (GigaOm, Feb 17, 2014)
The NYC Techonomy Boom Read More »
