Tag: PR

Blood Simple: A Photogenic Stanford Dropout

I have been a long-time fan and somewhat regular attendee of the New York Tech Meetups where month after month ten entrepreneurs take the stage to showcase their tech-driven startups before a most discerning audience of coders, students, VCs, journalists, entrepreneurs, etc. Mostly missing from the mix, however, are PR professionals who would be charged with…… Continue reading Blood Simple: A Photogenic Stanford Dropout

My Bet Is On Fantasy Sports

I’m sure you heard the news this week that one of the three American heroes who foiled that terrorist plot aboard a Paris train was himself stabbed in a late-night altercation on the streets of his hometown of Sacramento, CA. No, it wasn’t a terrorist attack, and yes, he’ll survive. Reading the story further, we…… Continue reading My Bet Is On Fantasy Sports

Pope Francis: On The Media’s ‘A’ List

Hearing the helicopters hover over my upper east side neighborhood in anticipation of the arrival tomorrow in NYC of Pope Francis, it’s hard not to be taken with the command and control this one individual, and his PR consiglieres, have exerted over how he will be publicly perceived. Taylor Swift, Kanye West and Vladimir Putin:…… Continue reading Pope Francis: On The Media’s ‘A’ List

The Martian Lifts Off

“The book The Martian is earning high praise from space, and the astronaut-reviewer can’t wait to see the soon-to-be-released movie.” Clever marketing types have long understood the allure of space, and specifically the PR bump their products could receive through their presence on a mission. I suppose it all started with Tang, that chemically concocted,…… Continue reading The Martian Lifts Off

Tinder Tackles Vanity Fair

PR pros in the earned media space (i.e., publicity) are all too familiar with the inevitable appearance of factual mistakes in the stories they successfully pitched to reporters. Just as there are fallible PR pros who simply fail to grasp the machinations of the news reporting process, there are (far too) many journalists prone to…… Continue reading Tinder Tackles Vanity Fair

Slaughter Standards at Hermès

For deep-pocketed style and status-conscious women, few symbols make as much of a statement as an Hermès’ Birken bag. A recent piece in Cosmopolitan magazine led with “I need a Birken,” and went on to describe just where the designer fashion accessory resided in the hierarchy of style for one upwardly mobile, 29-year-old fashion industry…… Continue reading Slaughter Standards at Hermès

Let Hillary Be Hillary

PR Week news editor Frank Washkuch posted an opinion piece today lamenting the Clinton campaign’s shortsightedness in its dealings with the national press corps assigned to cover it. The title of the piece pretty much summed up his sentiment “Time for the Clinton campaign to change course on media relations.” Clinton advance aides create a…… Continue reading Let Hillary Be Hillary

Uber’s Parisian PRedicament

Some months back, I was asked to appear on Bloomberg West to talk about Uber’s PR shortsightedness in the wake of a widely-reported, highly critical incident in Sydney, Australia that Mashable’s Seth Fiegerman summed up as follows: “Uber briefly introduced surge pricing up to four times the normal rate in Sydney on Monday during an…… Continue reading Uber’s Parisian PRedicament

Trump, Cyrus and Swift: Contrasting Characters

In an age when the threshold is high for breaking through the clutter of an incessant news stream, ambitious newsmaker wannabes and their PR enablers have used all kinds of gimmicks to capture the media’s attention. Some are pre-fabricated, while others lack taste. Rare is the staged event that can shake its PR vestiges and emerge as…… Continue reading Trump, Cyrus and Swift: Contrasting Characters