In PR circles we talk about the importance of building executive profiles and visibility.  Leaders who are in the news can serve as ambassors for the company brand; and their visibility can advance the goals of the business. But let’s take this idea to an absurd extreme, where one exec, say the CEO, singularly emblemizes the company while dominating headlines and living rent free in our minds. Further, the exec is controversial, a loose cannon. Is their high profile a good thing? Most who long for that kind of fame (e.g., startups and their founders) might answer a resounding “Yes ..read more

I have been working with PR teams for over twenty years.  In all that time, some of the same questions keep coming up about press releases. No, not “is the press release dead yet?” The one I had in mind is about the value of issuing less newsworthy PRs, like awards, personnel announcements, etc.  Some avoid them because minor announcements generally don’t move the needle on media coverage. I argue that it is the wrong way to look at the question. First, we live in an online world.  Even if the media don’t write, there’s a chance that customers and industry players will see the ..read more

Have you ever considered launching a CEO or executive podcast but don’t know where to start? It’s really not that hard, doesn’t have to cost much – and you can earn real ROI without having to build a vast audience, according to our guest Saul Marquez, CEO and founder of Outcomes Rocket. He says: Downloads are vanity, creating and nurturing relationships is sanity. Saul Marquez, Outcomes Rocket Saul breaks down the process in this episode, and, judging by the success of his digital marketing firm and its namesake podcast that Saul also hosts, the formula really works. We had a great ..read more

I have been mucking around with ChatGPT and other similar solutions. In reviewing others’ experiences, I have seen that many talk about which prompts work best for certain kinds of inquiries. This seems kind of funny, that we all need to become AI whisperers now. We need to carefully construct our requests to get the right results. Isn’t the tech supposed to be smart, and working for us? Then, I thought: hey, wait a second! What if we reverse roles? Perhaps the AI can give me the prompts I need to get the results and information IRL from real people? Then, the AI could truly work for me, and ..read more

The PR, Done and Doner podcast panel had fun watching and discussing famous video interview flameouts of 2023. It was a wild ride, and nice follow-up to my post about one-hit blunders, i.e. high profile figures who were felled by a single bad story last year. We discussed what went wrong, what went right, and offered tips, through the lens of long time PR pros.  Participants included my Fusion PR colleagues Jordan Chanofsky, Olga Shmuklyer and Mark Prindle. (Not that we like to dwell on the negative, but it can be instructive to watch and learn from these, a ..read more

Some say there’s no such thing as bad publicity. The very idea seems harmless enough, right?  After all, the only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about. But most people I know who work in PR vehemently disagree with thoughts like these. Would anyone who’s been canceled say that all exposure is good? To illustrate, I thought I’d share a few examples of some high profile figures who suffered career-limiting consequences after just one bad story in 2023. Rehabilitate a Royal Image? No Sweat! Celebrity: Prince Andrew Situation: The Prince had been caught up In th ..read more

I enjoyed chatting with Eric Yaverbaum for our podcast recently. If you don’t know the name, you probably should – especially if you run in NYC PR circles. He is CEO of Ericho Communications⁠ and author of Public Relations for Dummies and Leadership Secrets of the World’s Most Successful CEOs. Eric used the latest influencer scandals (e.g., with Twitch star Kai Cenat and YouTuber Mr. Beast) as a lens to view the state and future of crisis management. He spoke at length about crisis strategy with newer social platforms such as TikTok and Twitch, and impications for crisis comms ..read more

Things are a bit slow due to the summer schedule but please stay tuned ..read more

Personal branding; some love it and some dismiss it as an exercise in narcissism and self promotion. But promoting personalities vs. company brands is a key part of PR.  Whether you are old, young, building your own profile, or your CEO’s, it is key to understand why personal branding is important and how it works. We discussed this at length in a Defining PR roundtable I participated in (see my blog wrap).  And in the last PR, Done & Doner episode, guest Stacey Ross Cohen dug deep into the topic. She is an old friend – we have known each other since third grade, and coincidenta ..read more

I enjoyed participating in the Defining PR roundtable on Twitter Spaces recently, which was organized and led by Stephen Karaolis, founder of Pear The Agency and AI startup PR Labs (more on this below). It was a great panel and very lively conversation about the changes rocking the industry, and the growing role of AI. The roundtable included others in tech and B2B PR (my kind of people!) representing agency and client-side views. This was my first time on Spaces (it took me a while to figure out how to just raise my hand). Although it was sometimes hard to get a word in, all had the chance ..read more