Category Archives: Business

The eye of the Tiger: does Woods have to choose between being a great golfer and a good human being?

Tiger Woods wrapped up the 2010 Open Championship at St. Andrews tied for 23rd and 13 strokes off the pace, “his worst finish at a major in which he completed 72 holes since a tie for 24th at the 2004 PGA.” You might remember that Woods had a little domestic dustup last November, and since then he hasn’t exactly been

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Qwest/CenturyTel merger: do you, Triceratops, take this Brontosaurus to be your lawfully wedded wife?

It was announced yesterday that Louisiana-based CenturyTel is buying Qwest, marking the second major takeover in ten years for the Denver telco. I have some history with the US West iteration of the company, having worked there from 1997 until the ill-fated Qwest “merger” in Summer 2000. I was fortunate enough to be a part of USW’s PR group, which

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Qwest/CenturyTel merger: do you, Triceratops, take this Brontosaurus to be your lawfully wedded wife?

It was announced yesterday that Louisiana-based CenturyTel is buying Qwest, marking the second major takeover in ten years for the Denver telco. I have some history with the US West iteration of the company, having worked there from 1997 until the ill-fated Qwest “merger” in Summer 2000. I was fortunate enough to be a part of USW’s PR group, which

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Of tigers and dogs and the howling jackals of the press: what the Woods trainwreck can teach us about public relations

In case you missed it, Eldrick Tont Woods, the world’s greatest golfer, has been up against some pressing PR issues of late. Pretty much nobody is arguing that he’s handled it well. Begin with the official record. While it’s not yet 100% clear what touched off the fateful events of November 27, 2009, everybody is denying that Elin was trying

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Corporation files to run for Congress: important marketing strategy questions remain unanswered

The Supreme Court has decreed that corporations are persons and money is speech, so it was only a matter of time before a company decided to exercise its Constitutional right to run for Congress. Following the recent Supreme Court ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission to allow unlimited corporate funding of federal campaigns, Murray Hill Inc. today announced

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Predicting the 21st Century: Nostraslammy’s ten-year review

Ten years ago, at the turn of the millennium, Nostraslammy took a stab at predicting the 21st Century, with a promise to check back every ten years to see how the prognostications were turning out. Odds are good I won’t be able to do a review every ten years until 2100, but I figure I’m probably good through 2030, at

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Democracy & Elitism 3: burning down the straw man, and who are these out-of-touch “liberal elites,” anyway?

Let’s begin with a quick trivia question. What legislator’s Top 20 donor list includes the following? Blackstone Group (Financial Services) Bain Capital FPL Group (Energy) DLA Piper (Corporate law firm, representing Global 1,000 and Fortune 500 companies) Kindred Healthcare Beacon Capital Partners Comcast Corp Brownstein, Hyatt et al (Corporate law firm) Venable LLP (Corporate law firm) Hummer Winblad Venture Partners

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Business and social media: American companies growing up, sort of

Ever since the Internet began gaining popular awareness in the mid-1990s, the topic of how businesses can productively use various new media technologies has been a subject of ongoing interest. Along the way we’ve had a series of innovations to consider: first it was the Net, and the current tool of the moment is Twitter. In between we had, in

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Organizations, fear and leadership

My wife, who’s working on her MBA, is currently wading through a class that focuses on leadership. The other night she observed that “there sure are a lot of people out there developing theories on leadership, aren’t there?” Well, yes, and for good reason. Most of those people are working to provide hooks for consulting practices, which can be pretty

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