Corporate sponsorship is important for a great many of America’s non-profits, and that’s certainly true of the Susan G. Komen Foundation. Of course, any time you strike an alliance with another entity, you can’t help assuming some of their risk. Your partner jumps the tracks, all of a sudden people are looking at you even though you didn’t do anything
Read more2011 was a big year where issues of political power were concerned. The #Occupy movement made a great deal of noise the past few months. Finally, there was lots of discussion about Citizens United and corporate personhood, and the “99%” began asserting its anger. There was l’affaire WikiLeaks and the ongoing Julian Assange and Bradley Manning battles, with Anonymous getting involved
Read moreCitizens across the country are embroiled in battles to keep developers from destroying the character of their cities and towns, and now one such fight has made its way to my neighborhood, the Denver West Highlands. Here’s the note I just sent to the mayor and city council. I suspect a lot of our readers know exactly how I feel.
Read moreA couple of weeks ago, as I was lamenting what looked (at the time) like the end of the road for the NBA 2011-12 season, I explained that the league was facing an especially nasty confound. You had three factions (players, big market owners and small market owners), and there was simply no common ground between two of them (the
Read moreWhen we were putting S&R together in 2007 I hunted down Gavin Chait and begged him to join us. He’s one of the smartest guys I know, a relentless, good faith thinker and someone you can count on to hit you with a perspective you hadn’t thought about. He wrote our very first post and also penned at least one
Read moreI’ve long thought that Mark Cuban was a really bright guy. He’s not omniscient, by any means – every once in awhile he’ll wander down a blind alley of an idea and I’ll wonder if he’s finally run out of smart. But my experience is that he usually bounces right back with something that makes a lot of sense. In
Read moreEvery once in awhile a new term/catchphrase/buzzword/meme catches fire here in the US. Sometimes it’s a function of the fact that our incredibly plastic language, with its myriad dynamic influences (everything from media to subcultural to ethnic to technological) sort of inherently generates new words. Other times the term is a result of political or PR craftiness, as was the
Read moreMy alma mater, Wake Forest University, has a “career connectors” group on LinkedIn, and there’s currently a thread where one of the university’s career dev folks asks for some input on a project she’s working. Specifically, she asks: “If you were hiring a recent graduate, what top five professional skills do you want him/her to possess to be a strong
Read moreMark Cuban is rich. Really, really rich. And like a lot of rich people, he has an opinion on all this talk about government and taxes. A snip: I’m not against government involvement in times of need. I am for recognizing that big public companies will continue to cut jobs in an effort to prop up stock prices, which in
Read morePart two of two… On Tuesday, I offered some thoughts on the sociopathic nature of some public relations agencies. Once we learn that American firms are lipsticking brutal despots and states that support terrorism it’s legitimate to wonder if there is anyone on Earth that they wouldn’t represent. I just heard a story this morning about a flak who went so
Read morePart one of two… I work in the world of marketing and corporate communications, and my track record of business-related posts (here and at my biz site, Black Dog Strategic) probably demonstrates how seriously I take ethical concerns. For instance, not long ago I made clear that I think understanding the truth of a bad news story aimed at a
Read moreAnalystas are rushing in from all sides to examine the causes of the UK riots. Are they about politics and economics? Or is it merely an opportunity for thugs to steal stuff? All we know for sure is that it’s anarchy in the UK and that Saturday’s opening day match between Spurs and Everton has been postponed. One sobering development,
Read moreNews Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch has issued a public apology for the News of the World scandal, which appears in several British national newspapers this weekend. The final text is available here. For those unfamiliar with the exciting world of public relations, these kinds of official statements often go through a rigorous process of draft, revision, review, more revision, show
Read moreYesterday Ragan’s PR Daily, an excellent resource for professional communicators of all stripes, offered up a feature entitled “8 things to consider when TV news wants to skewer your client.” As is the usually the case with Ragan’s stuff, Gil Rudawsky’s article provided some useful on-point advice for the media relations practitioner, and the comment thread finds other experienced folks
Read moreOkay, this is brilliant. I never heard of it until this morning and now I learn that there’s apparently a whole movement afoot, with a project and everything.
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lullaby pit 