Marketing Myths: Frequency Is Not Familiarity

The Nielsen Global Survey recently released a study that suggests 60 percent of global consumers would prefer to buy new products from a familiar brand rather than a new one. According to organizations like Brafton News, this means marketers with established brands need content to cultivate continued loyalty while emerging businesses need trust and awareness through lead generation efforts. But do they...

Reacting Badly: Crisis Communication Is No Carnival

There comes a point in every crisis when a company must decide whether remediation will cost more early or later. Early is almost always better, but the crisis has to end before anything can be remediated. Carnival Cruise Lines learned this lesson the hard way. Rather than end the crisis aboard the disabled cruise liner Triumph early, someone made the decision that it would be safer (and cheaper) to tow...

Reconciling Definitions: PR Is Not A Communication Process

It didn't hit me until I tried to teach it, but the most recent definition of public relations offered by the Public Relations Society of America is wrong. It isn't a little bit wrong. It's a whole lot wrong. It's wrong because public relations is not a strategic communication process. There is much more to it than that. Even my students crinkled their brows when the full force of comparison was offered for consideration....

Communicating Big: The Art Of Nonverbal Power

When colleague Kelli Matthews, instructor at the University of Oregon, shared a recent talk by American social psychologist Amy Cuddy, I was immediately curious and excited to see it. Cuddy's TED talk rubs up against some of my individual work related image development, with mine approaching it from different disciplines. I had seen her study two years ago, but not the talk. I also thought this would be...

Disregarding Lessons: Last Lectures And Final Essays

Like many people who work in communication last November, I read the last words of Linds Redding, a New Zealand-based art director who worked at BBDO and Saatchi & Saatchi. He died at 52. Given I was scheduling initial doctors' visits to solve some bodily wonkiness after quietly turning 45 when I first read his essay, his words really sent me reeling. They seemed all too right ... that the creative side of...

Convincing Employees: Public Relations' Ugliest Public

Ten years ago, when you mentioned internal communication to most public relations professionals, the best you could hope for was a blank stare. (A blank stare was still one step up from any reaction at the mention of social media.) But it wasn't really their fault. Many of them were taught it was hands off. "Oh no, we handle all external communication," one might nod in agreement, emphasis on external. Conversely,...

Multitasking With TV: Where's Your Message?

People still watch television, but most people watch it differently. As many as 42 percent of U.S. consumers now say that they access the Internet via their PCs or laptops (and 17 percent access the Internet via smartphones) while watching it. Almost 25 percent of them specifically sign on social networks. These were among the most recent findings to come out of the KPMG International 2013...