Authentic CEOs

Posted on August 26, 2008 | 0 Comments

I just returned from Singapore where I appeared at the Global Branding Forum. This has been an annual conference for the past five years and has had such speakers as Al Gore, Rudy Guiliani, Francis Ford Coppola and others. I was flattered to be invited and made a presentation that I titled: "Time for Brands to Get REAL."

After this, I appeared on a panel with Spike Lee and Al Reis, and I thought our readers might enjoy an anecdote I cited. I think that we are all getting fed up with the phonies we've seen in…

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PR and Road Kill

Posted on August 22, 2008 | 3 Comments

To some, PR is still little more than road kill

There's no question the craft of public relations has gained in stature.

More and more chief executives understand PR's importance to constituent communications and its influence, direct or indirect, on the Street. Chief Marketing Officers have also recognized PR's ability to reach targets on a one-to-one basis. Additionally, CEOs and CMOs prefer cost-effective PR instead of big, bad advertising.

Yet, for every two steps forward, it seems PR always takes at least one giant stride in reverse. Take Chrysler,…

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Authenticity and Keeping Promises

Posted on August 13, 2008 | 0 Comments

The academic symposium at Tuck sounds like it generated rich dialogue around The Authentic Enterprise (very much in keeping with the Society's goal to encourage a global conversation). I was pleased to see the focus on the leadership needed by the CCO and that the potential conflict some might see with marketing and the CMOs role may in fact be quite the opposite--that authenticity is fundamentally what will help marketers distinguish their brands. Jim Gilmore, author of Authenticity: What Consumers Really Want, and a speaker on the…

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Public Relations - One of the Best Jobs in the World?

Posted on August 08, 2008 | 0 Comments

If you are starting out or considering a career change, does the following appeal - learning another language (or three), travelling and working abroad to understand things from different cultural angles, putting yourself in other people's shoes and thinking 'what's in it for me?' from their point of view, being inquisitive, an interpreter of information and insightful, and above all being a diplomat - forgiving, encouraging, conciliatory, driving change? Ie, being paid to be a roving, curious, intellectual, liberal dilettante? Welcome, then, to the new order of public relations and its search for talent around the world.

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No Spectators

Posted on August 05, 2008 | 0 Comments

I'm honored to be invited to join the Arthur W. Page Society annual conference in September. As my part of the discussion, I'd like to share the two essential rules to successful communications in social media:

* Ask, don't tell.
* No spectators.

Truth be told, I learned these rules by happy accident. Today women who blog are ubiquitous and BlogHer is the #1 guide to women who blog, a company that reaches more than nine million people a month via our publishing network of more than 2,200 blogs, our…

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