Tag Archives: Crisis Management

Red Packets in the USA!

Evaluating a New York media scandal on the international beer metric Twenty years ago last March, I wrote my first blog post about PR in China. I had been living and blogging in China for nine months, but my early posts focused … Continue reading

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The Life and Death of a Cool Phone

That time we tried to make the Moto X in the U.S.A. I’d been working for Burson-Marsteller in China for nearly six years when I got poached away by our client, Motorola. Jumping from agencies to clients can be tricky, … Continue reading

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The Kiss-Cam of Annihilation

The reputational risks of being a Coldplay fan Here is proof that the universe hates you: You go to a Coldplay show with your paramour thinking you will be safely anonymous in a darkened arena full of 50,000 people with … Continue reading

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Who Speaks for the Killer Shark?

You’re gonna need a bigger PR plan I saw Jaws for the first time when it premiered on network television. This was in in November 1979, just after I’d turned 12 and more than four years after the movie had been in … Continue reading

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Decapitation!

Doing comms when a leader is ousted. Also, travel fun! I just got home from a trip that took me around the world, from San Francisco to Amsterdam, from Amsterdam to Taiwan, and then back home. I arrived in Amsterdam … Continue reading

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The Art of Keeping Your Mouth Shut

Never go to war with a popular TV program Way back in the early nineties, there was a popular sitcom called “Murphy Brown” set in a TV newsroom. The plot device of the lead character’s single motherhood offended then vice … Continue reading

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We Can Character-Assassinate You for Wholesale

The long tradition of shady PR knife work in dark alleys A few years ago, I had the exquisite experience of having my emails read back to me by lawyers.  There had been a snafu involving disclosure of financial information … Continue reading

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Who Wants to Be On the Death Panel?

PR thoughts on the murder of an insurance man Two weeks ago, Brian Thompson, CEO of big health insurer United Healthcare, was gunned down in New York. This created an epic amount of Discourse on social media, aggravated by the … Continue reading

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Always Check the Link!

Everything on the Internet is bad or porn until proven otherwise. Oops! CNN.com: Toy manufacturer Mattel has apologized after mistakenly printing the web address of a pornographic site on the packaging of its newly launched “Wicked” dolls. Instead of pointing readers … Continue reading

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The Great Luncheon Meat Disaster of ’24

A food crisis hits me where it hurts This is one of the greatest things I have ever read in a press statement: First and foremost, our investigation has identified the root cause of the contamination as a specific production … Continue reading

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