This is the time of the year that self-proclaimed PR experts write about what they think are the worst blunders made by other practitioners, but never mention ones that they made during 2025. So I'll do so also, but with a twist: It will be limited to what I consider...
February will be a busy month for sports marketing publicity practitioners. It most likely will also be a disappointing month for them, because, as usual, positive earned media for the two mega events—the Super Bowl and Winter Olympics—will be negligible, even though...
The recent disclosures of illegal gambling involving professional athletes validates, in my mind, what I have been telling clients for many years—“using current athletes as publicity spokespersons is a bad bet.” As the sports marketing guru at several public...
Media coverage of the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milano Cortina, Italy will take place from February 6 to 22. Olympics coverage is heating up and the crescendo is certain to increase as we approach the end of the year. NBCUniversal, which will televise the games, has...
As some of my journalist friends have told me over the years, “You see one PR program and pitch, you’ve seen them all,” and it’s hard to disagree with them because so many PR approaches are similar. The truly original PR program with creative thinking is the exception...
On this website on Sept.10, I wrote an essay about how PR lessons learned from the Epstein files situation can be used on non-political accounts. This is a follow-up to the original article. On Sept. 3, nine women who were sexually abused by Jeffrey Epstein gathered...
I’ve long advised non-political PR practitioners that they should pay close attention to the political scene because there are many lessons that are used by political operatives that can be used on non-political accounts. In this essay, I’ll identify the many...
If there’s one aspect that all PR practitioners should be aware of, it’s that when arranging an interview for a client there is only one certainty: Until the story appears, you’ll never know if it will be what you hoped for. Experience shows that the resulting story...
There’s an old adage that goes, “the cover-up is greater than the crime.” I don’t fully agree with it; it depends on what the crime was. But one thing that’s evident is that covering up a crime, no matter how big or small, will usually lead to extensive negative media...
Earlier this month, on this website, I authored a column about how President Trump’s tactics regarding the Epstein crisis are an example of “how to keep a PR crisis in the news.” This is an addendum to that column. An accurate title could be “How to make certain that...
I’ve often criticized the strategies used during a PR crisis because many are from hackneyed by-the-book manuals. That’s definitely not true about the tactics that President Trump has been using during his Jeffrey Epstein crisis. But just because it’s original...
I’ve attended and led hundreds of public relations creative meetings during my career in the propaganda business. I’ve heard brilliant ideas, good ideas, bad ideas, silly ideas and outlandish ideas. Most often missing during almost 100% of the sessions was the...