Many of the world’s best warm-weather athletes will soon compete for the gold in the Paris 2024 Olympics, which will begin on July 26. So will sports marketing sponsors that are spending millions of dollars to become official Olympic sponsors of “this and that” or...
If history repeats itself, and it certainly will during the Summer Olympic Games in Paris (from July 26 to August 11), some athletes will not only take home gold medals, but will win another type of gold—lucrative endorsement deals with brands. Also if history repeats...
There were important lessons that PR practitioners should learn and remember from the trial of former President Donald J. Trump, some of which relate to my almost 25 years at Burson-Marsteller (now BCW), 10 years at Arthur Cantor/Advance Public Relations, at that time...
It’s almost Olympics time again, and soon the International Olympic Committee (IOC) will again pull out its crying towel and complain about ambush marketing campaigns aimed at sponsors of the Paris Summer Olympics, which will be staged in the City of Lights from July...
In addition to being a football game, the 2024 Super Bowl became a political hot potato when MAGA supporters attacked pop star Taylor Swift for being a Democratic operative. This is not the first time that a sport has become embroiled in matters political. In fact,...
A PR person assigned to gain major earned media publicity for a sponsors’ Super Bowl tie-in during the early years of the Big Game was the equivalent of being given an ice cream sundae by agency management. Reporters were anxious to interview football players that PR...
Early in July 2023, I wrote an article on this website regarding news events that provided free important PR lessons in the first half of the year. Here are my choices for the second half of last year. From the international scene Israel was widely condemned by a...
With only a few weeks left in the year, one thing is a certainty: 2023 has not been a very good year for old-timers, especially on the political and sports scenes. But in our business, some old-time tenets that date back to the Founding Fathers of public relations are...
During my long PR career, I was called a maverick because I often disagreed with my colleagues’ widely accepted PR principles, and when we came to a fork in the road, I took the one less used. Here are some beliefs that set me apart from the clan: 1. Don’t pitch...
The reporting errors regarding the Palestinian terrorist attack on an Israeli musical festival and kibbutzim should have provided important lessons for PR practitioners, especially when doing research for a program or speech: Never rely on one single source. The...
On September 25, a headline in The Wall Street Journal read, “Bosses Say They Want The Truth. Do They Mean It?” How you would answer the question above if it was asked of you could determine your status at public relations agencies—which statistics show is short-lived...
On August 28, The U.S. Department of Transportation posted the following: “WASHINGTON – The U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) today fined American Airlines $4.1 million for violating federal statutes and the Department’s rule prohibiting tarmac delays of three...