How to Stay in Control When On the Spot

Seasoned business pros and corporate executives invest heavily in media training so they can deliver their messages clearly. Their calm, unflappable demeanor comes after intensive preparation and practice. This post offers a few lessons from media training that you can apply to everyday business situations.

How to Make Messages that Make Your Audience the Hero

Finding the right messages about ourselves and our companies is hard. We have to slow down and understand just how we benefit others. It requires a commitment and sometimes even a shift in perspective. Find out how to make more interesting messages.

Why is it So Hard to Be Human (In Corporate Communications)?

Topping the list of advice about how to communicate during the coronavirus pandemic is being human. Yet so many companies and organizations struggle to be authentic and compelling. This blog post offers some practical tips for how to humanize your communications.

Internal Communications Like Rodney Dangerfield Gets No Respect

They say that those closest to us are often the last to know things.  Nowhere is that more true than within our own companies and organizations.   Internal communications is often an afterthought.

Email: The Most Dangerous Form of Communication

Email is the communication tool we all love to hate. It’s fast, inexpensive, convenient and effective. It also is overused or used inappropriately. From sports teams to fashion retailers to political candidates, everyone, it seems, wants my attention and my dollars.

Don’t Use the Word Strategic Unless You Mean It

It seems everyone and everything these days is strategic.  We have strategic plans, enter into strategic partnerships, undertake strategic marketing, make strategic hires, and even, according to one State Department official, practice “strategic patience” in the Middle East.

Media Relations: Finding Your Perfect Pitch

Media relations have never been more challenging. With the speed of communications, the multitude of communications platforms, and the rise of press release distribution services, reporters and editors are simply overwhelmed by the number of pitches and press releases they receive.

Customer Service Nightmares

Today was the day I had dreaded for some time.  I had to clear up a bunch of issues with several big companies—Lowes, Comcast, Verizon, and KitchenAid.  And now with phone calls completed, I’m looking back on a day of exhausting, frustrating, and dehumanizing experiences

Public Relations: Does a Day (or Week or Month) Make a Difference?

Last Thursday was Earth Day and there were the usual wonderful and less wonderful actions on the part of marketers, nonprofits and corporations to get in on the celebration by aligning and promoting their brand. Nancy Schwartz highlighted a number of great nonprofit efforts. On the commercial side, Leslie Kaufman wrote a piece for the New York Times about Earth Day now being big business.

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