In a former life, I thought I wanted to be a sports journalist — a strange aspiration for someone with my hand-eye coordination (or lack thereof), but one that developed over my love of the business, politics and sheer excitement of professional sports. Although I’ve since grown up and crossed over to the “dark side,” [...]

Greg Ip acknowledged that some of his more valuable relationships were people he met over the course of his career – through PR people!

It’s hard to do much these days without swiping a card, entering a pin or typing in a postal code, and each time we do, we share a little bit more about ourselves. Just recently, a new iPhone app called ShopKick makes its iPhone debut (with an Android launch to follow soon) that allows frequent shoppers [...]

Apple’s Steve Jobs’ decision last week to pick out his competitors specifically was a surprising move. There seemed to be a strong element of “I’ve had enough and I’m not going to take it anymore!” to his news conference, which is understandable. Perhaps for the first time since the Newton, an Apple product was losing [...]

I attended the Monster Ball Tour concert in Toronto last night and enjoyed the spectacle. I’ve now seen wholesome country star Taylor Swift and Lady Gaga concerts within four months of each other. That’s quite a contrast.
As noted by others, Gaga (born Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta on March 28, 1986) has taken the showmanship and [...]

There was a time you could spot a crisis easily – it was big, it affected lots of people, and it came with big black headlines in the newspaper. It wasn’t pretty but at least you knew it when you saw it.
Today a crisis can look at lot different. It’s as innocuous as a comment [...]

Last week’s excellent blog on the importance of storytelling by our colleague Lorna Freeman crystallized a thought I’ve been mulling around. Recently, I attended a golf tournament to raise funds for a great organization called motionball. motionball’s aim is to introduce the next generation of donors, volunteers, and sponsors to the Special Olympics, a global [...]

The question is: can embattled BP chief executive Tony Hayward take a day off after two months of Gulf oil crisis management to watch a yacht race? The answer is: no.
Images of Hayward at a yacht race off the coast of England were greeted with howls of abuse and protest from the White House right [...]

I’ve written about story in my blog posts before – the way in which, as a communications vehicle, it enables people to connect with one another, find commonalities, and entertain. Curling up with a book and devouring a good story is one of my favourite pastimes. I can feel connections to people I’ve never met [...]

How many of you PR agency consultants have been in an elevator at a client’s offices and overheard a conversation between the client’s employees? It can be an excellent gauge of internal morale and whether personnel are practicing on the inside what’s being preached on the outside. I can recollect several times when employees were [...]