Did this title grab your attention? Put a fire in your belly? Does it make you want to scroll down to the comments section (immediately below this post) and vehemently voice your displeasure? You could call me names – maybe even ones that start with the letter ‘s’ – or write comments like: “Lorna, the [...]

I have recently watched with more than casual interest the public relations controversies swirling around News Corporation and, most recently, the Susan G. Komen Foundation. I have former colleagues, now friends, in the top communications jobs at both organizations and have been astonished to hear how similarly the situations evolved. Both scenarios were not dissimilar [...]

In all the noise and commotion of the recent Susan G. Komen debacle, it was not difficult to point out what Komen did wrong.
Within the scandal, something was done so very, very right, that it went almost unnoticed. What Planned Parenthood did, and did not do, in communicating with media and followers of the [...]

The debate over whether we’re about to run smack into a second internet bubble is getting lots of attention in the San Francisco Bay Area and around the country.  Signs that Bubble 2.0 is here are everywhere:  the huge valuations for social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Zynga and Groupon; the explosive growth in [...]

I’ve always had mixed feelings about Starbucks. On one hand, I can’t help but feel cynical about a company that has made buying a simple cup of coffee – surely the most egalitarian and accessible of all products – an expensive proposition that involves Italian code words and silly instructions. Whose green awnings and soft, [...]

Our recent support for clients facing issues or potential crises has included a new dimension of communications best practices – the real-time monitoring of conversations in social media channels. Without this proper social media monitoring, it would be flying blind to attempt true crisis management.
Early in my career, I had the good fortune to work [...]

I attended the WebCom 2.0 Conference in Toronto last week. Among several interesting speakers was Jon Husband of Vancouver who referred to the breakdown of institutions and the dynamic flow between knowledge and authority in the Internet age.
This view ties nicely to the new approach we have been developing for how organizations respond to crisis situations. [...]

A lot of PR people I know watch Mad Men. If you don’t, this won’t mean much to you, so check out this instead.
The central premise of Mad Men, as I have come to realize, is a struggle between fiction and fact, between deception and transparency, between acting and reality. Public relations professionals I think [...]

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 [...]

Toronto’s Mayor, David Miller – currently languishing in lame duck status after declaring he won’t run for re-election this fall — had the newsrooms buzzing recently when his office issued a cryptic media advisory calling a news conference for the next morning to announce a significant announcement.
“Live trucks should arrive well in advance to run [...]