Chris Atkins is an author, speaker and communications consultant with 35 years of PR agency and in-house experience.
Chris was Managing Director for all internal and external communications for PricewaterhouseCoopers. With nearly nine billion in revenues and 30,000 employees, PwC (US) is the largest of the “Big Four” accounting firms. He joined PwC after five years at Standard & Poor’s, where he was responsible for all communications for credit ratings and indices such as the S&P 500. He was at the forefront of S&P’s crisis response regarding the role of credit ratings in the financial meltdown. Before joining S&P, he spent 26 years at several major public relations agencies. He was Managing Director of the Global Corporate Practices at Ogilvy Public Relations and Ketchum, counseling clients such as FedEx, the New York Stock Exchange and GE. While at Ketchum, Chris founded the Ketchum Reputation Lab, which used the 20+ year data set from Fortune Magazine’s “America’s Most Admired Corporations” survey to develop an analytical tool to inform communications strategy.
Chris also served as Chief Operating Officer of the New York office of Burson-Marsteller, and was a Vice President in the Corporate Group at Hill & Knowlton. A frequent speaker and guest lecturer at NYU and Columbia on the topic of crisis preparedness and response, Chris was named by PR Week as one of the “20 crisis counselors CEOs should have in their speed-dialer.”
Chris is a member of the Arthur W. Page Society, and a trustee of the Institute for Public Relations. He is the co-author of a book on corporate reputation called Image Wars: Protecting Your Company When There’s No Place to Hide, (1989, John Wiley & Sons) and “An Honest Day’s Work,” to be published in the fall of 2014. He lives with his wife, Lauren Letellier, in Manhattan and Hillsdale, NY.
Is this a PR problem? The videos and photos of this 69-year-old physician being dragged up the aisle of an airplane with less care than most people give to their roller bags will not fade from the public memory anytime soon. Nor should they. The security personnel who […]
The other night I was in the mood for a tale of political espionage that didn’t involve the current administration, so I re-watched “All the President’s Men.” The 1976 thriller, based on the Bob Woodward & Carl Bernstein bestseller, follows the two then-young Washington Post reporters and their […]
(Some random ramblings on the PwC Oscar Affair) Next post, I’ll tackle the “Live by the sword, die by…” Well, you know. The PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) Oscar affair shows no signs of losing its position as a top-trending fixation for millions. The latest news about “envelope-gate” is that […]
The Trump administration directive (leaked today) that a number of federal agencies can no longer give interviews with mainstream or social media, distribute press releases or answer telephone inquiries actually may not be a violation of the first amendment, as companies (and probably government agencies) have the right […]
This morning, LinkedIn thoughtfully sent me a list of job openings in my area. There was one for a Public Relations Director. I’m not looking for work, but I clicked through to confirm my suspicions. Sure enough, here is the list of qualifications a candidate should meet (italics […]
Mnemonics are wonderful things, even if there isn’t one for remembering how to spell “mnemonics,” as far as I know. The first mnemonic many of us learned was “Thirty Days Hath September, April June and November. All the rest have 31.” Then my teacher wrecked it by adding […]
O-ho the Wells Fargo Wagon is a-comin’ down the street, Oh please let it be for me! O-ho the Wells Fargo Wagon is a-comin’ down the street, I wish, I wish I knew what it could be! First Voice: I got a second mortgage without asking. Second Voice: […]
When I was a third grader, my grandfather passed away in his sleep. I missed a couple of days at school and upon my return, my teacher asked why I had been absent. I told her and she asked, “How old was he?” I replied, “He was […]
Many years ago, the lease on my car came up and I decided to look at a number of potential replacements. I visited a local car dealer and was quite taken with a particular vehicle. The salesperson was, I thought, a little aggressive, practically dragging me over to […]
Forty-eight years ago, “60 Minutes” debuted on CBS. And 12 years later, I started my career in PR, already wondering why corporate executives ever volunteered to be on the program. That wonderment persists to this day. During my career both in the agency and corporate spheres, there were […]
Chris Atkins’ Random PR Thoughts
Chris Atkins: Public Relations Consultant, Author & Speaker 