Thanks to the ups and downs of business cycles, most companies find themselves in the midst of constant change. Whether to meet or exceed the expectations of ravenous shareholders or just to ensure the ongoing sustainability of the enterprise (or both), companies are always looking for ways to […]
A PR agency I once worked for had a large chemical company as a client. One day, I was summoned to a meeting with one of the agency’s senior leaders, who asked if I would take over as the senior relationship manager for the client. The person who had been in that […]
For the last several years, I have had a white board in my office on which I have written a number of adages (currently 24) that have come to mean something to me over the years. The list changes now and then, with new entries supplanting older ones […]
Could you land this? A fellow communications practitioner once said to me, “I may be the PR guy, not the CEO, but in an emergency I could land the plane.” What did he mean by that? He meant that he understood enough about how his company worked — […]
If you have ever bought or received a diamond engagement ring, you have undoubtedly learned about the Four Cs. These are the four factors that determine the value of a gem. For the uninitiated and/or the unlucky, here are the Four Cs: Clarity, Color, Cut and Carat. And just because I’ve never […]
Right up front, let me say that Advertising Value Equivalency (AVE) is an intellectually bankrupt concept and a desecration of all that is good and right in the world. Wow! It felt good to say that out loud. AVE is a purported measurement tool that attempts to assign […]
The fun (or should I say unsettling) thing about paradigm shifts is that it’s hard to tell when they’re happening. But I spotted one recently, and it kind of rocked my world. If your company recruits recent college graduates, chances are your new employees barely think about email […]
Over the years I have written and spoken a lot about crisis preparedness and response. One point I often stress is that the best way to manage a crisis is not to have one in the first place, and this is why doing a regular vulnerabilities assessment – […]
If you want to provoke a raging argument on Facebook, forget about politics or religion. Try asking a question about punctuation. Recently, I was castigated by an extraordinarily literate FB friend for the punctuation of the name of this blog. She contended that the possessive form of my […]
The other day, I had lunch with Joe, a friend of mine, somebody I had hired as a recent Penn grad at Burson-Marsteller many years ago. We’ve stayed in touch over the years but while I soldiered on in my PR career he abandoned his and decamped to […]
Chris Atkins’ Random PR Thoughts
Chris Atkins: Public Relations Consultant, Author & Speaker 