As someone who read Confucius as a young man, and was largely raised on his ideas, free speech with self-regulation is my default position—though when it becomes apparent that people simply aren’t civilized enough to use it, then you have to consider other solutions. We have Facebook making statements saying they are ‘Standing Against […]
Tag: public relations
When referring to your Australian office might not be a smart thing to do
There are some companies that do not realize that we live in a global community. And there are at least two who have done themselves a disservice by referring our account or enquiries to their Australian representative. We left Rackspace in 2013 although, for most of the 11½ years we were with them, […]
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Ikea tries to shut down its biggest fan site, showing us how the company thinks within
In an age of social media, you would think it was the most stupid thing to try to shut down the biggest online community you have. Ikea has done just that, on IP grounds, against Ikea Hackers, by getting their legal department to send Jules Yap, its founder, a cease-and-desist letter after her site […]
Panos Emporio: dare to be human
We weren’t responsible for the layout or photography, but our contribution here is in the tagline, ‘Dare to be human’. In my 12-year friendship with Panos Papadopoulos, the designer behind Swedish swimwear (and now clothing) label Panos Emporio, we’ve often worked on marketing tasks. The most recent one: come up with a tagline that […]
The Murdoch apology does not let us off the hook
Above is Rupert Murdoch’s apology for the actions of the News of the World, to run in the UK in the wake of the resignations of Rebekah Brooks and Les Hinton. They’re great words, and they’re straight out of the PR 101 playbook. Some might say they’re a trifle too late, as was […]
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What the media say about Google Plus
You have to wonder how many of the Google Plus reviews are being inspired by the press releases. Here’s a typical one today, which I picked at random. Rob Pegoraro writes: ‘You don’t add friends to an all-encompassing list and then, maybe, slice it into subsets; instead, you group them in “Circles” and then […]
Some positive news a month on from the Christchurch ’quake
Tomorrow, it will be one month since the Christchurch ’quake. It’s tempting to argue scale—the Japanese earthquake and tsunami versus our own—but at the end of the day, people are people, and our nations have both been hurting. We have become united, through disasters that emphasized that we live in an emerging global community. […]
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It’s ‘Chevy’—even President Obama says so
Dear Chevrolet: even your own nation’s president calls the brand ‘Chevy’: You might want to rethink that memo. You may also like A whinge about whinging Johnny Foreigner might be better at running a car company in Shanghai Volkswagen’s scandal won’t spread to other German car groups How can we help those fooled into believing […]