Timeliness is an essential ingredient for successful public relations. And with Super Bowl 46 only a few days away, it’s a natural, timely hook, if you can think of one with a logical tie-in to your organization, product or service. For one popular club in Burr Ridge, that principle translated into a news release riding […]
Growing up in journalism, I would periodically hear of the profession’s learning curve, which included making your first mistakes in smaller markets. The key was to learn from those missteps and thereby become less prone to major blunders at larger publications. That was in the 1980s, when a story I wrote in the Marshfield Mariner took […]
Public relations for its own sake is empty. It should have a purpose—some larger organizational aim that the PR serves. For example, a feature profile on a Realtor should help that professional and his or her firm sell homes. A recent case in point: this Inside Edge PR piece on Better Homes and Gardens Real […]
“PR Secrets from a Media Insider” is back. My 90-minute workshop, which demystifies how to communicate with the media and empowers organizations to secure coverage for their causes, returns with three sessions over the next three months. The first one is Wednesday, Feb. 8, at 1111 South Blvd. in Oak Park (directly south of the […]
It takes quite a bit to coax out the cranky side of me. Some sample scenarios: seemingly bright souls who fail to see the humorous relevance of “irregardless” in certain contexts; running across mention of the Red Sox collapse in Game 6 of the 1986 World Series; and getting yet another LinkedIn invitation from someone […]
Think back to the last time you were left panting desperately for air. Maybe you were dashing to catch a plane or were trying to outrun a pursuer—on a playing field or, God forbid, in a more sinister context. Whatever the scenario, it’s fairly safe to say that it was an exception to the rule […]
Highly recommended reading: “Penn State, My Final Loss of Faith,” by Thomas L. Day, which appeared last month in the Washington Post. It’s an excellent commentary by someone with extensive experience connected to the now-controversial Second Mile charity founded by alleged pedophile Jerry Sandusky. The piece came to my attention today after Day, a fellow Medill alum, […]
It’s been almost a week since he did it, and I’m still stunned by George Hood’s latest Guinness World Record. In a blog post just over two weeks ago, I noted Inside Edge PR’s efforts on George’s behalf, as he was about to make his bid to break the record (50 minutes, 11 seconds) for an […]
What’s next, URLs by the block? Sure, “hyper-local,” as a way of describing the trend in journalism toward coverage centered on ever-smaller geographic areas, has been overused in recent years. But I can’t help but think that the Chicago Tribune, some four years after launching TribLocal to up the media market’s ante in the suburbs, has […]
George Hood is at it again. More than a quarter-century after he first set a Guinness World Record in the realm of self-inflicted physical pain (OK, let’s call it ultra-endurance), he’ll be going after another mark. This time, instead of jumping rope for more than 13 hours (as in 1986) or riding a spin cycle for more than […]