The owner of a St. Louis Public Relations firm, I am often asked for advice when a friend or colleague inquires about a marketing problem or a potential marketing opportunity. Recently a friend solicited my assistance to spread the word about an upcoming advertising campaign he was involved in. The…

The owner of a St. Louis Public Relations Agency, I have had recent meetings with heads of several established businesses and have elicited one conclusion; it’s time to get back to what football coaches call “blocking and tackling”. A number of these established companies enjoyed outstanding success prior to the…

Many companies believe the answer is a resounding “Yes!”. They argue the in-game $3 million, thirty-second commercial, will reach an unprecedented audience. More than 100 million persons will watch the game, including millions of young men and other hard to reach demographic groups. In fact viewers are actually “tuned-in” to…

It’s interesting how local sports teams are tied into the fabric of a community. Once a local team starts winning it seems the entire area wants to jump on-board. The team becomes the lead item on local newscasts and TV ratings soar. Bars and restaurants begin to fill-up on game…

Many business owners believe they need a major announcement or big event to get some media coverage. Not so. In many cases your local paper or business journal has space to run your news item providing its “newsworthy”. Often a number of small announcements work just as well as one…

BP’s PR campaign has taken a new twist, in case you haven’t noticed. Several weeks ago owners of local gas stations and regional oil distributors started appearing on TV newscasts and in newspaper articles. The message…”Please don’t boycott BP you’ll only hurt your friends and neighbors.” The idea being that…

For all the hype and promotion surrounding professional sports, one of its most watched events doesn’t end with a winner or loser. In fact there isn’t even a final score. Just lots of hope for fans of NFL teams everywhere. The NFL Draft has become its own cottage industry within…

Tiger Woods is back and in the hunt for another green jacket at the Masters. Rather than joining the talking heads who have already discussed how they would handle Tiger’s situation if they were in charge of his crisis communications effort, it makes mores sense to focus on what happens…

America still likes to get together for big events. Few are bigger than the Super Bowl. Could anything had been better than the New Orleans Saints rising up to tackle the irrepressible Peyton Manning and seemingly unbeatable Indianapolis Colts? So many great story lines. Beginning with the Bayou city recovering…