Your PR Architect

To:  Michael Ferro, Chairman       Tribune Publishing, a.k.a., tronc cc: Blog Readers Subject: Invitation: How to Communicate Dear Mike: I invite you and your communications team to drop by my office at the university.  My schedule's Chicago Tribune Building, By Stuart Seeger [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons flexible 'til late August. But act fast. Because as your company transforms to some digital communications-moneymaking internet punchline, your recent news release tells me Tribune Publishing has lost its grasp of how to communicate in English. Your June 2 news release,  Tribune Publishing Announces Corporate Rebranding, Changes Name to Tronc,  sets a new low in incomprehensible jargon. Experienced PR people write releases that readers will understand. The writer who pumped out this horrid excuse for a press release has no grasp of this.  It's perfectly fine to r...

Perhaps the one memorable line from the weakest Star Trek film -- Star Trek V, The Final Frontier -- was uttered by William Shatner's Captain Kirk: "What does God need with a starship?" I asked a variant of that question last week, when online retail juggernaut Amazon demonstrated a re-usable rocket that, after completing its mission, returned safely to its launch pad. I'm not sure who's ordering Adele CDs on the moon, but it's impressive to know that Amazon's been thinking about this. Jeremy Clarkson, By Ed Perchick (flickr) ,  via Wikimedia Commons Then I asked: What does Amazon need with a rocket ship? Next, over the Thanksgiving holiday, Amazon posted a video of ex- Top Gear bad boy Jeremy Clarkson, using his wry sarcasm to provide an update on the Amazon delivery-by-drone technology , called Prime Air. Looks like it'll be a hit, assuming you have few trees or overhead electrical feeds. (Clarkson, along with Top Gear alumni Richa...

Try to think of a time when anyone you know said: "Hey, let's pick up a Sbarro's pizza for dinner." Odds are: never. Sbarro isn't a destination eatery. You mainly find them in shopping malls and airports, and unless it's the lunch hour, the meal selections often look as if they've sat under a bright heat lamp longer than a Kardashian. Today, Sbarro filed for bankruptcy reorganization a second time. You could target plenty of reasons why this chain's brand has been eclipsed by Papa John's, Domino's, or even Pizza Hut. Possible causes: saturated fat, sodium, or the reality that no one over age 17 enjoys the experience of eating in a mall's food court under flying sparrows. My view: Sbarro might have done better to personalize its brand to help connect with consumers. They clearly don't have the media ad dollars to compete with Papa John's (and quarterback and Buick pitchman Peyton Manning), leaving their social media presence...