Your PR Architect

This week, United Airlines proved that it has learned nothing about social media in nine years. By now, you may have seen the tale of United's removing two teenage girls from a flight for wearing leggings. United explained that its policy for users of employee-provided travel passes came with a dress code. Leggings and spandex are forbidden. This episode, as silly as it sounds, triggered a Twitter onslaught of criticism for the airline. It amused me, at first, because what passes for travel attire on most U.S. air carriers ranges from business suits to rumpled pajamas to cosplay outfits. But then, as the United story tumbled across Twitter, involving celebrities including Chrissy Teigen, Patricia Arquette, and even octogenarian William Shatner (at left, in tights from his '60s Star Trek era), I remembered: United's been down this road of embarrassment before. In 2008, Canadian musician Dave Carroll created a mini-sensation when the airline's baggage crew smas...

Social media and public relations can work quite well together. If you know what you're doing. Trouble is, if Kelly Brady’s your expert on the topic, grab a parachute. Now. Your plane's on autopilot and you’re about to smack a mountaintop.  Howcast.com posted a 2013 video with Ms.Brady expounding on the value of social media in PR. And very little of it has any basis in how social media really works for most PR pros. Publicist Kelly Brady Note: Ms. Brady believes landing a story in the New York Post is a good PR hit. If that's your paper of record, then her advice might be worth following -- if your client loves Page Six. (Learn more about Ms. Brady here .) Here are excerpts of her pearls of wisdom: “Social media is relatively a new tool in public relations.” Sure, if you’ve been living the hard-partying life since 2009. By then, Facebook had more than 100 million users. Today, it’s close to 1.4 billion users. “Creating a buzz about the account...

I have a bunch of orphans to look after. Not long ago, I worked on a series of video podcasts. Created them, actually, with the help of some very talented video professionals. Our videos profiled professional photographers (see the screen shot below), many of whom championed the virtues of film and digital photography. No one called our work "content creation" at the time. But we produced online material to help build the reputation and brand of a company struggling to re-imagine itself for the digital era. Digital eventually supplanted film, and the company filed for bankruptcy reorganization. Our videos, however, reflect the company's view at the time: that film gave photographers creative latitude that digital cameras did not. (View the series at this link. ) This view, in 2014, has changed. The podcasts -- including this one, profiling British photographer  Jocelyn Bain Hogg  -- live on as created in 2011. Frozen in time. I would have forgotten the...

The dance about net neutrality has barely begun. And it's going to affect what crawls across your computer. Unless you start asking questions. By NASA [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons First, Common Cause says this about net neutrality: "network neutrality is the principle that Internet users should be able to access any web content they choose and use any applications they choose, without restrictions or limitations imposed by their internet service provider." You can learn more at http://www.commoncause.org/site/pp.asp?c=dkLNK1MQIwG&b=1234951 What this means: think of the internet as a collection of pipelines through which media content flows. Verizon, Comcast, or Time Warner are some major owners of those pipes. They can "throttle" downloads of content providers like Netflix if they don't pay for increased bandwidth. Or, you might see Walmart's online shopping pages load more quickly than Amazon's, if Walmart buys preferential pi...

Aside from the minor tedious nature of a 6-plus minute slide show, there's plenty to like about MillerCoors posting scenes from its 2011 diversity summit on YouTube. I like linking diversity to the fundamental goals of the business: "Diversity Sells Beer." Or a clear focus on "regular employees" from different backgrounds, not executives in $1000 suits. (Although diversity initiatives really catch fire only when senior leaders actively champion such change.) Capturing key points on whiteboards, and chronicling them in stills (and video) isn't a bad way to keep these learnings close at hand. It's not a Joe Sedelmeier film, but it works. The disappointment, however: MillerCoors' video has had a stunning 116 views as of this blog post. MillerCoors' parent, SABMiller.plc, has 70,000 employees worldwide. If only 10 percent are MillerCoors employees, that still leaves a stunning gap between the number of views and MillerCoors' workforce. ...