Your PR Architect

(The following post is 100% free of political commentary. But it does mention a few blowhards.) When's the last time you bought a well-made suit? Not the Haggar separates some retailers sell, but a good suit that would last a few years, until fashion dictums made it obsolete? Probably not anytime recently. Casual Fridays at many businesses extended to Casual Everydays. Which, outside of Wall Street, law firms, and TV anchor desks, usually meant fewer suits and ties. My last suit was hand-tailored with Italian silk, and cost the equivalent of a mortgage payment. I don't need to buy another suit anytime soon. This only partially explains why Tailored Brands, the parent company of Men's Wearhouse and Joseph A. Bank, announced last week that 250 of its 1,500 stores would close this year. Not good news for a brand that had some cachet with consumers. By Ed!(talk)(Hall of Fame) [CC BY-SA 3.0] via Wikimedia Commons Tailored Brands' CEO reported last week t...

Home Depot, like many large companies, outsourced the running of its Twitter feed to a nameless marketing "agency." When the agency posted a racially offensive tweet, HD acted swiftly to sever its relationship with the agency. Read about it here:  http://atlanta.cbslocal.com/2013/11/07/home-depot-tweets-alleged-racist-photo/ Brad Shaw of Home Depot, via Ad Age Maybe the practice of entrusting your brand presence to an outside contractor isn't as disastrous as it sounds. But someone, somewhere needs to have a broader perspective. With Twitter's huge IPO taking place this week, all eyes were focused on the micro-blogging site. Brands can live or die on Twitter. The irony: two years ago, Ad Age lauded Home Depot for its internal team's social media acumen .Why did this strategy go off the rails? So cheers to Home Depot for cutting its ties with an insensitive agency. But who the heck thought placing HD's online brand in the hands of a non-employee w...