Your PR Architect

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

Thanksgiving's around the corner. I don't wish to stand between you and your Butterball . So I'll be brief. I often tell students that public relations is "doing the right thing and getting credit for it." Other times, I say -- with apologies to Leonard Nimoy -- that PR is "a wreath of pretty flowers which smells bad." But, no matter what I say about PR, Indeed.com says it worse. Much worse. Try searching for a public relations job on Indeed.com. This is what you'd find in Buffalo, NY: Of the "public relations opportunities" served up in this message, only the "Sr. Marketing Analyst/ Communications Specialist position could reasonably include PR duties. (The Public Relations Director job at Superior Group is a paid ad that's been up for weeks, which means Superior Group -- a contract employer -- may have filled it already.) The others? Who knows? The Infant-Toddler Specialist position? The restaurant m

A few retailers recently gained some media praise for deciding  not to open for pre-Black Friday sales on Thanksgiving Day. Nordstrom, A.C. Moore, Barnes & Noble, and Costco are among those choosing to pass up quick-buck opportunities and rampant doorbuster-ism and allow employees to celebrate Thanksgiving with their loved ones. Bravo to them for choosing family over profits. But REI did them all one better. Recreational Equipment Company -- REI, the big sporting goods retailer -- took it even further: they won't be open on Friday, Nov. 27, actual Black Friday. They earned national TV coverage, telling NBC News among others, that employees would be paid for Nov. 27, even though the stores would be closed. "We're paying our employees to go outside," they said. A great move, earning REI plenty of free publicity. Except when the CEO took his message to social media via the "Ask Me Anything" forum on Reddit.com . While Jerry Stritzke, REI's chi

By Greg Rakozy (www.instagram.com/grakozy), via unsplash.com More than one friend of mine likes to post photos to Facebook. Photos of their travels. Snapshots from their parties. Lots of photos. Every. single. photo. Like a sky full of stars, that's too much to absorb. What's worse? Often, they're near-identical images -- group shots of three or four people, taken moment by moment, with little change of gesture or expression. Or the dreaded BOH (backs of heads). Not action photos, which might call for a rapid-fire sequence of images. Just group photos. People grinning for the camera. Do we need to see four, five, or six iterations of the same snapshot? No. That's unfair to everyone who follows you. Sure, social media is a visual medium. Visual communications, from infographics to vlogs, are the common currency of the internet. And, one outcome of citizen journalism and the proliferation of smartphone cameras is that people take countless photos. This isn

When a newspaper gives you a soapbox to comment on business trends, aren't there better topics than revisiting the decline of once-dominant manufacturers who long ago lost their edge? When I read Patrick Burke's column, "Tough times for Rochester's former Big Three," I thought: "Great opinion piece. For 2010." Kodak's in financial trouble? Tired old news. The company struggled with digital innovation, and hasn't yet regained its footing. Xerox is having trouble? Surprise -- it's tough when you're elbowing against nimble system integrators. Bausch & Lomb's parent company, Valeant Pharmaceuticals, has earned scrutiny for questionable financial practices? Those behaviors pre-date Valeant's 2013 purchase of B&L and its move to New Jersey. Xerox's Gil Hatch Center, Webster, NY. Photo by DanielPenfield (Own work) via Wikimedia Commons Big companies now compete in a global arena. They aren't always adept at g