Your PR Architect

In mid-August, the U.S.'s premier auto racing sport will compete at a road racing course in Watkins Glen, NY. NASCAR's brutish Cup series cars will race in this rural community Aug. 20.  May 2023, Charlotte Motor Speedway. (c) DKassnoff, 2023. But, don't expect  The New York Times  to cover NASCAR before then. The newspaper's sports section -- now outsourced to The Athletic, its sportsbook subsidiary -- hasn't covered NASCAR since July 2. That's when NASCAR's drivers competed on the rain-soaked streets of Chicago. The Times provided no coverage of their July 30 race in Richmond, VA, or any NASCAR race since early July. The Times  has focused its motorsports coverage on Formula 1 racing. These are the expensive, open-wheeled, high performance racing teams once called Grand Prix. This class of racing is controlled by another media company: John Malone's Liberty Media, which purchased Formula 1 in 2017 and returned it to profitability. Visit the Times ...

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...

Your house is part of a community. A museum is a place you visit to see art and artifacts. That was my reaction last week when the leadership of George Eastman House announced a rebranding of its facility and website, rechristening itself the George Eastman Museum . The announcement said "museum" helped differentiate the place for European visitors, for whom "house" meant "institute." Eastman's house? Viewed from East Avenue, it's a stunning mansion built by the founder of Eastman Kodak Company, who died in 1932. A more-modern museum, film archive, and research department is attached to the back of the original mansion.  Drawing Room, George Eastman House, Rochester, NY. (c) DKassnoff, 2010. I'm debating whether the name change means more than a PR move. "House," to me, meant more than "museum." It says that George lived there -- made his big decisions about business, life, and death. (At an advanced age an...

"Let's put a big banner on the building we're going to implode to celebrate our new line of printers." I worked for the people who came up with that line of thinking. It was the demolition equivalent of putting lipstick on a pig. There's no way igniting a few hundred pounds of explosives and leveling a giant brick manufacturing complex can be perceived as a celebration. You can PR spin a ribbon-cutting or a golden-shovel groundbreaking.  But, flying bits of concrete and debris? Building 9 implosion, (c) DKassnoff. It's rubble. It's the end of something. And if you view the video on the New York Times' website, it's anything but a celebration. John Baldoni's recent essay on Forbes.com reminded me of that day, not too many years ago, when we tried to put a pretty bow on a scene of destruction.  And we failed. Past and current employees gathered for the event on a sunny morning (June 30, 2007). Most of them cried w...

There's no shortage of companies eager to conduct research to fuel your PR recommendations for clients. Good data is helpful, sure. But I recommend a different approach: Listen to your customers. Face to face. And not at a noisy, overstimulated trade show. Author and market researcher Paco Underhill's firm makes a practice of doing retail research by having a staff member track a consumer's behavior, in detail, as he or she navigates through the store. Me, I'd be highly suspicious of anyone stalking me with a clipboard.  However, the research I'm talking about does not involve clipboards or stalking. Here's how one experience went: On a brief trip to the west coast, I had time to spare. I wandered into a small camera shop that catered to serious photographers. I asked "how's business," and then added that I worked for Kodak -- at the time, a powerhouse brand in photography.  Unknown to me, the shop owner had serious issues -...