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Many companies hire celebrity spokespeople or athletes to pitch their brands, through media interviews, appearances, advertising, etc. In our celebrity-obsessed culture, celebrities can bring huge amounts of attention to your brand, because access to them opens many new doors to building awareness. There are obviously advantages to having a celebrity spokesperson, but also some risks.

What a difference four years makes. In the 2012 election, same-sex marriage was a lightning rod issue in the election, with Mitt Romney and the Republican Party deadset against it, and Obama silent on the issue. Meanwhile, in the 2008 election, LGBT rights took a turn for the worse with Proposition 8 passing in California, which revoked same-sex marriage rights in the state. Fast forward to November, 2016.

I just returned from a trip to Mallorca, Spain and it was interesting to note the differences in service and style at different luxury hotels, and how the personal touches made our experience more special.

There’s a certain video from 1958 that is making the rounds on social media that shows a woman mixing customized makeup for a customer in a department store.

A recent article in Advertising Age talks about the marketing trend of pharma companies using powerful fear and scare tactics to sell their drugs to consumers, including Pfizer, GSK, Mylan and others.  Many companies have turned to scare tactics as prices have risen and consumers have become more skeptical.

Usually, when companies talk about marketing to the LGBT community, they mean gay only.  There are reasons for this – e.g.  men (even gay men) are still to this day paid more than women for the same job, so men tend to have more disposable income; also, gay men tend to be trendsetters and early adopters, so are natural targets for companies marketing new, innovative products or technologies.  And while the L’s, B’s and T’s also provide significant market potential for relevant brands, they are often harder to reach, and often underrepresented in media, organizations, etc. 

Stop the PR and spin being used to baffle and confuse clients that the size of the agency is an effective tool to compare agencies and potential outcomes!  Most people who read this will be outraged, as vast sums of energy, time, money and rationale have been spent to craft and define how to separate agencies -- namely, self-serving terms such as: large, multinational vs. medium vs. the most colorful descriptor - "the boutique".

Reading the media nowadays, every day we hear more stories about companies slashing marketing budgets, putting projects on hold and laying off people.

It’s quite common for potential clients, when interviewing PR firms, to ask them how strong are their media contacts.  The assumption is that if we have friends in the media, then surely they will write about our clients.  Right? 

What would Bill Gates, the visionary founder of Microsoft, do in this economic downturn?