If you’re like me, then you are less likely to read something that touts 33 Ways to Tell When Someone Is Going to Ramble on Forever than to sneak a peek at 3 Really Beautiful People You Should Meet. Let’s face it: most of us like three-word phrases that precede a colon. Oh, and really […]
Category Archives: Public Relations
Have you heard the story about the guy who went straight to the top, without any setbacks along the way? He enjoyed one triumph after another, each conquered mountain taller than the previous peak. Of course you didn’t hear that story. It’s obviously phony. Life is rarely so neatly navigated, so.tidy. Neither are numbers, and […]
Whether it’s the latest surge or decline in prices at the gas pump, realizing that you are running late when you glance at your watch, or any number of everyday moments, numbers have an undeniable impact on our emotions. Last night, at Wrigley Field, the 34,000-plus fans who came out to watch the Chicago Cubs […]
Jim Collins, the acclaimed author or co-author of groundbreaking business books like “Good to Great” and “Built to Last,” calls them BHAGs: Big Hairy Audacious Goals. As defined by Wikipedia, a BHAG “is a strategic business statement similar to a vision statement which is created to focus an organization on a single medium-long term organization-wide […]
Have you ever had the experience of seeing a movie that you were skeptical would be much of anything to write home about–then being pleasantly surprised when it was actually pretty good? Or, on the other end of the spectrum, do you recall the time (or two, or three, or…) when you heard a ton […]
We fence ourselves in sometimes. Color inside the lines. Steer clear of stretching beyond the norm. But in an increasingly automated world, where so much is standardized and sanitized, it’s such a refreshing thing to see creativity jutting out of the most unexpected places. Here’s one way to hop the ho-hum fence that we, often […]
Birthdays–at least the ones I have had since turning 40–have a way of prompting deeper reflection and re-examination. Each year brings a reminder of those who did not get to celebrate another birthday or whose chances of reaching their next one are bleak. These are morbid notions, perhaps, but motivational also. These ruminations last week […]
About a decade ago, a friend was a featured guest on a television program. He told me that he got excellent reviews from friends who caught the segment. But, he noted, he wanted to hear my “expert” opinion, too. Put yourself in his shoes, wiggle out of them, and then try mine on for size. […]
Six years ago, at the behest of an employee at Volvo of Oak Park who had heard me speak at a public relations workshop, the dealership’s vice president met with me at the business, 1140 Garfield St. At my suggestion, he agreed to bring me onto the iconic seven-car tower that the dealership built in 2006–at a […]
“Who says?” With those two words, Dorothea Mae DeLoskey Baron sparked my journalism career. It was April 1984 and toward the end of my sophomore year of high school in the south suburbs of Boston. Reading Sports Illustrated for six years had been the primary catalyst that stoked my desire to write, eventually, for the weekly newspaper […]