Is Customer Service Scaleable? Here's a tale of two customer service experiences. It was the best of times. It was the worst of times. Let's start with the bad. More than a month ago, my 6-month-old refrigerator (purchased from Sears) broke. Since it was still under warantee, I called Sears customer service to get someone out to fix it. Two weeks later, a service guy shows up and says he doesn't have the right part for the repair. Guess when the next available appointment was? Three weeks later.
Updated Mon Aug 22, 2011
Music And Tech On a Crash Course In Boston Within a few weeks Boston hosted two different future of music events--a wild mix of artists and scientists.
Updated Thu Apr 28, 2011
Gmail's "Shoot First, Apologize Later" Strategy Our office is buzzing today about the new Gmail feature that recommends people you should CC. For PR people, and I assume a lot of other business people, this feature is a trainwreck waiting to happen.
Updated Fri Apr 15, 2011
Tech Bubble 2.0: A Self-Fulfilling Prophecy? I'm a big believer in the idea of a self-fulfilling prophecy--if you think something enough, or talk about something enough, you'll come to believe it. And maybe even unconsciously let it happen. Alright, I promise I won't psychobabble but I've been doing a lot of thinking about this when it comes to the potential "new tech bubble" everyone's been writing and talking about.
Updated Mon Apr 4, 2011
Top Three Reasons People Get Bored Reading Your Blog I think a blog post should be a little more like a conversation. It sure can feel schizophrenic. But most people just want to talk, not be talked at.
Updated Fri Mar 25, 2011
What IBM Watson Means for PR A perfect example of "show, don't tell"--Watson screams geeky tech innovation.
Updated Wed Feb 23, 2011
Corporate Parodies: The Good and the Ugly Everyone loves a good parody, unless you’re bearing the
brunt of the joke. BP isn’t laughing @BPGlobalPR,
even though the jokester behind it is arguably helping the rest of us cope with
one of the worst environmental disasters in years.
Fri Jun 11, 2010
Is Bloom Energy's PR Team Having the Best Week Ever? Bloom Energy's PR team (agency: OutCast Communications) kicked off what might be its "Best Week Ever" in VH1 terms on Sunday with a 60 Minutes segment before the product even formally launched. I've been following the coverage that's been steadily rolling in all week, which is pretty much the equivalent of trying to consume the Vermonster. What a launch!
Fri Feb 26, 2010
Can Jamie Oliver's TED Talk Change the Way We Eat? I just tuned in to Jamie Oliver's TED Prize acceptance talk on CNN.com and got involved in a lively debate with my chef significant other, John, about this: Can one man's words transform the way America eats?
Thu Feb 11, 2010
Can Cleantech Revamp the American Brand? The Made (or Manufactured) in America brand needs an Extreme Makeover. The brand's story is told through the abandoned manufacturing towns throughout the rural U.S. Big companies move out, leaving the jobless and empty factories in their wake.
Thu Jan 28, 2010
Four Ways to Break Through The Holiday Noise Last year, I was working on a sustainability campaign around the holidays, and a TV producer challenged my client and me to come up with some green tips that haven’t been “done before.” You wouldn’t think that was such a tall order, but for a national TV outlet, it turns out nearly everything has been done before. LED Christmas lights? Nope. Unexpected ways to weatherproof your home? Over it. Some of the tips were truly different but too “off the wall” for a mainstream audience.
Posted Wed Dec 2, 2009
Blog FAIL: What was I thinking?! About four or five years ago, when everyone started launching corporate blogs, a lot of people (myself included) thought it was OK to just use it as a medium to post press releases, without a lot of context. Like the scrunchie, that guy I dated sophomore year, and stirrup pants, this goes down in history as one of those “What was I thinking?” moments.
Posted Fri Nov 20, 2009
In Defense of O'Dwyer in the Social Media vs. PR Fiasco Jack O’Dwyer has been doing PR for 40 years, and he’s a well-known, albeit curmudgeonly, expert in the industry. In a recent interview with Dave Armand at PRSA, Jack denounced social media, saying that PR people’s jobs are to deal exclusively with the press.
Posted Fri Nov 13, 2009
The Booth Babe Tactic Goes Solar Consumer technology vendors notoriously use the “booth babe” to grab the attention of nerdy passers-by at conferences. After all, nothing says “Check out my new widget” like a hot, clueless chick dressed as a pirate. (Sarcasm, naturally.) I was saddened to see in a post this week from NYT’s Green Inc. that the same kind of thing is happening in the solar industry.
Posted Wed Oct 28, 2009
A Shot in the Arm for Tech Media: Cleantech Thank God cleantech came along, because technology was starting to get pretty boring. Having worked at a tech PR agency for several years in the past, I’ve now distanced myself and become mostly a tech media spectator. For some reason, I was going through withdrawal, so I kept reading about consumer technology (I’d rather walk into a presentation about the slow growth of grass than read about things like servers).
Posted Fri Oct 9, 2009
Behind the Newsweek Green Rankings: IBM I grew up in a superfund site caused by IBM. Why are they the #5 greenest company in America?
Posted Mon Sep 28, 2009
Achieving Name Recognition: Why Audience Makes all the Difference The East Coast Greenway, a 3,000-mile, uninterrupted bicycle path that runs from Maine to Florida, is a dream in progress for former executive director of the East Coast Greenway Alliance Karen Votava and her successor, Dennis Markatos-Soriano.
Posted Wed Sep 16, 2009
Sigg with Regret Sigg, the Swiss water bottle company, built a PR and marketing machine out of a consumer scare about the chemical BPA in plastic water bottles.
Posted Thu Sep 3, 2009
