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Skechers became a $10 billion company by systematically rejecting the assumptions that governed modern footwear marketing. Inside the marathon brand, the $9.4 billion 3G Capital acquisition, and the uncool moat.
Cam Newton's post-Super Bowl 50 press conference on February 7, 2016 — the Panthers had just lost 24-10 to Denver, Peyton Manning's final game victory. The walkout, the Ebony Magazine reset, the contrast set with Marshawn Lynch and Bill Belichick, the 2016-2026 career arc, and what the case established for athlete communications training across the major U.S. leagues.
United cut involuntary bumping 85% after the Dr. Dao crisis — by changing policy, not by issuing statements. The case is still the cleanest demonstration of how reputation actually gets rebuilt. In the AI era, the rebuild has to be retrievable.
A long-term high-profile client of 5W called me recently. He told me he got engaged for the 1st time and is planning a holiday wedding. He’s never been married – yet was mystified that on Google there’s a new info graph which refers to him as married. He wanted it corrected – so we prepared a notarized letter from him stating he’s never been married, copied the 1st page of his tax returns saying so, and multiple recent news clippings referring to him as a bachelor – and sent it off to Google.
The trends reshaping modern PR: data-centric storytelling, personalized pitching, measurement, influencer relations, and a real content strategy.
For a long time now, people have often thought of branding as something connected specifically to companies and corporations.
The seven-year arc from live-television collapse to annual Billboard #1 — and the Counter-Statement that made the recovery possible. Live-event failures become reputation events when audiences cannot distinguish between performance failure and production failure.
Starbucks just spent three weeks managing the most awkward PR crisis a beverage brand can have — proving that its signature drink does not actually contain pumpkin. The Food Babe investigation, the rapid corporate response, and the reformulation that turned criticism into a relaunch narrative.
Jeff Bezos's August 2013 purchase of The Washington Post for $250 million produced thirteen years of consequential media ownership history — a sustained digital-transformation success through 2021, the Will Lewis publisher controversy, the Sally Buzbee departure, and the October 2024 endorsement crisis.
Disney's response to the death of two-year-old Lane Graves on June 14 is producing one of the most-studied crisis communications cases in modern American hospitality. The speed, the direct family contact, the immediate operational change, and the absence of defensive communications. What the broader category should be taking from the case.
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