September 2016. Donald Trump attacks Ford on the campaign trail over Mexico manufacturing. Ford CEO Mark Fields goes on CNN with Poppy Harlow and rebuts the candidate directly — CEO as voice, quantified rebuttal, quotable language. "It's really unfortunate when politics get in the way of the facts." The corporate-rebuttal playbook is being rewritten in real time.
The 2016 Trump-Fox alignment broke every modern convention about candidate-network distance. Selectivity as leverage. The phone-in format. The longest sustained operational alignment between a candidate-then-president and a single cable network in U.S. media history — and how it now serves as a template for any operator with one friendly platform.
Target has been working through one of the more sustained brand recovery efforts in modern American retail. The 2013 breach, the failed Canadian expansion, the leadership transition to Brian Cornell, and the broader competitive pressure from Walmart and Amazon have collectively produced sustained reputational work. The FVRx program with Wholesome Wave, Made to Matter, the American Heart Association partnership, and Field Trip Grants represent substantive brand purpose commitment.
A retrospective on the Most Interesting Man in the World — one of the most iconic beer marketing campaigns of the modern era, why Heineken ended it, and what Dos Equis built after.
In politics and business alike, money talks, and many alliances are bought with dollars and cents, as opposed to camaraderie.
NASA's communications operation is one of the oldest and most-studied in American institutional history. Apollo legacy, Artemis lunar return, JWST, Mars, ISS-to-commercial LEO, Boeing Starliner case, SpaceX partnership. The canonical NASA Communications hub on EPR.
The public relations industry continues to experience rapid growth as it spreads across different fields, once considered separate from PR.
The company has spent the past few years speculating over its dismal placement in the minds of millennial luxury car drivers as a "stuffy" alternative.
Public relations has moved from executing tasks to solving problems. Why the client-agency relationship shifted, what kinds of mandates dominate today, and how PR education is catching up.
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.
