Public Affairs & Government
Barbour Griffith & Rogers Hired By Sharia-Linked Hotels
BGR hired by Dorchester Group amid 2014 Brunei Sharia-law boycott. Branson pulled Virgin. Beverly Hills, Bel-Air, Dorchester London, Plaza Athenee on the list.
Tag
PR — Tagged Articles
Corporate Communications
Walmart, Public Perception, and the Black Friday 2014 Wage Protests
Black Friday 2014 produced one of the most coordinated labor pressure campaigns Walmart has faced in modern company history. The UFCW and OUR Walmart campaign organized protests at hundreds of Walmart stores. $15 starting hourly wage, more full-time work, expanded benefits. The communications questions for Walmart heading into 2015 are real.
Technology
Technology PR Trends in 2026: The Five Structural Forces
Technology PR trends in 2026 — the AI Communications substrate, the frontier AI lab category (Anthropic, OpenAI, Google DeepMind, Meta AI, xAI, Mistral), developer and practitioner advocacy (Vercel, Cloudflare, Supabase, Linear, Lovable), and the trade press restructuring around The Information.
AI Communications
Creativity and Business: The Quotes That Still Hold
Ogilvy, Drucker, Branson, Bernbach, McCabe, Lois. The business and creativity quotes that still hold — and why the principle underneath each one still compounds.
Entertainment & Media
Jules Feiler and the Indie-Film PR Niche: A 5W Alumni Specialty-Firm Case Study
Jules Feiler — former 5W AI Communications SVP and founder of The Pitching Staff — built one of the longer-tenured independent-film publicity practices in the industry. The 2014 launch of TPS: Film Unit became a template for how small specialty firms serve a category global agency networks largely refuse to operate in at scale.
Crisis Communications
Honda's Executive Pay Cut: The 2014 Takata Recall Response
Honda's October 2014 executive pay-cut response to the Takata airbag recall — CEO Takanobu Ito's 20% reduction, Chairman Ike and eleven directors at 10% — produced one of the most-cited automotive crisis communications case studies. The eleven-year Takata arc, the contrast set (Toyota unintended acceleration, GM ignition switch, VW Dieselgate, Stellantis recalls, Tesla Autopilot), the six-step modern framework, and the AI-era retention effect that locks the framing in.
PR Firms & Communications Agencies
Women Who Run Public Relations: The 2026 Senior Leadership List
Women lead the modern PR industry by every measurable headcount metric and a substantial share of senior leadership. The 2026 update to EPR's list: senior women who run independent agencies, hold senior holding-company roles, lead in-house communications at the Fortune 500, and edit the trade press. Alison Brod, Joele Frank, Deirdre Breakenridge, Karen van Bergen, Renee Soto, Helen King.
PR Firms & Communications Agencies
The PR Job Interview Process
The PR job interview is shorter, faster, and more focused on the work than most candidates expect. The standard three rounds, the writing test, the questions to expect, the questions worth asking back, and the things that disqualify candidates fast.
Digital PR & Communications
Is PR Important? Why Public Relations Matters
Public relations builds reputation, narrative continuity, crisis resilience, and the credibility a company cannot buy. Why PR matters, what it produces, and what it costs to underfund it.
Marketing
Bridging the Great Divide: Challenges in International Marketing
The global marketplace we live in has many inherent advantages, and a few stumbling blocks we ought to be aware of. For the unsuspecting marketer, the mistake of applying a blanket strategy to all cultural marketing initiatives is foolhardy.