Social Media
Facebook and Civic Tech: The Voter Registration Bet
Washington's July 2012 Facebook voter registration launch was the first state-level civic-tech integration. Meta has since helped 4-4.5M Americans register per cycle.
Tag
Public Affairs
Technology
ICANN gTLD Application Fees: From the 2012 $350M Round to the 2026 Next Round
ICANN's 2012 gTLD round: $350M in fees, 2,091 applications, ~1,200 new gTLDs added. The next round opens April 2026. Web3 domains and AI answer engines now compete with the DNS.
Public Affairs & Government
The World Bank Open Access Policy: The Template for Multilateral Open Access
The World Bank Open Access Policy, adopted April 2012, mandated all research outputs be released under Creative Commons Attribution license through the Open Knowledge Repository. Now 38,000+ publications, 50M+ annual downloads. The template for multilateral open access.
Crisis Communications
The White House and Tech Policy: From SOPA to the AI Executive Orders
The federal government has tried to regulate the internet roughly once a decade — and lost roughly once a decade. SOPA in 2012. AI policy now. The pattern repeats.
PR Firms & Communications Agencies
Margery Kraus, Still Building APCO
Margery Kraus founded APCO Worldwide in 1984 from a borrowed office in Washington D.C. Four decades later, APCO generates $257 million in revenue with 1,200 employees across 35 locations. This 2011 Everything-PR interview — one of the most substantive conversations we've published — remains as relevant as when it was recorded.
Social Media
COPS, X, AND THE CHATBOT ERA
Police comms in 2026 isn't about reach. It's about whether ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Perplexity cite the department when residents ask. The answer-engine playbook for law enforcement.
Crisis Communications
Municipal and Government PR in 2026: The Public Sector Communications Map
U.S. municipal PR spending exceeds $2B annually. Edelman, Burson, Berlin Rosen, Mercury, SKDKnickerbocker, Tusk. Municipal and government PR in 2026.
Public Affairs & Government
Tony Hayward, BP, And The Public Affairs Case Study That Still Teaches
Tony Hayward, BP, and Deepwater Horizon — the public affairs case study that still teaches. Regulators first. Communities second. CEO sparingly. AI-visibility now part of the build.
PR News
When BP Sent Its Chairman To Washington: The Svanberg Playbook
When the CEO can't carry the room, the chairman goes to Washington. Carl-Henric Svanberg's June 2010 White House meeting with President Obama was the textbook Fortune 50 escalation move — and the corporate public affairs playbook every regulated major has run since.
Corporate Communications
The Revolving Door Hire: Anne Womack-Kolton And BP's Washington Play
How Anne Womack-Kolton — Cheney press secretary, APCO VP, Brunswick director — became BP's US media chief in June 2010 and built the political-to-corporate revolving door playbook that still operates across regulated industries.