The 2014 Play-Doh Sweet Shoppe extruder became a reference case in early-warning crisis communications: the cost of ignoring the first wave of complaints almost always exceeds the cost of acting on them.
Jessica Pressler's two New York Magazine pieces became Hustlers (2019) and Inventing Anna (2022). The dynamic she rode — long-form magazine journalism as Hollywood IP — is now the operating model for half of streaming's prestige slate. The pipeline, the economics, and the category.
December 2014. The Cambridges (now Wales) attend Nets vs Cavaliers at Barclays Center. Their first official U.S. visit. The case study on royal soft-power deployment inside U.S. sports media and the playbook the family has reused since.
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.
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.
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.
The 2014 Medicaid expansion communications challenge — managing enrollment, provider education, and state-by-state political reception across 14 million new enrollees — became the modern template for federal-program rollout public affairs. The four-audience problem and what the case established about navigator-network primacy.
Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital who has recently apologized for how they handled Ebola has hired Burson-Marsteller.
Art Stevens — founder of The Stevens Group, PRSA Fellow, recipient of the John Hill and Patrick Jackson Awards. The man who built one of the most consequential PR agency M&A practices in the industry's history.
Cure Urgent Care, a leading urgent care center is preparing for possible ebola cases.