A CNN headline this week: "Donald Trump is Fox News' Top PR guy." Four months in, the defining feature of the Trump White House press operation is a media-relations strategy that runs almost entirely against the traditional press corps and almost entirely in favor of a single friendly cable network. The Muir interview, the amplification loop, and what it means for the network press.
Three coffee chains, three completely different PR playbooks. A Q&A on how Starbucks, The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf, and Caribou Coffee approach public relations, marketing, and reputation.
Industrial designer and branding expert Ravi Sawhney of RKS Design frames the 2016 outcome as a branding lesson: emotional connection with the core customer beats broad appeal. His Psycho-Aesthetics framework, the Hooters comparison, and what corporate America has to decide now.
The New York Times's post-election "apology" from publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. — a rededication to fair reporting practices with no named coverage decisions, no structural editorial process changes, and no measurable standard for readers to hold the paper to. Why the format is the problem, and what a substantive apology would have looked like.
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.
Chris Burch has spent four decades identifying founders, funding growth, and building consumer brands. From Eagle Eye Apparel and Tory Burch to Burch Creative Capital and NIHI Sumba — the operator profile and the case study in cross-category operating range.
The textbook is two years behind the field. So universities are hiring the operators — senior practitioners brought in as professors of practice to teach AI Communications, GEO, and Citation Share in real time.
PR and SEO have converged into one integrated function. Earned media, brand mentions, Wikipedia, original research, named experts, digital PR, and the social graph — one coordinated discipline that compounds across both.
There are many leaders calling for a national conversation about race. Starbucks tried to start one by having baristas write "Race Together" on cups. The execution missed by a wide margin. What other brands should learn from it.
A 2026 comparative read on three luxury brands operating very different reputational positions \u2014 Porsche, Jaguar, and Rolls-Royce. The IPO that worked, the rebrand that didn't, and the disciplined holdout.