Everyone's talking about purpose these days. Everyone tells you that you need to find yours — for your own sake and for that of humanity’s. There is a growing proliferation of books and articles and workshops with various approaches promising to help you find yours. One approach is visioning, a vogue-ish high-level process used in business, urban planning, nonprofits... anywhere where thinking strategically about future direction is helpful. (5-min read)
Amplify the campaign to maximize investment in nonprofit workforce as Fund the People's new communications manager.
Developed by the Hudson Valley AgriBusiness Development Corporation and facilitated in part by Antidote Collective, this intensive 6-month program includes online training activities, expert instruction, one-on-one mentoring sessions, group interaction and industry networking events. Applications due Aug. 15, 2016. (quick read)
For 5 years (2005 to 2010) I was a consultant on pro bono branding and communications projects for several nonprofit clients through Taproot Foundation. It was a highlight of my career, and I encourage it for everyone. Here's an interview that gives a feel of why it's rewarding and impactful. (2-min read)
For 5 years (2005 to 2010) I was a consultant on pro bono branding and communications projects for several nonprofit clients through Taproot Foundation. It was a highlight of my career, and I encourage it for everyone. Here's an interview that gives a feel of why it's rewarding and impactful. (2-min read)
I spoke at the premiere NYC Green Festival on "Building Your Authentic Brand Image and How to Incorporate Social Media in the Process." I talked less about "social media" and more about branding. Because you can't do social media properly unless you properly understand your brand. For that talk I created a pretty informative overview I so neatly titled "7 Dimensions of High-Impact Branding."
Richard Edelman, president/CEO of global PR firm Edelman, recently reviewed former CIGNA PR head Wendell Potter's book, Deadly Spin, on his own blog and on PR news site O'Dwyer's, saying it "distorts [the] PR field."
I disagree. It exposes the PR field, or at least the dark side of it — some of which Edelman has practiced in the past (for Big Tobacco and Wal-Mart, for example, and perhaps others).
Wendell responded to Richard in a blog post simultaneously posted on Huffington Post, Center for Media and Democracy, and his own site.
As Wendell says, "The reason I wrote my new book, Deadly Spin, was to explain not only how the insurance industry used the dark arts of PR to shape health care reform legislation, but also how many other special interests use them to influence how we think and act every day."
Wendell, of course, doesn't think PR is inherently evil or manipulative. He writes in the book:
PR has been — and is being — used to good ends. Even the noblest of causes can benefit from the services of a communications expert to clarify facts, disseminate information, and counter unfair arguments. And there are plenty of ethical PR people out there to do this....
But with PR so intricately woven into every major industry and movement in today’s mass media reality, the stakes of spin have become incredibly high. And ethics do slip. PR often crosses the line into misleading, withholding, or simply lying. And when it does, society suffers — sometimes tragically so.
This is a conversation worth having, and I encourage all of you to engage in the comments of Wendell's blog.
Disclosure: I am proud to be a friend and colleague of Wendell's, and we're exploring ways that we together can use PR to the "good ends" that he notes in the book — one of which is to spread the messages in Deadly Spin. I left corporate PR years ago with that in mind.
