Author Archives: Michael Whitlow

Energy’s Big PR Problem? Politics (Duh!)

by Michael Whitlow
John Janoush, vice president of Jantran,a Mid-South towboat operator, told National Public Radio recently that six of his towboats are stuck on the Arkansas River, a tributary of the Mississippi River. Later in the story, when talking about the flood danger to Rosedale, Mississippi, he commented about the strength of the levees: “Our [...]

CEOs: Four Ways to Avoid Killing the Elephant

by Michael Whitlow
Full disclosure. We work for a competitor of Go*****.com, but this is not about going one up on Go*****. It’s about CEO behavior, and how clueless some CEOs can be.
The furor on the web last week over a certain CEO’s (BobParsons.me) culling/killing an elephant, which he had helpfully videotaped and posted (see the [...]

Choosers of the Slain & Being A Best Place to Work

by Michael Whitlow
Our three Virginia offices shared the “Best Places to Work” spotlight (see Principles pay dividends) with a defense engineering company by the name of Valkyrie Enterprises last week, winning our top spot in the small business category as they earned theirs in the mid-sized category. For CRT/tanaka, this was a wonderful tribute to follow a great [...]

What’s the Most PR Can Do?

by Michael Whitlow
After a few decades in the business, I have seen the profession of PR change pretty dramatically.  “Make your work your play and your play your work,” Phil Jackson is reported to have said, and the advice still makes sense to me in the context of our business. It can be very gratifying [...]

Connected, or Just Pathological Narcissists?

by Michael Whitlow
The recent resignation/retirement/reincarnation/recrimination stories about Crispin Porter + Bogusky’s Alex Bogusky made me pause to think about our modern heroes in the socially connected world, about feet of clay and about Mother Teresa.
I’d been wondering for awhile about whether our somewhat obsessive focus on the latest new ways to connect in our technologically driven world are [...]

Facebook Tips – Quick Start Guide for Business

Your business is not one of those that was an early adopter on the Facebook page front, but since last year you haven’t run into a single customer without a Facebook account. How do you enter the game?
First, you must remember that a business page does not allow all of the functions that you and your [...]

Rolling Stone War Journalism: Does it Expose or Reflect Army PR?

I thought I could just let it go that the great rock-and-roll paper of my youth turned into a slick magazine. But, the editors broke a story about Goldman Sachs profiting from/causing every stock market crash since the 20s - great journalism, even though it was one of those ”do ya think?” stories (who would have guessed this of [...]

BP Plan Snafu: Maybe Time for Wisdom of the Crowd?

The most recent revelations about the state of BP’s crisis plan offer important lessons for public relations professionals, and to ignore the wake-up call is to ignore a moral obligation.
The AP ran its story Wednesday night, noting a long list of problems with the 582-page regional spill plan and the 52-page plan for the destroyed Deepwater Horizon rig. The [...]

I’m w/Zuckerberg – Facebook Fan Salutes Good PR

Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Facebook, was in the news this week with an example of yet another monster-sized-almost-monopoly giving its mea culpa to its customers via an op-ed in The Washington Post and other places. I’ll give Mr. Zuckerberg’s detractors their point if they want to criticize his ironic comment in the lead paragraph “If [...]

Republicans Take PR Initiative…Again

Tyler Whitley of the Richmond Times-Dispatch reported on the latest in a series of public relations winning programs over the years from the Republican side of the Congressional aisle, announced this week by Virginia’s very own Eric Cantor, the Republican Whip.
The “YouCut” project allows voters to select from a selected list of potential cuts our government could [...]