Market Focus: Taking the IPO on the Road

By Craig McGuire

Initial Public Offerings can be a communications minefield. Craig McGuire looks at how to pull off a successful road show, and survive the quiet period. The IPO is just weeks away. You’ve stroked the right journalists, launched a loud branding campaign and groomed your CEO for success. With a prospectus in hand and the underwriters under way, you’re racing down the home stretch coming up on the final … (Click Here to Read More)

 

Market Focus: From the Top Down (Reputation Management)

By Craig McGuire

A sturdy reputation program requires buy-in from all parts of a corporation. Reputation management is too often seen as incidental damage control. Ideally, however, it is more about implementing a long-term, integrated program in which communications professionals work closely with senior management to reinforce a company’s core operational strengths with its various audiences. In other words, no amount of reputation management would have saved Enron, Worldcom, or the slew of other companies swept up in corporate governance scandals and, more recently, mutual fund debacles … (Click Here to Read More)

 

Market Focus: Nonprofits Capitalizing on Crisis

By Craig McGuire

Smart nonprofits are using news events to further their causes. The recent shortage in flu vaccines sparked a national outcry and resulted in endless lines of potential flu sufferers snaking outside pharmacies and doctors’ offices, hoping the supply wouldn’t run out before they reached the front. But for the American Lung Association (ALA), the shortage provided a strong opportunity to push its message. For years the ALA has promoted a “Find a Flu Shot Locator,” garnering limited coverage by publicizing that flu shots are not only safe, even for asthma sufferers, but … (Click Here to Read More)

 

Market Focus: Board Games (Corporate Board PR)

By Craig McGuire

Craig McGuire looks at five PR pros who are masters at breaching the boardroom. It’s known as the corporate jungle for a reason. Managing communications for corporate boards can be a sticky business, fraught with peril for even the most polished PR pros. To understand what it takes to enter the lion’s den and emerge victorious, or at least in one piece, consider the war stories from these seasoned specialists … (Click Here to Read More)

 

Market Focus: Hearing Them Out (Customer Communications)

By Craig McGuire

Communicating may be an integral part of PR, but so is listening. Despite being the essence of customer-facing communications, collecting customer feedback has traditionally fallen beyond the reach of the communications department in most firms. But because seasoned PR professionals have several communications-related advantages over their customer-service counterparts, this area is fertile for PR pros to leave an indelible mark on the company – and one that many feel is somewhat underexploited. Many agencies, even large ones, don’t offer customer-feedback expertise, though … (Click Here to Read More)

 

Market Focus: Reaching a Different Type of Influencer

By Craig McGuire

The traditional model for analyst relations (AR) gave tech vendors a tool to influence industry analysts who develop paid reports for sale through independent research and consulting firms. Today, with so much more noise in the market and such a need for reliable, independent validation, AR is now as likely to engage earlier and leverage analysts to build brand … (Click Here to Read More)

 

Market Focus: The Battle for the Business Wires

By Craig McGuire

The rivalry between PR Newswire and Business Wire over the lucrative press release distribution market is ugly and will only get uglier in the Internet Age. Craig McGuire reports from the ring. For decades, Business Wire and PR Newswire, the two titans of press release distribution, have pounded at each other like battle-hardened heavyweights, trading blow for blow on each other’s geographic turf, copying each other’s innovations, luring away each other’s clients  … (Click Here to Read More)

 

Market Focus: Stream of Conferences (eConferencing)

By Craig McGuire

On the morning of September 11, a handful of professors from the University of North Carolina, Charlotte, set out to attend a conference in Scotland, where they were scheduled to give a presentation. Like thousands of other travelers that morning, they never left the ground. Shortly after the FAA shut down the nation’s airspace, the UNC delegation … (Click Here to Read More)

 

Market Focus: Industry Shake-Up (Disruptive PR)

By Craig McGuire

Scouring the Internet for stories, the disruptive media unit in Ketchum’s interactive strategies division came across an interesting eBay item. Short on cash for her upcoming nuptials, 23-year-old Virginia Beach, VA, hairdresser Kelly Gray was auctioning a spot in her bridal party. Chris Kooluris, disruptive media specialist at Ketchum, immediately shopped the item around to various clients, but got no serious takers. That is, until he asked Greg Artkop … (Click Here to Read More)

 

Market Focus: Switching on High Power PR (Energy Deregulation PR)

By Craig McGuire

Deregulation has thrust the nation’s energy companies into unfamiliar territory: competition. Craig McGuire reports on how they’re using PR to show them the way. Americans are not known for teir willingness to go without. So when they flick the switch and lights don’t come on, or they find a rate hike on their monthly bill, they don’t hesitate to push the panic button. With deregulation blowing many regional … (Click Here to Read More)

 

Market Focus: Partners in Disclosure (Financial Communications)

By Craig McGuire

Financial and communications pros are collaborating more. With proper financial disclosure now paramount, many corporations have encouraged a close working relationship between their senior financial executives and their corporate communications professionals and external PR counsel. PRWeek profiles a handful of these relationships, offering insights on how to keep all parties on the same track … (Click Here to Read More)

 

Market Focus: Financial PR’s New Guard

By Craig McGuire

The financial practices of large agencies have had to evolve. From ugly investor uprisings and crusading federal prosecutors to unforgiving regulators and shrinking sell-side coverage, it’s not getting any easier to be a financial communications or investor relations pro. The past several years dramatically changed the landscape for IR and financial communications agencies in the US. While most smaller boutiques were lightweight enough to simply switch gears into areas such as … (Click Here to Read More)

 

Market Focus: The Wired World (Global Newswires)

By Craig McGuire

Global trends are providing more overseas opportunities for both newswires and their clients. Craig McGuire reports. Just a few years ago, when semiconductor-software-design company Synopsys needed to publicize a new product to its audiences overseas, the Mountain View, CA-based firm would simply have issued a release through its newswire of choice, PR Newswire. Earlier this year, though, when Synopsys was preparing to unveil … (Click Here to Read More)

 

Market Focus: Media Training, Anyone?

By Craig McGuire

For as long as the US has had an effective media, there has been a need for media training. But while the PR industry as a whole has enjoyed a huge and widely recognized growth spurt, the revolution in the media training business has gone largely unrecognized. There are many reasons for its relative anonymity. First, there are no national media relations training companies, and the small one-man operations don’t have the size or scope to make a splash … (Click Here to Read More)

 

Market Focus: Small Caps With Big Ideas

By Craig McGuire

Small and midsize companies are using PR to attract attention. Until Comsys Holding recently set in motion a play to buy competitor Venturi Partners, the Houston-based IT staffing company was not exactly a household name. Like many small and midsize US companies, Comsys has struggled to draw attention from mainstream media and Wall Street analysts. Journalists today simply have too many larger companies to cover, let alone devote valuable copy space to the smaller players … (Click Here to Read More)

 

Photo Credit: By Anna Dziubinska on Unsplash.com.