People Archive

Bad Press for a Penny:
What NOT to Say If You’re a Spokesperson


My local newspaper, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, sent me an interesting story in their news email blast. The headline read: “City threatens blind woman over unpaid 1-cent bill.”
Uh-oh, I thought: PR disaster. Some auto-billing mechanism is creating a havoc.
Sure enough… The city of Attleboro, Mass. sent a nastygram to a 74-year-old blind resident threatening a [...]

How to Avoid Becoming a Flop When You Speak


I read a very good article in Maximum Impact’s newsletter, called “7 Reasons Why Speakers Flop.” For years, I have worked with CEOs on speaking at conferences, and these are all things I worked to get across to each of them each year. As I read this article, I wanted to stand up and yell, [...]

Guidelines for Making Your Brainstorming Session More Effective


This is my second post on an innovation presentation that I recently attended by Kathie Thomas of Fleishman Hillard at the PRSA St. Louis monthly luncheon.
Although Thomas presented many great ideas, one of the takeaways I enjoyed most was the brainstrorming guidelines. We’ve all been a part of such ridiculous brainstorming sessions at work that [...]

Oops… Where’s My Attention to Detail?


Today I accidentally deleted all the “real” comments off this site when I deleted all the spam comments. How did I do this act of stupidity? Not paying attention to detail.
I could blame this website’s interface, but in reality, I just wasn’t paying attention. It’s funny how all these years, I thought I was really [...]

What’s Your Innovation Style?


I recently went to an excellent presentation on innovation hosted PRSA St. Louis. The speaker was Kathie Thomas of Fleishman Hillard (headquartered here in St. Louis). She’s their innovation guru, and this presentation was also presentated at a national PRSA conference. I thought I’d share a few bits of her presentation that I found interesting.
What’s [...]