Today, the elves loaded the sleigh with beautifully wrapped presents, making sure each one found its place. Rudolph and I inspected the sleigh one last time, ensuring it was ready for takeoff.

Today, Santa’s Workshop has become a toy-wrapping wonderland.

“Guys, we have more than a million miles to travel in 24 hours. Cardio has never been more important.” — Rudolph, on the need to to build stamina for the Christmas Eve deliveries.

Santa spent the day making sure his sled was ready to fly more than a million miles in a few days.

Santa has been busy, and it’s only Monday.

Long ago, legend has it that African farmers noticed a goat whose energy spiked after eating a berry on their land. The rest is coffee history.

As wonderful as social media is for keeping up with far-away family or friends with whom you have lost touch, I sometimes find myself hiding behind the convenience of a Facebook message with people who live in the same area when I could just as easily pick up the phone or drive down the street and make a human connection.

One of the most important aspects of good public relations is communicating with employees. After all, they are the front-line champions of a leader’s vision. Without them, an organization cannot succeed.

Those who fail to plan, plan to fail – this is never truer than when you and your business are in the midst of a crisis.

Having a good plan won’t make conflict disappear, but it will make things easier in the end. In crisis communications it’s important to have an effective plan that has been put to the test.

They say “everything old is new again.” Content marketing is no exception.

It’s hardly a new trend for companies to focus on the education of customers in an effort to be the top choice. However, brands today must go above and beyond the mere content creation and create content that converts potential customers.

Video may have killed the radio star back in 1979, but if that was any indication of how overpowering video would become some 35 years later, then The Buggles should be getting way more credit for their one-hit wonder.

Storytelling is as old as history itself. Stories have been a way for people to pass down cultural history, teach lessons and entertain others. We often equate storytelling to something we do for children, but everyone, even businesses, have a story to tell.

Warren Buffett, the great financier and investor once said, “It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it.”

That statement is truer today than ever with the proliferation of social media and cameras in nearly every public square. One slip of the tongue or misguided “private” moment can have a negative impact. 

Public Relations isn’t just about writing press releases, executing sponsorships and planning events – it’s about building mutually beneficial relationships.

The Tylenol cyanide poisoning case in the early 1980s not only resulted in a terrific response to a crisis; it changed the way we view packaging safety in almost every industry.

In October of 1982, someone placed a deadly amount of cyanide into Tylenol capsules, resulting in the deaths of seven people. Johnson & Johnson, the parent company of the maker of Tylenol, ordered retailers to pull all the medicines off the shelves as soon as possible.

Despite the continued constriction and convergence of for-profit media, nothing rewards your hard work like having an independent reporter file a story about your organizations or call you to be quoted as a source because you are an expert in your field.

But how do you get there from here?

One of the first journalism jobs I performed was to rewrite press releases and turn them into briefs for a small-town weekly newspaper in Northwest Louisiana. The very name, “rewrite” seems ancient, harkening to a very different time in journalism, where type-written press releases were mailed to the newsroom and someone like me had to turn them into copy.