It has been exactly one decade since the PR Coalition—a coalition of professional organizations that represented more than 30,000 public relations professionals—called on public relations to become the champion for diversity. The Coalition argued that public relations, more than any other function, has ...

More than two decades ago, when I first dove into the world of reputation management, the field was still in its infancy.  Few business people concerned themselves with it, and the field was only beginning to be understood. Since then, so much has changed.  The mere use of the word “reputation” has gr ...

Many organizations face circumstances in which the public challenges their legitimacy. S. Prakash Sethi labeled these situations as legitimacy gaps and Bob Heath and Michael Palenchar claimed they are caused by issues of fact (misperceptions of the company’s actual behaviors); issues of policy (disapproval of one or more of the organ ...

When a crisis occurs, an organization needs to go above and beyond the publics’ expectations to manage the situation.  The recent affair with Subway tests the foundational elements of crisis management. In early July, it was reported that federal agents raided Subway’s longtime pitchman Jared Fogle’s home where they seized electronics and computers. These early reports stated Fogle was sitting with investigators at the home and was not under arrest or being charged.  Subway then said ...

Market Mix Modeling: Why You Are Failing at It and What You Can Do About It While market mix models (MMM) might sound quite elementary to our peers in marketing, PR professionals have only recently discovered their value. This sudden interest in this statistical tool can be partly attributed to the need to prove our worth ...

This summer, I was offered the great opportunity of a public relations research internship at Ketchum Global Research & Analytics (KGRA) in New York City as the 2015 Don Bartholomew Award for Excellence in Public Relations Research fellow. My experience at Ketchum offered me great insights on the best practices of public relations research in the industry and taught me how to apply what I have learned in my graduate studies to research that matters to the practice. Learning about ...

What are the legal limits on raising capital for startups?  Are there legal constraints on promotions for a startup?  Can a for-profit organization raise money on the Internet from unsophisticated investors?  These questions are important for practitioners to know given the changing nature of online capital campaigns. Public relations literature ...

Last week, I attended the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC) conference in San Francisco to gain insights into the research shaping our profession. The theme of the 4-day event this year, “Global Bridges,” was attended by journalism and mass communication educators, researchers and practitioners from around the world. ...

A version of this article first appeared in Media Monitoring & Measurement News. How can PR practitioners make sense of the plethora of possible earned media metrics and measurement strategies?  PR industry groups have published a number of documents to guide PR practitioners. ...

During the past two summers, I’ve had the great privilege of presenting at and attending several European-based public relations research conferences. In the summer of 2014, I attended the Barcelona PR Meeting and the BledCom Symposium. This summer, I attended (both for my second time ever) the Barcelona PR Meeting and International H ...