What Were They Thinking?

It’s about relationships, people!!!

Posted by Paul Holman of AHA Creative Strategies on February 01st, 2012

My friend, mentor and former boss, Della Smith of Q Workshops, is a smart cookie. She may, in fact, be the smartest person I have ever met. (And I have met a lot of really, really smart people!)

Now, I am not sure I would put Della up against Jeopardy genius Ken Jennings—that’s just a different kind of smart (and one that I believe has more to do with memory than anything else). But I have seen Della in a wide range of scenarios—from dealing with an organization facing a huge crisis to sipping a cold…

AHA Special Fast Take

Posted by Paul Holman of AHA Creative Strategies on January 03rd, 2012

I am not going to spoil the fun of today’s AHA Special Fast Take. All I will say is watch Ruth take the “plunge” into 2012. (And my apologies for the sound – it was very windy!)

Alec Baldwin removed from airplane

Posted by Paul Holman of AHA Creative Strategies on December 07th, 2011

Ruth has a special video blog post from her hotel in Atlanta regarding Alec Baldwin getting removed from an airplane.

Who are you pitching to?

Posted by Ruth Atherley of AHA Creative Strategies on November 16th, 2011

Our AHA blog is listed in Cision, a media database. It’s pretty clear, even if you only read a couple of our posts, that we write about communications: brand journalism, public relations, media relations, social media, positioning and messaging. It’s all related to strategic communication.

It seems pretty straightforward to me what to pitch to us. Which makes us shake our heads in wonder when we get pitches from random PR agencies and independent PR practitioners that have nothing to do with what we write about here. It looks to me like some people just grab any email they can…

Image release form

Posted by Ruth Atherley of AHA Creative Strategies on November 14th, 2011

I am on location at a video shoot for a client today and as I took the early ferry into Vancouver (a short 40-minute commute from my home on the Sunshine Coast), I heard a report on News 1130, a local radio station, that grabbed my attention.

It seems that a local politician used the images of two children in campaign brochures without getting permission from their parents. As a communicator, when I see issues like this, I wonder how it happened. In this day and age, taking photos of children without the written consent of their parent(s)…

Know and understand your audience

Posted by Ruth Atherley of AHA Creative Strategies on October 31st, 2011

I recently received an email from an organization in the communications field asking for my input. The email offered me the chance to win an iPod Shuffle. I found it surprising that an organization in this field would reach out to communicators and offer that as the prize. The communicators I know either have iPhones or smart phones that hold music or they already have a music player. And a Shuffle is pretty far down the food chain. An iPad would have been a better prize; only about half of the communicators I know have a tablet of some type.…

Social media – how far is too far?

Posted by Ruth Atherley of AHA Creative Strategies on October 27th, 2011

I saw something on Facebook this morning that really made me sit back and think. I have quite a few “friendly acquaintances” on Facebook. For the purpose of this blog, I will call them “pals.” These are people I have met and like, but that I don’t connect with very much in the real world. Some I met through work, others from my personal life. Many of them I met while travelling.

I don’t hold the same political views as some of them. I have to admit, I have found some of the discussions and ideas put forward by a…

Why You Should (and Shouldn’t) Hire a PR Agency

Posted by Ruth Atherley of AHA Creative Strategies on June 27th, 2011

AHA Creative Strategies is a PR agency and we often get calls from individuals and organizations that are looking to work with an agency. From the moment that we started AHA more than eight years ago, we had a vision of the type of clients that we wanted to work with. It wasn’t necessarily focused on any one industry or field, but more the approach, the integrity, the character and personality of the person and the organization. We’ve been incredibly fortunate that we have been able to work with great clients that came to AHA because they were focused on…

Viral Video

Posted by Ruth Atherley of AHA Creative Strategies on August 25th, 2010

You may have seen the video of a woman in Britain who, for no apparent reason, picked up a friendly cat and put it in a garbage can. Links to this video were emailed all over the world, it was uploaded to Facebook and YouTube and the clip appeared on a range of broadcast news shows.

AHA TAKE

Apart from shaking our heads at the cruelty involved – the poor cat was stuck in the garbage for about 18 hours – and the seemingly randomness of this nasty act, there are a couple of…

BP’s Crisis Communications

Posted by Ruth Atherley of AHA Creative Strategies on June 07th, 2010

There are many discussions online and, I am sure, in offices all over the world, about what BP is doing regarding its crisis communications.  It has been a very hot topic in the AHA office as well.

One of the key points in our discussions is how much the world has changed because of social media. Technology and the online conversations happening all over the world mean that, as communicators, we have to evolve how we deal with an issue or a crisis.

There are many articles and blog posts out there about the crisis…