2009

There has been a great deal of coverage on the acquisition of online retailer Zappos.com by Amazon. I had the privilege of hearing Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh speak earlier this year at the Ragan Social Media Conference in Las Vegas.

I have to admit that when I saw Tony’s name on the program as a keynote and realized he was speaking about corporate culture, I wasn’t that excited about it. However, you can’t deny that Zappos.com has a great reputation as does Tony, so I went to see him speak because, well – he was there and so was I.

His keynote changed how I view the world.

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I am a big fan of David Henderson and look forward to his blog posts. He wrote a piece recently that stimulated some strong discussion here at AHA and pretty much everywhere I have brought it up. With the headline The Very Broken PR Agency Model, you know right away that David is going to touch some nerves. In his post, he says that the agency business is singularly about billable hours and that the focus of most PR agencies isn’t on the work or the client.

I think he has some valid points and I strongly believe that as an industry, PR is in a time of huge change and the world we live in is now different. Not everyone is embracing this evolution and I think that some agencies are going to suffer because of it. David does admit that there are exceptions and that there are some generally smaller to mid-sized PR shops that “are flourishing because they are darn good at what they do.” He also says that is “the exception, unfortunately, in a large industry dominated by the money hungry big agencies.”

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Let’s hear from Maryse Cardin, Communications Strategist/Writer, on the get to know you questions.

Tell us a little bit about yourself.
I’m motivated, grateful and excited about my life and the opportunities that are forever presenting themselves to me. I’m a lifetime student, always learning, always growing. I love to work with people and help them succeed.

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There is an excellent post on the PR Channel blog about how to effectively use video in public relations. More and more at AHA, we are making use of video as a communications tool for our clients. It is one of the reasons that we wanted to have a video producer as a part of the crew. (And we were lucky to get Scott to join us, he’s exceptional.)

Five years ago creating a video was a huge deal. It took big budgets, a great deal of planning and the video came out looking very corporate and slick. Today, no one wants that. For video today, while production value is still very important, it’s not about the slick look. It’s about good lighting, sound and the story.

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