Holtz Communications + Technology

I just ran a Google Blogsearch and found about 25,300 results on “kenneth cole” twitter Egypt. The world doesn’t need another post about the fashion designer who stumbled badly with a tweet that hijacked the #Cairo hashtag to promote his Spring collection.

And yet, an elephant lingers in the room.

The posts I’ve read (which, admittedly, doesn’t come close to 25,300) have fallen into a couple clear…

The explosion and subsequent oil spill from the Deepwater Horizon oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico last April rapidly became the worst oil spill in US history and the single event that severely affected energy company BP‘s reputation on a huge scale.

In this episode of FIR Live, Gerald Baron, founder and director of PIER, and Neil Chapman, a BP communicator,…

Whenever a company mishandles a social media kerfuffle, there is no shortage of bloggers and other experts ready to offer biting criticism and recommendations for how the organization should have handled the situation. Sometimes the advice is good, sometimes it’s not. The advice offered is rarely consistent from one expert to another. And it’s even more rarely forgiving of companies new to the…

The next episode of FIR Live will look at the communication efforts surrounding the Deepwater Horizon explosion and subsequent oil spill—the worst in U.S. history. Our guests are…

• Gerald Baron, who authors the Crisisblogger blog and wrote “Now is Too Late 2,” one of the best books available on crisis communication in the digital era. Gerald is a founder and Director of Strategic Services for

While taking a qucik glance at news headlines at the MSNBC site, I stopped to click through on one that read:

“Cat Bin Lady’s” Internet infamy grows

In case you missed it, this is the tale of UK resident Mary Bale, who gained notoriety after a video showing her dumping a cat in a garbage bin was posted online. Facebook groups have formed calling for a…

Much has been written about Apple’s press event held last week to address the iPhone 4 dropped-call kerfuffle. Some people were satisfied (especially Apple’s most loyal customers, who melted into gooey puddles when Apple CEO Steve Jobs got choked up over how much he loves Apple customers); others weren’t.

I’ve made no secret about my view of Apple’s business practices while recognizing that the company cranks out…