Holtz Communications + Technology

Of all the bad, lame pitches I won’t bother reading, the top of the list must be occupied by the mass-distributed, unrequested press release in which “press release” is misspelled. Good freakin’ grief.

Doug Haslam of Topaz Partners and I were interviewed last week for a BuzzMarketing podcast that will be available from MarketingProfs, but you can listen from here right now.

As I have watched the facts unfold surrounding the Black Mustang Club, I have taken a nostalgic journey back to my brief stint in the newspaper business before I made the transition to corporate communications. I imagine myself on the news desk, my manual Royal typewriter before me, as the phone rings.

The source on the phone is breathless. “Have I got a…

One of the bigger PR news stories of 2007 involved a press conference staged by the Federal Emergency Management Agency in October to address the California wildfires. FEMA’s External Affairs Director John “Pat” Philbin was slated to take a new position as Public Affairs Director for the Director of National Intelligence, but in the wake of the press conference controversy, that offer was…

The January 2 edition of John C. Dvorak’s video podcast CrankyGeeks  is must-viewing for PR practitioners, and in particular those who work for technology clients. Dvorak’s guests include New York Times writers John Markoff and Gregg Zachary, who offer an intriguing take on the state of technology journalism;

I received an invitation a few weeks back to write a post for Brandweek, and was delighted to take Senior Online Editor Rory Thompson up on the offer. Of course, I don’t work in marketing—never have—so it took some thought to come up with a theme that addressed branding. I settled on the impact bad customer service has on a brand and how social…