This is just friggin’ amazing

One of my Alma Maters, Humber College, has hit the PR payload when four students built a radio and made contact with the International Space Station.
With polytechnics moving strongly with pro-active MR and GR, stories like this do wonders in tying research to colleges with the strategy to remove the stigma that college/polytechnic education is [...]

On transparency and authenticity…

I lose.
For not contributing nearly enough to this precious weblog. But while the hours in a day seem to diminish with every new month and I’m not able to update as much as I’d like, I still keep a very active blogroll of PR and communications-type vehicles that keep me in the industry loop.
One of [...]

Finger Lickin’ Good Proactive

So you think you’ve finally run out of ideas for proactive media relations? Sure you’ll never come up with an angle to get your product/brand in ink?
Shame on you. And 11 Stractical points (one for each herb and spice in the Colonel’s secret recipe) for KFC (parent: Yum!) for going back to brand basics with [...]

iPhones and iBasketball

Rogers and the iPhone. iPhone and Rogers. A match made in… well… Canada. Here’s the story: Rogers announces iPhone price plans for the Canadian roll-out of the Apple phenom. Customers/consumers kick up a storm as the prices are seismically higher than in the US or anywhere else for that matter. Then Rogers announces a dramatic [...]

Beckham jersey ruins friendship

David Beckham, moderately famous for playing soccer and extraordinarily famous for inexplicable reasons, has become the subject of a gurfuffle as he tossed a game-worn jersey to two ten year old former best friends. Former, because the ownership of that LA Galaxy sweat rag has torn the two apart.
“Okay” you’re saying to yourself, “has Stractical [...]

Scrabulous talk keeps scoring

CBC Radio’s excellent Spark takes up the Scrabulous issue and comes to many of the same conclusions as Stractical: Hasbro/Mattel/other license holders saw a phenomenon rising and jumped on board, legally and communicatively.

Personal Correspondence + The Internet = Public Correspondence

One of the responsibilities for many corporate communication professionals is to handle response from the non-media public to issues of branding, marketing and community The ability to treat each inquiry with care is important not only for the satisfaction of the inquirer, but for the very real possibility that a corporate response from anyone about [...]

No Crossing The Blog Line

Apologies all around for not posting this week. Sometimes life happens.
Mark Cuban, the polarizingly (not a word) charismatic owner of the Dallas Mavericks has decided to ban bloggers from the locker room, creating a clear separation between newspaper reporters and bloggers. As of now, the only person affected by this ban is Tim McMahon who [...]

Student faces expulsion for Facebook study group

Interesting and troubling story coming out of Ryerson University about an engineering student who is being threatened with expulsion for administering a Facebook group that included some quiz answer sharing. I’m not going to deride the university for refusing to comment on an ongoing investigation or even praise the student’s representatives for going on the [...]

Obay Buzz Goes Offish

It’s tricky (tricky, tricky, tricky) pulling off an “It’s Coming…” campaign. You know the ones. Some vague, non-sequitur ad that doesn’t mention a product or a brand but instead leaves you scratching your head and wondering “What was that all about?” “It’s coming…” campaigns double down on a bet that the audience will take notice, [...]