From 50,000 Feet

Barack Obama is more than just a messiah; he’s a brilliant marketer, especially to the Millennial cohort, according to this excellent analysis by Advertising Age’s Peter Feld:
Baby boomers and Gen Xers declared mass marketing dead long ago. We live in a world of fragmented media surrounded by cynical consumers who can spot and block an […]

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I liked this column by Robert Samuelson. I suspect that’s because, unlike John McCain and Barack Obama, he’s not running for office or trying to advance a party’s agenda, so he can afford to think about the shocking 90 percent increase in oil prices in less than two years in practical terms.  Like this:
There’s […]

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There must be an interesting tale behind this week’s Rolling Stone cover story (link is to an excerpt only) about the Eagles.
According to the rules of celebrity marketing, the timing is a little off.  The Eagles have been touring since March.  Their new album, Long Road out of Eden, came out last October and has […]

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What does a PR person owe their client or their boss when they are no longer being paid to speak for them or keep their secrets? The question comes up, obviously, with the publication of Scott McClellan’s memoir, What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington’s Culture of Deception.
President Bush’s current spokeswoman, Dana Perino, […]

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“The Brand Called Obama” was Fast Company’s cover story for its April edition, but I just ran across it now thanks to No Quarter.  The theme is “the degree to which his success indicates a seismic shift on the business horizon as well.”
Obama has deftly embraced — and been embraced by — the Internet. […]

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When Sen. Hillary Clinton’s chief strategist, Mark Penn, stepped down from that role (but didn’t really go anywhere) because the PR firm he chairs, Burson-Marsteller, brought him to a meeting with its client, the Colombian government, the news analysis focused strictly on how Penn’s actions affected Clinton. 
Politics is the screen through which we tend to […]

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The Ladders, or I should say, TheLadders (spaces between words are so 20th-century), thought its job placement service for people who believe they should earn more than $100,000 could get some favorable publicity with a political survey of executives. They asked: Who would American executives elect as president today?
I guess the idea […]

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Dealmaker.com’s Bess Levin sees glee emanating from Wall Street regarding the fall of NY Gov. Elliot Spitzer:
Obviously, overall, Wall Street is happy about the news. One trader told (CNBC’s) Bob Pisani it means “there is a God.” But we want more individualized, firm-specific responses. Like, Merrill Lynch was one of (Spitzer’s) first targets. Are […]

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If you’re in the US, you can no longer look at wikileaks.org, the wiki site where whistleblowers could post leaked documents, after a California court ruled in favor of a Swiss bank accused of money-laundering. The court ruled in spite of the fact that Wikileaks did not attend the hearing due to […]

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When Bill Clinton took office in 1992, it signified a bipartisan consensus on the benefits of free trade. His predecessor, George H.W. Bush had promoted the North American Free Trade Act (NAFTA), and Clinton picked up where Bush left off. Ross Perot and organized labor fought the deal, but lost after Perot’s famous thrashing […]

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