BNY Mellon tagged posts

Was Abraham Lincoln right about the nature of reputation?

Abraham_Lincoln_November_18In 1861 Abraham Lincoln faced the greatest test of his presidency when he tried to hold together the United States in the face of a highly divisive Civil War that eventually claimed the lives of over 700,000 combatants in the North and South of the country.

However, Lincoln was a lucky man. And he had at his disposal a new weapon. A weapon more powerful than a Smith & Weston.

It was the telegraph.

Before the invention of the telegraph it would take a dispatch rider the best part of a week to reach the battle front on horseback. Now Lincoln could now dispatch orders to his Army Generals by getting an operator to tap them instantly into the machine.

Although the telegram was re...

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Reputation matters but in whom do we trust?

Smoking posterAsk most people in PR about the reputation of tobacco industry and you’re likely to get a wide variety of answers, most of which will border on the negative.

The tobacco companies have responded to the clampdown on the public sale of cigarettes through giant health warnings on packets and a steep rise in VAT by publicly talking about the need to find the “safer smoke” for its customers. And this has led to tobacco companies making massive investments in e-cigarettes.

But is this motivated by the desire to wean smokers off smoking or simply substitute one nicotine delivery system for another in order to protect market share and massive profits?

The discussions about e-ci...

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Are you content with marketing or like your marketing with content?

Content Marketing imageNo, this isn’t a crossword conundrum or trick question but in fact the essence of the debate I chaired on Thursday 1 May at the offices of BNY Mellon ahead of the PRCA’s PR Council Meeting.

Like most things in life, there are at least two sides to every story – whether it’s the forthcoming EU General Data Protection Regulation that threatens to obliterate the freedom of marketers to track behaviour of consumers or the ethics of sponsoring education content in the classroom.

You can be sure that whenever you get two marketers in the room, you’ll have at least three points of view.

So when it comes to ‘content marketing’… well, you can bet there’s as many views on the ...

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