JCPR Blog

Originally appeared in Money Management Executive. The world of communications in the mutual fund industry is rife with buzzwords and phrases. They come in and out of favor as funds and fund managers seek to gain competitive advantage by [...]

Why aren’t there any new Christmas songs? There are probably millions of new songs written every year. I know there were tens of thousands of songs recorded and released commercially in 2012, because they were all on the list of 2012 Grammy [...]

America being a free country, we’re all entitled to our own opinions about Democratic vs. Republican, dogs vs. cats, bacon vs. chocolate. Cheap and easy-to-use digital technology also means that we can now upload our preferences and share them as [...]

While social media outlets can be golden opportunities to market fresh ideas and garner real-time intelligence on how news resonates with the public, they can also become PR quagmires and regulatory pitfalls. Take a look at recent news reports that [...]

What would you do if an infamous dictator asked your PR firm to rehabilitate his country’s image? Martha Boudreau, Regional President for Mid-Atlantic and Latin America at Fleishman-Hillard, is one of the few PR professionals who can draw on [...]

There’s a gap in our industry: a gap that threatens the livelihood of every individual and agency involved in PR. The gap is one of creativity, which, if it continues to grow, will lead to an unbridgeable chasm of relevancy. It’s time to get mad [...]

In the book, The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies and Nations, author James Surowiecki makes the point that a large group of people working together is [...]

Like most sane people, you’ve probably been muttering, cursing and talking back to various devices in recent months. It’s election season in America, after all.  Whether you’re coming from the left, right or center, some candidate’s speech, [...]

By Cheryl'Lynn Joost As Social Media Manager for JCPR, I spend a great deal of time combing the internet for creative campaigns that use social media to create a powerful community of brand evangelists. One of the most compelling recent examples of [...]

Yes, you read the headline correctly, and no, you have not stumbled upon the Us Weekly homepage. The lessons learned from Dina Lohan, the train-wreck mother of train-wreck Lindsay Lohan, make for an intriguing PR case study – specifically, [...]

Last month, NPR’s Scott Simon eloquently mused over the current use – and in his mind, overuse – of the word “curate” in a witty commentary on the subject. Simon notes that ‘curate’ has been stolen from museum walls and applied to [...]

I recently had the privilege to attend “Think Performance” by Google, a marketing conference with the purpose of showing how to optimize a business’ online presence by leveraging Google’s tools and services. Aside from the opportunity to [...]

Originally appeared in Money Management Executive. "Inventions have long since reached their limit, and I see no hope for further developments," Julius Sextus Frontinus, Roman engineer, 10 A.D. This quote seems completely ridiculous when looking [...]

For those of us who are professional communicators, words, their meanings revealed by the context in which they are used, are the building blocks we use to give dimension to abstract concepts and bring ideas to life. Even if the words are meant to [...]

As a proud member of the Content Team here at JCPR, writing press releases is a key responsibility. The best PR professionals make writing look easy. However, rarely is it a breeze. A great deal of time and dedication go into communicating a [...]

What makes millions of people, with no connection to each other besides wanting a new cell phone, wake up in the middle of the night to buy it? There aren’t limited quantities, the phone itself doesn’t do anything different from other phones, [...]

Crisis may be the new normal for investors, but it's also the stark reality of the communications landscape. Good news may travel fast, but bad news travels even faster-and mutual fund companies are by no means immune from the threats to their [...]

This is a story about a shirt I didn’t need, but I bought anyway. Why? Because of the label. At the time, I didn’t realize that the well-designed label pushed me from “I kind of want it,” to “I have to have it.”  But as many marketing [...]

The latest research shows that clients of financial advisors increasingly believe that the grass may be greener working with another advisor. Investors believe there are better alternatives – and aren’t afraid to look for them. Given this [...]

I recently read an article by Hollis Thomases in Inc. entitled, “11 Reasons a 23-Year-Old Shouldn’t Run Your Social Media.” As a 23-year-old myself, I was quite offended. Many of my peers are already struggling to find jobs, and what right [...]

Over at Forbes, PR executive Aaron Kwittken asks, “Did Lance Armstrong Make The Right PR Call?”    Regarding the superstar athlete’s decision not to continue arbitration with the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) over doping allegations, [...]

Think about how people consume information: it’s not from one source, app or platform. People prefer information from multiple streams rather than from a single river. Streams are varied ideas, voices and media converging into a platform that [...]

At the end of the day, pressing the flesh still counts. The truth is that quite often, people do business with you quite simply because they like you. New business guru and JCPR friend Robb High compares forming business relationships to dating. I [...]

The virtual world is full of attention traps lying in wait for the unsuspecting surfer. Click on some link and you can end up losing great chunks of your day. “Sticky” sites can be black holes in an otherwise productive schedule, as you glance [...]

Whenever anyone sees those six words in an email, text message or social media post they take notice. The fact that such emphatic validation of the video is stamped – not by the brand behind the video, but by a friend, follower or other trusted [...]

Just a few months ago, Pinterest was the new kid on the social media block, but is now the number three social network in the world, behind only Facebook and Twitter.  It has attracted 10 million monthly visitors faster than any other site in [...]

(spoiler alert: you don’t have to be a gold-medal writer to make it happen) A steady stream of content will win you a shiny gold medal in the eyes of your co-workers, customers and influencers. While quality counts, quantity is the Michael [...]

Words are important to me, as they should be for anyone in the communication business. As a kid I loved to pore through the dictionary (or the encyclopedia or an atlas) and I still do. I still get excited learning new words (especially ones I can [...]

On the surface, many of the iconic quotes from actor Samuel L. Jackson have nothing to do with social media, but if you take a deeper look into some of Mr. Jackson’s famous one-liners, you’ll find words of wisdom that apply to companies that are [...]

Companies hire people based largely on tangible factors. However, the most critical measure of an employee's potential impact on the company -- engagement -- is often overlooked. That measurement is what could ultimately bring a business to the next [...]

“1, 2, 3 … Facebook!” At least, that is what most adolescents are thinking as soon as their camera flashes. “Tag me!” has become the instantaneous reaction to every picture. This is the essence of personal visual branding.  Facebook [...]

Financial advisors have lagged when it comes to utilizing social media, but unfortunately the people they need to reach most have not. Investors and media have aggressively embraced it, and used channels like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn to [...]

Brand identity is no longer built solely on what a company does. Regardless of whether they make a faster vehicle, a smarter phone or a killer app, it’s how companies communicate how that product or service sets them apart from others that can [...]

Written communication--whether it's e-mail, Twitter, text messages or blog posts--has supplanted verbal communication in every facet of our lives. Words have, in essence, become disposable, as we are inundated every day with an unprecedented volume [...]

It’s a simple question, but one many companies can’t easily answer. In marketing and PR, we try to distill a company’s story down to key messages -- the points that each spokesperson uses to ensure that they are telling the [...]

By Cheryl'Lynn Joost Professional networking is becoming even more popular and commonplace thanks to the help of social media. There are now many ways to connect with industry peers and people who share common interests through LinkedIn, Facebook [...]

Forget everything you know about numbers. With social media, measuring success through figures or hard data often creates false benchmarks that do not speak to whether a brand’s message is actually resonating with its audience. All too often, [...]

Nearly every company wants to describe themselves as innovative. In a perfect world, each brand would have a unique offering that doesn’t simply improve the landscape for their industry, but rather revolutionizes it. Unfortunately, if a [...]

When is a sentence not a sentence? When it’s a fragment (such as this one), a comma splice, or a run-on sentence. This is basic stuff that we all learned in elementary school, but it’s often helpful to revisit the basics. A sentence [...]

As any artist will undoubtedly tell you, nothing is unintentional. There is a clear, defined purpose for the inclusion of a random color or a dramatic shift in a musical arrangement. And while the final result might often be a mystery to us, to the [...]

Saying that communications is a two-way street is one thing, but actually practicing it is another. A brand’s ROI is no longer about return on investment, but rather, return on influence. While media impressions were once the benchmarks of a [...]

It’s likely that by now, you’ve heard of Pinterest, a social site that allows users to create virtual pin boards and share them with their followers. It's gaining popularity mostly among the female demographic (according to ZDNet, 58% of [...]

When the Public Relations Society of America set out to redefine PR, it was an admirable endeavor that looked to modernize the definition to reflect the changing, and increasingly social, media landscape. However, since PR is an organic process, [...]

Note: There seems to be a lot of discrepancy about the 'right' way to handle personal and professional social profiles online. You may have asked yourself if you should manage two separate profiles (one for your personal life and one strictly for [...]