Inside the world of Rob Mclean, Author

Google continues to impress me with their person-centric model of service delivery. Today I go to my standard Google homepage... the basic blank screen with the search box and the Google logo. Except this time the Google logo had been replaced. Now you'd think it would have been replaced by advertising of some sort right? A big Coca-Cola splash banner or something. Nope. In it's place was an active Pac-Man game.  See the picture below. I'm not sure why they did this, but it continues to show that Google is about 'fun'. To be honest, I think as interesting as the Pac-Man game is, they probably shouldn't have done this. They've now broken their long standing tradition of the Google homepage being nothing but the search box and the Google logo. Yet, despite the fact that I think it was a mistake (one easily corrected however), I have to say it's great to see a company willing to make mistakes in the spirit of trying new things. If only Yahoo

Wild and crazy weather in Oklahoma....

One of the blogs I follow that has good content is Tim Dyson's blog. He recently blogged about the changing face of public relations and it's worth a read. He makes the simple point that PR is about more than communicating with journalists or writing press releases. I tend to agree. It use to be that PR folks simply had to worry about articulating and communicating a message. Marketing would worry about the underlying support of that message through collateral, web sites, etc. Today though, I believe that PR folks are being consulted more on brand management and creation - 'What do we need to do to get through to our publics?' The reason for this phenomena, I believe, is a function of management teams having good experiences with highly competent public relations professionals. These CXO's have had good experiences with PR folks - they've come to see that good PR professionals think strategically, have a big-picture mentality, have strong underlying ski

Yahoo had an interesting article the other day about comment Obama made that technology such as the ipod and Xbox are distractions that are hurting the nation. They quote from a speech he gave: "And meanwhile, you're coming of age in a 24/7 media environment that bombards us with all kinds of content and exposes us to all kinds of arguments, some of which don't always rank that high on the truth meter. And with iPods and iPads and Xboxes and PlayStations — none of which I know how to work — information becomes a distraction, a diversion, a form of entertainment, rather than a tool of empowerment, rather than the means of emancipation. So all of this is not only putting pressure on you; it's putting new pressure on our country and on our democracy." I find Obama's view interesting. I couldn't agree more that we are entertainment saturated. As a public relations professional I can say that, in my opinion, the number of hard news or in-depth analysis st

I was getting groceries today and the line-ups were long. One guy decided to go on a little bit of a rant as to whether they wanted his business and what kind of operation where they running. Sometimes I wonder if manners are something I developed as a result of my job or whether I've always had them innately. In public relations your job is to bring two sides together. Whether it's the media and a company, or employees and management, or your company and a partner for a news release - one thing that is a given in PR is that generally speaking it's not about 'you' but rather about everyone else... everyone who has a role in cumulatively telling a story. Your job is to bring out the best in everyone else, because without their buy-in you will generally hit one brick wall after another. In this process manners are essential. You are often dealing with people who have one view... their view... and it doesn't always line up with other parties involved. The abi

If you're like me, you're computer is a mish-mash of 20 different programs open at the same time. It can make focusing on a single task, especially writing, a tad difficult. When I need to really focus in on something that I'm writing, I'll often use Dark Room . There's something great about seeing nothing on your screen but the words you are typing. No icons, no email pop-ups, no minimized windows waiting to be checked.

So if you're an investor today was one hell of a day. The DOW dropped 1,000 points at one point. Financial news commentators were left with blank stares and nothing to say because they couldn't explain what had happened. So what's going on? I mean, we've known about the Greece scenario now for months. Was the market really factoring in 10 percent 'good news' ultimately coming out of that situation? And then when Trichet, President of the European Central Bank, gave an off-handed remarked today that buying government bonds was not discussed at the bank's Thursday meeting, everyone decided to bail on the market? Give me a break.  Greece's total debt is perhaps $400B .  The market at its peak lost over a trillion dollars of equity today .  You could have paid off Greece's national debt more than two times over with that money. Does this seem in anyway reasonable or logical? Or perhaps the sell-off today was the result of some fat fingered Citi

This is just to interesting to pass up. So the CEO of Goldman Sachs, Lloyd Blankfein, has been on all the network interview shows lately. You can watch a clip of him on the Charlie Rose show below. Now on the one hand I applaud Goldman for communicating. Yet at the same time, Lloyd, my lord man, who is prepping you for these interviews? First, branding yourself 'market makers' is ludicrous when the markets have destroyed trillions of dollars of wealth, when people have delayed their retirements and people have lost their homes or seen the value of their homes crash. This is a perfect example of how knowing your audience is critical. What Blankfein is saying makes sense and for those that understand the equity market they won't have an issue with the interviews he's given. But in terms of the general public, ouch, he comes across as an ivory tower philosopher trying to get the peasants to understand the importance of Schrodinger's cat. Like it or not, Gold

I'm currently taking off a few pounds through dieting. My goal was 15 pounds and I'm current down 10 pounds (so far I'm four weeks into the diet). During this process it occurred to me that there is a lot of similarities between losing weight and the process of public relations. Anyone who has dieted will attest to the frustrating obstacles that are associated with shedding weight. While you may do the same thing for weeks, the results are not the same day to day. You might go a week without losing weight and then - BAM - you drop a couple of pounds.  One week you might lose three pounds, the next week nothing. Anyone who has dieted for over a month will tell you that at various points you want to quit, because it feels like it's not working. Yet, the reality is that it is working. If you stick with it, the pounds do come off. Public Relations often feels that way to me. Organizations often view it as an event-driven activity - we have a new product, let's do