Inside the world of Rob Mclean, Author

I awarded Christine Lagarde of the IMF this month's PR blunder , but it turns out she may win for the year! After her comments that the Greeks should basically accept their suffering and start paying more taxes, it turns out that Lagarde doesn't pay taxes herself! You can read the full story here . Because of her diplomatic status she pays no tax - that's right, zip, zero, nada - on her 467k salary. Her PR blunder was bad enough, but this basically destroys whatever brand she had. Who in their right might chastises people who are suffering, saying they need to pay more taxes, when they themselves pay no taxes? But hey, none of this is a big deal really. I mean, after all, the Treasury Secretary of the United States, Timothy Geithner, didn't pay his taxes and no one seemed to really care. Now, please don't copy Lagarde or Geithner. If you don't pay your taxes you'll be looking at a massive repayment order with interest tacked on to the amount you...

I've been doing a regular update on my original 'Top 10 Reasons this recession will never end" post and I think I'm going to make this my last and final entry in the series. The previous entries can be seen here: Top 10 Reasons This Recession Will Never End Update 1 Update 2 Update 3 Update 4 Update 5 The reason I think I'll make this my last post on this topic is that it's beyond clear now that this recession, if it ever does end, will be no time soon. Let's take a final look at the 10 variables I've been tracking in my assessment of how this recession is progressing. Remember, ratings of worse or better are relative to the status of the variable  in the last update. 1.  Crashes hurt for a long time   - worse - We are now almost four years post-2008 crash and the markets still have not returned to their post-crash levels. In fact, they have recently started falling again, with the DOW currently at 12,500. For the millions of baby bo...

So RIM has announced it is going to lay-off 2,000 employees (or about 11 per cent of its current staff). The rumour though is that the cuts could escalate to 6,000 employees. This comes on the back of multiple senior executives leaving RIM in the past few months. So what is really going on with RIM? In my opinion, they are getting ready for an acquisition. This is what you do when you want to be acquired. Realistically speaking, if RIM were to be acquired, it would be for its patents, technology (perhaps) and its sales channel (ie. carrier relationships). It would not be for its staff. In fact, the employees are a detriment to an acquisition because then the acquiring company has to go through all the pain and hassle of figuring out who to let go, giving people packages, being seen as the 'bad guy' by those remaining, etc. It's a ton of hassle and cost for the acquiring company. The less 'human capital' RIM has the easier it is to digest when acquired. ...

So anyone following world politics / economics knows that Greece continues to be a mess. The people are suffering, the Nazi party has claimed seven per cent of parliament, suicides in Greece are up something insane like 400 per cent, and immigrants that moved to Greece are now leaving and returning to their homelands. How bad is it in Greece? A recent story of another suicide tells of a 60 year old man and his 90 year old mother who jumped off their apartment rooftop. The man's suicide note? “I don’t see any way out. I have property but no cash at all, so what am I going to do about food?” he wrote, adding that his mother had Alzheimer’s while he had a terminal illness. “I don’t have many days left, I am very sick,” So against this back drop Christine Lagarde of the IMF comes out and sticks her foot right in her mouth in an interview with the Gaurdian.   The following excerpt goes down as this month's PR blunder extraodinaire. So when she studies the Greek balance...

So apparently, according to the National Post, the NDP is rising in popularity across Canada . I'm not surprised as the Conservatives seem hell bent on imploding themselves from a PR perspective. The thing that caught my eye recently was a story on EI recipients and how they will now be required to take any job that is within an hours drive of their home. So let's get this straight. You pay in to EI your whole (working) life so that if you lose your job you can get up to $1,500 a month for something like nine months to tide you over until you can find another job. This is why in Canada we pay insanely high taxes right? So that we have social benefits and safety nets like this. Now though, if you lose your job and McDonalds has an opening an HOUR away (so two hours of commuting per day) you will be expected to take that job or lose your benefits? So the question becomes, why in the world is anyone paying in to EI if, in the event they lose their job, they have to go ...

So Facebook recently went public and flamed out in spectacular fashion (including a lengthy delay in opening on the Nasdaq and proceeding confusion over whose orders had been filled and whose had not). The stock opened at 38 bucks, rose to 42, and then proceeded to return to 38. Since then it has fallen to 31 bucks. What's even more important to note is that both the $38 and $30-32 range only held due to the underwriters propping the stock up, buying shares at those prices to stop the stock from falling further. How long can they do that before they simply can't dump any more money in there? Who knows, maybe Bernanke and Obama will give Morgan Stanley stimulus money to be used solely to prop up FB's share price moving forward (after all, FB is too big to fail for America's social networking industry). But seriously, I won't be surprised if in a year from now Facebook is trading between 14-20 bucks a share. For PR folks, what's important in this story...

Generally speaking, PR efforts against another organization are difficult to do. The debacle of RIM's stealth attack (ie. failed viral attempt) against Apple with their "Wake UP" campaign in Australia is a good example of how hard it is to attack your opponent using PR/Marketing. What generally makes it hard is the age-old notion of 'don't throw stones if you live in a glass house'. Generally speaking, no one's actions are so perfect they themselves cannot be faulted in one manner or another. So criticizing others when you yourself are not perfect often degrades the view others have of you. However, one brilliant way of attacking the banks is the following video of a 12-year old girl explaining why Canadian banks are stealing from Canadians. You're pretty much screwed when kids start attacking you. First because you can't attack them back or discredit them. Second, because it's so impressive that someone at the age of 12 would ta...

I've been taking the Myer Briggs Personality test  for over 15 years now and I just took it again. If you haven't taken it I strongly suggest you do, it seems pretty accurate to me. Not surprisingly, yet again, for the 16th year in a row I came up an INFJ.  It also amply explains why I went in to psychology and public relations as areas of academic study when I was younger. The description of the INFJ is as follows: Beneath the quiet exterior, INFJs hold deep convictions about the weightier matters of life. Those who are activists -- INFJs gravitate toward such a role -- are there for the cause, not for personal glory or political power. INFJs are champions of the oppressed and downtrodden. They often are found in the wake of an emergency, rescuing those who are in acute distress. INFJs may fantasize about getting revenge on those who victimize the defenseless. The concept of 'poetic justice' is appealing to the INFJ. "There's something rotten in Den...

So for those of you following world politics you know that Greece just held it's elections. Unfortunately I have to write this post quickly so I can't get in to all the implications (although they aren't good), but suffice to say the take away for me was that Greece's neonazi party - Golden Dawn -  won seven per cent of the vote and are now part of the government. I mean, wtf, the nazi's are back? Well, they aren't Hitler's Nazis, but still. Anyway, here is the press conference they held after their 'victory'. Can you imagine holding a press conference and yelling at reporters to stand and show respect? It's mind boggling this is what things are coming to. Yet as every era in history has shown us, when people are subjected to poverty and suffering (when they had a taste of decent living), they tend to rise up - sometimes under the leadership of someone good, and sometimes under the ravings of madmen. A quick search on YouTube brings...

Hilarious video of Lovitz going off on Obama. ( warning: offensive language) I don't necessarily agree with Lovitz comments, as I believe the real issue facing society today is corruption. There are good rich people and there are bad rich people. There are good politicians and there are corrupt politicians. There are good companies and bad companies. So yes, class inequality is a problem, but you can't generalize that all rich people are the problem or that all poor people are the problem. The real problem is that the US is teetering on becoming a fascist state or a banana republic (some would say it already is) where a segment of government officials and big corporations (mostly the banks in this case) are destroying the entire system that everyone else is living in. The whole rich versus poor debate, which Obama is fuelling as much as he can, is a total red herring. The real issue is corruption. While Lovitz is not going to sink Obama (he's not tha...

Interesting article out of Postmedia -  Canadians not told about `secret bailout' for banks: study . Apparently Canadian banks were given $114B during the financial crisis by the Canadian government and the US Federal Reserve (thanks Bernanke, ctrl+p appreciated). The scary stats, if they are true, are that the banks were given what amounts to seven per cent of the Canadian economy (GDP I'm assuming). Put differently, it was the equivalent of $3,400 for every Canadian (just imagine, the gov could have given every single Canadian $3,400 instead). Kind of confusing if the banks were solid as a rock, as everyone believes to this day. While Canada is often praised for having the best banks in the world, when you see things like this happening quietly behind the scenes, you have to wonder what is really going on?

So apparently it was RIM who was behind the 'Wake Up' protests at Apple stores in Australia. Overall this is a pretty dumb campaign idea. Flash mobs can be an interesting tactic, but not when used like this. This basically makes RIM look like some grade-school kid who being upset that some other kid is getting all the attention, starts insulting said other kid in hopes that people will stop liking them so much. It's petty. It's childish. And the greatest sin of all (since petty and childish aren't necessarily bad)... it's uncreative. It would have be funnier to have two giant nerf-like phones (costumes with people in them), one a blackberry and the other an iPhone, and have them fight each other outside Apple stores and have the RIM phone kick the Apple phone's butt. Heck, keep fighting until the cops come and arrest all these giant phones. At least that would have given people a laugh and the video of an iPhone being arrested by the...

If you thought rioting was only for Americans, Greeks, Italians, and Europeans in general, I guess egg is on your face. Students in Quebec took to the streets to protest rising education fees. I don't think I'd call this a riot, but it definitely shows that Canadians will take over the streets for more than just the Stanley Cup playoffs. From a PR perspective nothing gets people's attention like mass protests. The story was front page of both the Globe and Mail and the National Post. What Occupy Wall Street did last year was wake people up to the PR reality that unless you make some noise, and a lot of noise, your concerns will be ignored. This is a troubling trends for society, because it is a prelude to the theme that acting out is the only way to be heard. It implies that the 'system' has become so unresponsive to people's needs, that they must use a physical presence (and associated implication of physical force) to have their concerns add...

So Obama has officially launched his 2012 campaign and his slogan is going to be "Forward" While on the surface this slogan may seem OK, when you stop and think about it, it's just not. It might have an OK ring to it at first, but it's not something which over the period of months will generate motivation for Obama. Here's the problem with the slogan: Forward is not a vision . Yes, it implies that you aren't going backward, but that's a non-game changer because no one is going to run on going backwards. You may position your opponent as offering backward strategies, but they are going to position such strategies as forward looking. So the whole concept of 'moving forward' is pure vanilla. In addition, it's a clear indicator that Obama is not going to be running on his record. He's going to run on Bush's eight years in office and frame all the problems that exist today as the result of the Bush years and the republicans. And...