Inside the world of Rob Mclean, Author

So Ben Bernanke, previous head of the federal reserve (and the man we can thank for the housing bubble and collapse of 2008, in conjunction with his predecessor and mentor Alan Greenspan), just pulled in a cool $250,000 for a 40 minute speech in Abu Dhabi . That's more than he made in an entire year as head of the federal reserve. If anyone believes that someone gets paid $250,000 for 40-minutes of their time just to "speak" I've got some property I want to sell you.

So while Russia is invading Ukraine, Obama is doing Internet comedy to drum up enrollment in Obamacare? Such a bad PR move here. Yes, the interview is hilarious. Does it make you like Obama more? Sort of, I guess. Does it reinforce confidence in him as Commander in Chief? Not in the least. This is one of those PR stunts which seems like a good idea and gets TONS of media attention, but which down the road actually hurts your brand. It's one thing to "connect" with people if you are the President, it's another thing to play the role of the clown making them laugh.  I honestly don't know what Obama's PR folks are thinking doing this kind of thing, other than on the surface it seems like a 'hip cool' thing to do. 

So things are a mess in Ukraine and we're getting to see how PR is being twisted and used for propaganda purposes, by both the Americans and the Russians. What makes this interesting is that it's really the first time we're getting to see Russia play the propaganda game using PR. In the past, outside of Western countries, propaganda was more of a marketing tool. This time around though Russia is showing its PR chops in the propaganda wars. So let's look at what the situation with Ukraine is and then what we're getting from Russia and from the US. Ukraine - what's really going on? You can fact check my interpretation of events, but basically this is more of an economic issue. Ukraine is bankrupt. They need $35B to get through the next two years. The European Union and the West saw this as an opportunity to expand Nato influence and offered to "help them out" with a billion or so, with more to come as required via the IMF. Russia stepped in tho...

This week Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stones announced that he's joined First Look Media (FLM). Taibbi is notorious for framing the term "vampire squid" to describe Goldman Sachs and his reporting is known for exposing the corruption in the financial sector. FLM is a new media venture by  eBay founder Pierre Omidyar and already has Glen Greenwald (of Edward Snowden infamy) on its staff. Greenwald heads FLM's "The Intercept" publication.   It use to be that when reporters broke huge stories, such as Greenwald did with Edward Snowden, that they were bumped up the ladder to higher spots in the big leagues (ie. NBC, CBS, ABC, CNN, and Fox).    However, a new paradigm is clearly unfolding where there seem to be two media camps. The "free" press (where news is reported without regards for consequences) and the "narrative" press (where news is less about the details and more about the overall narrative, a narrative that requires cooperation wi...

You know what the biggest all-consuming concern of the PR industry today should be? It's trust. Americans don't trust anyone (or hardly anyone as it were). In a recent Gallup poll it turns out that across 16 core elements of "civil society", a majority of Americans only trust three things: the military, small business and the police. A majority of American's do not trust (or have confidence in) the President, the news, big businesses, and only 10 per cent have confidence in their elected representatives (ie. Congress). It is very clear that for the next two decades PR's #1 task is going to be about reestablishing (or in some cases maintaining) trust with the general public. The fact that only 25 per cent of the population has confidence in newspapers is staggering. It's not only staggering in terms of what it means for PR professionals (one has to ask, is PR making things worse?) but for society as a whole. When people feel they can no longer ...

I use to think google glasses were kind of dumb. I mean, I really have no desire to have things flashing up in front of me as I walk through the world. That said, this video changed my mind... I now think these would be awesome to have.  If you have a great product, sometimes all it takes is a very basic example of the product in action.

Pew research put out a great infographic about the issues Americans care about. You can view the graphic here if you have issues seeing it below. It's fascinating because as you look at the various items on the list you can see where the PR battles have been won and lost. The economy? Despite Obama saying things have been getting better for the past five years, it's stayed smack dab at the top of Americans' concern list. Clearly they are losing the PR battle on this front. Despite unemployment supposedly now at 6.5 per cent, it remains the #2 concern, yet again clearly losing the PR battle (it should be way down the list if people actually believed the 6.5 per cent figures). Climate Change is all the way at the very bottom of the list. I mean, that is a PR disaster. Given the amount of PR the government did regarding climate change it's pathetic that people really don't care about it. The one item that makes you scratch your head though is how people s...