6 A.M.

It is the 60th anniversary of Edelman. Officially, we kick off the celebration on October 1, 2012 – 60 years after Dan Edelman and five associates started Daniel J. Edelman Inc. in the Merchandise Mart in Chicago, down the hall from our first client, the Toni Company.

Standard operating procedure for PR people has called for an outstanding creative concept initially executed in a highly public place to attract mainstream media.

The depressing saga of the manipulation of LIBOR by traders at Barclay’s raises the issue of culture in financial institutions. As Martin Wolf, the sage editorial writer at the Financial Times, said, “Banks as presently constituted and managed, cannot be trusted to perform any publicly important function, against the perceived interests of their staff.

There was so much good material at the 2012 Academic Summit that I just took notes furiously, in the hope that I could absorb all of the lessons over time. I thought it would be useful to share some of the most “quotable quotes” from some of the speakers. To view a highlight reel of [...]

I am at the Fifth Academic Summit, being held this year at Stanford University. Edelman, PR Week and Media X, the Stanford laboratory are co-sponsoring the event. We have 90 professors from 70 universities in eight nations in Palo Alto. In my keynote address today, I am citing five major shifts in the media business. [...]

Edelman held its Strategy Committee meeting in San Jose last week. We were fortunate to attract top thinkers from HP, Adobe, four media outlets, Facebook and Google. Here are the highlights:

I have just read Velocity, a new book by Ajaz Ahmed of AKQA and Stefan Olander of Nike. The book is written as a dialogue between the agency guy and the client, with seven laws of Velocity as the organizing principle. Here are some of the highlights: 1) Buying a Product Is the Beginning of [...]

I went to the annual meeting of the National Committee on U.S. – China Relations on Wednesday in New York City. Steve Orlins, head of the NCUSCR, interviewed former U.S. Ambassador to China (and Republican presidential candidate) Jon Huntsman for an hour. Here are highlights of the conversation. 1) Bo Xilai—Huntsman said the willingness of [...]

This week I met with Bradley Horowitz, who is now in charge of Google+, in addition to his work on Google News and other brands. Google+ is trying to differentiate on the basis of integrating social with search. As noted in a recent Fast Company article, Google+ allows you to share privately.   I was [...]

I attended the annual dinner of the Atlantic Council in Washington, D.C. this week. There are significant challenges facing government leaders as a result of ease of communications, which is politicizing the world’s people. People today believe they can make a difference.   Ban Ki-moon, Secretary General of the United Nations, said in his keynote [...]