Entertainment Industry

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How SeaWorld Lost the PR War and Did the Right Thing

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By Felicia Knight

The golden rule of public relations, political campaigns, and crisis management is “control the narrative.” It’s hard enough to create and maintain an image, but once the competition or the opposition has defined who you are and hammered that message home, it’s doubly hard to bounce back.

Just ask the folks at SeaWorld. For years, SeaWorld had done an excellent job of defining itself as synonymous with Orcas. Sure, SeaWorld had sharks and dolphins, concerts and roller coasters, but Orcas are what paid the bills. SeaWorld defined these oceanic giants not as menacing apex predators, but as kissing, cooing, dancing, huggable friends of humans. Pandas with fins.

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Can Chris Rock Save the Academy Awards?

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By Felicia Knight

We’re not the first to note the irony of Sunday’s 88th Academy Awards©, being hosted by comedian Chris Rock.

Dubbed by many as #OscarsSoWhite, this year’s awards have been dwelling in PR hell from the moment the nominees were announced in January.

That hashtag is not new. Nor are the complaints that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is run like an antiquated club of predominantly white members, some of whom haven’t been active in the industry since the debut of VistaVision. The argument is that these older, voting members of the Academy don’t see many of the films they’re voting on and aren’t familiar with a newer crop of talented minority actors and directors.

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Who Had the Worst PR Week, and Why?

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By Felicia Knight

There are public relations blunders and then there are public relations disasters. There are PR problems that erupt out of nowhere and there are those that are self-inflicted. This week has seen a crop of all of the above, which prompted us to take a constructive look at some PR problems that we’re thankful landed on someone else’s desk:

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Television: Still a Big PR Bang for the Buck

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By Felicia Knight

This week, we (and Google by way of a doodle) take note of the 90th anniversary of the first demonstration of television. Granted, it was a primitive mechanical television, but it was the precursor to the electronic tube TVs that dominated the childhoods of baby boomers everywhere.

That first image, demonstrated by Scottish engineer, John Logie Baird, was roughly 3 inches by 2 inches—a far larger screen than that of the Apple Watch, but not nearly as large as your neighbor’s 75-inch flat screen, where you’re hoping to be invited for Super Bowl 50.