Yes, Virginia, You Still Need A Media Kit

Every Company Needs a Media Kit

“Media Kits are so linear and old school Lee, we don’t need one,” stated the PR manager who did a one-day boot camp with us to work through her company’s strategy, messaging, communication initiatives and plans for the year.  I gathered myself before responding. (Double Forte peeps have told me that I should never play…

Read More

5 Strategies To Maximize Influencer Campaigns

5 Things To Remember For Good Influencer Campaigns

When I first cut my teeth in the world of PR, large glossy print publications still reigned supreme, Instagram had yet to be created and RFPs and PR plans were absent of the word “influencer.” Flash forward 15+ years and enter the new frontier of public relations, where ‘celebrity spokesperson’ is a tactic of the…

Read More

PR Problems Don’t Exist

As the CEO of a PR agency I’ve heard a variation of “we have  PR problems” a lot. And when someone calls to tell me that somebody or some company needs Double Forte’s help because they “have a PR problem,” I take a deep breath and hoist the big red flag at my desk.  Eventually…

Read More

Sometimes Facts Are Better Than Storytelling In Persuasion

Storytelling is all the rage – well it’s always been all the rage, witness Oedipus Rex ,The Epic of Gilgamesh, the Bible, Pride & Prejudice. As a business though, storytelling has come into vogue as the purpose of or method of communication, sometimes to the detriment of communicating.  Strong stories, that are simple, emotional, truthful,…

Read More

Ho, Ho, H…Links – Today’s Holiday Gift Guides

It seems like just yesterday PR professionals and editors lived a simpler, (mostly) friendly give-and-take existence. Heading into holiday season, hardworking media mavens connected with their editorial partners in crime, tossing them witty holiday pitches designed to sell the season’s hottest gift ideas on behalf of their clients, all the while hoping for the coveted…

Read More

Every Company Needs A Crisis Plan

Crisis Communications

The old rule of thumb was that a crisis never happened on Monday at 10:30 AM. No, crises always seemed to happen between Friday at 4:30 PM and Monday at 6 AM. Since we started the agency, we’ve handled some doozies – a premeditated murder at a store, salmonella-based recalls, e-coli-based recalls, activist shut-downs, sexual…

Read More

Time is Money, Time is Limited and Time is Bias

  Supported by scientific, psychological, economic research and more, in his book, When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing, Daniel Pink turns the everyday clock into a neurological barometer. Success, primarily seen as the result of hard-work, benefits a lot from timing. But Pink doesn’t speak of serendipity; rather, he structures success and productivity as…

Read More

Travel by Tales: A Summer Book Club

As a PR agency that prides itself on creativity, we prioritize an eclectic range of knowledge. From English literature to agriculture, our office contains a variety of different academic and professional backgrounds — heck, our CEO studied medieval history in her academic days. However, saturated in our own work, we can unintentionally become insulated from…

Read More

Read More WIRED Magazine

Our intern thinks we should read more Wired Magazine

Every time I pick up a copy of the newspaper (yes I still read the physical newspaper) yet another long strand of facts confront me. I gather the basics, the who, the what, the where, etc, and proceed to a series of quotes. This is standard news format (more on writing here.) I do my…

Read More