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Archive for August, 2010

Writing a Better Research RFP

By: Frank Ovaitt on Monday, August 30th, 2010 at 2:04 am

The fall semester begins. Another cohort of strategic public relations master’s students at The George Washington University enters my applied research course, which focuses on integrating research into practice. One of the assignments they will endure involves developing a detailed RFP (request for proposal) for research services. Wanting to give them a useful guide, I spoke with five members of the Commission on Public Relations Measurement and Evaluation: David Geddes, David Michaelson, Katie Paine, Mark Weiner and Lou Williams. Research providers will tell you they hate RFPs. More precisely, they had bad RFPs – which is most of what they see. But ...

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Never Waste a Crisis

By: Robert W. Grupp on Wednesday, August 18th, 2010 at 1:27 am

On the heels of the Tiger Woods scandal last April and only days before the BP rig explosion and oil spill, the Economist ran a story calling attention to the fact that brand-threatening scandals are becoming a regular feature of the corporate landscape. This, the Economist said, is because of “a toxic (sic) mixture of globalization, which scatters corporate activities hither and yon, and the internet, which allows bad news to spread like wildfire.” It cited estimates that executives have an 82% chance of facing a corporate disaster within any five-year period, up from 20% two decades ago. Taking a page from ...

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