PR Insights Blog

Why do we do things that may well not be in our best interests? In an exceptional podcast by Social Scientist Shankar Vedantam of NPR's Hidden Brain some of these behaviors are explained by "Scarcity". The idea is when we want something badly enough we develop tunnel vision. At these times we can no longer see the wood from the trees. In an article published by SpinSucks, "Is Tunnel Vision Impeding Your View of the Sales Funnel," I put this in a communications context.

Drawing on social science research this article explains why we make bad decisions when we are chasing money and ways in which which we can improve decision-making by recognizing when are in a tunnel driven by scarcity. By furthering an understanding behavior and tunnel thinking, and highlighting the benefits of stopping, looking up and moving into a funnel to broaden perspective, we provide communicators, entrepreneurs and business leaders a simple model to avoid behavior traps.

How do Fortune 1000 companies and large non-profit associations conduct agency searches? How do they grade agencies in the hiring process and those they've hired? Insights from our new research conducted with RFP Associates and Researchscape, with the support of the Institute for Public Relations and industry leaders, offers a path to achieving better search outcomes and longer relationships.

Researchscape's new ResearchStory™ artificial intelligence-powered survey tool helps companies evaluate quantitative and qualitative survey responses, and provide results reports in hours. With this new product, CommunicationsMatch™'s research partner continues to break new ground.

Even in the age of smartphones, Tweets, Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn posts, and content creation, media relations still drives public relations. Our CEO asserts that media relations still is the most important service PR agencies should deliver.

Our research into the hiring practices of Fortune 1000 companies and large non-profit associations, conducted with the support of Researchscape, the Institute for Public Relations, and communications industry leaders, offers takeaways for client-organizations looking to hire agencies. Here are six.

Larry Weber, Chairman & CEO of Racepoint Global (the Weber in Weber Shandwick), shared a key takeaways from his new book Authentic Marketing at Capitol Communicator's PR Summit D.C. On the sidelines, I caught up with him for the latest Communicators-to-Communicators 3-minute video. He shares key takeaways - the importance of corporations having a moral purpose and the role of technology in communications.

Tracey Wood Mendelsohn, president and CEO of the Black Public Relations Society-New York, Erika Sanchez, president of the Hispanic Public Relations Association’s New York Chapter, and I share three simple steps communications professionals can take to increase diversity in the public relations industry in this summary of a new CommPRO.biz article.

CommunicationsMatch™ and the Marketing IMPACT Council™ have partnered to help companies find high impact communications, marketing and advertising agencies and generate new business opportunities for listed and member agencies. John Greco, chair of the Marketing IMPACT Council, to serve as senior executive advisor to CommunicationsMatch.

CommunicationsMatch™ and the Hispanic Public Relations Association (HPRA) announced a new partnership today with the goal of encouraging the inclusion of HPRA members in companies’ search process for communications agencies and professionals. HPRA members not already listed will join the more than 5,000 agencies and professionals searchable on CommunicationsMatch, by industry and communications expertise, location, size, member organization, and diverse ownership.