Xenophon Strategies

Josh Stewart

As anyone with the red and blue Bank of America (BoA) debit card knows, the fourth largest bank in the U.S. recently proposed a $5 fee for use its debit card.  Netflix, in efforts to modernize their business model, decided to not only rename the DVD portion of its business to Qwikster (???), but also to raise prices considerably.   

Both...

Josh Stewart

The Economist recently examined the old adage “There is no such thing as bad publicity.”  The conclusion?  Of course there is bad publicity, but not all bad publicity is the same.

Brands like Hoover, McDonald’s or The Salvation Army, all bring certain things to mind.  That is because there is already a relationship (whether one admits it or not) with that brand.  So any...

David A. Fuscus

Public service campaigns have long used friendly or cute characters to inform the public about serious issues and these campaigns can hang around for decades.  McGruff The Crime Dog™  has been taking a bite out of crime since 1979, we learned a lot about seat belts  from the Crash Test Dummies from 1985 to 1999 and Smokey the Bear first advised us that only we could prevent forest fires way back in 1944.

When they work, branded characters can drive a message...

Xenophon News

There are a number of different stories about the origin of Valentine's Day. According to one legend, a gentleman named Valentine sent the first "valentine" while in prison. He had fallen in love with a young girl, his jailor's daughter, who visited him during his confinement. Before his death, it is alleged that he wrote her a letter, which he signed "From your Valentine." 

Another legend has it that Valentine was a priest who lived in...

Matt Meenan

It never ceases to amaze me how often people blow it when communicating with the public and media. You see it all the time – whether it’s a self-generated PR disaster (I’m looking at you, Dan Snyder), a head-smackingly bad quote in a news story or, nowadays, a Tweet that gets attention for all the wrong reasons (sorry,...