After 30+ years in this business, I still look forward to going to work. Rarely are two days the same, and the challenges are varied and stimulating.
My firm, Reich Communications, Inc., handles an interesting range of clients that take me from b2b to consumer publicity, from the world of high-priced art to advocacy for issues including traffic safety and securing mental health resources for survivors of mass violence globally.
Over the years at mid-size and large New York agencies, I’ve served a client roster that reads like a “who’s who” of business – General Electric, Emery, Ryder, Travelers Insurance, Phillips Petroleum, Georgia-Pacific and Jaguar Cars. I’ve also worked with groups like the Greater New York Automobile Dealers Association (for their giant New York Auto Show), Syndicated Network Television Association, and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
Highlights include leading the publicity team that launched L’eggs hosiery, which later became a Harvard B-School case history. I also managed P.R. and community relations for the Metro New York McDonald's Co-op, with more than 250 stores. We won a Marketing Excellence Award for a McDonald's public service program I developed on fire safety. It also won an Emmy for on-air host Dr. Frank Field, health & science editor at media partner WCBS-TV in New York, and it was directly credited by the NYFD for saving several lives. During those years, I also had more than my share of Big Macs.
I have a degree in Industrial Management and an MBA in Public Relations. I live in southern Westchester, 15 miles north of midtown Manhattan, in the same town where I grew up. “Money-earnin’ Mount Vernon” is how the town is now known as a center of hip-hop culture, but it also claims as native sons Denzel Washington, Dick Clark, author e.b. White, Art Carney, Art Buchwald and Sean “P-Diddy” Combs.
I write about marketing, media and public relations at my blog, "my 2 cents" If I ever retire from this crazy business, I'd love to be an all-night jazz deejay.
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Should TV Networks Replace Ad Agencies?,
10 Sep 2008 in Featured Posts
Should the TV networks replace ad agencies? That’s the question raised by “Media Rules” author Brian Reich (no relation) at a recent New York Media Information Exchange Group session and reported by Advertising Age yesterday.
Brian says the TV and …
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The Danger of the Sound Bite,
30 Apr 2008 in Featured Posts
The sound bite: It’s something we in public relations and marketing strive for. We coach our clients how to speak in sound bites for the media, getting our key points nicely wrapped up in a brief, punchy and self-contained two or three sentences….
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Blog Videos: Yes, No, Maybe?,
03 Jan 2008 in Featured Posts
I’m seeing a flurry of videos on blogs lately — at least those in the marketing part of the blogosphere. I know myself, so I’ll admit upfront that I’m a late adopter….
I remember when I was given my first computer at work in 1985. When the offic…
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Citizen Journalists: A Good Thing… Sort Of,
01 Nov 2007 in Featured Posts
The concept is noble and egalitarian — Citizen Journalists. Anyone and everyone reporting news and feeding into some vast system that collects and disseminates it for all to see.
We already have that in the web and, in particular, the blogosphere….
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License and Registration, Please,
27 Aug 2007 in Featured Posts
There’s been some heated discussion lately about licensing of public relations people….
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Whole Foods CEO: Busted!,
17 Jul 2007 in Featured Posts
John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods, has been busted. It seems he’s been blogging and commenting on chat lines for some time, hiding his identity and posting comments praising Whole Foods and sometimes knocking the competition.
Sneaky and unethical? Fo…
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A New Frontier in Product Placement?,
26 Jun 2007 in Featured Posts
Product placement became a hot topic a few years ago with the influx of placement on TV reality shows, taken to its most blatantly obnoxious peak by Donald Trump on NBC’s The Apprentice.
Product placement has been around for decades, perhaps gettin…
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Feature Creep,
31 May 2007 in Featured Posts
This week’s New Yorker (yes, the New Yorker) has a story by James Surowiecki that’s worth reading.
Surowiecki says, in part, “Technology is supposed to make our lives easier, allowing us to do things more quickly and efficiently. But too often it s…
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Blogging For Booty,
17 May 2007 in Featured Posts
“Blogola” is what The Wall Street Journal called it in a Page One story Tuesday. Brooks Barnes, who covers the TV networks, describes the public relations efforts the networks and the TV production companies are taking to win over bloggers who they…