Saturday, January 17, 2015

THE Book for PR insight

Different than normal post this week…  Just talking one subject- books….
Over the holidays I read one of the best books ever.  The book was an extreme look inside the world of public relations at the highest level, where the media spotlight seems to be on 24/7.  The title of this amazing read is “What Did Jesus Drive: Crisis PR in Cars, Computers, and Christianity” by Jason Vines.  The majority of this book is how Vines, the PR lead for Ford and Chrysler (among others) handled major public relations issues with his companies, the strategies and thoughts behind the decisions.  Plus there's some great background on the most successful marketing plays ever pulled off in the auto industry as well.  The best part of this book was the style of writing, it was written like you were having dinner with the author and he’s just telling your stories about his days in the trenches, and leaving it all in there, no “political correctness” scrubbing- the whole story in a conversational manner.  So what does this have to do with the glass business?  Basically the immediate thought is we are pretty fortunate as an industry that for the most part our PR crises do not go mainstream and if they do they surely peter out quickly.  In addition it gave me perspective on how to handle events if they came up. Overall it’s just a great business read on the inner workings of the car, computer, and bible industry.  Yes a portion of the book is dedicated to a company with the task of reprinting the bible and that was pretty fascinating to me.  I never expected that industry to have any issues that is for sure!  Those of you who know me and have been reading this blog since 2005, know that my favorite all time business book was “The Disney War” by James B. Stewart.  I have to say that this one may knock that one from the top.

Next up on the list is “Marissa Mayer and the Fight to Save Yahoo!” by Nicholas Carlson.  Should be interesting to read especially right after the Vines book. 


That’s it for this post, I apologize for no links or video of the week.  We’ll be back to normal (or whatever “normal” is for me) next week!

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