I’ve heard the anecdote that government is the source of 75 percent of the news we consume. While this includes the crime reports you see on your local news, we see a lot of news emerge from politics, foreign affairs, statistics and studies, all of which are generated here in DC. As a PR firm…
When – if ever – is it appropriate to use a tragic event reported in the news to pitch your own (or your client’s) message? At RH Strategic we’re pretty successful with the tactic of “newsjacking”: jumping on events like a government shutdown or a data breach to insert our clients’ voice into the…
With topics like Heartbleed, the Target Hack and the ongoing fallout from the Edward Snowden disclosures constantly in the news, cybersecurity is a hot topic that affects consumers, businesses and government. To stay abreast of major updates, readers need reliable sources of news that they can depend on. A few weeks back, my colleague Kara…
Selling to government agencies is all about the RFP. And winning an RFP is a battle that starts way before the RFP is ever written. It is also a process that includes influencers and decision makers comingled from agency purchasers to political leaders, sometimes even the White House. The key is using the integrated approach…
Product announcements are no doubt an exciting time for a company, its stakeholders, partners and PR team. We recently completed a project for Swan Island Networks and its announcement of TIES for Microsoft CityNext – a partnership built to help local and regional governments “tie” together a wide spectrum of existing information, from both public…
Thought leadership has become a big part of organizations’ communications mix, even for companies like our clients who are selling solutions to government agencies and other businesses, especially here in DC. The idea behind thought leadership is to take the focus away from products and direct it towards the underlying issues that our clients’ solutions…
As PR professionals in DC, it’s our job to monitor the federal marketplace for trends that inform our clients’ communications and marketing strategies. One theme we’ve heard a lot about lately is that in this era of flat or declining government budgets, it’s become almost cliché to talk of agencies “doing more with less.” How…
The news that the U.S. government is giving up control of the Internet – that is, the Department of Commerce announcing it will end its oversight of ICANN, the non-profit that administers Internet domains – brought me back to a time in my public affairs career when I learned first-hand about managing controversies, especially those…
I read a Washington Post blog recently calling 2013 the year of cybersecurity. While the year saw a profusion of data breaches and leaks, it’s more accurate to call 2013 the year of cyber violations – not cybersecurity. I think it’s more likely that 2014 will be the year of cyber solutions – maybe the…
How do you get good PR for winning a spot on a major government contract when you don’t know whether you’ll win as a prime or a subcontractor, whether you’ll win at all (of course), when the awards will be announced, and whether the subs will be amenable to publicity? You can play it by…
These are heady times in the public relations industry with news of layoffs at some of the larger firms and the continued transformation of traditional media practices by social and digital. At RH Strategic, we have always been proud of our position in the PR landscape; our ability to garner great results; and our success…
The problems with Healthcare.gov will no doubt eventually be repaired by IT pros, but the damage to reputations will sting for years to come. The challenge for the contractors involved is that the standard crisis communications playbook simply doesn’t apply in these situations. This playbook says that in a typical crisis where a corporate reputation is…