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Public relations is often treated like magic - something that either happens or doesn't…
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Richard Laermer posted thisGot Ethics? One of the oldest myths in business is that reporters wake up every morning looking for someone to destroy. Most don’t. The vast majority of journalists aren’t carrying an agenda, a grudge, or a secret plan. They’re carrying deadlines. Their job is surprisingly simple: find the facts, verify them, make sense of them, and get the story published before someone else does. Yes, opinion journalism exists. Yes, some commentators and pundits wear their viewpoints on their sleeves. But straight reporting is still built on a foundation that most journalists take seriously: accuracy, fairness, and credibility. Here’s why. A reporter can survive being late. They can survive being scooped. What they can’t survive is becoming known as someone who gets the facts wrong. Credibility is the currency of journalism, and once it’s spent, it’s almost impossible to earn back. That’s why good journalists are skeptical of everyone—like you. They check. They verify. They ask uncomfortable questions. Not because they’re against you, but because that’s the job. Of course, not every interaction goes perfectly. Almost every executive has a story about a reporter who misunderstood a point, left out context, or focused on the wrong angle. And let’s be real: some journalists are better than others. Some are fair. Some are careless. A few are simply impossible. But holding a grudge against “the media” because of one bad experience makes about as much sense as swearing off restaurants because of that terrible meal. The smarter approach is to learn who’s trustworthy and build relationships with them. If a reporter consistently treats sources fairly, return the call. If a reporter consistently twists facts or creates drama where none exists, remember it and proceed accordingly. Most importantly, do not disappear. Too many executives think silence is a strategy. It isn’t. When a reporter calls, your options aren’t limited to “say everything” or “say nothing.” You can provide context. You can suggest another source. You can explain why now isn’t the right time. You can simply have a conversation. What you should never do is hide. Because in today’s constant on the run world, where everyone with a smartphone thinks they’re a publisher, the value of professional journalism has actually increased. The reporters worth talking to are trying to separate fact from noise, signal from nonsense. Help them do that. You may not love the story that results. But you’ll almost always be better off participating than pretending the phone is not ringing.
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Richard Laermer posted thisThe Generation Gap of Mentoring When I was coming up, everyone wouldn’t shut up about the “generation gap”. It was as if young and old were different species who couldn’t possibly understand each other. The people ahead of me acted like they’d paid dues and you hadn’t. Which I guess is fine. But they showed up. That’s the thing. At the office, at the bar, wherever — they’d pull you aside and tell you what was actually going on. Not the sanitized version. The real version. Who to watch out for. What would get you fired. Where the bodies were buried. No calendar invite. No formal agenda. Just — here’s how this actually works, kid. I don’t see that anymore. Seniors are drowning in their own stuff. Juniors are watching TikTok tutorials and calling it professional development. And nobody’s sitting down together long enough to pass anything real along. The old mentoring wasn’t a program. It wasn’t a thing with a name. It was someone who’d been around deciding you were worth five minutes of honest conversation. Then ten. Then more. And slowly you started to actually know something. That’s gone now and everyone acts like it’s fine. It’s not fine. We’re all just getting dumber together, one missed conversation at a time. And here’s what kills me : the seniors who won’t mentor aren’t protecting anything. They’re just hoarding. Experience isn’t a competitive advantage you lose by sharing it. It’s the opposite. Every time you explain something to someone coming up, you understand it better yourself. The people who taught me didn’t get weaker. They got sharper. The juniors aren’t off the hook either. Half of them don’t want mentoring, they want validation. There’s a difference. A mentor tells you when you’re wrong. That’s the whole point. If you only want someone to tell you you’re crushing it, get a hype man, not a mentor. Real mentoring is uncomfortable. It’s someone who’s seen more than you looking you in the eye and saying, “Dude, that thing you just did? Don’t do that again. Here’s why.” And you sit there and take it because you know they’re right and you know they didn’t have to bother. I think it’s the rare person that “bothers” anymore. We wonder why everyone seems so lost. Or do we?
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Richard Laermer posted thisIt’s a rant. Stay with me for a few seconds. It’s a big (and kinda old!) story on my mind: In 2006, twenty long years ago, our press covered Gerald Ford’s funeral like it was a press conference. It was a church service. Big difference. When a man spends his entire life telling anyone who will listen that God guides his every decision, and then dies, and then gets a nationally televised funeral in a cathedral, you’d think someone in the press corps might connect those dots. You’d be wrong. Ford died December 26 of that year. The coverage was wall-to-wall. The gravest ties. The most somber fonts. Thousands of words about the healer, the consensus-builder, the man who pardoned Nixon. All true. All beside the point. The Episcopal priest from Ford’s church in Rancho Mirage — not a celebrity bishop, just Ford’s actual pastor — stood up and preached from the Beatitudes. Matthew 5. The Sermon on the Mount. The values Ford lived by, chapter and verse, right there at the podium. The New York Times didn’t mention it. Neither did television. I’m not religious but it bugged me. And here’s why… Ford said his faith guided him daily. That’s not a throwaway line. That’s the whole biography. Cover his life without it and you haven’t written about Gerald Ford! You’ve written about someone named Gerald Ford. The press has two settings for faith: ignore it or sensationalize it. There’s apparently no third option that involves just reporting what happened. In a church. At the church service. So the next time you read coverage of someone whose faith was central to who they were, notice what’s missing. And say something. Call it out. Tag the outlet. Write the letter. Post the response. The press won’t fix what nobody complains about. Honesty about what drives people (including God) isn’t a niche interest. It’s the whole story. Demand it.
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Richard Laermer posted thisWhatever happened to urgency? Not panic. Not chaos. Just… caring enough to move. Now everything feels wrapped in soft corporate bubble wrap: “We’ll do our best.” “We’re looking into it.” “Circle back next week.” “Let’s put a pin in that.” “I guess..” Translation: Nothing is happening. People answer emails three days later like they’re responding from a submarine at war. Deadlines are treated as vague poetry. “ASAP” now apparently means “before retirement.” And the worst part? Nobody even seems embarrassed by it anymore. The world runs on people who actually move. The people who call back immediately. Who fix things now. Who understand that momentum matters. That speed matters. That making someone wait unnecessarily is disrespectful. A sense of urgency used to be called professionalism. Now it feels like a superpower. Before someone says it: urgency does not mean burnout. It means giving a damn.
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Richard Laermer posted thisHe had me. Then he didn’t. Someone gave me a really great pitch for a product. He wanted me to try it out. I’m not un-pitchable because that would make me a hypocrite. Everything was wonderful. I was all set to go. And yeah even sign up. Then he said the stupidest thing you could possibly mutter to someone when you’re selling them: “I hope we talk again.” That was a total nonstarter because he meant that he weren’t sure of himself. We now live in an age where if you’re not totally certain of everything you say you’re in trouble. “I hope we talk again” is a white flag. It’s the seller saying: I’m not sure you’re coming back. And the second you plant that seed, you’ve watered it. Confidence isn’t arrogance. It’s just not apologizing for your own product before the person has had a chance to walk away. The close should sound like the beginning of something and not a eulogy for a deal that almost happened. He should have said: “I’ll follow up Thursday.” Full stop. Instead, I walked. Pretty fast.
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Richard Laermer posted thisQuick Wednesday Tip: Influencer PR……Because Boring Campaigns Deserve to Die Nobody woke up this morning excited to read another press release. Your audience didn’t. The journalist didn’t. Honestly, you probably didn’t either. So let’s talk about influencer PR: the thing everyone says they’re doing and almost nobody is doing well. 1. Stop dating influencers casually. One sponsored post and you’re out? That’s not a strategy, that’s a Tinder swipe. Build actual relationships — ambassadorships, co-created content, ongoing partnerships. The audience can smell a one-off deal from three feeds away. Commit or go home. 2. Put them in the room where it happens. Hosting an event? Don’t just invite press who’ll file a 200-word brief three days later. Invite influencers who’ll post live, react in real time, and make their followers feel genuine FOMO. That buzz is worth more than any recap. 3. Find the ones who can actually tell a story. Not every influencer with 400K followers can make anyone care about your client’s brand values. Find the ones who are genuinely good. You know, the ones whose audience leans in. Those people are rare. When you find them, don’t let go. 4. Keep them on speed dial before the roof caves in. Crisis PR is not the time to introduce yourself to an influencer. Build the relationship now, while everything is fine and boring, so that when something blows up (and something always blows up) you have allies ready to help shape the narrative. 5. Hand over the wheel occasionally. You wrote the brief. Great. Now stop treating it like the Ten Commandments. The best influencers know their audience better than you do. Brainstorm together. Be surprised. The ideas that come out of real collaboration beat the ones that came from a brand deck every single time. Influencer PR works. But only if you stop treating it like a media buy with a personality.
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Richard Laermer posted thisThe Axed Hack’s Guide to Successful Flacking PR is not the dark side anymore. Not even close. Once upon a time, journalists treated public relations the way vegans treat Arby’s. You didn’t “go into PR.” You defected to it like you were entering witness protection. I know because I did it. I spent the ’80s and part of the ’90s as a reporter — USA Today, the New York Daily News, The New York Times, Crain’s, and others. When I left for PR, colleagues acted like I’d joined a snake-oil caravan. But journalism gave me one thing consistently: bylines. And landlords, sadly, do not accept bylines. Now everything’s changed. Newspapers have been gutted. Digital outlets collapse weekly. AI handles the SEO sludge nobody wanted to write anyway. Journalists aren’t looking at PR as a backup plan anymore. They’re looking at it as the last functioning airport during a storm. So here’s the real question: Are you actually built for this business? You belong in PR if: • You have terrifying attention to detail. If you shrug at mistakes because “the client won’t notice,” you’re already dead here. • You can write clearly without treating every sentence like a hostage negotiation. Writing is rewriting. If edits wound your soul, this is not your industry. • You finish things. In journalism, editors save you. In PR, there’s only the deadline, the client, and your ability not to fall apart. • You can handle simultaneous chaos. Six clients. Three fires. Two reporters calling. A producer ghosting. A client texting “quick thought” at 9:42 p.m. This is Tuesday. • You can create something out of nothing. Journalism gives you the assignment. PR often gives you: “Find the story.” That’s the whole job. You do NOT belong in PR if: • You think it’s easier than journalism. It isn’t. You answer to clients, reporters, executives, lawyers, investors, and someone named Chad sending passive-aggressive Slack messages at 9 p.m. • You think enduring bad PR makes you good at PR. Getting pitched badly is not a professional credential. • You already know everything. The best PR people ask questions constantly. The worst ones perform intelligence like it’s community theater. • You think your work is precious. Your copy will get rewritten, ignored, killed, revived by legal, and edited again. If feedback destroys you emotionally, this business will too. • You need someone to show you every step. We’ll answer questions. We will not teach ambition. And here’s the reality in 2026: Reporters aren’t just peeking at PR anymore. They’re lined up around the block with polished portfolios and prewritten LinkedIn messages. The field will take you. The question is whether you’ll take the field seriously. PR is not glamorous. It is not easy. It is not journalism with snacks. It’s fast, unforgiving, occasionally absurd, and completely intolerant of ego. Which is exactly why some of us love it. And yes. 33 years later, I still answer my own phone.
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Richard Laermer posted thisProofread. It’s Not That Hard. Nobody checks their work anymore. I mean nobody. I am a typo-savant. I catch errors the way other people catch colds — involuntarily, constantly, and with great suffering. Ads, reports, emails, legal documents — all crawling with mistakes nobody bothered to fix because, apparently, somebody else was going to do it. That somebody never showed up. Here’s a small personal Hall Of Shame: A luxury real estate mailer arrived at my house announcing YOU’RE DESERT REALTOR. Glossy. Octagonal. Wrong. A regional magazine ran a profile of some local mogul—big photo, big layout, big money—and called him the man behind MURHPY’S LAW. Frame-worthy. The state of Arkansas passed a marriage law with a misplaced “not” that briefly made it legal for adults to marry children with parental consent. They couldn’t fix it for two years because the legislature only meets every other year. That’s one word. Two years. And thousands of dollars in damage control. That last one is not a punchline. The others are. We live in the Era of My Bad…where nobody is at fault, nobody proofreads, and autocorrect gets the blame for things autocorrect didn’t do. Carelessness is now a personality trait dressed up as a workflow. You spent a fortune on design. You spent nothing on a second look. Slow down. Print it out. Read it backward if you have to. Because somewhere out there, someone like me is staring at your ad, your report, your very important document—and laughing. Or never buying from you again. Those two outcomes aren’t mutually exclusive.
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Richard Laermer posted thisThursday Musing: What If “Couch Potato” Had Been Cancelled? Ten years ago, British potato farmers actually tried to make that happen. Their proposed replacement: couch slouch. Which tells you everything about why it failed. “Slouch” is a word your mother used. Nobody wants it near their leisure time. The effort was fronted by Chef Anthony Worrall Thompson, who delivered this with a straight face: “Potatoes are one of the UK’s favourite foods. Not only are they healthy, they are versatile, convenient and taste great too. Life without potato is like a sandwich without a filling.” Nobody had said a word about the potato’s nutritional profile. Nobody was low-carbing their way off the island. The phrase wasn’t an attack on root vegetables — it was a description of a person on a sofa. Didn’t matter. In 2015, the British Potato Council formally petitioned to have “couch potato” removed from the Oxford English Dictionary. Marketing manager Kathryn Race explained, with apparent sincerity, that the term “misrepresents potatoes, a low fat energy source and an excellent source of vitamin C.” Then Conservative MP Nigel Evans introduced an actual parliamentary motion on the subject. The American press ignored it entirely — and these are people paid specifically to cover weird news. Eventually, the British public said what everyone was thinking, and the phrase survived. Potatoes are food. Couches are furniture. Some battles aren’t worth having. This one absolutely was not.
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5d
Read his book. It’s worthy.
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Daniele Bernardi i believe urgency takes some energy people seem to be unable to muster these days. Unfortunately this was way before the remote work days. Sometimes people need to push. This is
innate. It can’t be taught. But I’m of the belief we can stop being lazy and just take a deep breath and make your ideas and your feelings known. I get that it sounds a little woo-woo, but so what? People, even cynics, respect all of you when you prove to be fierce. Wimpiness is out. Pushing is in!
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Richard Laermer liked thisRichard Laermer liked thisStrangling Cuba until it collapses into chaos, or launching a cinematic special-ops mission to rendition a 94-year-old autocrat, isn’t a strategy. It’s a weapon of mass distraction from Epstein, ICE, inflation, Iran, the J6 terrorist immunization fund … The real move is magnanimity.
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Richard Laermer liked thisRichard Laermer liked thisA year ago, I joined Shield AI because I believed this company had the potential to play a defining role in the future of defense. A year later, the outcomes we're delivering have only reinforced that belief. Shield is entering its next phase. Our job now is to scale what is working, advance what comes next, and move at the pace this moment demands. Read more:
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Richard Laermer liked thisRichard Laermer liked thisBig news today: you can now connect your existing Audible subscription directly within Apple Podcasts to listen to 700+ series in 135 countries. Kudos to the teams across both Audible and Apple who have been working hard for months to make this experience seamless. It's honestly so so easy. Your Audible subscription connected on Apple Podcasts includes many of the ad-free, early-access and exclusive binge content previously available on Wondery+, along with many Audible Originals that have never been available to listen to on Apple Podcasts before: shows from Malcolm Gladwell, Mel Robbins, Jon Ronson, Kerry Washington, Stephen Fry...the list goes on and on, so I encourage you to connect your Audible subscription and explore them! These shows are joined by nearly 200 beloved ex-Wondery series like Dr. Death, Business Wars, American Scandal, Dying for Sex. While these are still available widely with ads, the additional benefits and exclusive content previously on Wondery+ are now on Audible. For anyone who's an Audible member and wants to see this in action, here's how to connect your subscription: 1. Open Apple Podcasts on your iPhone or iPad 2. Your Audible subscription should connect automatically 3. If it doesn't, search for any show on the Audible channel and click on "Audible" 4. Tap to link your existing Audible account We'll be coming out with new podcasts available wide with the opportunity to binge them right now with an Audible subscription. We're starting with "OnlyFantasy", out now. It's a new investigative series from Leon Neyfakh and Gracie Canaan about human intimacy in the digital age and the inner workings of OnlyFans. #PodcastBusiness #AudioIndustry #Audible #ApplePodcasts #OnlyFantasy #binge https://lnkd.in/dbXWsUznMembers Can Now Access Audible's Premium Storytelling via Apple Podcasts | About AudibleMembers Can Now Access Audible's Premium Storytelling via Apple Podcasts | About Audible
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RLM Public Relations
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Publications
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Punk Marketing. Get Off Your Ass and Join the Revolution.
Harper Collins
A practical guide on how to create effective marketing now that power has shifted from corporation to the consumer.
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Projects
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ThankBank - Project/Product Manager
- Present
- Implement lean startup mechanics in fast-paced, deadline oriented project life cycle
-Define, design and analyze UI requirements, build wireframes, create prototypes and work directly with designers/coders to achieve results as detailed by management
Strategy: Help develop product vision and strategy directly with our management team and connect this vision/strategy with ThankBank's business objectives.
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Spanish, Pig Latin
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