Public Relations is a mix of art and science and is a practice every professional needs to master, even if it’s just to market yourself. Today you’ll learn a lesson at the expense of Sen. John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee for the office of President of the United States.

It’s clear the flak that Barack Hussein Obama, Jr. has caught from his two-decades long association with his radical Afro-centric pastor, Jeremiah Wright has McCain’s attention. McCain is afraid that being endorsed by John Hagee and Rod Parsley will become his own Jeremiah Wright. Unfortunately, McCain did the knee jerk reaction, and in the humble opinion of your simple scribe, he has hurt himself.

McCain has denounced the endorsements of Hagee (based on his beliefs about the Catholic church, Israel’s rightful claim to the Holy Land and other issues) and of Parsley (primarily because of his historically-accurate teachings on Islam). By doing this he might have distanced himself from some political fallout, but he also distanced himself from many tens of thousands of evangelical voters who weren’t entirely in love with McCain to begin with.

Here’s what he should have done. (Get out your notebooks.) [Read more →]

I was listening to NPR today on my weekly trip to Lowe’s, and the anchor did a phone interview with an aid worker named Joy who was in China for Mercy Corps. I produced a series of radio programs for them a million years ago and I highly respect their founder Dan O’Neill, so I really excited to hear they were getting some good PR on NPR.

This girl sounded cute, but come on, take advantage of the PR opportunity. She never talked about the great overwhelming need and that only because of people’s generosity can they immeadiately jump into action. She didn’t have to give a web site (but she could have done that) but she should have at least given people the idea to donate to any charity that is working over there.

What really got to me is that there was no mention of Christ. The reporter really set the aid worker up nicely asking “why do you do this?” The reply was nice but she talked about her career choice and why it’s important to her. Maybe Mercy Corps has left its Christian roots. I hope not.

Finally, we can all learn from this. Joy, the aid worker, seemed to think this was more of a personal profile than a corporate PR opportunity. Please remember this, when someone puts a microphone in front of you first think about God and what He would have you say to give Him glory and second, think about the people who give you a paycheck… somewhere down the list you can think about yourself.