Karen Katz will take over as CEO of Neiman Marcus in October. Like many new CEOs, she wants to take the company where it's never been.

She's not thinking of global market or brand extensions or new product lines.

She wants this well-known, upscale brand to embrace social media. As Katz said in the most recent issue of Fast Company:

"We have to use the digital domain to reach even more people and be a resource to

Clients often ask how they should get into social media. They're thinking about if and how social media can impact their bottom line.

The first place they should look is inside their organization and make certain their company's personnel policies outline appropriate social media use.

Anyone can set up a blog, Facebook, or Twitter account in a matter of minutes. And then there are thousands of forums and opportunities to

I conducted a little experiment a few weeks ago. I needed to come up with some ideas to help a prospect solve a problem she has marketing her service. The challenge was how to sell cost reduction as opposed to revenue growth. Revenue growth is (at least I thought) an easier sell in difficult economic times.

I hadn't encountered this challenge before, but I knew other communication professionals probably had. Why not turn to the wisdom

When I sat down to watch Invictus last weekend, I expected somewhat of a biography of Nelson Mandela’s vision to reconcile blacks and whites after his election as the first black president of South Africa In 1994. What was totally unexpected was the powerful lesson in the importance of vision, risk taking and passion required in personal leadership.

Vision

Mandela, played by Morgan Freeman, knew that he had to find ways to help

Social media is emotional. It's personal. It functions in real time.

In short, it runs counter to all forms of marketing regulated industries have used for years. The social media guidelines from most regulators (whether FTC, FDA, FINRA, etc.) are still in development. This leads to a lot of:

"The regulators won't let us."

"What if we interpret the guidelines incorrectly?"

"We

Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius said, "Conceal a flaw, and the world will imagine the worst."

The CEOs who have committed public relations blunders so far in 2010 need to bone up on the Roman philosophy.

The list -- like the BP oil spill -- is staggering.

As we near the mid point of the year, here's our list of nominees for the CEO PR Hall of Shame.

Grand Prize: Tony Hayward

He singlehandely has disproved one

The great basketball coach John Wooden passed away Friday at age 99. His successful career hold lessons for anyone charged with motivating others and leading a team. We drafted the following post for an edition of our bimonthly eNewsletter, the Atkinson Advisor, a few years ago, and thought it would be a good time to revisit Wooden's Pyramid of Success.

John Wooden’s accomplishments as a leader are legendary. Wooden coached UCLA

Every day we see another story about newspapers dying or going to the recycle bin. There is even a website on the subject – Newspaper Death Watch.

Several members of our team recently had the opportunity to hear from Tennessean publisher Carol Hudler and two of her marketing colleagues about the health of Nashville’s daily paper. She refuted several typical myths related to the newspaper business. Here’s what we learned

As anyone who reads online news stories knows, the comments section is the Wild West of the World Wide Web. The following scenario is not improbable:

A simple story about a local lottery winner leads to comments about immigration, which leads to rants about race relations and, ultimately, an indictment of the current administration (regardless of who is in office).

It seems people feel free to say whatever they want, no

I saw the sign above in an airport recently. What we have here is failure to communicate on two levels.

Wouldn't "Yesterday's Airport of Tomorrow" be the airport in which I was standing today? But then a display about "Today's Airport" doesn't sound as sexy. And why would I want to see a display about the airport terminal?

The display is apparently (I didn't take the time to view it) about