AuthenticityPR, Johnson City, TN (2026)

05/30/2026

Let’s talk about two letters you should care about A LOT in your business:

CX stands for .

It’s the sum of every interaction a customer has with a brand — before, during, and long after the transaction. Customer service is a subset of CX.

For professionals, it’s essentially synonymous with customer relations, and that makes it our business too.

In my opinion, customer relations ranks second only to in organizational priority, and for good reason: you can’t have happy customers unless you first have happy employees.

Depending on the industry you’re addressing, CX goes by other names — guest experience (GX) in hospitality, patient experience (PX) in healthcare, and B2B experience when your customer is another company.

The label changes. But the stakes don’t.

Here’s the bottom line: effective must be a proactive, company-wide business imperative.

My thinking on CX has been greatly elevated — and frankly sharpened — through my recent work with Chicago-based Experience Investigators Founder and Chief Experience Officer Jeannie Walters.

Jeannie is the kind of client every pro dreams about landing: deep expertise, compelling credentials, and a message that lands in virtually any industry.

6 Steps to Smarter Customer Experience

Define it before you deliver it. ...

Be proactive, not reactive. ...

Remember: is a team sport.

drives customer experience. If you promise a certain customer experience externally but aren’t living it internally, your employees will see right through it.

Measurement without meaning is just a calculator. Organizations can drown in dashboards and still not move the needle if they’re measuring the wrong things.

buy-in isn’t optional — it’s the whole game.

The 3 Big Takeaways

For CX to be effective, it must be adopted company wide.
Proactive CX will blow away reactive CX.
Research shows embracing can boost your profitability.

Next week, I’ll be taking a slightly different angle on CX — sharing a few of my own recent run-ins with organizations who clearly need to purchase a copy of Jeannie’s book.

Have you experienced your own CX nightmares? Do share!

Stay authentic — and stay tuned for some therapeutic CX venting next week…

05/18/2026

If the audience you’re speaking to and about is basically yourself — your wants, your message, your agenda — then you need to read this.

Change out that mirror for clear glass.

You need to clearly see who’s in front of you.

And you need to know them.

We’re talking about your . Your .

Do you actually know your audience?

Not their demographic profile. Not their age range or zip code or median household income.

Those things matter, but they’re not the same as knowing your audience.

Knowing your audience means:
• understanding what keeps them up at night
• what they aspire to
• what they quietly fear
• what they wish someone would offer them

It means getting close enough to their motivations that your message feels less like a pitch and more like a conversation they were already having in their own heads.

I learned very early in my career that it’s a far easier path to business success when you fill an existing need or want rather than educating the public why they need your product.

In , this is audience analysis. And most organizations do it badly.

The WIN Framework

The most practical place to start is what’s known as WIN: wants, interests and needs.

The principle is deceptively simple: you win your audience’s support by addressing their wants, interests and needs, and not by broadcasting what you want them to hear.

This seems obvious. And yet the number of organizations that communicate from the inside out is staggering.

Before you write a single word of a press release, talking point or social post, you should be able to answer three questions:

What do they want?
What would interest my audience?
What do they need or think they need?

Maslow Wasn’t Just for Psychology Class

Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs may get heavy rotation in psychology courses, but it’s also one of the most practical frameworks communicators can use.

When you map your message to where your audience actually lives on that pyramid, it resonates.

When you miss the level, it feels tone-deaf.

Why?

Because it is.

Build a Persona That’s Ruthlessly Specific

One of the most effective tools in audience analysis is the persona: a fictional but research-grounded profile of a representative member of your target public.

When you write to a real person instead of a demographic abstraction, your messaging changes completely.

The persona forces you to answer the questions that actually drive effective communication:
• What would they find valuable enough to share?
• What tone would earn their trust?
• What would make them feel understood rather than sold to?

Know their W-I-N. Then write to it.

The 3 Big Takeaways

• The WIN framework (wants, interests, needs) is the foundation of effective audience analysis. Great starts with what matters to the audience, not with what you want to say.

• Maslow’s hierarchy gives communicators a practical tool for matching messages to where their audience actually lives emotionally and psychologically.

• Personas transform abstract demographics into specific, human characters. Writing to a real person is almost always more effective than writing to a demographic category.

What’s your target market’s WIN? Do share!

Stay authentic — especially in striving to truly know those receiving your communications.

05/13/2026

Innovation, , .

Those who know me know all of those are passion points in my DNA.

Add to that , and I’m knocking on your door asking to manage your PR.

But no matter how innovative, creative and unique your disruptive technology may be, it still has to deliver the ultimate .

That brings me to a technology that completely captivated me when I first saw it on TV, but now the company behind it is dealing with a major crisis.

LED B-Ball Courts: Whistled for a Technology Technical

The Big 12 Conference prides itself on being cutting edge . For the 2026 Phillips 66 Big 12 Men’s and Women’s Basketball Tournaments at T-Mobile Center in Kansas City, Missouri, it partnered with ASB GlassFloor — a German company out of Stein an der Traun — to debut what might be the most visually stunning basketball surface ever put inside an arena.

And it is stunning. It’s like playing on top of a giant computer screen. Watch this video of the ABS Glassfloor.

Forget painted lines and static logos. This thing is a living, breathing digital canvas powered by GlassCourt OS software. Real-time graphics. Scrolling stats. Dynamic sponsor messaging. Multiple court configurations at the push of a button. It can even show movies.

The whole setup is built on an aluminum and steel spring-action chassis engineered to mimic the flex and feel of traditional hardwood.

On paper — or glass, as it were — it’s jaw-dropping. ASB GlassFloor holds certifications from FIBA (international basketball’s governing body), FIVB (Fédération Internationale de Volleyball), and the International Handball Federation. Their website tagline? “Redefining Indoor Sports.”

The Big 12 Conference wasn’t the first to use it. The floor has seen action at the NBA All-Star Weekend in 2024, FIBA’s U19 Women’s World Cup and various European professional leagues, including Germany’s Bundesliga and the Greek Basketball League.

In the U.S., a handful of club programs had used it for practice and demonstration purposes. On the international stage, the reviews had been largely positive.

I was completely captivated the first time I saw it on TV. As someone who loves , I thought: whoever handles PR for this company has a dream product.

Ha. Not so. That PR dream quickly became a PR nightmare .

Disruptive Technology Disrupted Players’ Ability to Play

Basketball players don’t play on a skating rink for a reason.

During the opening rounds of the Big 12 Tournament — and the women’s tournament the week before — players were slipping on the surface more than they normally would on a wooden court.

Coaches noticed. Players noticed. Fans at home noticed.

Then came the moment nobody wanted to see.

Texas Tech guard Christian Anderson — projected at the time as a top-20 NBA draft pick — fell and strained his groin after slipping on the floor during a quarterfinal loss to Iowa State. A trainer rushed onto the court. Play stopped.

Anderson told reporters: “Obviously the floor is a bit slippery.”

Texas Tech coach Grant McCaslan was diplomatic but pointed: “It’s definitely different. It’s obviously a different surface than we’re used to playing on, and there were some challenging movements today… the quickness of guard play and stop-and-start action — it just has a different response than what we’re used to.”

Translation: It appears this floor isn’t ready for prime time.

The PR Crisis: Yormark Yanks the Floor

Big 12 Commissioner Brett Yormark didn’t hesitate. After the quarterfinals concluded Thursday night, he pulled the plug on the glass court for the remainder of the tournament.

In his statement, Yormark said he had consulted with the coaches of the four semifinal teams and decided to transition back to hardwood “in order to provide our student-athletes with the greatest level of comfort on a huge stage.”

To ESPN, he was even more direct: “The focus now needs to be on four of the best teams in the country and not the court.”

Ouch.

That’s a sitting commissioner of a major college conference publicly announcing that your product became a distraction — at one of the biggest events in college basketball, with NBA scouts from every franchise in the building and 10 conference players projected in ESPN’s first-round mock draft.

This was the moment ASB GlassFloor had staked its North American reputation on.

Social media didn’t wait for a press release. It never does. Fans lit up the company’s X feed.

One user fired off: “Cool idea but the surface needs a lot of work. I’ve watched 5 games and every team had guys slipping a lot more frequently than normal.”

Others called for the floor to be scrapped entirely. The story moved fast and went wide.

My favorite response was from who posted an image of a glass basketball on a court and said, “After determining the glass court may have been unsafe for players, the Big 12 will return to a wooden floor. However, in the spirit of innovation, they will now begin a groundbreaking new trial with glass basketballs. Records could be shattered.”

That post made me LOL.

What ASB GlassFloor Said — and What It Actually Means

To be fair, ASB GlassFloor didn’t go dark. After the Big 12 swapped the floor, the company issued its first public statement. It’s worth reading closely because it tells you a lot about how they’re managing this.

The statement acknowledged that the company observed “more player inconsistencies” (i.e., wipe-outs) on the floor during the Big 12 tournaments than at other venues, and said the performance was different from their other deployments. They committed to a full investigation and “scientific testing and review,” and said athlete health and safety remain their “highest priority.”

Then came more spin.

The statement reminded readers that the floor holds Level 1 FIBA certification, which is the highest international standard for professional basketball, and touted the commercial exposure and innovation the Big 12 Championships provided.

It pointed to deployments across the NCAA, NBA, various European leagues, and international competitions as proof of concept.

This was the first time ASB GlassFloor’s LED court had been used in live competition in the United States.

Read that again. They debuted their product in live American competition at one of the most high-profile college basketball tournaments in the country, with NBA scouts from all 30 teams in the building and a top-20 draft prospect who went down with an injury on the surface.

That’s not a product launch. That’s a product stress test with the whole country watching.

To their credit, a company spokesperson told Sports Business Journal they expect the Big 12 partnership to continue and said they’ll be “discussing the necessary adjustments.”

Commissioner Yormark, for his part, told ESPN Sports Analyst Pat McAfee he remains “a lover of the LED court,” but that the Big 12 needs to “go back to the lab” and “refine some things.” That’s a polite way of saying: not ready for this moment.

The statement ASB GlassFloor issued wasn’t completely bad crisis communications. Acknowledging the issue, committing to an investigation, and pledging to protect athlete safety are the right moves. But the framing leaned heavily on credentials and past successes, and that’s a trap.

When a player gets hurt because of your product, nobody wants to hear about your FIBA certification. They want to hear that you understand what went wrong and that it won’t happen again.

The PR work isn’t done. The investigation is just the beginning.

And that’s the real lesson here. It’s not that ASB GlassFloor makes a bad product. By most accounts, it’s a remarkable piece of engineering.

But whether the installation was flawed, whether the surface underperformed under tournament conditions, or whether the demands of high-level American college basketball exposed a gap in the product’s readiness — those are questions that still demand specific, public answers.

Innovative technology that can’t deliver on its promise isn’t just a product problem. It’s a brand problem. And right now, ASB GlassFloor brand’s reputation is doing exactly what their floor did to Christian Anderson… slipping.

The 3 Big Takeaways

Innovation must deliver on its promise. A product can be visually stunning, technically impressive and backed by international certifications — and still fail in real-world conditions. If your disruptive technology isn’t ready for the stage you’ve placed it on, that stage will expose you. And if you’re unlucky, it’ll be loud, national and repeated.
Crisis response requires more than acknowledgment — it requires accountability. ASB GlassFloor issued a statement, pledged an investigation and kept the relationship with the Big 12 intact. Those are the right first steps. But leading with credentials instead of contrition signals that reputation protection is competing with genuine accountability. Say what went wrong, even if you’re still finding out. People respect honesty far more than a credential list.

The biggest stage cuts both ways. High-profile partnerships create enormous visibility in both directions. Debut your product at the Big 12 Tournament, and it either becomes your greatest marketing win or your most public failure. There’s no quiet middle ground at T-Mobile Center.
What did you think about the ABC Glassfloor? How do you feel they handled this crisis? Do share!

Stay authentic — and stress-test your disruptive technology before the whole country is watching.

05/05/2026

Increasing your can be terrifying. Will you lose ? Get attacked on ? Hand your an advantage?

Last November, Founder Joel Bikman asked me to review a price increase notification he'd written. It was good — but it was from the , not from him.

(I’m leaving a lot out of this abbreviated message. Click here for the full story.)

Joel is the epitome of before . He wrestled with this decision for months. His production costs kept climbing, but he resisted raising prices because he didn't want to do anything that might discourage customers from their goals.

Finally, he had no choice. It was either raise prices or go out of business.

I told him: make this . Tell the story of your struggle. Show customers the behind the decision.

At first, Joel resisted. He’s a very humble man who hates the spotlight. But after reading what I wrote for him, he sent it word-for-word.

The result? It worked.

Sure, HLTH Code lost some customers. That's unavoidable with any price increase.

But the company also strengthened its . The customer feedback Joel received was remarkable — some of it absolutely blew me away.

I’ll share excerpts from these comments next week.

5 Keys for the Perfect Notification

Be / / about why you need to increase prices.

Share the cold, hard / . Customers can’t (or shouldn’t) argue about reality.

Show and , and that you’re human. That’s hard to do if the communication is from a company.

Be willing to be . Share how the decision kept you up at night. Show the human struggle behind the business necessity.

Tell a . Don't just announce the increase — walk customers through your thinking, your research, your resistance. Make them feel what you felt.

Want to see what a perfect price increase notification looks like? Click here. You'll never look at price increase letters the same way.

Read the full message here.

Stay — even when the news is hard to deliver.

04/27/2026

Let me tell you about an accidental win for a brand I’ve openly mocked.

It’s pizza. A very low-quality, floppy, sponge-like pizza.

One that actually doesn’t taste much better than the cardboard box it’s packaged in.

And yet — somehow — a customer’s Instagram post about this pizza delivered over 13 million views, a Fox News feature, and several other news stories.

That’s enough buzz to make any PR pro jealous.

Oh — the pizza brand? It’s .

My Introduction to Domino’s Pizza

Growing up in a suburb of Milwaukee in the 1970s, we made our own pizza at our house.

I never heard of Domino’s pizza, even though it was established in 1960 across the lake from me in Michigan.

I was introduced to it after starting my university studies at BYU in Provo, Utah in 1983. Ordering Domino’s pizza was a quick, fairly cheap meal for college students.

And I confess — I did partake. Initially.

When you’re a starving student and want something quick and low budget, it worked.

My favorite toppings included sausage, pepperoni and onions.

But I quickly discovered another topping people loved that I’ve not seen before: pineapple.

I was incredulous.

Pineapple? On pizza? Mamma mia! Don’t you know pineapple is a fruit? Is this something people out west do?

From an Italian American’s point of view, it’s a blasphemous combination. In fact, no Italian in their right mind would ever eat a Domino’s pizza — no matter what the toppings were.

It didn’t take me long to get back in my right mind.

OK, that’s the rant portion of this week’s message. Now it’s time to deliver this unconventional PR story.

Pricey Airport Food: Thwarted

Airport food prices are highway robbery. That’s because you’re a captive airport audience and, unless you packed your own food, there’s nowhere to run.

Studies have found that airport prices commonly exceed street prices by 50 to 120 percent, with some items marked up even further.

At LaGuardia, one report said a beer was selling for $27. At Newark — ranked among the worst airports in America for food quality — the average meal costs more than $23.

Airport food vendors know you’re a captive audience. Limited competition, sky-high rents and complicated logistics mean those prices aren’t coming down anytime soon.

Enter Ali Van De Graaff, an Oregon mom traveling with her husband and four kids — and her husband’s genius idea.

The Story

Stranded at Medford-Jackson County Airport in Oregon during a flight delay, they did what any resourceful parent would do: had Domino’s delivered to the airport.

Not inside the airport — to the curb.

Her husband called in the order, exited security, picked up the pizza, and brought it back through TSA PreCheck.

Smooth as carry-on luggage.

One TSA employee commented, “That’s so smart.”

The flight attendant said she’d never seen anything like it. Domino’s fan pages celebrated. Other passengers complained about the smell.

Van De Graaff was unbothered.

“I’m feeding my kids. I’m doing what I’ve got to do.”

And she’s not wrong.

Domino’s Response

Domino’s joined the story with a quick post: “It’s plane delicious.”

I’ll give them credit — clever, timely, and it got quoted in the news.

But let’s be honest… “delicious”? That’s debatable.

What Businesses Can Learn Here

This is a masterclass in .

Domino’s didn’t create this. A real customer did.

That’s why it worked.

Van De Graaff wasn’t trying to do PR — she was trying to feed her family without going broke.

And that’s the lesson:

Truth travels further than spin.

But here’s the miss…

Did Domino’s reward this family?

Free pizza for a year would’ve been a no-brainer.

I couldn’t find anything suggesting they did.

That’s a missed opportunity.

3 Big Takeaways

beats paid media — every time.
A quick, clever response matters — is everything.
Reward customers who create positive buzz — it amplifies your

What would you do if your company got unexpected media coverage?

Stay authentic — and please… never offer me a slice of pizza with pineapple 🍍

04/21/2026

IF you don’t get your audience’s attention with your communications from the get-go, then you’re dead in the water.

That’s a given.

All your communications ( , , in-person sales, speeches, etc.) must be attention-getting and engaging.

If they’re not, then whatever you do after that won’t matter.

But, despite the hundreds of messages bombarding us daily, all vying for our attention, only a small percentage are successful.

When you’re successful in securing your target market’s attention, then your message must be hyper-focused on its next mission:

Persuasion Relations?

Maybe PR should stand for Persuasion Relations. Hmm…

You likely need to persuade the recipients of your message to:
buy your product
try your service
recommend you to others
support your cause
change their mind
or something else

If your communications don’t get your message recipients to do something that benefits your organization, then you’ve wasted your time.

And money.

And everyone else’s patience.

But what is persuasion, exactly?

Here’s where it gets interesting — and where a lot of communicators get it wrong.
Persuasion isn’t manipulation. It isn’t spin (a horrible four-letter word in the PR world). And it definitely isn’t propaganda.

Persuasion, at its core, is a communication process that intends to influence people through ethical means — in ways that enhance, rather than erode, a democratic society.

That distinction matters enormously.

When persuasion crosses the ethical line — when it becomes misleading, deceptive or manipulative — it stops being persuasion and becomes something else entirely: propaganda.

Propaganda is self-serving, nonresponsive and manipulative. It operates through half-truths, innuendo, and outright deception.

Consider the to***co industry’s decades-long effort to cast doubt on the link between ci******es and disease. That wasn’t persuasion. That was propaganda at its worst — and the public eventually saw through it, at a catastrophic cost to the industry’s reputation and bottom line.

PR professionals have a responsibility to communicate ethically, accurately, and with their publics’ best interests in mind. That’s not idealism. That’s strategy.
In a world where trust is declining and skepticism is rising, ethical persuasion is the only kind that works long-term.

Why Your Audience Isn’t Listening — Even When You’re Talking

Here’s an inconvenient truth: even well-crafted, ethical messages often fail to land.
The reason? Human psychology.

People seek consistency between their existing attitudes and new information. When new information conflicts with what someone already believes — what psychologists call — they don’t usually change their minds.

Instead, they change the channel.

They find information that confirms what they already think, ignore what challenges them and forget what doesn’t fit their worldview.

Psychologist Leon Festinger articulated this in 1957, and his work helps explain why PR professionals sometimes feel like they’re shouting into a void.

Audiences are, quite literally, filtering out messages that make them uncomfortable. This filtering shows up in five distinct ways.

Selective exposure — people actively seek out messages they expect to agree with and avoid messages they don’t.

Selective attention — even when exposed to a contrary message, people focus on the parts that support what they already believe.

Selective perception — people interpret information to fit their existing attitudes rather than updating their views.

Selective retention — people remember what reinforces their beliefs and conveniently forget the rest.

Selective recall — when memory is activated, people draw on the parts that confirm what they already think.

Sound discouraging? It shouldn’t. It should make you a smarter communicator.

If you know your audience filters aggressively, you write messages that work with their existing attitudes rather than against them.

You find common ground. You lead with values they already hold.

You make it easy for them to receive what you’re offering — because you’ve done the work to understand where they’re starting from.

What this Means for Your PR writing

Every persuasive message requires a clear goal.

What do you want your audience to think, feel, or do differently after they encounter your communication?

And — just as important — can you honestly say your message serves their interests, not just yours?

The most effective PR professionals understand that persuasion isn’t about overpowering an audience’s defenses. It’s about earning the right to change their minds by offering something real, valuable and true.

PR doesn’t stand for “Propaganda Relations” (heaven forbid!!). The professionals who succeed long-term know exactly where that line is… and they stay well clear of it.

The 3 Big Takeaways
Persuasion is the engine of every PR effort — if your communications aren’t moving people toward a specific action or belief, it’s not doing its job.

Persuasion that relies on misleading or manipulative tactics isn’t persuasion, it’s propaganda, and it always backfires eventually.

Human psychology (cognitive dissonance, selective exposure, selective retention) means your audience is actively filtering your messages. Understanding how this works makes you a more effective communicator.

If you could persuade your audience to do one thing, what would it be? Do share!

Stay authentic — and remember, there’s a very thin line between persuasion and manipulation. Always know which side you’re on.

04/07/2026

Recently, I shared the to Writing the Perfect , using my health and wellness client as a case study.

We crafted a (you REALLY should read it, if you haven’t already) that was personal, vulnerable, and . Not a . Instead, it was a heartfelt letter from Joel explaining exactly why he resisted the increase, how much he agonized over it, and why he finally had to act.

The other part of this case study that I teased last week were the . They were remarkable.

I have five responses to share with you. Here are two of them below. If you want to read the in-depth analysis of these as well as the other three, click here.

Here's the first example:
Dear Joel – Thank you so much for trying your best to keep as reasonably priced as possible and letting us know ahead of time.

My husband drinks shakes twice daily as during the work week and he puts a little in his coffee for the extra protein on the weekends.

He's a middle school teacher and doesn't have the time he would need for eating meals. He has in his liver and he went years unable to eat anything solid, but his condition improved enough to regain the ability to eat ground beef and eggs at dinner and weekends when he has plenty of time to eat.

He can now also swallow capsules without choking! No more crushing pills. His medical team is amazed. It truly has been a ! All that to share why we will make whatever adjustments needed in order to afford the of .
Blessing,
Sharon

This is gold. Sharon didn’t just accept the — she shared an intimate explaining why she's staying.
Notice she specifically thanked Joel for the and for trying to keep prices low. That’s what delivers: customers who feel respected and valued.

Lynn's response showed similar appreciation:
Joel – Thank you for the responsible way in which you have informed us of your necessary . I certainly understand the need. Many times through the years I have had completely unexplained and unannounced in various monthly subscriptions. I so appreciate the you have shown me, a long time user and lover of shakes. I am sticking with you and thank you for sticking with US!
Sincerely and with thanks and best regards,
Lynn

Lynn contrasted Joel's approach with other companies’ tactics. She’s experienced the alternative — those that show up on your credit card with zero explanation or warning.

After you read the other three responses on this , let me know what you think of them. Have you ever received a that made you feel respected? Or one that made you feel ambushed? Please share your experiences.

Stay — and remember that always beats .

AuthenticityPR

05/30/2026

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