Lindsay Lohan has a hard working publicist. So does Charlie Sheen. So, surely, someone in the PR industry must be willing to take on the poor snakehead fish as a client. Ever since making an inglorious splash in American headlines for being a marauding invasive species indigenous to Asia and Russia, the public has both hated and feared the snakehead fish.

Scientists, reporters and TV personalities have inundated the public with scary facts detailing how the snakehead fish is a voracious predator that can decimate entire species of indigenous fish and wildlife, upsetting the precious ecological balances of entire ecosystems. Oh, and did we mention the snakehead fish can slither—well, more like wiggle—on land and breathe air via suprabranchial chambers? Well, it can. So load your guns and lock your doors. Snakehead fish are coming after your daughters.

Snakeheads do pose a serious and ecologically costly threat to our communities. They’ve proliferated in the Washington, D.C. area, and have even been spotted in New York City’s beloved Central Park as well as in Florida and California. So the public has every right to be both intrigued and concerned. Snakeheads are spreading. Naturally scientists, anglers and environmentalists are all asking the same question: What should we do now?

This is where public relations can play an important role. The snakehead fish, also known as Frakenfish or Fishzilla, has a horrible reputation. And there is no un-ringing the bell on this ecological development. The snakehead is here, and we must deal with it. Perhaps a savvy PR strategy can help contain the snakehead’s expansion by motivating its only natural predator: the public. However, people aren’t too keen on eating anything with “snakehead” in the name. It doesn’t really read well on a menu.

So can public relations help integrate the snakehead into our cultural palate? With a new name, can the snakehead fish be the next Chilean sea bass?

What would you rename the snakehead fish? Let us know.

On a planet divided by violent political, sectarian, and international rifts, it’s nice to know that sworn enemies can share a deep admiration for one historical figure who was so much more than a man. Years ago, this misunderstood prophet dared to buck the tide and bring humanity together in the name of an all-encompassing love—the love of crispy, delicious fried chicken.

That man, of course, was KFC founder Colonel Harland David Sanders, and this week the trusty fourth estate brings us multiple stories about residents of Palestine’s volatile Gaza Strip region going above and beyond for a little taste of his special sauce.

Finger lickin’ good PR? Yeah…no.

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As fans of “The Office” prepare to say a fond farewell to their beloved Scranton-dwelling characters on tonight’s series finale, the real-life Dunder Mifflin paper company, launched in 2011 via a licensing deal between Quill.com and NBC Universal, is preparing to ramp up business with a well-placed ad.

The spot, created by PR agency Olson and crowdsourcing platform Tongal, will run tonight in five Dunder Mifflin “branch” markets (Scranton, Utica, Akron, Albany, Syracuse).

While back in 2011 some thought that the concept of reverse product placement in the form of an entire company was sure to be a failure, the real-world Dunder Mifflin has grown into a multi-million dollar brand that is now among the best-selling brands in the office-supply category. We guess having sales geniuses like Dwight in your corner can make all the difference, especially when he delivers nuggets of marketing gold like, “To me, success is simply the opposite of failure.” Indeed.

We told you last week about Abercrombie & Fitch CEO Mike Jeffries only wanting his brand’s clothing worn by “cool kids” — i.e. no one that falls outside the stereotypical “All American” standards of beauty, including girls over a size 10. “A lot of people don’t belong [in our clothes], and they can’t belong,” Jeffries once said in an interview. “Are we exclusionary? Absolutely.”

To make matters worse, it seems that less-than-cool kids aren’t the only people who don’t “belong” in A&F clothing — when garments are damaged and/or cannot be sold, rather than donating the clothes to people who need them, the company reportedly burns them. Why? Because homeless people aren’t the sort of brand representation A&F wants. So basically, Abercrombie has sent this branding message into the universe: “Six-pack abs and chiseled jaw required. Soul optional”.

In response, Greg Karber decided to give Abercrombie a brand makeover. After sifting through the “douchebag section” of his local Goodwill thrift shop for donated A&F clothing, Karber headed to LA’s Skid Row to hand out the clothes to the homeless, who, after displaying initial reluctance to accept the clothing (which Karber attributes to a fear of looking like “narcissistic date rapists”), eventually accepted the A&F clothes, completing phase one of Karber’s mission.

However, in the video below, Karber says that he can’t “clothe the homeless or transform a brand” all by his lonesome, and urges viewers to get involved. A grassroots re-branding campaign to teach a company to grow a soul? Like we said before: we sense a Glee episode coming on…

The factory collapse that killed more than 1,100 people in Bangladesh this April is by no means the first tragedy to strike the garment industry in recent years—but it does look like the culmination of an ongoing PR challenge that could reshape the way major clothing brands market their products. The earliest evidence of this change comes on social media, where companies that had operations in the factory have already begun responding to the demands of consumers and labor activists.

The New York Times reports that many businesses and industry groups now plan to follow the food industry’s example by offering the public more detailed information about how and where their clothes are made. H&M and Zara have agreed to sign a new “factory safety accord,” and major names like Disney, Nike, and Walmart may follow with campaigns designed to appropriate the “green,” “organic,” and “fair trade” themes favored by food and household goods marketers in recent years. The purpose of this material, of course, will be to highlight the brands’ corporate social responsibility efforts and distance them from horrific accidents like the one in Bangladesh.

It’s nothing new for fashion: upstarts like American Apparel began using their own “fair trade” practices as key selling points some time ago. Yet, despite AA’s success, retailers like Maggie’s Organics and Everlane (tagline “Luxury Basics. Radical Transparency.”) remain few and far between.

Not for long.

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Coke has long associated its brand with happiness — even dedicating entire websites to the philosophical meaning of the word, and calling the contents of a can of cola “140 happy calories.”

Now, the company is taking advantage of a happy coincidence — the fact that part of its logo happens to look like the Danish flag — to welcome people to Denmark, recently voted the “happiest country in the world” by the United Nations.

In honor of the Danish tradition of greeting arriving visitors by waving flags, Coke’s local agency, McCann Copenhagen, created an interactive airport ad that dispenses flags. Coke says it’s purpose is to “let Coca-Cola and Denmark spread happiness together.” The below video of a case study shows people’s reactions to the machine.

Little kids and elderly people jubilantly waving flags as loved ones rush to greet them, all made possible by Coke. We’d categorize this as a highly creative branding win.

Every brand on Earth is chomping at the bit to place official ads on the rapidly growing Instagram, but parent company Facebook continues to proceed with extreme caution.

While Mark Zuckerberg says he is very encouraged by the expansion of the image-sharing network, he clearly does not plan to open the commercial floodgates until he’s good and ready. In his own words, Instagram must first focus on “build[ing] community” before determining how best to use its considerable potential as an ad/marketing forum. We can see why Zuckerberg prefers to take low-risk baby steps, no matter how impatient advertisers may be.

In the meantime, brands and their social media teams should be quite happy to learn that they do have more promotional options on Instagram thanks to the newly introduced function “photos of you,” which allows users to tag any other existing account—be it a friend, a celebrity, a local business, or a big-name brand—in their own pics. Amateur lensmen and brand managers alike will receive notifications when others tag them, and they can then choose whether to display these images on their own public feeds.

Can you say “pre-approved user generated content?”

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We always knew we didn’t belong in Abercrombie; being accosted by overpowering cologne while dodging deer antlers and shelling out a year’s worth of allowance on a sweatshirt never particularly appealed to us. But then again, we weren’t blonde, lead cheerleader, and built like, well, we usually say “an Abercrombie model”, so we were pretty sure A&F didn’t want our business anyway.

Turns out, we may have been right.

When speaking with Business Insider last week, Robin Lewis, co-author of The New Rules of Retail, claimed that A&F CEO Mike Jeffries “doesn’t want larger people shopping in his store, he wants thin and beautiful people. He doesn’t want his core customers to see people who aren’t as hot as them wearing his clothing. People who wear his clothing should feel like they’re one of the ‘cool kids.’”

So what exactly deems a kid cool enough to earn the privilege of wearing the A&F brand? In a 2006 interview with Salon, Jeffries said, “In every school there are the cool and popular kids, and then there are the not-so-cool kids. Candidly, we go after the cool kids…We go after the attractive all-American kid with a great attitude and a lot of friends. A lot of people don’t belong [in our clothes], and they can’t belong. Are we exclusionary? Absolutely.”

So who’s automatically excluded from this “cool” group? Girls above a size 10, apparently. Abercrombie doesn’t even list women’s XL or XXL on its size chart. According to Lewis, the only reason Abercrombie offers XL and XXL men’s sizes is likely to appeal to beefy athletes. Read more

PR industry experts are inundated with columns and advice about how clients should manage their personal brands. Much of that input is common sense: don’t get coked up and crash your Porsche, don’t beat your girlfriend and land in jail, don’t get drunk and start tweeting. Most of the public is able to avoid these situations. (Thanks, moms.)

Nevertheless, brands love spokespeople. Brands need spokespeople to provide that human element that connects with the complex psychology that is consumer behavior. From Donald Trump to Eva Longoria, personal branding is big business, and a dangerous one, because all humans are fallible. But if there were ever a control in the experiment of personal branding, it would be Tim Tebow. The guy is as clean as a bag of cotton balls.

In fact, Tim Tebow’s personal brand is so sterling that even without a job—he has yet to be picked up by an NFL team after being dropped by the New York Jets—his sponsors aren’t worried at all. ESPN, Nike, TiVo, FRS, Fox Sports and Jockey are all on board with whatever happens next in his career, even if it doesn’t include football. Those brands are even lining up to retain his services after he hangs up his cleats. That’s personal branding done well. But there is more to successful personal branding than avoiding mug shots and visiting children in the hospital.

There is authenticity. Tim Tebow lives according to the values he espouses regardless of what his handlers, agents and PR people do. Tim Tebow runs the Tim Tebow show (which is his life), and his fans adore him for it. In a parallel universe, Charlie Sheen fans feel the same way about his personal brand. For some reason, many PR experts struggle with this idea of authenticity. So do young celebrities like Justin Bieber and Miley Cyrus; it’s hard to be authentic when you are still wrestling with who you are and the trappings of becoming an adult. Read more

“Mount Gay is made with a rhythm and style that hasn’t changed in 310 years” according to Erin Newby, head of strategy at Radical Media, the brand’s agency charged with its repositioning. Sir John Gay introduced the rum in Barbados in 1703 (B.C.), that’s before cola, or even ice. So the liquor had to stand on its own merits rather than being part of a mixed cocktail.

Newby appeared on a Creative Week panel along with Mount Gay’s global brand director and others from Radical Media’s team on Tuesday in New York to discuss the repositioning strategy and launch of its Black Barrel product. The multimedia effort included new graphics, print ads, video and redesigned website that brought the brand’s history to life. Their brand ambassador program is now spreading the word about Black Barrel.

Strategic evolution: Mount Gay’s earlier print ads featured product shots with the tagline “the rum that invented rum”. The agency tapped further into the brand’s history as the world’s oldest rum, which became a natural strategy, Newby said. The new line, “There’s a time and a place” captures the brand’s provenance and its slow double distillation process in copper stills. Mount Gay’s M.O. is “rum is ready when it’s ready, not before.”

Competition: “Everyone else focuses on flash and beach scenes”, said Justin Wilkes, Radical’s president of media and entertainment. Their biggest competitors include Bacardi and Captain Morgan. Added Fannie Young, Mount Gay’s global brand director. ”We wanted to position the brand in a more premium space.”

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