Thorough and highly applicable advice for communications consultants.
A public relations professional pulls back the curtain on his consulting practice.
In this second installment of a two-volume series, agency principal Darnell offers a comprehensive manual that delves into how to operate a public relations/communications consulting business. The first book, The Communications Consultant’s Foundation (2021), provided an introductory framework for starting such a business. This sequel takes a deep dive into the nuts and bolts, first covering communications strategies and account management, then discussing the business of running an agency, and finally providing an action plan for implementation. Darnell not only explains communications consulting in sometimes-dense detail, he also liberally cites examples, many very specific, from his own career. The author’s experience is credible and considerable; he has worked for other firms and run his own small communications agency for over two decades. It’s a credit to Darnell that he willingly discloses his business philosophy, strategies, and practices, right down to how (and how much) he charges his clients. In Part 1 of the guide, readers will get a solid understanding of the process of pitching accounts as well as insights into more mundane topics such as record-keeping and billing. Also in this section is useful information about client positioning, internal versus external communications, the specialized area of investor relations, and a helpful rundown of various media and public relations tactics that could be employed on behalf of clients. The second part of the work focuses on agency management, professional development, how to scale a business, and potential exit strategies. Here, Darnell delivers some wise suggestions for how best to research media as well as seasoned observations about trade associations and industry gatherings. Perhaps most intriguing is the author’s advice on ways to scale a business, in which he draws from examples of other practitioners. Part 3 summarizes previous material and shows how to apply it in the form of a “Marketing Action Plan” that can be developed for clients. The level of detail in this section is particularly impressive. As in his first book, Darnell includes a wealth of questions to answer and relevant exercises to complete.
Thorough and highly applicable advice for communications consultants.Pub Date: Dec. 21, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-03-201257-5
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Routledge
Review Posted Online: Jan. 27, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.
Helping liberals get out of their own way.
Klein, a New York Times columnist, and Thompson, an Atlantic staffer, lean to the left, but they aren’t interrogating the usual suspects. Aware that many conservatives have no interest in their opinions, the authors target their own side’s “pathologies.” Why do red states greenlight the kind of renewable energy projects that often languish in blue states? Why does liberal California have the nation’s most severe homelessness and housing affordability crises? One big reason: Liberal leadership has ensnared itself in a web of well-intentioned yet often onerous “goals, standards, and rules.” This “procedural kludge,” partially shaped by lawyers who pioneered a “democracy by lawsuit” strategy in the 1960s, threatens to stymie key breakthroughs. Consider the anti-pollution laws passed after World War II. In the decades since, homeowners’ groups in liberal locales have cited such statutes in lawsuits meant to stop new affordable housing. Today, these laws “block the clean energy projects” required to tackle climate change. Nuclear energy is “inarguably safer” than the fossil fuel variety, but because Washington doesn’t always “properly weigh risk,” it almost never builds new reactors. Meanwhile, technologies that may cure disease or slash the carbon footprint of cement production benefit from government support, but too often the grant process “rewards caution and punishes outsider thinking.” The authors call this style of governing “everything-bagel liberalism,” so named because of its many government mandates. Instead, they envision “a politics of abundance” that would remake travel, work, and health. This won’t happen without “changing the processes that make building and inventing so hard.” It’s time, then, to scrutinize everything from municipal zoning regulations to the paperwork requirements for scientists getting federal funding. The authors’ debut as a duo is very smart and eminently useful.
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.Pub Date: March 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781668023488
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our...
A psychologist and Nobel Prize winner summarizes and synthesizes the recent decades of research on intuition and systematic thinking.
The author of several scholarly texts, Kahneman (Emeritus Psychology and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.) now offers general readers not just the findings of psychological research but also a better understanding of how research questions arise and how scholars systematically frame and answer them. He begins with the distinction between System 1 and System 2 mental operations, the former referring to quick, automatic thought, the latter to more effortful, overt thinking. We rely heavily, writes, on System 1, resorting to the higher-energy System 2 only when we need or want to. Kahneman continually refers to System 2 as “lazy”: We don’t want to think rigorously about something. The author then explores the nuances of our two-system minds, showing how they perform in various situations. Psychological experiments have repeatedly revealed that our intuitions are generally wrong, that our assessments are based on biases and that our System 1 hates doubt and despises ambiguity. Kahneman largely avoids jargon; when he does use some (“heuristics,” for example), he argues that such terms really ought to join our everyday vocabulary. He reviews many fundamental concepts in psychology and statistics (regression to the mean, the narrative fallacy, the optimistic bias), showing how they relate to his overall concerns about how we think and why we make the decisions that we do. Some of the later chapters (dealing with risk-taking and statistics and probabilities) are denser than others (some readers may resent such demands on System 2!), but the passages that deal with the economic and political implications of the research are gripping.
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our minds.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-27563-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
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