Sustainability and Philanthropy—Can Walmart Show Us the Way
Sometimes things crystallize all at once.
The New York Times reporter, Stephanie Rosenblum writes this week that Walmart, the behemoth retailer whose ethical, environmental and worker treatment record has been so poor that it will now require its manufacturers supplying goods to its stores to adhere to stricter ethical and environmental standards. This is big news.
If Walmart is capable of raising its bar I am hopeful that our ethically and morally strong but often-slow-to adopt-change community will soon make some headway here as well.
Managing Negative PR in the Web 2.0 World
Negative pr has always been a thorn in the side of those of us who work hard building and protecting the reputations of Jewish organizations that do good work and put a high value on maintaining the trust of their constituents.
Yet, from time to time, even the most highly respected organization is faced with a situation that has the potential to seriously damage its reputation. I know because I have had to handle my share of negative pr situations over the course of my career. It’s never fun, difficult to get through and yet, if you follow the time-tested protocols for dealing with a pr “crisis,” you will get beyond the storm. The best “crisis pr” advice I ever heard was from Howard Rubenstein, the venerable crisis pr maven, who always started with “be prepared before a crisis strikes and always tell the truth as quickly as possible.”
So with the blogsphere now a legitimate, mainstream source of information, what must organizations do to be sure those writing about them get it right and how does an organization stay on top of the blog world to know what is being said?
Here are a few thoughts, but please add yours to the conversation.
The Birth of Jewlicious
From the very beginning of our planning almost two years ago, the Jewlicious blog was highlighted in our business plan as one of the prime innovative projects emerging from a new generation of communal entrepreneurs. It would be much later before I would meet the man behind the project, ex-Montrealer and Shuk resident, David Abitbol, who would become both a friend and connector to many of the innovative programs popping up here in Israel.
This morning (it’s already Monday here in Jerusalem) and just in time to welcome in 5769, David (aka ck) is featured in the Jerusalem Post. May the publicity go to his head!
Back in the early days of the new millennium, the “cool Jew” movement was just warming up, thanks to ironic, self-deferential, post-traditional brands like Heeb magazine, JDub Records’s flagship recording artist Matisyahu, a big-screen release called The Hebrew Hammer and the Jewcy line of cheeky apparel. The elder generation decried the movement’s rejection of dogma, but mainstream pop culture was amplifying the buzz, and Jews in their early 20s were finding new tongue-in-cheek ways to express their cultural identity.
Smack in the middle of the generational gap was Montreal-based web designer David Abitbol.
I think we need to make David an honorary member of Cool People!
