Author Archive - Dorian Burns-Coyne

Toyota, Tiger and Taylor Guitars

Corporate crises, PR catastrophes, and customer care conundrums seem to occur all to frequently these days. Maybe my youthful naivety has gotten the better of me, but off the top of my head I can list a slew of corporate hiccups that have occurred in the past two years alone that made more headlines than Avatar. Maybe that’s a good thing (the fact that they get more attention than a 3-D film), but the frequency cannot be healthy. Tiger being dropped by Accenture, and Taylor guitars being dropped by United may not be overly significant in the grand scheme of things, but when the pedal suddenly drops on a Toyota, real damage is done. However, how do these companies pick up the pieces and recover successfully? [...]

OK to go viral?

OK Go, a rock band from Chicago, Illinois, would be hard pressed to make it to the airways of your local radio station, but yet everybody knows about them. Despite being a rock band, they’re better known for their obscure music videos than the songs themselves. With almost 6.5 million views of their latest video since it was uploaded to YouTube a little more than a week ago, it would be an understatement to say it was a successful launch. However, can a band, or better yet a product, survive on video appeal alone? [...]

A Canadian Cinderella story

Did you see the gold medal game? Of course you did – everybody did. The fact that everybody knows what I mean when I say the gold medal game is a case in point, but what about those who didn’t watch the Canada vs. U.S. gold medal men’s hockey game? The triumphant victory isn’t even 48 hours old, but yet it’s almost old news. Have instant news updates and social media redefined the meaning of “news”, or is it just expected that everyone knows what’s going on by the minute? [...]