Deirdre's Books

  Answers for Ethical Marketers, A Guide to Good Practice In Business Communications, With advancing technology and evolving media, the journey to ethics has become more complicated for businesses and the professionals who communicate on their behalf. This book, Answers for Ethical Marketers, answers ethical questions, from taking your ethics and values into every media interview to applying ethics and sound judgment throughout your company and communication channels. The book shares how personal and professional ethics align, and how business leaders, managers, and students can maneuver their way around a new media landscape to demonstrate their values and role model ethical conduct.

This book is divided into eight important areas based on where and why a breakdown in ethical behavior is likely to occur, and delivers advice from experts on the frontlines of business communications; professionals who know what it means to face the inherent changes and challenges in their fields. With more than 80 questions and answers, readers will uncover situations where ethics are challenged, and their values will be tested.

This straightforward Q&A reference book is for professionals who realize ethics are a crucial part of decision-making and who want to maintain trust with the public and keep their positive brand reputations in business intact. 

Readers will learn the answers to pressing ethical questions that help them apply good judgment in their own situations, based on the stories, theories, and practical instruction from the author’s 30 plus years of experience as well as the thought leaders featured in this book.

In Social Media and Public Relations: Eight New Practices for the PR Professional, social marketing pioneer Deirdre Breakenridge teaches and demonstrates the eight new skills and mindsets PR/marketing pros need to build brands and engage customers in a social world. This concise, action-oriented book shows practitioners how to systematically expand their roles, improve their processes, and sharpen their strategies to engage with today’s more sophisticated and socialized customers.

Drawing on her extensive client experience, Breakenridge helps you respond to consumers who demand control over their own brand relationships… unite communications with technology more effectively, and become your organization’s go-to resource on social technology decisions… reflect social media realities throughout your policies and governance… generate greater internal collaboration, eliminating silos once and for all… listen to consumers’ conversations, and apply what you’re learning… build communications crisis plans you can implement at a moment’s notice… develop profound new insights into how consumers construct and perceive their brand relationships.,. practice ‘reputation management on steroids’… take the lead on identifying and applying metrics… and much more. For all PR, marketing, and communications executives and professionals; and for students intending to enter these fields.

PR 2.0 is the convergence of Public Relations and the Internet with the potential to change how communications professionals reach customers and online communities with social media strategies. This is a tentative time for communication professionals as they face a rapidly changing environment for their brands. Although traditional channels and methods are still present, audience behavior and interaction online necessitates a new way for brands (both B2B and B2C) to communicate.

Traditionally, PR pros communicate through the “Influencers” who provide those valuable third-party endorsements. Communication has always been closely controlled and monitored. The nature of the game has changed whether communications professionals like it or not. No longer will the PR professional have to speak through an influencer (i.e., the media). Although we still rely on our influencers, now we can also move forward with a direct to consumer approach through social media tools.

PR 2.0 breaks the traditional mold and allows communications professionals to think, react and promote in a whole new way. Today’s audiences are citizen journalists in social communities that are connected across the Internet. PR professionals through PR 2.0 will learn how to use the power of technology, the increased bandwidth and a whole new array of social media resources to join in the marketing conservations that span the Web.

  If you’re a marketing professional, you understand perfectly well that the Internet has changed all the rules you live by — and especially the rules that impact how you brand your products, services, and organization. Cyberbranding doesn’t merely show you how the rules have changed: it presents a complete framework for branding that works now — and for years to come. In Cyberbranding, crucial questions that marketers have about branding in the 21st century are answered: How do you move your brand online — without compromising the values it already stands for in the “real” world? How can you re-engineer your brand in the wake of the Internet revolution — and how can you create a new brand that leverages the full power of the Web? The book draws a series of insightful interviews with leading Internet branding executives.