Here in the ATL, Delta Air Lines has been a staple of our economy for the last 30 years. Most of the southern suburbs are frocked with Delta pilots and other employees (Hartsfield-Jackson Airport is on the south side of town). When Delta filed for bankruptcy there was a fear of how badly it would affect the city’s economy if Delta went the way of Eastern.

Now that Delta seemingly has righted-the-ship and begun to pull out of its tailspin, it has launched a new marketing campaign, and also boldly pronounced itself as “America’s largest airline,” and “New York City’s biggest airline”…bold, but not necessarily true. And therein lies the problem.

What do you do when your company makes a claim that isn’t backed up by the traditional methods of measurement in your industry?

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As many of us plunge into our first jobs post college, odds are we will be unsatisfied. We’ll feel overworked, under appreciated, and that we may have spent 4 (or more) years getting a degree in a field that we don’t like. Now, most of us here at Forward know that we have a passion for PR and that we want to do this for our career. However, that first job could still be laced with grunt work, and will most definitely have LONG hours. So the question is how do we cope? How do we not only survive, but thrive? And most importantly, how do you make the connections and moves that will get us started up the ladder of success?

Some other questions to ponder: How long should you stay at your first job? What are the most important things that we need to be doing in our first job? What can we do to get the attention of our bosses and have them notice our brilliant work (because all of our work will of course BE brilliant )?

I think some advice from our contributors who have started their first jobs and of course from our crack staff of veterans, would benefit a lot of us here at Forward.

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A few days ago on CNET News’s Blogma, there was a post entitled “When is it OK to lie at work?” The gist of it was, is it ever justifiable to lie about issues at work; ranging from true motivations to the quality of an employee’s performance? Several people weighed in on the subject, but I though we would put it to our readers and contributors here at Forward and get their opinion.

For me, the first response is “No, of course you shouldn’t lie,” oh but instantly I’m reminded of times that I told little white lies about someone’s performance in a group project trying to protect their grade. I’m not talking about huge lies, just putting a positive light on a slightly poor performance. Now by the time I was in my last semester, I showed no mercy to anyone, because I realized I wasn’t doing anyone (especially myself) any good by lying.

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Stealing secrets and selling them to the highest bidder; informants giving information to the rival company; money transfers and arrests…sounds like a movie right? Wrong! This was the foiled plan involving Coca-Cola Company secrets being sold to Pepsi.

In May, a letter appeared at Pepsi Co’s headquarters offering “very detailed and confidential information.” The letter claimed to be from a high-level executive named “Dirk.” Now, in case you don’t know, Coke has been soundly beating Pepsi for the last who-knows-how-long. In light of this, Pepsi could have agreed to take the information, and obtained a leg-up on Coke. Instead, Pepsi contacted Coke, told them about the letter, and Coke called the FBI to set up the sting. Said Pepsi spokesman Dave DeCecco: “We only did what any responsible company would do. Competition can sometimes be fierce, but it also must be fair and legal.” So out of this, Pepsi get a big boost for its image by proving that it is a very ethical company.

Coke now has some employee relations ends to tie up. A memo was sent to all employees by Chairman and CEO Neville Isdell promising “a thorough review of our information protection policies, procedures and practices to ensure that we continue to rigorously safeguard our intellectual capital.” This is a good start, as the employees will look to their executives for how to respond to this situation. Coke also needs to send out a plan for reporting this type of activity if an employee catches another involved with it.

What else do you think Coke, or Pepsi, should do in response to this situation?

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Here is a great example of how to handle a crisis.

Cadbury, the company that brings us Cadbury Eggs at Easter (you know, the commercials with the bunny that makes chicken noises), pulled more than one million chocolate bars from store shelves amid fears of salmonella contamination last week.

Cadbury was very up-front and thorough about the situation; it …

• Put out a detailed list of the type of bars that could be contaminated
• Communicated that the potential salmonella levels in the bars was below health problem standards
• Announced if anyone had ingested one of the contaminated bars, they did not have anything to worry about
• BUT Cadbury gave an information number and offered a full refund.

This is a great example of proactive PR. Was this situation a crisis? No. Could the company have let it slide since they knew the potential wasn’t serious? Probably. Instead, Cadbury came forward with ALL of the information for its consumers, pulled the products off of shelves, and set up an informational hotline for those who wanted it. It didn’t hold anything back or try to avoid anything, but was completely honest. This is how any potential crisis situation needs to be handled. Always present all of the information that is available, be timely, explain what has happened and have a way for those affected to get in touch with you.

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The World Cup is the biggest sporting event in the world. The 2002 championship game between Germany and Brazil was seen by 1.1 billion people in 213 countries. For comparison, the 2002 Super Bowl was viewed by roughly 100 million people world wide. The World Cup crown’s the champion of the world’s game…not America’s.

While the rest of the world is bursting at the seams with joy over these two weeks of competition, U.S. companies are stuck in a quandary of what to do. America doesn’t really care about soccer (football). Our national past-time is baseball and the biggest sporting event of the year is the Super Bowl. So what are American companies supposed to do?

To me it seems they have two options: try to ignore it, or try to go after the foreign-based population here in the U.S.  Some companies like Wal-Mart are doing just that by trying to focus on the Hispanic population here through special products, promotions and showing the games on plasma screen televisions in the store.  Other U.S. companies like Budweiser are sponsoring the World Cup to promote their brand to the rest of the world.

I think it’s an interesting scenario for U.S. companies to deal with every four years.

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In the wake the of the recent admition by Arizona Diamondbacks relief pitcher Jason Grimsley to federal agents that he used steroids, Major League Baseball stands at a pivotal point. MLB needs to step to the plate, throw down the gauntlet on this issue and say to the world that steroid use will not be tolerated.

Under the current collective bargaining agreement, there is a “three-strikes you’re out” policy for steroids. First offense, a 50-game suspension; second offense, 100 games; third offense, you’re banned for life.

Tough yes, but at this point, I think the fans of the game want this situation out of baseball. I think a first-time offender should be banned. Plain and simple - if you cheat, you’re done.

Essentially, this is a customer relations issue. The fans that pay for the tickets to MLB games, buy hats, jerseys, bats and pay $12 for a hot dog and a beer don’t want to see records that have stood for years broken by guys on steroids. Baseball’s image has been teetering on the edge since the strike of 1994. For years fans didn’t come back to the game. Then in the summer of 1998 Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa put on a show that made the country fall in love again with our “national pastime.”

But all that good could be thrown away if MLB doesn’t draw a line in the sand (I realize that both McGwire and Sosa were on steroids at the time). If MLB doesn’t, I think the fans will once again walk away, and this time the damage may be permanent.

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The Walt Disney Company is launching a new marketing campaign in China, in hopes of boosting consumer-based product sales and fighting piracy.

With each Disney product that a customer buys comes a hologram sticker that the consumer peals off and attaches to a card. The card contains a few questions that the customer answers and then mails back to Disney for a chance to win free Disney DVDs, television sets and trips to Hong Kong Disneyland. This serves two purposes: one, Disney knows that customer bought a legitimate Disney product and not a counterfeit one; two, Disney gets valuable information about its customers. Disney is also running advertisements explaining that only official Disney products carry the stickers and gives the consumer a chance to win the prizes.

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We’ve all seen the pictures of missing children on the back of milk cartons, or on flyers in the mail. If you watched MTV in the early 90’s you may remember a song by Soul Asylum called Runaway Train that featured the pictures of about 40 missing kids throughout the video.

Well now Flickr is being utilized as a means for the pictures of missing children to be shown. The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children has begun posting its pics of missing children to a Flickr group. How cool is that! This is such an important cause. And it’s great to see that a new social media tool is the vehicle being used for it. (Tip of the cap to Kevin Dugan for that.)

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Shel Holtz (a very good caricature to the left) is working on a new campaign for Click.TV. Click.TV is a new and very intriguing gadget that,

“puts an end to the pause/play nature of video. Producers create comments in the video that function like bookmarks so viewers can hop around a video as they wish. Second, on sites that integrate Click.TV code into their web pages, viewers can add their own comments, making online video a community experience.”

Sounds cool doesn’t it! People like our very own Erin Caldwell will have a field day with this thing.

To promote Click.TV, Shel has embarked on the always treacherous mission of doing a blogger relations campaign. I compare this to walking over half-inch think piece of ice above Niagara Falls. One crack and down you goooooo…

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