I'm not sure which of the nine circles of hell I was in the week before ad:tech San Francisco 2008, but it's the level where PR people spam bloggers with irrelevant e-mail pitches.

After the fifth call we received this year asking about "best practices" for structuring corporate communications functions, I knew something was up.

While the pundits debate the current state of the economy and whether it fits the formal definition of a recession, we continue to see high gas prices, consumer spending is sluggish, the dollar is weak, healthcare costs are skyrocketing, and the housing crisis is affecting everyone from Bear Stearns to the average citizen.

If I could hire any two people in the world to join my PR consultancy, who would they be?

Profound changes in the way that advocacy groups interact with mainstream media outlets is on the horizon, yet most organizations have not restructured to take advantage of this new frontier.

Establishing a consistent and clear communications platform for a professional services firm can be elusive.

Mothers are known as problem-solvers - whether it's searching for a recipe for a quick meal or a way to stop the kids from fighting. A certain kind of mom, however, is in a constant state of searching. Instinctively, she seeks out answers for herself, her family, and others. She is the "Googling mom."

Over the past several months, headlines all over the world have alerted us to the recessionary fallout from the sub-prime, liquidity, and credit crises; and the housing bubble. Many believe that all of the above created a perfect storm that the Federal Reserve can tame.

I spent much of the summer and fall of 2007 assembling my first electronic book on social-media strategy, There Is No Secret Sauce.

Last fall, Wired editor-in-chief Chris Anderson posted an entry on his well-read blog, "The Long Tail," that informed the PR industry he was fed up with e-mail pitches deemed blatantly misdirected, poorly researched, or thinly veiled spam. In his frustration, Anderson publicized the e-mail addresses he felt associated with these poor pitches.