The Weber Shandwick PR firm created "Slam the Can for Dare to Care," a basketball-themed food drive designed to put a charitable face on the Brown & Williamson tobacco company. "The 16 B&W employees donating the largest number of canned goods during the two-and-a-half week collection period participated in a series of wacky basketball contests at a downtown shopping mall, with the winner receiving two tickets to the NCAA championship games," Shandwick stated in The Holmes Report, a PR industry trade publication. Shandwick declared the program an "unqualified success. ...

This CNN interview with Bob Druckenmiller, CEO of the Porter Novelli PR firm, gives his thoughts on PR aspects of the Ford/Firestone tire fiasco. "It could be a public relations firm's dream. I mean, you've got a chance to go in and be a hero, and there's very little downside," observed the CNN interviewer. Druckenmiller replied: "True. I think any crisis is an opportunity, both for a public relations firm and for a company to be a hero in terms of how they react to it."

While the International Whaling Commission held its annual meeting in London, PR Week asked British public relations practitioners how they would market whale meat. Two of the four respondents said that marketing whale meat is not an option given the already existing moratorium on whaling and the public opinion supporting it.