I came across an amazing example of viral marketing/brand promotion recently. It comes from Disney. This Disney campaign is very clever. It places the viewer inside of its theme park and personalizes the experience by inserting the person’s name on attractions and all kinds of signs. It’s the kind of subtle, engage-the-user, brand promotion campaign you would expect from Disney.

Today we are announcing one of the more significant personnel changes in the communications industry. Jim Lake, who currently heads the U.S. Public Affairs practice for Burson-Marsteller, is joining our firm as partner and President. We are adding one of the most experienced and talented people on the market to our growing firm at a time we are looking to broaden awareness of the company as an elite boutique communications agency.

Anyone wondering about the perils of an always-on, know-everything digital world can look no further than the premature publication of Apple CEO Steve Jobs’ obituary by venerable newswire, Bloomberg. Whoops!

This week marks the official one year anniversary of our firm’s founding. It has certainly been a journey going from business plan to where we are today: established clientele that include leading brands and companies with front-page challenges.

At first glance, Barack Obama’s ascent to presumptive Democratic nominee would seem the result of a conflagration of complex cultural forces, powerful fundraising and a gift for gab. According to Karl Rove, it’s much simpler than that.

I’m in Berlin right now, a city that for most of my lifetime has personified all things cutting edge, particularly regarding architecture and design. I came to here to speak at a conference on political communications and the 2008 U.S. presidential elections, hosted by a leading German think tank. I also had the opportunity to tour the Reichstag–the seat of German parliamentary government–and meet several high-level female members of parliament to discuss involving more German women in the political process.

This week, our firm launched a new web destination for all things politics and policy in Latin America. The debut of Vision Americas is exciting for us as it introduces a very unusual approach to a policy site: instead of publishing articles, it features videos. The content has pedigree too, coming from former Presidents of South and Central American countries, Ambassadors and Members of Congress.

It seems the world is back on hunger. Wasn’t it back in the early 1980’s when this was the issue du jour? Now, for very different reasons, the price of food is soaring and many in poor countries may starve again.

My friend, Jim Pinkerton, passed along a NYT article last week about a Chinese student at Duke who got mixed up in a life-threatening Internet frenzy. A freshman confounded by the pro-Tibet/pro-China demonstrations on her campus, she decided to play George Mitchell and broker an accord between the two sides.

I already know the answer to that question, nevertheless here we are. This inaugural posting is intended to explain how we might be different and offer those who scour the net for gossip, almost-news and opinion, some compelling banter.