As pointed out in a recent MarketWatch article, the upcoming holiday shopping season may start earlier this year due to the overlap of the Thanksgiving and Hanukkah holidays, in hopes of extending retail spending with an unusually truncated period of only 26 days between Thanksgiving and Christmas.

In PR, we work hard to establish quality relationships between our clients and influential members of the media, and when done well this can lead to big gains in interview and comment requests for a variety of topics and subjects.

Companies that possess the right data on timely trends people want to know about can apply some meaningful analysis to generate insights which can provide the backbone for an effective media relations campaign.

The best PR results happen when organizations do good things - not just say good things. I was recently reminded of this fundamental rule of public relations by an intriguing Popular Mechanics article that published today, "A Billboard That Condenses Water From Humidity."