BPH MARCOM (click any image)

A defense contractor that longed to pivot its mission toward the benevolent. A state park-supporting foundation that aimed to personalize a land-purchase campaign. A food bank with full coffers tasked with keeping record donations flowing. A ski resort and casino seeking clever tag lines. Take a look at how I delivered for each of these clients.

Forbes. Editor & Publisher. TechCrunch. All have decried the death of the press release in recent years. One prominent study found that more than 1,700 press releases are issued each day in the U.S., with 98% being roundly ignored. Check out this example of a press release that garnered coverage in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal and on CBS Evening News. The secret sauce: Approaching the right reporters at the right time at the right media outlets ... but above all, the storytelling.

Speechwriting, done correctly, is the most intimate of all business communications. Assimilating the passions and voice of another is a sobering task, one that I will undertake only with clients that allow me to do a deep dive -- culling the skills of an investigative journalist -- into the issue(s) that form the underpinnings of the speech.

When a retiring North Face executive approached me about penning his retirement speech, I realized that my first task was getting beyond the stoic persona he had projected his entire career.