Our Views

After an incredibly hot summer, we’re excited to welcome lovely New England fall at Next Step Communications, but sad to say goodbye to our summer intern, Amanda. Before heading off to Australia for her fall semester, Amanda reflected on her time at Next Step Communications as our PR intern, and the lessons she learned while working with us.

Hello, Kate O’Kelly-Lynch! College: Boston College Major: Economics Grad Year: 2017 Hometown: Dublin, Ireland Hobbies: Spin classes, Spotify & Soundcloud, Traveling Describe yourself in three words: Diligent. Inquisitive. Ambitious. What are you most excited about...

Over the past few months there have been many conversations about the role of the annual physical for a typical, healthy adult who isn’t experiencing any kind of ‘urgent’ symptoms. Certainly these annual visits aren’t doing any harm (beyond the economic costs for...

Since founding NSC I’ve learned how much heart and effort is needed to put into a company in order to be successful. And that doesn’t even include the work. A few weeks ago we had an office situation – the toilet seat was broken and there was some serious ‘sliding’...

How is this possible? Who is in charge of the universal sniff test? Who thought this was holiday chic? I’m far from PC, and obviously not fashionable, but I don’t even get the ad. As a ‘communications business owner’ I often stress to my team exercise craft excellence...

Last week I had the privilege of returning to UMASS and participate in a Communication department Alumni Board meeting. I wasn’t given the ‘secret handshake’ but seems that I’ll be formally invited to join later this fall. As part of my visit, I had a great time...

On Friday the team got into the Halloween spirit for our first pumpkin carving competition! It's one of my favorite traditions, but my carving skills have rarely exceeded three triangles and a gap tooth smile, so I was given the very tough job of judge. It was a tough...

Over the past few weeks our family has been put in the care continuum – with our daughter developing an infection post surgery to fix a broken arm. Thankfully we continue to be on the mend, but from someone who considers himself ‘somewhat knowledgeable’ about the...

This week Intel was faced with an interesting PR challenge when it announced the decision to end a 20-year relationship with the Science Talent Search program – the nation’s oldest science fair for high school students. Sure, at first blush it might look like abandon...

We should all give CVS a standing ovation for its decision to stop selling cigarettes. However, today’s news that CVS is helping reduce smoking in the US is a ‘tough pill to swallow’. Should anyone be surprised this research was lead by CVS’ Health Research Institute...

The end of summer means saying goodbye to the heat (actually not too sad about that one after this week!), sand between your toes, white pants and at the Next Step office, our amazing intern Sarah Strangie. Before heading back to Amherst and her favorite slice of...

Just a year ago, you couldn’t turn on the news without hearing about Ebola. As doctors and nurses were returning from West Africa after providing compassionate care to those in suffering, Ebola was be labeled as the pandemic that was going to take down the US...

For years I’ve struggled to grasp the senseless popularity of a family based in Southern California that manipulates the weekly tabloid silly sheets for greater marketing pull. My struggle is that people care and they are winning! Yesterday when news broke that the...

Today’s Wall Street Journal wrote about the current ‘health’ of both the Social Security and Medicare programs. As most of us in our 40s realize, what we are paying into the government retirement fund for our older neighbors certainly won’t be there when we could use...

Nigel's Checklist Start a company (hello, Next Step Communications!) Partner with a few companies who share a passion for improving healthcare Roll up my sleeves and dig into the work Identify, interview and hire a team of professionals who share an interest and...

There’s no denying there is power in social media – 70% of the U.S. population has at least one social networking profile and the number of worldwide users is expected to grow from 2.1 billion last year to 2.5 billion by 2018. But as a business, weeding through the...