How Bezos’ Long-Term Vision Has Faltered on PR

Many years ago, a former executive at Apple told me that the company really only had one public relations person: Steve Jobs. That was, of course, an exaggeration since the company had a sizable PR department, but the statement captured the reality of communications at Apple, which is that Jobs micromanaged any PR that mattered.

The subject of founder CEOs and their influence on PR has been on my mind recently because of the now widely covered Twitter battle over the past 10 days between Amazon and Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders and other political figures. Recode reported—and I’ve heard independently—that Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos personally pushed his lieutenants to publicly counter Amazon’s critics much more aggressively as a unionization effort heated up at an Amazon warehouse in Alabama.