Richard,
Thank you for your praise for my post. Cornell does have a Communication Arts Department and there is a Business School that teaches Marketing. I am not sure how closely the people at Paracelsian work with those at Cornell. They are located in a facility a couple of miles away from the main Campus. Cornell is one of the biggest stockholders in Paracelsian and Dr. Babish was a professor at Cornell before he went on an indefinite leave of absence to form the company. I'm not saying there is no contact between Paracelsian and Cornell. I'm just saying that I don't know how involved the cooperation is between Paracelsian and University scientists and business professors. I do know that a couple of years ago a business professor named David BenDaniels was on their Board of Directors, but he is no longer a member of the board.
While I think the publicity could be better handled, I'm not sure I would want to contract this out to students. I would not want publicity for my company handled by someone without experience. This is especially true for a company like Paracelsian. The worst thing that could happen is that some overly confident student might put out a claim that could not be justified scientifically, possibly raising false hopes. Law suits for fraud can get started this way. Ideally, whoever is responsible for publicity should have a background that enables them to understand the science, the skills to write an article that will grab the average layman's interest and explain the significance of a new development in a meaningful way, and the knowledge of various media that will enable them to know the best manner to reach a target audience. This is a job for professionals, people who have proven track records. I don't know who would be best suited for this job, but for what it's worth Paracelsian has switched PR firms two or three times in this past couple of years or so.
As far as calling Art Koch, I'm not sure how to advise you. I only spoke to him for a few minutes at the shareholder's meeting, so I don't know him very well. I've always been reluctant to call officers of the company because I'd rather have them spend their time building the company than have them on the phone with me. The do not have a big staff so their time is valuable. On the other hand, you might want to give him the URL of this forum and have him look over the postings of the last few days. I'm just guessing, but I bet they'd be surprised to learn that a reaction to their most recent press release was to discourage a previously bullish investor (Richard M.), causing him to unload some stock and contributing to a minor decline in price. I bet that was not the intended result of the press release.
Robin Messing |
