Disclaimer: This is Tom Murphy’s personal weblog. In an ideal world the opinions I express on this blog and the associated web pages would represent my own personal views and not those of my current, prior or future employers. Of course we know the world is never that simple and I’ll write on this blog with that in mind :).
- Murphy’s Law is my blog about Public Relations and technology.
- PR Opinions, is an archive of all my PR posts from March 2002 to August 2006.
Tom Murphy
I live and work in Washington state in the United States where I work as director of commercial communications for Microsoft Office including Office 365 and Yammer. A big part of my job is digging into how social technologies are finally changing how people work and enabling them to focus on getting the most important things done. It’s a really exciting and fast moving area. Before joining the Office team I was leading momentum communications for Windows, leading a team of smart, creative people focused on communications and storytelling for consumers, businesses and application developers. Prior to joining the Windows team I spent four years working on Corporate Citizenship communications at Microsoft Corporation. I moved to the United States in March 2009. Prior to that I spent four years running Microsoft’s local Citizenship and Public Relations programs in Ireland.
I started working in public relations in 1992 and I’ve had the great fortune to work in a range of great in-house and agency roles working with many of the world’s greatest technology brands such as Corel, Gateway, Intel and Microsoft, as well as a range of successful (and unsuccessful) independent start-ups. I’ve had fantastic opportunities to work around Europe, Middle East and Africa, Asia, North America and Latin America – and along the way worked on strategy, crisis communications, product marketing, initial public offerings and investor relations, analyst relations, and I’ve been working with social media since 2002. From a technology perspective I’ve worked with companies in practically every area of the technology business from launching microprocessors, to tape (gulp) storage, consulting services, desktop apps, cloud services, operating systems, enterprise applications, developer tools, mice, keyboards, PCs, laptops – you name it I’ve probably done it.
A word of warning, although I may offer it you should never take any career advice from me. When I left college in 1991 I didn’t know what I wanted to do, but I knew I didn’t want anything to do with:
- computers
- communications or PR
I’ve spent over 20 years doing both, so be forewarned.
I started blogging about public relations and other things in 2002. I am a passionate advocate of the importance of great communications and the positive impact of social media. However, I am a pragmatist and I eschew the hyperbole you often find about social media. I believe that great PR starts with your business objectives and your strategy. Social media is no different. Understand your business and your audience – avoid the hype!
If I blog about a Microsoft product or service it will be tagged with He would say that – that’s my formal disclosure tag.
I’m married to the long-suffering Sorcha and we have the world’s best son, Cillian and the world’s best daughter, Anna.
If you want to get in contact:
E-mail: tpemurphy -AT- hotmail.com
Mobile: +1-425-614-614-6
MSN IM: tpemurphy -AT- hotmail.com
Twitter: @tpemurphy
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/tpemurphy
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/tpemurphy
Comment policy: Comments on any of these blogs are moderated. Any comments I deem inappropriate for this blog will be not be posted. Where those comments are not spam, I will flag that decision with the person who submitted the post. Comments on the PR Opinions blog are closed.
Murphy's Law 