There’s a certain “cycle of life” in business. Companies are born, struggle, grow … and grow some more. Then the decline sets in, which typically culminates with the company dying, merging or being acquired. This keeps the investment bankers busy, befitting the thousands of transactions that take place each year. This also means thousands of …more
The largest semiconductor in the world runs a story depicting tattoos with “Intel” as part of the deisgn. Caterpillar produces a video about the role of their tractors in uniting the country of Madagascar. Visual storytelling can be an effective means to show a company’s humanity to the outside world. It’s tough for B2B companies …more
I am a big fan of The New York Times Dining section. Donut drama. Importing Mom instead of the pasta. Hunting for “treasures” in restaurant laundry. And the list goes on. The NYT Dining journalists know how to shape story lines beyond the – “chef showed restraint, allowing the flavor of the fresh [fill in …more
It always feels like a tussle between Procurement and the PR agency. The Council of PR Firms offers a paper called, “Procurement Professionals Q&A: Advancing the Working Relationship with Public Relations Firms” which proposes the money side be handled as thus: With regard to the financial negotiation, there should be a short term and longer …more
In preparing for a storytelling workshop in Asia last week, I spoke with six different journalists from blue-chip properties like Reuters and The Next Web. I asked a simple question – How do you prepare for an executive interview? While each journalist has formulated his or her own approach to due diligence, two common denominators …more
We’ve all done it. We sandwich the most vanilla verb with a noun or two and gushing adjectives and end up with an executive quote that communicates absolutely nothing. It’s such a waste, particularly in today’s media environment in which journalists are moving so quickly they increasingly need a quick way to plug in a …more
Every PR agency claims social media expertise. As the “train wrecks” demonstrate, it’s not always true. With this in mind, Sociagility has rated how global PR agencies perform in applying social media to themselves for the second consecutive year. To put science behind the quest, Sociagility uses what it calls the PRINTTM methodology to rank …more
Yes. But before diving into the topic at hand, it’s worth a visit to your Google Analytics. This doesn’t require a lengthy analysis. Click on the site content and pull up the pages with the most views. If you’re a B2B play, it’s likely that your contact page is a top producer of pageviews. It …more
This post has nothing to do with storytelling techniques. No pithy remarks about a Malcolm Gladwell essay. Nor does it offer a fresh take on public relations or social media or how to appease the search engine gods. The post has everything to do with communications. Specifically, it touches on the most basic form of …more
