The countdown continues. On Monday, I published the first half of the best posts of 2017. The rest of the list follows. 6. Trump’s Job Description for Press Secretary: Make Communications Great Again Given President Trump’s penchant for throwing Sean Spicer under the bus during his tenure as press secretary, I took the …more
It’s that time of year again when I try to ration the Bud’s eggnog in miniscule allotments and curate the best of the posts published in 2017. Subjective factors — fresh or contrarian point of view, word play, amusement quotient, etc. — not popularity (visits), define “the best.” On a related topic, I’m pleased to …more
I continue to come across shards of content that amuse, surprise or teach. As individual content, each one doesn’t necessarily frame a post. Which is why I invented the grab-bag post. Coming at you … Japanese Train Apologizes for Departing 20 Seconds Early That’s not a typo in the headline. . A Tokyo …more
After the press event to launch our office in Jakarta last month, a journalist from one of the local publications interviewed me. Here’s an excerpt from that interview. Q What is interesting about the Indonesia market that makes Hoffman want to open a branch in Indonesia? A As one of the smaller global …more
I wrote a post a few weeks ago about how even smart people often fail at discerning poor quality information from the good stuff. It turns out that my cousin, Todd Quinn, a business and economics librarian at the University of New Mexico, deals with this issue every day and even teaches classes to help …more
After eight years and 893 posts, I figure there’s enough data to highlight the most viewed posts of all time with a straight face. It’s fitting that half of the posts from the top 10 do not fall squarely under the storytelling umbrella. While storytelling in business communications serves as the basis of the blog, …more
By Karuna Tsang, Associate Account Director “Welcome to San Francisco. The local time is 10:45 p.m. …” announced the captain. Finally, after a 12-hour flight, I arrived in the United States. It had been a while since I visited the U.S., and what excited me the most was that I would be working in …more
It doesn’t matter whether you sell pizza, cars or solid state memory chips, every company grapples with the question: why should the customer buy me over competitors? Few companies try to compete on price, and even those that do are careful in how they play the low-price card. The next time you’re at Costco or …more
I have discussed the concept of a “word visual” in which the words handle the heavy lifting for an image that doesn’t require deep design expertise. For PR pros who typically major in mass communications, journalism or English, the “word visual’ establishes a path to visual storytelling that’s particularly useful for social channels. One of …more
