If the intended audience doesn’t trust the format of the ad, the actual content has no chance. We know that the rise of digital consumption has brought advertising along for the ride. In fact, projections call for the digital ad spend to surpass TV advertising dollars for the first time this year. So back to …more
It’s only a matter of time. Once President Trump tires of telling us how many jobs he’s kept in America and discovers the difficulty in building a wall that stretches 1,000 miles, he’s going to take shots at China. Past behavior suggests that these shots will come in a different forms. He will claim that …more
As we increasingly embrace visual storytelling for our clients, we’re applying the same mentality to our own communications. The latest example comes in the form of our Chinese New Year greeting designed by Cindy Li in our Hong Kong office. Since investing in an in-house design function over five years ago, we’ve come a long …more
The Columbia Journalism Review published an open letter to President Trump earlier this week before the official inauguration which of course takes place later today.We already know what Trump thinks of journalists. Let’s put it this way. His campaign rhetoric never included the slogan, “Make journalism great again.” And we now know what journalists think …more
Today we publicly announced that the country of France is now a client. France’s international economic development agency, Business France, selected us to promote the country’s tech industry (Le French Tech initiative) in the U.S. and Asia. I rarely use the blog as a forum to address Agency business, but I’m making an exception today. …more
Today’s celebration of Martin Luther King has me thinking about persuasive language, specifically his “I Have a Dream” speech (video below) and President’s farewell address last week. Let’s step back for a moment and consider the meaning of “persuasive language.” This doesn’t mean winning over 100 percent of the target audience. There will be …more
I don’t smoke. I rarely drink more than two Old Fashioneds at a sitting. If I have a weakness, it’s called WG Yogurt. Their root beer yogurt deserves a Michelin star — “creamy with hints of cherry tree bark.” What does this have to do with business writing? During my last stop at WG Yogurt, …more
Hyperbole wrecks a news release. Words like “breakthrough” and “revolutionary” in a new release essentially say to the journalist, “Stop reading. This announcement is nothing more than corporate drivel with yet another claim of changing the world.” Yet, an exception occurred ten years ago when Apple distributed the news release with the Spartan headline, “Apple …more
You can’t make this stuff up. Raking through my storytelling and PR posts, I’ve curated a list of seven “life is stranger than fiction” moments. 1. Media Squeeze — and Watermelon Explosion — Described by the NY Times Presents an Opportunity for PR BuzzFeed proved what everyone has always believed in theory. If you stretch …more
