Dear CMOs, I appreciate that communication is often not the “shiny new object” in your arsenal. I also appreciate that the demands on your time mean you’re slurping down a protein-fortified yogurt concoction for lunch and the last thing you need is a PR agency review consuming time you don’t have. That’s okay. If you …more
In honor of Apple’s 50th anniversary, I decided to dust off my favorite Apple post. This proved to be a time-intensive exercise. I had no idea that I had written so much about Apple over the years. Ultimately, I landed on this post from 2018 that stepped back and looked at Apple’s use public relations …more
Axios published a story last week on “The Rise of Super Journalists.” There’s much the communications profession can glean from how journalists are applying AI to their work. I’ve highlighted the following passages from the Axios story (full Axios story at the end of the post) that have relevance to communications. Reporters with sourcing …more
All communication consultancies periodically encounter Procurement before contract sign-off and embarking on the fun stuff with a client. I am not a fan of Procurement. They always claim to be there to help the agency and make sure everyone — both the agency and the in-house PR department — enjoy a “happily ever after.” Yet, …more
That was the headline in a Wall Street Journal article back in 2012. The piece made the point that the word “innovation” (and its derivatives) was being used so much by companies to tout incremental improvement — or worse — that the word lost meaning. Raking through earnings calls from the previous 12 months, The Journal …more
Most companies want to be known as innovative. To bastardize the Wallace Simpson line, “you can never be too rich, too thin or too innovative.” The problem is those same companies often depend on adjectives to tout their breakthroughs. The Wall Street Journal challenged the use of the “i” word over ten years ago: “Businesses …more
We tend to correlate experience with stronger leadership. The common Steve Jobs narrative swings from impetuous youth to lessons learned. It stands to reason that people who have been tested when things didn’t go according to plan expand their leadership game. Yet, there’s a downside to experience when it comes to leadership. We can gain …more
On a charitable day, I would characterize most company videos as dreadful. Consider what happens when you go to an event, meet a new person and that person launches into a soliloquy of “me, me and in case you missed it, here’s more about me.” Right. You walk away. Why would a company video be …more
I moved to Silicon Valley during the summer of 1981. I had no clue that IBM would introduce the personal computer a few weeks later and the microprocessor was on its way to rock-star status. Rewinding the tape to the early days, I’ve created a name game that pulls from all aspects of the …more
