By Frank Zhang, DGM Hoffman China Sitting on the train from Shanghai to Wenzhou, I had time to contemplate a simple question: What were students from Wenzhou-Kean University, a Chinese-American jointly established higher education institution, expecting to hear from an international communications consultancy? I arrived at the venue 30 minutes early. It turns out …more
By Stephanie Yang, Account Director, Hoffman Taiwan On a burning hot summer day, Hoffman Taiwan held a housewarming party at our new office — which happens to have one of the best views of Taipei. The photo above, fit for a postcard, was taken from our office on the 30th floor during …more
By Chris Owen, UK Director After working on the book for over 34 years (we have people in this office who haven’t been alive this long), Christopher Booker published Seven Basic Plots in 2004. It’s a seminal piece of work; taking a psychological and analytical approach to literature, it identified seven core themes to which …more
By Alannah McDermott, Intern Imagine yourself sitting at a table, staring down at a pile of puzzle pieces. With determination and a hint of intimidation, you push aside the pile and place one small piece in front of you. This is where you’ll begin. As you reach for another piece, you notice it’s …more
I asked Silicon Valley veteran Dave Kellogg for his OK to republish this post. I met Dave some 10 years ago when he was CEO of MarkLogic. Here was a CEO who not only understood PR but seemed to enjoy it. Unfortunately, his internal communications team didn’t command the same understanding, and our client relationship …more
By Matt Burrows, Senior Account Executive At first glance, dentistry might seem like the last profession you should address to get thoughts on storytelling, with most conversations with your dentist consisting of them asking questions while your mouth is open to the world. So when Dan Tynan — journalist, communications writer and Thought Follower …more
By Elisa Zallio, Junior Account Executive, Hoffman Europe (London) I’d like to tell you about Emilio Salgari. He is a barely known, Italian writer from the late 19th century; he wrote adventure stories for periodic magazines, usually about fallen noblemen turned pirates to take revenge on their enemies — and, obviously, they’d fall in …more
The news release was born on Oct. 28, 1906. Fast forwarding to 2015, organizations distributed roughly 762,000 news releases on wire services. Our back-of-the-envelope math figures 30 hours went into each news release at $200 per hour. The punch line — Organizations spent around $4.5B on the creation of news release back in 2015, a …more
By Mandy Heiser, Account Executive Let’s take a look at the top Google results for the recommended search “china and us”: What about “us and china”? Let’s pull out a few phrases: “high-stakes trade”, “far apart”, “fail to reach agreement” “fighting for global power” … The story these search results …more
