Going back to the Trump administration, TikTok has been in the government’s cross hairs for data privacy issues. The government views user data saved outside the U.S. as a security risk. Rather than distribute a news release or talk to journalists on recent actions to address the issue, TikTok has controlled the narrative by issuing …more
July 10, 2008 marks the day I published the first post on Ishmael’s Corner (below). Dusting off the post, I assumed my first attempt would come across as pompous or worse. Actually, it’s OK. Not great. Not a Pulitzer Price winner. But it does a decent job in explaining the blog’s aspirations. Keep in …more
What does a shovel have to do with storytelling? Everything. Many of our clients come from the B2B tech world where hearts race from inventing a way to increase the spin-torque efficiency of a memory device. While these types of stories hold great importance to the people who use a given technology, they typically aren’t …more
The battle between New England and Los Angeles in the 2019 Super Bowl didn’t exactly turn out to be a humdinger (old-school adjective fits the style of play). I found the ads to be a letdown as well. Maybe it was an unrealistic expectation, but I was hoping to watch 60 seconds of storytelling that …more
Business communicators can learn from novelists and their storytelling techniques. I’ve always been partial to the Kurt Vonnegut advice: “Be a sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them – in order that the reader may see what they are made of.” It’s never easy for a …more
That’s the question posed by friend and colleague Peter Lewis after asking him to share his perspective on the state of storytelling to mark my blog hitting the big one-oh. Before jumping into the answer, a few back stories (naturally). I’ve known Pete for some time, going back to his days laying the groundwork for …more
Today marks the day, the 10-year anniversary of Ishmael’s Corner. In the spirit of taking a step back, I reached out to a mix of individuals I respect for their perspectives on that elixir for communications we call storytelling. The backgrounds vary from journalists to storytelling gurus to authors and everything in between. As …more
Communication professionals can learn a ton about storytelling from our advertising brothers. When you’re shelling out $4 million and change to create a single ad, it has a way of tuning one’s senses, a dynamic that typically doesn’t exist when PR crafts a pitch or writes a news release. With this in mind, I wanted …more
I shared half of my top posts for the first half of 2017 last week. Here’s the second half, starting with the star of today’s reality TV shows, President Trump. . . 6. Trump’s Job Description for Press Secretary: Make Communications Great Again Given how many times President Trump has thrown Sean Spicer under the bus, …more
