Human beings gravitate to “train wrecks.” How else can you explain the popularity of “Breaking Bad”? Or people flocking to watch “Shrek”? Even though advertising has limited real estate — often 60 seconds of video or one static print page — the discipline finds a way to set the stage, surface the “bad stuff” …more
How do you interview a celebrity who has passed away? The San Francisco Giants and star pitcher in his day Tim Lincecum shows the way. I’ve always admired the marketing efforts from the San Francisco Giants acknowledging that some might miss the mark. If you live in the Bay Area and follow the Giants, you’ll …more
Between Huawei’s reputation, 1,000 posts, our Asia team crushing it, taking things personally and Frank Bruni’s acerbic wit, the first half of the best posts in 2019 covered a lot of ground. Here comes the second half. . . 6) Thought Leadership versus Thought Followship The communications industry has wakened to …more
You can throw out many adjectives to describe 2019. Dull won’t be one of them. Writing about the intersection of communications, journalism and branding, a never-ending stream of fodder for potential posts flew by my window every day. I wish I had more time to dig and explore. The following captures the first half …more
The Grab Bag post returns for a second 2019 installment. Again, the story lines in these posts can’t quite shape stand-alone posts. Yet, I hate to see a shard of a story go to waste. . TIME Cover Photo Depicts a Stately President Trump Take a gander at the cover of TIME Magazine August …more
Game 5 of the NBA finals takes place tonight. Let’s forget for a minute that Kawhi Leonard has the strength of Paul Bunyan and Andre Iguodala misplaced his jump shot since hitting that dagger in the Warrior’s Game 2 win. There are lessons to be had from the communications and branding perspectives. And I’m not …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’ve been collecting potential fodder for a grab bag post for over five months. Now, I have too many possibilities. Here come three vignettes pulled out of the hat. How The Economist Symbolizes Global As business storytelling goes, The Economist lands in my top five. This is a publication that adores the back …more
Sometimes not. Twitter is testing the concept of longer tweets, allowing a chosen few to access up to 280 characters. A blog post from a Twitter product manager explained the radical thinking: “We want every person around the world to easily express themselves on Twitter, so we’re doing something new: we’re going to try out …more
