It’s that time of year again when I try to ration the Bud’s eggnog in miniscule allotments and curate the best of the posts published in 2017. Subjective factors — fresh or contrarian point of view, word play, amusement quotient, etc. — not popularity (visits), define “the best.” On a related topic, I’m pleased to …more
After eight years and 893 posts, I figure there’s enough data to highlight the most viewed posts of all time with a straight face. It’s fitting that half of the posts from the top 10 do not fall squarely under the storytelling umbrella. While storytelling in business communications serves as the basis of the blog, …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
Does PR Get Storytelling? As one way to answer the question, we randomly selected 50 news releases and applied three tests to them. Test #1 We analyzed the use of adjectives and adverbs, often a shortcut to genuine storytelling. If you say you’re great, no one believes you. . On the other hand, sharing a …more
Being the optimistic type, I would describe 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
Most of us who toil in business communications tilt toward words. We studied mass communications, journalism or English in college. When we went looking for jobs, our resumes touted writing expertise, not design. Yet, today’s world calls for equal emphasis on the visual side. I’ve always viewed my blog as a laboratory where I can …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
Look, I recognize it’s been a rugged 20 years or so for the publishing industry. Since Craigslist showed up on their doorstep and eviscerated classified advertising, media properties searching for new revenue streams seem to have a certain Ponce de León quality to them. Some would argue that in a world where people expect to …more
Back in 2015, I wrote that PR’s version of the Industrial Revolution had begun. I made the point that the upheaval in the business of communications was redefining our world in similar way that manufacturing did in the 18th century and captured 10 symbols as proof points. Now, two plus years later, let’s revisit those …more
