Every PR agency with a pulse touts its storytelling chops. You half expect carnival barkers shouting, “Step into our tent, and we’ll show you how to tap the magic powers of storytelling to connect with the outside world, eat canapes at Davos and pal around with Anderson Cooper.” Yet, the vast majority of content developed …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
After conducting our storytelling workshop over the years, a certain theme has emerged. By the close of the workshop, participants buy into the concepts. They then jump back into their jobs with renewed determination to communicate with conversational language and a show-don’t-tell attitude only to run into that visible force called stakeholder approval. We continually …more
As part of celebrating the Agency’s 30-year anniversary later this year, I will periodically play the nostalgia card in the blog. Such is the case today. In the course of digging through old client files, I came across the news release from our first press conference in New York City for client Meridian Data. Before …more
It’s easy to pile on United. More than the mistakes, it’s the type of mistakes, lacking that quality known as common sense. I’ve certainly taken my shots at United over the years with posts ranging from “The Worst Customer Service Narrative in the History of Branding” to the recent “United Enters Third Stage of a …more
I enjoy studying journalism. When it comes to business communications, journalists are the masters at storytelling. Highlighting this point, I came across the following from a New York Times review on the new Richard Nixon biography last week: “The similarities between Nixon and Trump leap off the page like crickets.There is, first and most superficially, …more
Since conducting our first storytelling workshop in 2011, the honing of the material has been a never-ending process. To this point, we’ve considered the methodology as our intellectual property. It was part of how we differentiated the Agency, an approach to developing content that recognized that given a choice between dull or interesting, human beings will gravitate …more
Today’s celebration of Martin Luther King has me thinking about persuasive language, specifically his “I Have a Dream” speech (video below) and President’s farewell address last week. Let’s step back for a moment and consider the meaning of “persuasive language.” This doesn’t mean winning over 100 percent of the target audience. There will be …more
I don’t smoke. I rarely drink more than two Old Fashioneds at a sitting. If I have a weakness, it’s called WG Yogurt. Their root beer yogurt deserves a Michelin star — “creamy with hints of cherry tree bark.” What does this have to do with business writing? During my last stop at WG Yogurt, …more
