One of the best parts of a 12-hour overseas flight is catching up on the stack of magazines that have accumulated on my night stand. The March 28 issue of Businessweek carried the story, “Li Huabo, Corrupt Chinese Bureaucrat or Fall Guy?” It’s the type of business storytelling that I suspect we’ll be reading more …more
After talking at the PR Newswire event on visual storytelling, it occurred to me that I missed the obvious. People gravitate to the PR profession for two reasons, they like to write or they like to interact with others. In either case, the visual part of communications is an afterthought at best. They perceive areas …more
It wasn’t that long ago that poaching a journalist to write a company blog was considered avant-garde. Now that most major brands have figured out the potential power of owned media, the real experimentation begins. This dynamic isn’t lost on publishers still in search of the killer revenue stream. If companies harbor illusions of cultivating …more
I met a colleague, Jane Wang, for a cup of coffee at Roy’s last week. Once and for all, she puts an end to the great debate of what’s more valuable in media relations, a flush Rolodex or great content (storytelling). Before going further, it occurred to me that the under-40 crowd might not have …more
Jack and Jill. Romeo and Juliet. Shrek and Fiona. The news release and storytelling. Not exactly a stanine buster figuring out which one doesn’t fit. Don’t blame PR Newswire. Their services are merely the delivery vehicle corporations use to fling their dull announcements – OK, I’m being kind – to the masses. To combat …more
You’re probably thinking, “What does this headline have to do with the intersection of storytelling, PR and social media?” Bear with me as I share the context – While I don’t consider myself political much less an activist, the behavior from the NRA and its recent communications troubled me. How can any reasonable person or …more
It seems every PR person in America has weighed in on the NRA’s press conference last month. No need to rehash this ground with another “What the NRA should have done is …” Instead, I’ve extrapolated from information in the public domain and pieced together how I think the dialogue went down between the NRA’s …more
Do you remember the controversy when the book “Emotional Intelligence” by Daniel Goleman came out?” The idea that variables other than pure intellectual horsepower could have the same or even more impact on one’s success triggered quite a dialogue. So when Goleman recently penned a post on the relationship of storytelling to leadership, I paid …more
There’s a certain “cycle of life” in business. Companies are born, struggle, grow … and grow some more. Then the decline sets in, which typically culminates with the company dying, merging or being acquired. This keeps the investment bankers busy, befitting the thousands of transactions that take place each year. This also means thousands of …more
