I rarely post recommendations encouraging you to go check out a business writer. And by rarely I mean never. Today I’m making an exception, though, because it turns out that one of my favorites, MediaPost’s Bob Garfield, hates those motherfucking Jane Seymour Kay Jewelers ads as bad as I do. Awww. Every kitsch begins with Kay. But wait. Open your heart?
Read moreWhat would happen if you put Yogi Berra in charge of making infographics? We’ve written about the problems with infographics before, but this one takes the cake. There’s a fun one from Ethos3 up at SlideShare.net addressing the importance of nonverbal communication when making presentations. It’s generally pretty helpful, but it also provides us with a lesson in the value of not overreaching. See
Read moreYes, PowerPoint sucks. Here’s why, plus some suggestions about how to fix the problem. Imagine a widely used and expensive prescription drug that promised to make us beautiful but didn’t. Instead the drug had frequent, serious side effects: It induced stupidity, turned everyone into bores, wasted time, and degraded the quality and credibility of communication. These side effects would rightly
Read moreThis is hysterical.
Read moreIn case you haven’t been tracking along, the folks at Maker’s Mark (which is owned by Beam, Inc.), faced with more demand than they could meet, recently announced that they’d be lowering their alcohol by volume (ABV) from 90 proof to 84 proof. You won’t even notice, they assured us. The backlash was swift and loud. Makers Mark customers pitched
Read moreCorporate sponsorship is important for a great many of America’s non-profits, and that’s certainly true of the Susan G. Komen Foundation. Of course, any time you strike an alliance with another entity, you can’t help assuming some of their risk. Your partner jumps the tracks, all of a sudden people are looking at you even though you didn’t do anything
Read morePart one of two… I work in the world of marketing and corporate communications, and my track record of business-related posts (here and at my biz site, Black Dog Strategic) probably demonstrates how seriously I take ethical concerns. For instance, not long ago I made clear that I think understanding the truth of a bad news story aimed at a
Read moreNews Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch has issued a public apology for the News of the World scandal, which appears in several British national newspapers this weekend. The final text is available here. For those unfamiliar with the exciting world of public relations, these kinds of official statements often go through a rigorous process of draft, revision, review, more revision, show
Read moreOkay, this is brilliant. I never heard of it until this morning and now I learn that there’s apparently a whole movement afoot, with a project and everything.
Read moreThis one is actually fun. And pretty damned cynical about the world of business and advertising, to boot.
Read moreWhom do we trust when we’re looking for information? Increasingly, research shows that Americans are more likely trust friends, peers and word-of-mouth over “experts.” For instance: A 2007 eMarketer survey of the most trusted sources of information for US consumers was topped by “friends, family and acquaintances” and “strangers with experience.” These sources outranked “teachers” and “newspapers and magazines.” A
Read moreEarlier today I offered some comments on the trending controversy surrounding Dillard’s and its involvement in an upcoming Houston event staged by anti-abortion advocate Heroic Media. That article noted some parallels with last year’s dust-up involving Target and Tom Emmer, a social reactionary running for Minnesota governor. My friend and colleague, Sara Robinson, turns out to be a devoted Dillard’s
Read moreThe University of Colorado recently announced that it “will be phasing out its hodgepodge of logos, replacing them with a standard CU symbol.” University spokesman Ken McConnellogue says that “It’s important for the University of Colorado to be consistent and coordinated with its messages and images. In a world where people are bombarded by images and messages, we can’t afford
Read moreA Gallup poll released in August indicated that the advertising and PR industries aren’t viewed very favorably by the American public. One-third of respondents voiced a positive view of the advertising/pr industry (6 percent “very,” 27 percent “somewhat”). Twenty-seven percent were “neutral.” Twenty-five percent expressed a “somewhat negative view,” while 11 percent were “very negative.” (The rest didn’t venture an
Read moreThis is the future – people, translated as data. – Bryce, Network 23 The future has always interested me, even when it scares me to death. I wrote a doctoral dissertation that spent a good deal of time examining our culture’s ideologies of technology and development, for instance (and built some discussion of William Gibson and cyberpunk into the mix).
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lullaby pit 