Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Thursday, February 25, 2010
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
Monday, February 22, 2010
Monday, February 15, 2010
Friday, February 5, 2010
Thursday, February 4, 2010
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
Tuesday, December 22, 2009
Monday, December 14, 2009
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
Monday, November 23, 2009
Luke Wilson you better have gambling debts to pay , or else you aren't cool anymore.
AT&T Swings Back At Verizon Wireless, Misses (via brandchannel)
AT&T Swings Back At Verizon Wireless, Misses (via brandchannel)
Next up is the Luke Wilson Lifetime Movie of the week.
AT&T Swings Back At Verizon Wireless, Misses (via brandchannel)
Next up is the Luke Wilson Lifetime Movie of the week.
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Management reading: Bursting the branding bubble | The Economist
Management reading: Bursting the branding bubble | The Economist
Shared via AddThis
The most important part of the book:
Mr Baskin does not simply rail, but redefines branding. “For branding to mean something, it has to do something.” In other words, branding must be generated directly by the experience of the user. At a basic level, straplines such as Nike's “Just do it” and Las Vegas’s “What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas” work, he says, because they play to feelings that are related to how a product might be used. His notion of branding goes much further, taking in, for example, the way an airline deals with its stranded passengers. The amalgamation of all such company-wide actions emerge to create a brand, he argues.
The new reality of branding requires the visceral feelings and experience more than straight recall of names.
Shared via AddThis
The most important part of the book:
Mr Baskin does not simply rail, but redefines branding. “For branding to mean something, it has to do something.” In other words, branding must be generated directly by the experience of the user. At a basic level, straplines such as Nike's “Just do it” and Las Vegas’s “What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas” work, he says, because they play to feelings that are related to how a product might be used. His notion of branding goes much further, taking in, for example, the way an airline deals with its stranded passengers. The amalgamation of all such company-wide actions emerge to create a brand, he argues.
The new reality of branding requires the visceral feelings and experience more than straight recall of names.
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
How to explain social media to your boss and your bosses' boss.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIFYPQjYhv8
Wednesday, August 5, 2009
Communications Planning in Four Quuestions or Less
Posted On: 5/21/2009
This article is terrific for the current economy, if you can't answer these about anything you are working on, go home. Seriously, every communications campaign should start with the answers to these four questions. It might not make for flashy presentations but it will help you initiatives to stay focused and be successful. In the end it is important to be about concise communications that are clearly understood by your intended audience.
The four questions communicators should ask themselves
By Jim Ylisela
jimy@ragan.com
Use these questions to help you cut through the crap and improve your communication program
Simple is not dumb. And clear does not mean basic.
What’s the biggest problem facing communications today? Fear, you say? Yes, that’s certainly holding back a lot of organizations.
Incompetence? Sure, there’s plenty of that going around.
What about this: The overwhelming desire, among too many executives and even some communicators, to make things more complicated than they are, or need to be.
What is it with this obsession with convolution, whether it’s how we write and speak, or how we plan?
Which leads us to the four big questions you should ask anytime you’re doing a piece of communication. Use these questions to help you cut through the crap and get to the heart of the matter.
Big Question No. 1: What are we trying to do?
We’ve sat in meetings with executives who talk about communication as if they’re planning the manned mission to Mars. You don’t have to use a lot of fancy terms to talk about what you’re trying to achieve.
In fact, the simpler the better. If you can’t sum up your communication goal in a sentence or two, there’s trouble ahead, cheri.
Here’s the problem: Nobody wants to ask this question, because they don’t want to admit they don’t get it, and because the question itself sounds kind of dumb.
Exactly. If you can’t get a simple answer to that simple question, your communication planning can easily fall off track.
So in our consulting work, we ask communicators and executives alike: What are we trying to do? And if the answer that comes back is something we can’t understand, we ask again—and again—until we reach a point of clarity that lets us go to the next step.
Big Question No. 2: Who are we trying to reach?
You can’t do communications without considering your audience. Every organization has many audiences, and we’re not just talking about internal and external.
For example, internal audiences might include:
• Everyone
• Front-line workers
• Managers and supervisors
• Members of a particular department or division
• Executives and top leadership
Communication to each of these groups should be tailored to what they need to know, and what’s most important to them.
External audiences are the same way.
You might have:
• Customers
• Members
• Media
• Shareholders
• Analysts/regulators
• The greater community
Who needs to get these messages, and what’s the clearest and simplest way to construct them?
Big Question No. 3: What’s the best way to get there?
OK. So you know what you want to do, and you’ve figured out who you want to reach. If you have multiple audiences, you may have even decided what each group needs to know. Now what?
Vehicles, baby. Channels. Print. Online. In person. Social media. How do those audiences like to get their information? What’s the appropriate channel for each? What about using multiple channels?
We see print publications with stories that should never be in print. Print is about explanation and context. It’s not about timeliness.
Worst decision made over and over again: Running a meeting story in a monthly newsletter, weeks (or months) after the meeting. No one cared at the time you had the meeting, and they certainly don’t care now. But they might want to know how the decisions announced at the meeting will affect them.
We see online stories that are really print stories slapped on the Web. Online is about speed, action and choice. Present stories so they can be read quickly. Give readers actions to take. Allow them to choose if they want to read more.
Face-to-face communication is about the immediate and the emotional. It’s also about conversation. Too many managers and executives hold meetings and then don’t let anyone ask questions.
Big Question No. 4: Why should anyone care?
The most important question of them all, and one that is too infrequently asked.
Why? Are we afraid of what the answer might be? (As in, “I have no idea why anyone would care to read this, but the boss said we had to run it, and exactly the way it’s written.”)
If you can’t explain why the readers should care, then what business do you have doing the story? Once you figure out why, you’ll be able to organize the communication around your answer.
This article is terrific for the current economy, if you can't answer these about anything you are working on, go home. Seriously, every communications campaign should start with the answers to these four questions. It might not make for flashy presentations but it will help you initiatives to stay focused and be successful. In the end it is important to be about concise communications that are clearly understood by your intended audience.
The four questions communicators should ask themselves
By Jim Ylisela
jimy@ragan.com
Use these questions to help you cut through the crap and improve your communication program
Simple is not dumb. And clear does not mean basic.
What’s the biggest problem facing communications today? Fear, you say? Yes, that’s certainly holding back a lot of organizations.
Incompetence? Sure, there’s plenty of that going around.
What about this: The overwhelming desire, among too many executives and even some communicators, to make things more complicated than they are, or need to be.
What is it with this obsession with convolution, whether it’s how we write and speak, or how we plan?
Which leads us to the four big questions you should ask anytime you’re doing a piece of communication. Use these questions to help you cut through the crap and get to the heart of the matter.
Big Question No. 1: What are we trying to do?
We’ve sat in meetings with executives who talk about communication as if they’re planning the manned mission to Mars. You don’t have to use a lot of fancy terms to talk about what you’re trying to achieve.
In fact, the simpler the better. If you can’t sum up your communication goal in a sentence or two, there’s trouble ahead, cheri.
Here’s the problem: Nobody wants to ask this question, because they don’t want to admit they don’t get it, and because the question itself sounds kind of dumb.
Exactly. If you can’t get a simple answer to that simple question, your communication planning can easily fall off track.
So in our consulting work, we ask communicators and executives alike: What are we trying to do? And if the answer that comes back is something we can’t understand, we ask again—and again—until we reach a point of clarity that lets us go to the next step.
Big Question No. 2: Who are we trying to reach?
You can’t do communications without considering your audience. Every organization has many audiences, and we’re not just talking about internal and external.
For example, internal audiences might include:
• Everyone
• Front-line workers
• Managers and supervisors
• Members of a particular department or division
• Executives and top leadership
Communication to each of these groups should be tailored to what they need to know, and what’s most important to them.
External audiences are the same way.
You might have:
• Customers
• Members
• Media
• Shareholders
• Analysts/regulators
• The greater community
Who needs to get these messages, and what’s the clearest and simplest way to construct them?
Big Question No. 3: What’s the best way to get there?
OK. So you know what you want to do, and you’ve figured out who you want to reach. If you have multiple audiences, you may have even decided what each group needs to know. Now what?
Vehicles, baby. Channels. Print. Online. In person. Social media. How do those audiences like to get their information? What’s the appropriate channel for each? What about using multiple channels?
We see print publications with stories that should never be in print. Print is about explanation and context. It’s not about timeliness.
Worst decision made over and over again: Running a meeting story in a monthly newsletter, weeks (or months) after the meeting. No one cared at the time you had the meeting, and they certainly don’t care now. But they might want to know how the decisions announced at the meeting will affect them.
We see online stories that are really print stories slapped on the Web. Online is about speed, action and choice. Present stories so they can be read quickly. Give readers actions to take. Allow them to choose if they want to read more.
Face-to-face communication is about the immediate and the emotional. It’s also about conversation. Too many managers and executives hold meetings and then don’t let anyone ask questions.
Big Question No. 4: Why should anyone care?
The most important question of them all, and one that is too infrequently asked.
Why? Are we afraid of what the answer might be? (As in, “I have no idea why anyone would care to read this, but the boss said we had to run it, and exactly the way it’s written.”)
If you can’t explain why the readers should care, then what business do you have doing the story? Once you figure out why, you’ll be able to organize the communication around your answer.
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