A frequently shared video from Davos 2018 showed Alibaba founder Jack Ma warning audiences to change the way they teach, otherwise 30 years from now we will all be in trouble. “Everything we teach should be different from machines,” he warned. The earliest audience for Jack Ma’s prophetic statement looks to be the communications industry, as this summer Alibaba announced its AI copywriter — a...
I remember when “me too” was just an answer to an unremarkable question.
I might ask a colleague “Are you a fan of wine or beer?”
“Beer,” he might reply. “Yeah, me too.”
Then in late 2017, those two words — me too — changed everything. #MeToo became the cultural movement that linked just about every woman in the world together as a target of sexism or sexual harassment...
It’s become somewhat cliché to talk “brand,” but the fact is that getting it right means combining a lot of science and a good bit of art. As a leading global internet and consumer brand, eBay is on a multi-year journey to modernize our brand across our stakeholders. Along the way, we’ve gained some insights that have informed and shaped our approach.
A starting point for us has been...
The world of medical technology is undergoing a profound transition, driven by the explosion of new products, services and apps. The underlying change agent is — no surprise here — innovative technology, primarily mobile, Internet-based with unprecedented user-friendly interfaces.
This fundamental change represents more than an incremental improvement in technology, but instead has...
In 1974, when I became a full-time faculty member of the USC School of Journalism after seven years as an adjunct, I joined a largely white male group of seasoned newspapermen. What I didn’t know was how much these print newshounds hated broadcasting and public relations.
During the first meeting of the fall semester, three items dominated the agenda: a move to diversify the all-male...
The art of the deal has gotten a bad name these days. Forget for a moment its political associations, there is a case to be made that we could use a little more deal-making and a lot less posturing or arguing.
Let’s start with the role communicators often play, that of negotiator. A reporter calls with a story we’d rather not tell. All too often those calls get ignored or the reporter...
Much has been said about media and creative agencies working better together. But that stool needs a third leg and it’s us. Here’s a POV on why what we do is the magic ingredient marketing needs more than ever.
When David Ogilvy founded the company, advertising was the dominant marketing capability. Through it, Ogilvy built brands which remain household names today. In Ogilvy’s 70th...
Employee communications has a long history of being an underdog in communication circles.
How many people do you know who start off their comms career aiming to be the head of employee communications? For that matter, how many people actually know what they’d be doing if they were in this role?
Few universities offer an employee communications curriculum and there hasn’t been a...