Category: Ideas
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Do you dare to ask?
What’s more important: knowing all the answers or asking the right questions? We live in a world where the value of questions is often underrated. As school children we are rewarded for knowing the right answers, not for asking the right questions. At a job interview, most people will worry about saying all the right […]
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5 reasons to hire a writer
Let’s talk about that project that’s been sitting on your to-do list. It could be updating the company website, planning a content marketing campaign or writing a thank-you letter to the team. You could always write the copy yourself. You know the brief and besides, it’s not like writing is rocket science or even graphic […]
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How to be a good critic
Critics get a bad rap. “It’s easy to criticize.” “Everyone’s a critic!” Or that old refrain – “If you haven’t got anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.” That may be true in many areas of life, but it is not the right approach to getting good results from a creative team. The […]
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Getting out of survival mode
Every time you turn around these days it seems that someone is offering advice — how to make your life better, find purpose, accomplish your goals. This article offers a simple approach to actually making it happen. And it works! I can personally vouch for the efficacy of everything on this list, with the possible […]
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My bilingual brain
This is not a scan of my brain, but it could be. An MRI of my brain would likely show less activity while processing language than the brain of someone who only speaks English. That is because bilingual brains are fitter – requiring less effort to process words than a monolingual. Several recent studies also […]
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How cats won the internet
And what they can teach us about content marketing. When it comes to grabbing attention online, we are all competing with cats. That is a fact that you are entitled to find offensive – but it’s a reality of the world wide web. Cats are the consummate content marketers. They manage to steal attention away […]
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#JeSuisCharlie: What communicators can learn
What can communicators learn from last week’s terror attacks in Paris? No matter what your position on the issue – whether or not the satirists at Charlie Hebdo were right in publishing caricatures of the Muslim prophet – the outcome of their editorial choices cannot be ignored. Extremism and satire make strange bedfellows. In my […]
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Corporate Speak: Are you guilty?
We all do it: say ‘leverage’ when we mean use, talk about ‘granularity’ instead of detail, refer to deliverables, low-hanging fruit, moving targets, key learnings. But what about the more serious culprits? Where we use euphemisms like ‘headcount’ for people, ‘change management’ to suggest restructuring – which is not to say downsizing, efficiencies, or heaven […]
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Can communication restore lost faith?
After a two-week strike by pilots that left both passengers and crew on the tarmac, Air France KLM is fighting hard to regain lost ground. But in the long haul, it will take more than a letter of apology to win back customers I’ve been flying between France and Canada for over twenty years. We […]
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My rule for creating content that delivers
One rule I try to live and work by is: ‘Always deliver on your promises.’ The bottom line is if you can’t deliver, don’t promise. This policy may not always win friends and influence people but it will definitely not make enemies or leave disappointed clients grumbling behind your back. The same thing goes for […]