WAINGER
WISDOM
In this blog, we explore what it takes to engage, inspire and connect whether you are building a personal or organizational brand.
Join us in this ongoing conversation about creating effective leadership communications with strategies and tactics that foster understanding and motivate people to act.
Join us in this ongoing conversation about creating effective leadership communications with strategies and tactics that foster understanding and motivate people to act.
Four Ways to Build Brand Value
The “strategic” part of strategic communications frequently involves enhancing and utilizing everyday communications to manage change and grow leadership in your sector. And integral to this is branding—and developing a brand that has meaning and value—as we wrote in the following contribution to the Huffington Post
Five Corporate Communications C’s for Happier Customers
Here’s an example of a poorly executed corporate communications plan and bad message development from the good people at Network Solutions. I received an email from the company thanking me for an order for a dot-biz web address that I didn’t want and didn’t place.
Strategic Communications that Keep the “Ship” Afloat
Organizations without clear messaging and without a strategic communications plan are like the Costa Concordia—they run aground. Rarely is there a tragic loss of life, as there was with the Mediterranean cruise liner. But there most certainly can be severe consequences: reputational damage at worst and apathy among customers and donors at best.
Five Qualities of Good Public Relations People
NBC’s Today show devoted a segment this week to Alzheimer’s disease, with a “PR executive” who sincerely advocated for her cause (she noted that her mother had suffered from Alzheimer’s), but struck an odd note when she said that the disease’s “negative stigma” is due to a perception that it’s a disease that “old people get.”
Social Media: 140 Outrage-Inducing Characters
The Tweet read, “If a girl is drunk, is it ok to have sex with her? Reply yes or no to @drphil #teensaccused.' It was deleted almost as quickly as it was posted, but the “ill-advised” question posed by Dr. Phil McGraw (or his team) drew understandable outrage. And the impact of this mind-blowing social media misstep lingered long enough to make it into this week’s edition of Time magazine.
Message Development and Our Negative Bias
Anyone who is serious about message development has to factor in the negative bias of the human mind, as I wrote this week in a blog post for The Washington Business Journal: Have you ever wondered why no one seems to hear the positive messages about your company or cause? It may have something to do with the basic wiring of the human mind.
Your Public Relations Firm Relationship: Is It a Marriage Made in Heaven?
Outside public relations support can be an invaluable tool – whether you’re working on a single project or in a long-term engagement to provide perspective, expertise, and communications support. But if you’re spending wads of money and feel as though your relationship with your PR firm is spiraling toward the drain, it’s time to reexamine the basics.
Change Management: Post Sale to Jeff Bezos
In the movie Avalon, the father character Sam Krichinsky, remarks wistfully, "If I knew things would no longer be, I would have tried to remember better." I'm sort of feeling as Sam did today when I learned about the sale of The Washington Post to Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. We mourn for what was while moving forward to the future.
Spokesperson Training: 5 Tips for Staying on Message
Poet Robert Burns tells us that “the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry.” Well, the same holds true for spokespeople and their messages. One of the goals of spokesperson training is to help people with message discipline. Even after careful thought and planning, spokespeople and presenters often stray from their message, tripped up a by a hostile question or something else unexpected.
Spokesperson Training 101: Never Lose Your Cool
It's not been a great week for the Anthony Weiner campaign. Aside from the candidate's own missteps, his communications director and spokesperson, Barbara Morgan, made her own mess. Speaking to a reporter from a political website, Talking Points Memo, Morgan lambasted former intern Olivia Nuzzi and her article, which painted an unflattering picture of the Weiner campaign and its team. Morgan's tirade broke just about every spokesperson training rule and used almost every expletive in the book.
Liz Wainger says:
Liz Wainger says:
Liz Wainger says: