Communications and Obamacare: Promises Burned, Opportunities Missed
Leadership Communications Bust
It’s an […]
Want An Effective Communications Campaign? Look at Road Races
As I hit the mid-point of the Army 10-Miler race, with breathtaking views of the Washington, DC, monuments honoring Jefferson, Lincoln, and Washington, I was struck by how running a long race is a lot like creating an effective communications campaign.
Effective Communications: It’s the Story, Stupid!
While there was no stated theme at the recent Communications Network Fall Conference, virtually every plenary and break out session focused in some way or another on the need to tell our stories better for more effective communications. I suppose this theme isn't surprising among professional communicators but it was fascinating how much of a struggle it seems to be for a group of people, who more than most, really understand storytelling.
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.
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.
Spokesperson Training: Spokes-Disasters and How to Avoid Them
Let’s face it, if you are like most people, you’d rather get a root canal than have to stand up and speak in front of group. And with good reason. Absent effective spokesperson training, a nervous misstep can cost you a client, cause a deal to go south or create a social media firestorm from which it is hard to recover.
Leadership Communications: One Equals the Other
Good leaders have vision. Great leaders have vision and the masterful the ability to communicate it, thus captivating others to embrace and support it. Nowhere was the intersection of leadership and communications more evident than in the remarks by His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama when he spoke at the Anwar Sadat Lecture for Peace at the University of Maryland.
SPOKESPOWER: Spokesperson Power
The events of last week – from the terrifying explosions at the Boston Marathon to the devastating fertilizer plant explosion in Texas were defined by chaos, a lack of clarity about what happened and why, and enormous amounts of misinformation.
The Spokesperson and Media Relations
s we approach spokesperson training and media relations, our clients frequently tell us that they don’t want to do media interviews because they are always misquoted and the media is “out to get them.”