In a time where anyone with a smartphone can become a news aggregator or citizen journalist, corporations appear to following suit, and are coming down with a serious lack of continuity in their communications. I'm not suggesting that companies are not developing and executing some well-integrated campaigns -- in fact,...

Very early in my career, I learned a simple lesson: companies cannot chase or buy a good reputation. Twenty years later, this is even more true in our increasingly democratized communications landscape.

In my industry, public relations practitioners often seek impressions - another word for eyeballs and ears reading,...

Cast your mind back many years. Then imagine someone telling you that one day soon people would make major product and service decisions solely on the basis of opinions shared on the Internet by friends and strangers alike. For instance, imagine that person trying to explain Facebook and that in...

If you like TED talks as much as I do, then you've likely come across video of Brene Brown's talk on the power of vulnerability. Apart from being a very entertaining speech, Ms. Brown delivers a really important message. In a day when the world has demanded more transparency, more...

All too often, marketers of all industries will look at one piece of measurement and decide whether a campaign was successful or not. If sales are up, the campaign worked; if sales didn't move, the campaign flopped.

It's true that an overall success or fail is easily determined by...

Companies discovered years ago that "mom" was the most influential consumer on the planet. She makes a strong majority of all household purchases from groceries, to clothing, to the family car, and also decides where to get services for the family, like banking, insurance and cable, phone and internet. She...

I'll admit it -- I'm a news junkie. I follow all sorts of topics and am constantly watching for stories that stick out. But of all the stories that interest me, the ones I follow the closest are the stories that last. I watch especially closely when those stories are...

Very often, businesses that serve other businesses put public relations on their "nice to have" list. Some believe that the payoff on PR is too long-term, it doesn't have an impact on sales or have a direct return on investment. However, I think the challenge for these types of businesses...

I love it when clients ask us for a "creative idea." While it's not much to go on, somewhere between the lines it usually means they want something they haven't seen before. The underlying caveat is that the ideas must deliver. Nobody wants to pay for creativity without results.

The world of retail is often dramatic and competitive, but more than ever before there is a perfect storm brewing in the Canadian marketplace. This country already has more retailers than it knows what to do with and the sector continues to broaden. The likely causes for this trend are...

Internal communications can be one of the most complex pieces of an organization and yet, it is one area that everybody thinks they understand -- simply because they are an employee.

No one would ever suggest that it's not important; however, the lack of understanding also causes some disparity...

While trends don't follow a calendar, the New Year certainly summons the temptation to prognosticate. As a communicator, I constantly watch for innovations in the marketplace, but more so, how audiences react (if at all). In communications, trends aren't established by all the effort, creativity, and planning they require, but...

There has been a lot of talk about bullying as of late, particularly in Ontario with Premier McGuinty's recent announcement of anti-bullying legislation. What I find most interesting about it is how some simple rules of communication are making it a powerful movement.

The "cause" of bullying has quietly...

A cynic might suggest that for thousands of companies, the notion of corporate citizenship is something simply managed by a marketing department, providing executives with the opportunity to point to some superficial initiative and proudly claim they are "doing good." Picture the grinning exec with the big cheque.

While there...

One day, retail historians may look back and chuckle as they read the early-2000s' predictions of the death of brick and mortar stores at the hands of online shopping. It appears that the truth (and the future) may well lie somewhere in between the two extremes. A perfect world where...

In a world that is so readily connected to so much information, it seems totally counterintuitive that useful, timely, relevant information is a rarity. We're all tracking, seeking and consuming more information all the time. The problem is there's so much to sort and filter through to find the good...