The mail operation of TNT, delivering post to your door, has decided to change its name to Whistle, or is it whistle? Not sure in its marketing statements which it is, capital or not. Be very careful about changing names or choosing them in the first place. It is a key part of corporate communications. Read More
Category: content
Microsoft and Minecraft get their corporate communication wrong in acquisition
Mergers and acquisitions are daily and weekly. The largest this week is a poor example of corporate communications. Minecraft the target Microsoft has taken over a small Copenhagen-based games company Mojang for $2.5 billion. Mojang developed Minecraft which has become very popular since its launch in 2009. Players can build cities with Minecarft using Lego-like Read More
Make your websites accessible for the disabled — or break the law
Corporate communicators have a legal requirement to make their content accessible by disabled people. One in five of the population has some type of disability. If your website cannot be used by them then you are potentially missing out a good 20% of your potential market. 4 tests The World Wide Web Consortium, 3w.org, has Read More
3 tips on how to work with centralised content generation
Centralised generation of any content creates opportunities and problems, as I argued in my last blog. Here are three tips to help overcome the problems. Train Train the centralised content generators in what the specific voice of the brand is and what its key words are. This is done by the brand “owners” so that Read More
3 for and 3 against centralised content generation
Centralised content generation – or creating a hub for many publications to generate content – is on top of the agenda for many content generators. It’s been in operation for many years in some publishers for other functions and it’s time to take hard look at why it works and does not work. Functional or Read More
Tip of the week: use those hyphens correctly
London’s Docklands Light Railway has the following phrase on a sign: “just in time information”. It’s wrong. It is not “just information”, or “in information”, or “time information”. It should be “just-in-time information”. Needs hyphens It needs hyphens to glue the words together so that we know it is a complete modifier to the word Read More
Murriwins in supermarket communications?
In the savage wars of the supermarkets Morrisons’ corporate communications take the biscuit. It has incorporated its distinctive M into the slogan about price: “I’m cheaper” says a sticker on the floor at the doors and on marketing material. Notice the “I’m” making Morrisons into a person. And notice the “your”, appealing directly to Read More
Top 10 tips for presentations
Presentations are the bread and butter of corporate communications. Yet they can be boring, can create panic in new presenters and fail to get the message across. Here’s my top 10 tips for presentations: 1 Presentations are about presentation and content. Great content can be ruined by a poor performance. But a great performance cannot Read More
Miliband’s poor picture: say cheese and have eye contact
Another non-smiling politician loses the communications game. Google Ed Miliband’s image and there are several good looking smiling images but they chose this one. What is he looking at? If you want to communicate then have some eye contact and smile. Even in a small group make sure you make eye contact regularly with everybody. Read More
Scribe your corporate communications
Scribe your corporate communications: use graphics to help meetings and conferences. Scribing is a method of using the craft of graphics in real time to help people remember what was said at meetings. It is used by many corporations. It is also known as graphic recording. Death by PowerPoint It can both enliven and enhance Read More