Once in a while, it’s good to be reminded of the importance of managing a photo shoot. Just over a week ago, the entire nation got that reminder. Lesson 1: Communicate, Confirm, Then Re-confirm In an effort to capture some photographs of Air Force One flying across New York’s harbor,…
Tom Hanks may be playing the part of a symbologist named Robert Langdon in the soon to be released film Angels & Demons, but the character is actually named after John Langdon, the typographer. John Langdon was approached by Dan Brown’s father—an admirer of Langdon’s work—and asked to prepare an…
If there were ever any doubt that telling stories can help build communities, markets, and supporters, here is an article that makes it clear. This is a very sad story of a girl suddenly dying of a mysterious disease, played out fully on Twitter. Beyond the obvious tragedy, what I…
Sometimes, when hand coding HTML isn’t an option, inserting a hyperlink can be a pain. This is especially true when the URL is over 30 characters long. While updating my status on Twitter, it became apparent that I needed to find a solution. Some users claimed inserting an <a href=”url”></a>…
The traditional guild – an association of people in a common trade – is steadily loosing its members. Largely, it is due to the wealth of trade secrets now shared online, but other factors are still unknown and puzzling their recruiters. I’ve participated in a variety of organizations across North…
In a recent article in the LA Times, writer Mike Dorning speaks about Jon Favreau, the president’s storyteller in chief. Favreau makes it clear that one of the key elements that enables Obama to communicate so powerfully is story. “Favreau has explained their joint approach to friends simply: ‘Tell a…
According to an article in Scientific American Mind, the “wisdom of the crowd” effect occurs when you ask a crowd a question, average their guesses, and the result you end up with is closest to the correct answer. If this is true, and consistency is a key to persuasion, can an experienced actor pull off a prank in today’s highly wired world or will the plugged-in crowd collectively conclude that it is a hoax even before the media professionals do?
I have written previously about invisible quality–that quality that most (good) creative firms provide that makes invisible the effort and skill that goes into making top quality creative. Now, of course, the question comes to mind, if our efforts at delivering quality are aimed, at least partly, at making the…
Have you heard? Did you see anything? What’s happened to Jack? These are the questions Jack In The Box is trying to get us to ask. With one Super Bowl commercial, depicting their CEO/mascot Jack getting hit by a bus, his iconic yellow hat thrown to the ground, his round,…
