Now that social media is clearly a permanent disruption (i.e., here to stay, and making organizations and individuals reinvent themselves if they don’t want to get left behind), it’s worth paying attention to the various ways its precepts can inform professional development, organizational leadership and personal branding. Business “best practices” that have been in use [...]
Apr 11, 2013 | Categories:Brands, Features, Social Media, Technology | Tags: best practices, bold, brand, branding, CEO, CEO branding, change, charisma, clarity, conflict, crisis, disruption, experimentation, failure, Humanize, Jamie Notter, leadership, leadership traits, loyalty, Maddie Grant, organizational leadership, personal branding, professional development, reinvention, Social Media, social organization, stakeholders, strategy, transparency | Leave A Comment »
[Originally posted on Forbes.com.] I’m writing this just after the conclave of cardinals announced the successor to Pope Benedict XVI, who last month became the first modern-day pontiff to abdicate the throne. They charted some new ground, choosing 76-year-old Argentine Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, the first non-European to fill the role in more than 1,200 [...]
Mar 18, 2013 | Categories:Brands, Features, Social Media | Tags: abdication, Argentina, behaviors, branding, bureaucracy, Catholic Church, change, church brand, communication, conservative, corruption, culture change, debate, entrepreneur, entrepreneurial, environment, Europe, Forbes, Forbes.com, George Brandt, honesty, integrity, Jesuit, Jorge Mario Bergoglio, Latin America, leadership development, passion, personal brand, pope, Pope Benedict, Pope Francis, progressive, progressive pope, relationships, respect, Romy Ribitzky, Second Vatican Council, secularism, sex abuse, startup, The New York Times, transparency, Twitter, Upstart Business Journal, values, Vatican, Vatican II, vision | Leave A Comment »
[Originally posted on Forbes.com.] Andrew Mason’s unsurprising ouster from Groupon last week wasn’t entirely about his personal brand. As anyone who has been paying attention knows, the group-discount company has been performing spectacularly badly. Its fourth-quarter earnings report was awful, with a GAAP loss of 12 cents per share—that’s 10 cents more (or six times [...]
Mar 05, 2013 | Categories:Brands, Features, Media, Social Media, Technology | Tags: accountability, accounting, accounting gaffes, adolescent, Andrew Mason, Battletoads, behavior, Bloomberg Businessweek, brand, candid, CEO brand, CEO branding, Chicago Tribune, daily deal, Eric Lefkofsky, experience, fraternity, GAAP loss, Goldman Sachs, Greg Smith, Groupon, grownup, honesty, IPO, irreverent, John Paczkowski, juvenile, millennials, personal brand, Peter Kafka, resignation letter, responsibility, Sam Gustin, SEC, share price, Silicon Valley, stunts, tech boom, The New York Times, Time, transparency, video game, Wall Street | Leave A Comment »
[Originally posted on CNBC.com.] I recently came across some survey data that suggests 2013 will be a tough year for CEOs—or, at least, many of them believe that it will be. Now that the economy’s “green shoots” of recovery are starting to bud into potential blossoms, expectations are up in terms of performance. It’s no [...]
Feb 19, 2013 | Categories:Brands, Features, Social Media | Tags: board of directors, brand, brand building, branding, CEO, CEO Snapshot Survey, chief executive, CNBC, corporate brand, economic recovery, Facebook, Harris Interactive, human, human brand, Humanize, identity, Jamie Notter, leadership style, Maddie Grant, management, Mark Zuckerberg, personal brand, personal values, profile, recession, RHR International, Richard Branson, Social Media, stakeholder activism, strategy, team, the economy, Thomas Saporito, Tony Hsieh, transparency, Virgin, Zappos | Leave A Comment »
[Originally posted on Forbes.com.] Greg Smith, the disillusioned Goldman Sachs employee who left the firm in March with a scorched-earth op-ed in The New York Times, is back in the news as his tell-all book hit shelves last week. Whether he really pulled back the curtain on the Goldman brand or he’s just a faddish [...]
Nov 08, 2012 | Categories:Brands, Features, Insights, Media | Tags: backlash, book, brand, Business Insider, financial services, Goldman Sachs, Greg Smith, op-ed, personal brand, tell-all book, The New York Times, transparency, whistle blower | Leave A Comment »
[Originally posted on Forbes.com.] It used to be that if you were famous and you screwed up, the path to redemption was clear: Hire an old-school, big-name publicist to keep yourself out of the news for a while, then orchestrate a high-profile comeback (think a self-deprecating turn on “Saturday Night Live”) to prove that you’re [...]
Nov 01, 2012 | Categories:Brands, CSR, Features, Health and Wellness, PR, Social Media | Tags: Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Brands, change, charity, crisis communications, David Letterman, Forbes.com, Haiti, Lance Armstrong, Livestrong, Michael Vick, Nike, personal branding, personal brands, publicist, reboot, Ted Kennedy, Tiger Woods, transparency, Wyclef Jean, Yele Haiti, YouTube | Leave A Comment »
[Originally posted on PRWeek.com.] This is the second in a series of three posts that will discuss what I see as a PR émigré managing in a world where evolution meets revolution. Some cities always attract the limelight. New York and Paris have rich pasts full of historic events and interesting people that will always [...]
Oct 25, 2012 | Categories:Brands, Features, PR, Social Media, Trends | Tags: Amtrak, Bill Clinton, Brands, Buddy Cianci, C-suite, cities, Cory Booker, David Jones, digital at the core, evolution, Havas, John Wren, Martha Stewart, Newark, One Young World, personal branding, Pittsburgh, place making, PR, Providence, PRWeek, public relations, Richard Branson, Sir Martin Sorrell, solutions mindset, Tony Hsieh, transparency, Trends | Leave A Comment »
[Originally posted on Forbes.com.] Personal branding is the name of the game these days, and in our age of radical transparency it is informed not just by how you present yourself but also by the people you associate with. Just as product- and service-based brands have to choose their celebrity ambassadors carefully, individuals looking to [...]
Oct 17, 2012 | Categories:Brands, Features, Politics, PR, Social Media | Tags: Ann Romney, Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, branding, campaign, clout, colleagues, Culpwrit, Forbes, friends, Gallup, Klout, Melinda Gates, Michelle Obama, personal branding, privacy, social media monitoring, social media presence, spouse, transparency | 1 Comment »
To announce his support of same-sex marriage, Barack Obama used just a couple of sentences. But in speaking from the heart, he seems to have won the support of far more constituents than when he’d previously been vague about his standing. That’s the thing about communication: ’Tis better to do it, and authentically, than not [...]
Jul 19, 2012 | Categories:Brainsnacks, Trends | Tags: authenticity, Barack Obama, benefits package, British, C-suite leadership, CEO, chief executives, communication, corporate communication, Forbes, gay marriage, Harvard Business School, leadership, leadership trends, studies on communication, transparency | Leave A Comment »
This is the first in a series of 10 posts about different aspects of CEO branding. “If Acme Widgets Corporation were a person, what sort of person would it be? How would you describe the looks, the personality and the style of that person?” Anyone who has attended consumer focus groups has probably heard variations [...]
Jul 16, 2012 | Categories:Brands, CSR, Features, PR | Tags: business leaders, CEO branding, CEOs, connection, conscience, consumers, corporate social responsibility, corporations, CSR, David Jones, Enron, Euro RSCG Worldwide, focus groups, happiness, market research, One Young World, perception, recession, Supreme Court, Tony Hsieh, transparency, Tyco, Who Cares Wins, WorldCom, Zappos | Leave A Comment »
Right now, corporate distrust is at a record high: First there were the Enron and Bernie Madoff scandals, then that whole Wall Street crisis, followed by revelations about John Edwards. More recently, Best Buy CEO Brian Dunn was dismissed (with a $6 million severance package) after allegations that he had an inappropriate friendship with a [...]
Jun 29, 2012 | Categories:Brainsnacks, Trends | Tags: authenticity, Bernie Madoff, Best Buy, Best Buy CEO, Brian Dunn, C-suite, C-suite leadership, CEOs, chief executives, communication, Enron, honesty, John Edwards, leaders, leadership, leadership trends, lying, Rielle Hunter, Scott Thompson, transparency, truthfulness, Wall Street crisis, Yahoo, Yahoo CEO | Leave A Comment »
It’s relatively easy to spot a liar at work, if you can dial in on atypical behavior such as a fake smile, unusual response time, dilated pupils and changes in gestures. But whereas authenticity is crucial to a person’s mental health when communicating with romantic partners, friends and family, a study out of London revealed [...]
Jun 08, 2012 | Categories:Brainsnacks, Trends | Tags: authenticity, body language, communication trends, dishonesty at work, Greg Mortenson, honesty, how to spot a liar, job trends, lying, lying at work, psychology, signs of lying, Three Cups of Tea, transparency | Leave A Comment »
This is the first in a series of 32 posts—each one a section from Euro RSCG Worldwide PR’s “The Big Little Book of Nexts,” which in total features more than 150 sightings for 2012. It’s the biggest, most robust annual trends report ever from @erwwpr CEO Marian Salzman and her trendspotting team. To download the [...]
Nov 28, 2011 | Categories:Advertising, Brands, Features, Marketing, Social Media, Technology, Trends | Tags: authenticity, Beck's, Brands, Chrysler, community, digital, Dr Pepper Ten, farmers markets, gender gap, Green Box, Jell-O, Levi's, local, mobile, Net-a-Porter, Occupy Wall Street, Prosumers, smartphones, Steve Jobs, Style.com, Summer's Eve, Top Chef, tradition, transparency, Trends, trends 2012, Twitter, vitaminwater, Wendy's | Leave A Comment »
[Originally posted on the Huffington Post.] Behold the velocity of change, where technology has enabled a Mach 11 approach to spreading and receiving information. And as an outcome of all this now-or-now business, the rumor mill is not only buzzing but also shouting down the lane. It’s not at all unlike the virus portrayed in [...]
Nov 01, 2011 | Categories:Brands, Features, PR, Social Media, Technology | Tags: Anthony Weiner, Apple, Ashton Kutcher, buzz, change, China, Demi Moore, Facebook, freedom of speech, hype, Internet, iPhone, Kodak, Los Angeles Times, McDonald's, Occupy Wall Street, PR, public relations, Sina Weibo, Social Media, TMZ, transparency, Vladimir Putin, Whole Foods | Leave A Comment »
Originally posted on Fuel the Future. As someone who has watched trends for many years and come up with a few buzzwords of my own, I’m amused and startled by this notion of “storytelling” as the newest bit of jargon working its way into our marketing/PR vernacular. In the canon of marketing, it seems fair [...]
Aug 31, 2011 | Categories:Advertising, Brands, Features, Marketing, PR, Trends | Tags: 1969, American Airlines, brand, digital, Gap, journalists, Madison Avenue, Marketing, media coverage, military, news, Nicolas Sarkozy, PR, public relations, social, stories, storytelling, transparency, Truth | Leave A Comment »
Originally posted on Fuel the Future. I’m experiencing a bit of social media myopia these days and think I need to adjust my lens. It’s getting blurry out there, isn’t it? In this crazy connected space we’re all playing in, every move we make is watched, followed and interpreted—sometimes without our consent. It’s a fact [...]
Jul 08, 2011 | Categories:Features, Social Media | Tags: ABC News, Anthony Weiner, blur, blurry, BranchOut, computer, Facebook, Fuel the Future, Google, Harvard Gazette, jobs, marketers, Marketing, networking, New York Post, online, PR, private, public, reality TV, sharing, smart phone, Social Media, social networks, Street View, Switzerland, transparency, Twitter, Unlisted Videos, YouTube | Leave A Comment »
Originally posted on the Holmes Report. As 2012 draws closer and we begin to watch who is going to run against President Barack Obama, it’s interesting to think of all the candidates as brands. After all, nobody was better than Obama at doing a fully integrated marketing campaign, complete with social media and an iconic [...]
Jun 27, 2011 | Categories:Brands, Features, Marketing, Politics, PR, Social Media | Tags: abortion, Alaska, Apple, Barack Obama, branding, Brands, candidates, Cannes Lions, Chiat, Clow, consumers, David Plouffe, economy, Facebook, gay marriage, iPad, issues, Jonathan Salem Baskin, Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, Osama bin Laden, presidency, Rick Santorum, Sarah Palin, Shepard Fairey, slogan, Social Media, transparency, USA Today, values, voters, Weinergate, Yes We Can | Leave A Comment »
This is the 12th in a series of 12 posts expounding on the 2011 forecasts in the annual trends report from Salzman, president of Euro RSCG Worldwide PR and an internationally respected trendspotter. As I wrap up my series of predictions for the very near future, I want to go a bit more personal. I’m [...]
Dec 15, 2010 | Categories:Features, Social Media, Technology, Trends | Tags: alone time, alpha male, BlackBerry, brain, braininess, cancer, cell phone, clean water, clothing swap, concussions, Connecticut, craniotomy, credit, cyberbullying, debt, dopamine, e-mail, female, forecasts, home office, Indo-Chinese spices, juggling, listening, Madoff, male, Mark Zuckerberg, mobmedia, NFL, real estate, reunion, soldiers, Stamford, TBIs, Technology, Time, transparency, traumatic brain injuries, Trends, trendspotter, trendspotting, tumor, tweet, Tyler Clementi, water, WikiLeaks | Leave A Comment »
In our industry, new buzzwords pop up constantly, and lately it has been “authentic.” Last month, I attended AdweekMedia’s Social Media Strategies conference in New York and its What Teens Want conference in L.A. In normal conference manner, professionals described how they have managed to garner enviable results within their unique market. The lesson learned [...]
Nov 10, 2010 | Categories:Features, Social Media | Tags: AdWeekMedia, authentic, authenticity, brand, brand voice, conversation, Facebook, fan pages, Grayson Chance, H&R BlockThreadless, Honor Society, Lady Gaga, Los Angeles, MySpace, New York, online brand presence, PepsiCo, Pete Wentz, Social Media, Social Media Strategies, The New York Times, transparency, tweet, Twitter, viral content, What Teens Want | Leave A Comment »
This week, Facebook became the new “Letters to the Editor” when Marie Claire published an article that turned controversial. At the center of this argument are six health bloggers dubbed the Big Six. In Marie Claire’s article “The Hunger Diaries,” journalist Katie Drummond discusses how health writers might be promoting obsessive eating and exercising behaviors [...]
Oct 05, 2010 | Categories:Features, Media, Social Media | Tags: blog, exercise, Facebook, health, Hearst, Internet, Katie Drummond, Letters to the Editor, Marie Claire, the Big Six, The Hunger Diaries, transparency, Twitter | Leave A Comment »
Originally posted on the Huffington Post. When Wyclef Jean hired my agency about six months ago, I knew that our mission would be to help him pursue his mission: tirelessly working toward Haiti’s recovery. I and my team were to take care of the details so Wyclef could look to the bigger picture—that of making [...]
Aug 22, 2010 | Categories:Features, Insights, Marketing, Politics, PR | Tags: campaign, Fugees, Haiti, Haiti recovery, hip-hop diplomat, Media, NPR, passion, policy, positive thinking, presidential, Rolling Stone, Sean Penn, teamwork, The Miami Herald, Time, transformation, transparency, Wyclef Jean, Yele Haiti | Leave A Comment »
