‘Fake news, real threats’

1
2017

I’ve grown to dislike the word message.

What’s the message? Tell us the message. It’s off message. Send a message. Get them to understand the message. All we need is a clearer ...

I was recently invited to an annual strategic communications presentation of our client. The communications team proudly stated that apart from a nuclear disaster, they were prepared to handle any potential digital crisis. Despite investing a...

The new normal is that there isn’t one 

In terms of geo-politics, the year ahead is likely to be every bit as interesting. The events running up to the inauguration of President Trump on January 20 have certainly opened the year...

The significance of communication is raised a notch when it comes to the public- private partnership (tripartite) model. Strong communication helps in establishing a trustworthy relationship between all the stakeholders while forming a positive...

When the Asia-Pacific Association of Communications Directors and Ruder Finn Asia polled 140 senior communications officers towards the end of 2016, we obtained fascinating, unexpected insight. What were the primary concerns? What was working...

This topic formed the basis of Addison Group’s recent presentation at the Asia Pacific Communications Summit. The theme of the conference was hyperconnected communications and we discussed some of the key developments and trends that have...

Despite following regulatory checks and balances to the letter, many companies are still unable to convey in their annual report a clear sense of what sets them apart or how well placed they are to take advantage of market drivers. They also...

At the beginning of this year, Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz announced plans to hire 10,000 refugees as a direct reaction to President Donald Trump’s decision to ban citizens of seven majority Muslim countries from entering the United States. “We...

A new approach to crisis management is emerging which places it squarely on the desk of chief executive officers and their top communication executives.

Yet there are some companies which still regard crisis management as something that...

Numerous studies demonstrate the growing importance of intangible assets in generating value. And with good reason – more than 50 per cent of the total value of an organisation lies in its intangible assets and resources, reaching 80 per cent in...

Speechwriting is an attractive profession. At the very least, there’s job security: almost every decision-maker, whether in the public or the private sector, needs speeches. The days when politicians like Bismarck or Churchill wrote their own...

According to tradition, our company organised a yearly face-to-face meeting with managers from our global research and development (R&D) organisation. But out of 3500 managers, we could only afford to host 700 of them.  With an enormous...

At a dinner party, if you were asked to describe how an algorithm works, what would your answer be?

I would explain a very simple algorithm that takes care of content selection on the web. Most simply, it would involve two pieces of...

From Gaga to banking

Good is the New Cool: Market...

When Oxford named ‘post-truth’ the 2016 word of the year, it only confirmed that the media now has a harder job to. The media business is...

In order to uncover more about the potential damage fake news can cause, we analysed the response to the Pepsi incident to understand: what effect does fake news have on corporate reputation? Can fake news impact on a company’s stock price? And...

1. Real television experience

Your media coach should have experience in the medium that you are training for. Limousine drivers are good at driving limousines. But just as you wouldn‘t engage a limousine driver to drive a bus, you...