Raphael turns 527 today. His name lives on because of the quality and QUANTITY of his work. He produced so much art because he fundamentally understood the needs and wants of his number one client - the Catholic Church. As a result, that constituency kept coming back for more. Good…
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Amber Naslund of Radian6 wrote a wonderful post last week on social media topics that need to go the glue factory. One she did not mention was more of a piece of advice: "Be remarkable." It's a real favourite of digital marketing/social media types these days. They throw this gem…
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There are right ways and wrong ways to ask questions when you are new to the Comms business (or any business). No sane manager expects entry level people to place clients in huge outlets or solve massive PR crises. However, everyone likes to see that new folks think, even if…
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North Korea uses the most over the top official rhetoric of any country on Earth. In fact the language is so routinely bizarre that sometimes you wonder if the place is actually on Mars. Every year at this time the North Korean government issues a collection of crazy statements related…
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The "new tools" of marketing and PR are still "new" even though they've been in use for years now. Though best practices and rules of the game still appear far from certain, "new media" is now an established, entrenched industry, with all the hallmarks that come with this distinction. Books…
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This post by Julien Smith on the perils of saying "I love you" inspired today's post, the first in a new video series called "Shoot that term in the head." In business there are sorts of fucked up and vague terms that people use as ways to obfuscate, betlittle, exploit,…
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Length matters. I say this partly because, in the last few days, I've come across several items on the amount of words needed to convey news. Two in particular spurred on some thoughts: This post, that touched on whether the 140 character world might eventually kill traditional news media. A…
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Justin Kownacki, who tends to deliver the goods, had an interesting post about inspiration (and why it is bullshit) the other day. I disagreed with elements of what he wrote, but looking back we were pissing around over semantics. In effect, we were talking about different meanings of the same word.…
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I am about 50 pages into Michael Pollan's book In Defense of Food with about 15o to go so this ain't a book review. However, already, I'd recommend you read it even if you have limited interest in food production (if you don't care about what you eat then you…
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