Framing Issues on the Fly
Is it climate change or global warming? Does outsourcing to a developing country lead to sweatshops or opportunities for advancement? Both in the arena of public opinion and the marketplace, firms, political groups, and non-government organizations (NGOs) are perpetually locked in framing and re-framing exercises to try and establish their view of an issue as […]
When A Magazine Loses Its Way: Larger Lessons from the Canadian Geographic Fiasco
Canadian Geographic (CG) magazine and its owner, The Royal Canadian Geographical Society (RCGS), are having a very bad month. First, there were hard questions about the curious role of RCGS Chief Executive Officer, John Geiger, during and after the search for John Franklin’s doomed flagship, HMS Erebus. This week, the crowd-funded news site Canadaland revealed […]
Is Transparency a Greater Priority for CEOs Than Corporate Communicators?
I recall an interview that MIT Sloan Management Review conducted in 2012 with Andrew McAfee of the MIT Center for Digital Business. McAfee was the guru who coined the term Enterprise 2.0 to describe the potential for collaboration tools to improve how organizations work. In discussing CEO attitudes around social networking tools, McAfee had this […]
Canadian Activists and Social Media: Not Quite a Love Affair
You might think that advocacy groups would be the most enthusiastic adopters of social media. After all, social technologies are tailor-made for relationship-driven groups; they harness loyalty and amplify messages. They help smaller organizations do a lot more than their organizational resources would normally allow. But surveys from a number of years ago suggested that […]
Are Mega-Sports Events Worth Mega-Advertising Attention?
Hockey snobs be damned: this year’s World Cup has been a delight to watch. Here in North America, it’s a standard complaint that soccer is tedious to follow. I actually find American football or hockey more tedious as television events largely because of how the games are paced to accommodate advertising. You can enjoy a […]