John Gapper’s recent essay in the Financial Times entitled “General Electric has too much imagination” is a must-read for anybody working in tech communications. I took away three core lessons: First, shareholder value is an outdated measure of business performance. The company was founded by the inventor of the light Read more…
Can pulling an all-nighter help today’s digital tech leaders pass the tests of today’s thorniest public policy issues? Consider Twitter’s Jack Dorsey, who’s struggling to define free speech, or Mark Zuckerberg struggling to separate fact from fiction at Facebook. Uber’s new CEO is trying to figure out who is or Read more…
When you choose to use Facebook, or any social media platform (or Internet service, really), you agree to live by rules that are as theological as they’re restrictive. Unlike choosing or reaffirming a religious belief, however, our compacts with social media are one-sided, insomuch that we buy-in via a quick Read more…
Pepsico recently showed that social media doesn’t just propagate fake news, but that vested interests can delete content entirely. The company got a court to order Facebook to render invisible to users in India about 20,000 or more posts in which people said its Kurkure snack food was made out Read more…
A recent book and FT op-ed opine on a novel solution to America’s inability to respond to knowns and predictable attacks by Russians and jihadis: Hire pirates or, more exactly, employ privateers in the way England’s Queen Elizabeth I did in the 16h century. Back then, the ocean was the world’s Internet, and across it Read more…
The EU wants Google’s smartphone platform opened up to competitors, but the action isn’t just about business…it’s about political and social authority. Google is a rival to the very notion of nation-states, only it’s smarter and more efficiently relentless than any civil government; like a country would do, it sorts people into Read more…
John Schnatter’s nasty public battle for control of the company he founded may be unresolved, but its lesson on reputation is both printed and bound. In case you haven’t been following the soap opera, Schnatter used a racially-charged word during a training session on how not to use racially-charged words, Read more…
A live band’s recreation of the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s album a few nights ago made me sad. Turns out I experienced an affliction called nostalgia, which was first diagnosed in the mid-17th Century to describe the feelings of melancholy among Swiss mercenaries far from home. It can more broadly involve wistful recollections of Read more…
The advocates for freedom of online expression are supporting the very entities that want to control it. Members of the European Parlaiment have voted to continue debating the merits of laws intended to force content aggregators to pay for snippets pulled from news sites (Article 11), and to protect artists’ copyright by Read more…
With Nestlé facing pressure to break up the company and a CPG market that is no longer obediently accepting of its practices, its CEO is committed to buying and promoting the value of its brands. It could disrupt them instead. Here’s why: Brands ain’t what they used to be. To say Read more…