Working with a client to review his current corporate communication practices, I conducted a corporate communication inventory. This issue actually is not very much covered in the textbook (only mentioned as a side issue) and so I thought I’d devote a blog post to this issue and mark it for inclusion into the book in a… Read More »
If you have covered financial communication and its tools and tactics – you at least have a rough understanding of what an annual report is (From Chapter 7: “a comprehensive report on a company’s activities throughout the preceding year (…) intended to give shareholders and other interested people information on the company’s activities and performance.”)… Read More »
Just a few days ago Kelly and Ben Decker published an excellent article over at HBR.org on how to best communicate with employees in order to motivate them. They see the main challenge to motivate an employees is shifting his typical response to work from “I have to” to “I want to.” According to their reasoning we have to strategically… Read More »
Carl Icahn is an investment legend and has certainly made it into several CEOs’ nightmares. While we are usually talking about “Financial Communication” in terms of how to best communicate with the financial industry and investment community, Icahn is an extreme example of the plentiful challenges for financial communicators. He frequently uses public communication including a dedicated… Read More »
On the weekend I came across a remarkable chat between an Amazon customer and a customer service agent. While it is of course not realistic that every customer is treated in this way (and some agents or also customers might have reacted completely adversely), for me it really is a stunning piece of excellent communication… Read More »
Yesterday I happened to watch a great documentary about the century-old struggle for the soft drink consumer between Coca Cola and Pepsi. A really remarkable film highlighting all the marketing challenges and milestones of the two companies. I recommend every marketing and branding student to take 45 minutes, sit back and watch it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2fluoWku6Vw
Over on HBR.org Richard Mosley has published an interesting article on the increasing importance of employer branding. Some of you might come across this term for the first time – so the term “employer branding” at its core denoted an organization’s reputation (or more precise image) as an employer, as opposed to the more general corporate… Read More »
As some of you probably know I currently reside in Laos – a country in Southeast Asia. So today I found an interesting advertising leaflet that came with my daily morning paper (the English-language Vientiane Times btw). Just to let you know – there are plenty of international tourists, expats and people working in the “development… Read More »
For the fourth time, the University Hohenheim / Germany has published its plain-text-ranking of CEO annual meeting speeches. The communication scientists led by Prof. Brettschneider are using a special formula to calculate the formal understandability of the often hour-long speeches. Criteria that enter the formula include the length of sentences, the share of sentences with more than… Read More »
The German business and investment magazine “Bilanz” has just published an interesting article on the food provided at this year’s annual general meetings of Germany’s largest publicly traded companies (members of DAX). As you know, an annual general meeting is the place for all shareholders of a company to meet with its executives and be informed about both… Read More »