This past February, the UK telecommunications company O2 asked almost 3,000 employees at one of its offices to work from home for the day. The results raise eyebrows: Employees saved almost $15,000 in commuting costs, got 1,000 extra hours of sleep, were more productive (36% of them claimed as much), and spent more quality time…

With both business and communications evolving faster than ever, and with companies increasingly relying on innovation to fuel growth and competitive advantage, talking about innovations is becoming more important—and trickier. The famous flop of “New Coke” back in the 1980s reminds us what can happen when companies don’t properly introduce innovations (although in that case,…

Are consumers spending again? What are they thinking about? What trends do you most need to know about as you’re framing communications strategies for consumer-facing brands? In a volatile marketplace, it’s more vital than ever to aggressively track consumer sentiment and behavior and translate that into fresh, effective marketing approaches. To get you started, we…

With the red carpets for this year’s Academy Awards unrolling as we speak, we were wondering: Is the A-list still as valuable as it once was to a brand in our age of social media? Are brands missing out if they’re not visible at an event like the Academy Awards? And how do we measure…

Political communications often carries intriguing lessons for the corporate sphere, and this season’s Republican presidential contest is no exception. In recent months, we’ve watched as a front-runner, Mitt Romney, has faced challenge after challenge from upstart contenders. Although Romney remains on top heading into South Carolina, he has so far failed to gain more than…

Failure has cachet. Harvard Business Review devoted its April 2011 issue to the subject, with many authors agreeing on its importance to the running of successful, innovative enterprises.  Since Steve Jobs’ death, observers have catalogued his missteps—he never graduated from college; he was fired from the company that he himself had started—and ranked them as…

Everywhere we look today, from the streets of Cairo to Zuccotti Park, we find evidence of social media’s power to galvanize people and effect change. But what does social media’s grass-roots organizational potential mean for companies and brands? How can companies best mobilize consumers around their brands? And how should they conceive of the broader…

The Internet and social media have helped elect a US President, organize revolutions across the Middle East, and most recently, bring tens of thousands of people worldwide to protest income disparities and the global economic system. Yet many businesses are still uncertain how best to mobilize communities of supporters around their brands.  As a recently…

Some eighteen months ago, the Firm Voice ran a piece highlighting resistance to social media and cautioning firms not to ignore conventional forms of communications outreach. It’s worth revisiting the point, not for the sake of prophesying doom and gloom, but with an eye to examining how we can make public relations activities even stronger….

When’s the last time you attended a new business presentation, and a guy on the pitch team broke out into a hip-hop act? When’s the last time your boss paid you to learn how to perform stand-up comedy? When’s the last time your boss himself took the stage—and his jokes actually made you laugh –…