The only purpose of business writing is to create a change in the reader. Create the change and you succeed; fail to make the change and you’ve wasted your time. Before you spend hours on a piece of writing, spend 15 minutes on the one tool that will make it most likely to be effective. Learn…
Wells Fargo employees opened 2 million fake bank and credit card accounts to pad their paychecks with bonuses, according to regulators. The bank will pay a $185 million settlement and has fired 5,300 people. “When we make mistakes, we are open about it,” the CEO said. Are they? Actually, it’s the opposite. By any measure, this is…
Samsung’s new flagship phone, the Galaxy Note7, has a problem. Some of them are exploding. Samsung’s recall statement is very clear, except that something’s missing. Here’s the full statement about this unprecedented recall: [Statement] Samsung Will Replace Current Note7 with New One on September 02, 2016 Samsung is committed to producing the highest quality products and…
Dropbox got hacked a while back. So the company emailed affected users — and hid the news. Burying the lede* is counterproductive; it just makes people work harder to find out the truth. Good writers get to the bad news quickly and frankly, then move on. Here’s what happened: In 2012, somebody stole 68 million Dropbox usernames and…
American Airlines’ new ad campaign — “The world’s greatest flyers fly American” — gently praises flyers who are civil and generous. After decades of flyer abuse, that’s a lot to ask. I am a 2-million-mile, Platinum-for-life American Airlines frequent flyer. I’ve been a frequent business traveler for 25 years. I have watched the sad decline…
Today, I’ll share some insight into how I do outreach to influencers . . . and the power and courtesy of the answer “No.” I am going to reveal how I’m doing publicity and how it feels. I’m doing most of my own publicity outreach for the new book. The publisher has a list, but…
Mylan and its CEO Heather Bresch are under fire. It raised the price of its EpiPen product — an essential protection for people with life threatening allergies — by a factor of five in the last eight years. Mylan’s statement defending itself clarifies what it’s doing — providing rebates — but evades the main issue of…
AirBnB CEO Brian Chesky’s latest post responds to accusations from last December that its hosts discriminate based on race. Chesky’s post reads as sincere because of the low density of weasel words, even though he starts off with a huge faux pas. AirBnB’s first response AirBnB first responded to this issue on its blog in May. David…
While others write bullshit-filled press-releases, Elon Musk tells you exactly what he’s planning, in plain language. Here’s what you can learn from Musk: write directly to the reader, be clear, be organized, and be engaging. Elon Musk’s Master Plan, Part Deux Yesterday, Elon Musk posted “Master Plan, Part Deux” on the Tesla site. It begins like this:…