Three organizations have screwed up recently: The Motion Picture Academy nominated zero actors of color for Oscars, Chipotle made its customers sick, and the Boston Globe couldn’t deliver papers. I wanted to follow up on my recent posts about Chipotle and the Globe, and see if the Academy Awards folks could do any better. All three needed to…
Chipotle Mexican Grill’s CEO Steve Ells is “deeply sorry” after 141 of his customers in Boston College contracted Norovirus. This comes in the wake of virus outbreaks in nine other states over the past year. The restaurant chain has deployed a team of copywriters to solve the problem. Their efforts on the company’s website gave me a stomachache….
Volkswagen CEO Martin Winterkorn is gone. But on his way out the door, he described the company’s massive, deliberate fraud on his customers and the environment as an “irregularity.” That’s bullshit. Here’s what happened: Volkswagen jiggered the software in 11 million of its diesel cars to conceal how much they polluted. “Clean Diesel” is a pillar of Volkswagen’s marketing….
Use fewer words. If there is one thing you learn from me, learn that. I’ll show you how. If you’re in business, people read what you write on a screen. Their inbox is filled with crap. You’ve got to get them hooked quickly, deliver your message, and then let them get on with their day….
If you opened your New York Times on Friday, you got the impression that the Justice department was opening a criminal investigation into Hillary Clinton. Actually, it isn’t. After the newspaper recognized its errors, it papered over the original article and headline with passive voice. You’d expect this sort of innuendo from outlets with a conservative…
The social network Reddit is in trouble. Lots of its popular “subreddit” forums went dark as volunteer moderators protested the firing of Victoria Taylor, a popular Reddit staffer. But rather than stonewall, the company’s management is now attempting to tell the truth, clearly and transparently. It’s working. Communication succeeds when it’s matched to the audience. The audience…