Selling Ideas in a World of Skeptics
People don’t know who to trust or what to believe. Which means you need a new way to communicate your message.
The book is filled with tactical steps and real-world examples that will help communicators get beyond the skepticism with messages that truly resonate.
Featured Post
Why Perceptions Really Matter
The Language of Trust: Selling Ideas in a World of Skeptics is a book about how to use language to undo the skepticism that a world of too much spin has created.
The book is based on more than a decade’s worth of research into how consumers and the public respond emotionally to often complex, difficult and controversial topics. Whether your goals are corporate positioning, introducing a new product, or re-framing the policy debate, language carries more influence than you might fully realize. (more…)
Recent Posts
You are pathetic
Oh the hypocrisy of it all. 
Medicare is a wedge issue…again. Only this time it’s Democrats doing the wedging. They successfully hammered GOP Rep. Paul Ryan’s Medicare Plan to help a Democrat win the NY special house election in a traditionally Republican district. And the issue is giving them renewed confidence about the 2012 cycle.
How did this happen? (more…)
Potty Talk or How Urinals Will Save Humanity
I will use lots of bathroom language in this post, so beware. 
Increasingly, environmentally-active organizations are replacing traditional urinals and toilets with new versions from companies like Waterless, Kohler, Falcon Waterfree Technologies and Duravit that claim to manage water more efficiently, thus reducing the amount of water used or, if you prefer, wasted.
The other big difference between these new toilets and the porcelain Gods of yore is that they come with stories – as they should. After all, approaching a bone-dry urinal usually means (more…)
Moments of Misery
Last night I flew from New York to LA on a late flight. My flight was delayed, landed at 12:50 am, I had a 45 minute drive ahead of me and at most four hours to sleep before my morning meeting. Suffice it to say, I wasn’t in the best mood. I needed to pick up my rental car and was happy that I could go to Budget Fastbreak, grab my car and go. But it was not to be. Fastbreak at LAX, it appears, closes at 11:55 pm. If you arrive later than that, you have to go into the hell that is the normal car rental check-out line.
From there bad went to worse. (more…)
Why context matters
A headline in today’s WSJ reads simply: “April Budget Deficit Totaled $40.49 Billion.”
And?
While there is no doubt that number is big and negative, the headline gave me little to go on. Was it going to be a positive story or a negative story? Was the situation improving or getting worse? The headline provided a fact and, until I read the story, it left me to interpret its meaning. Maybe they wanted me to read further to find the context. Maybe they thought the number stood on its own. But the important point is that without some context, I was lost. (more…)
Post-merger messaging: Delta vs. United
Ask most frequent flyers about the impact of an airline merger and you can see the anxiety on their faces. Most don’t expect the experience to be a good one. They might get access to more destinations, but they expect to lose benefits, deal with more hassles, and less service. They expect the lowest common denominator of the two airlines. Put simply, when airlines merge, customers are skeptical that the result will be a better airline.
With this in mind, the airline can take two approaches to communicating about its post-merger self.
