When communicating complex ideas or data, effective visuals can allow readers to grasp the main idea quickly. The challenge, then, is to translate ideas into a straightforward, concise graphic. Delilah Zak, one of the lead designers for McKinsey Quarterly, is an expert at making business concepts and data comprehensible and memorable. Below she shares some [...]
Bringing your company’s story to life
One of the most difficult challenges for companies is to tell their story in a compelling way. We all know people who seem to be natural storytellers—those who can captivate an audience, in person or with the written word. What seems so easy for others can often be elusive when you attempt to describe what [...]
Advancing public policy and the greater good
Last Thursday, October 4, four Chicago-based organizations—the Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce, Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning (CMAP), the Illinois Science & Technology Coalition (ISTC), and World Business Chicago—held an event at 1871 in the Merchandise Mart to celebrate the release of the Illinois Innovation Index annual report. The Index is the product of unprecedented collaboration [...]
Getting more out of your insight through lean content creation
When you’ve come upon a particularly trenchant insight and you want to be sure it gets noticed by the largest possible audience, it pays to think about it not as a one-off but as a series. James Brown, the godfather of soul and a savvy businessman, understood this concept well. In 1969, he created a [...]
Attack of the robot writers
When the New York Times company released its latest earnings numbers, Forbes.com saw an opening to rub salt in the wounds of the struggling newspaper industry. A preview of the announcement was penned by Narrative Science, a company founded by two journalists that have developed software to generate articles automatically. Their technology can take a [...]
Heather Ploog joins Leff Communications as managing partner
Over the past two years serving clients, I’ve been reminded of how much my experience at the McKinsey Quarterly has shaped my approach for working with businesses on marketing communications efforts. During my time with the Quarterly, I had the benefit of collaborating on a daily basis with a number of very talented editors. These [...]
Using online publications to drive traffic to your website
A lot of emphasis has been placed on investing in a company blog, and with good reason. A blog can improve the search engine optimization (SEO) of your website, provide information to prospective customers on products and services, and strengthening the dialogue with current clients. In the rush to mobilize the company’s collective intelligence, however, [...]
How B2B companies can ensure that their outsourcing efforts deliver value
Two studies provide some insight into how B2B companies are approaching their marketing efforts. This report from MarketingProfs and Junta 22 found that 55 percent of respondents outsourced their content marketing. Research from Marketing Sherpa indicated that 45 percent of B2B companies have or are planning to outsource search engine optimization (SEO), 31 percent paid [...]
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