The Best Media-Training Tip Ever

LARA
People remember allegations, not rebuttals.

ORRIN
Exactly. Someone says Charlie fucked a goat. Even if the goat denies it, he goes to the grave, “Charlie the goat fucker.”

—Billions

Guest Blog Posts From the White House

First, the President takes to SCOTUSblog. Then the FBI Director graces the pages of Lawfare.

My LinkedIn Career Titles

I’ve changed this field several times over the years:

1. Digital Communications Consultant
2. Digital & Social Media Marketing Storyteller
3. I help people like you shape and tell your story.

Which Headline Is Best?

1. The Use and Abuse of Numbers in Writing

2. The Use and Abuse of Big Numbers in Writing

3. Stories, Not Statistics: How to Make Your Metrics Meaningful

4. Turning Statistics Into Stories: How to Humanize Big Numbers

5. How to Turn a Statistic Into a Story, and Thus Humanize Big Numbers

6. Every Big Number Needs Context

7. The Numbers Have No Context: Why No One Remembers Your Impressive Statistics

8. How to Humanize Numbers, Statistics, and Other Data

9. You’ve Been Using Numbers Wrong Your Entire Life

10. Show Me the Stories! The Use and Abuse of Numbers

11. Your Big Numbers Are Meaningless Without This One Storytelling Trick

Addendum (2/19/2016): And the winner is...

Which Headline Is Best?

1. PowerPoint: The Good, the Bad, the God-Awful Ugly

2. The Problem Isn’t PowerPoint. It’s the Way You’re Using It

3. 11 Tips to PowerPoint Perfection

4. 11 Ways to Perfect Your Next PowerPoint Presentation

5. The Ultimate Guide to PowerPoint

6. 7 Questions About PowerPoint You Were Too Embarrassed to Ask

7. How to Turn Your PowerPoint Loathing Into Love

8. How to Deliver a PowerPoint Presentation Like Steve Jobs

9. This Is Why You’re Terrible at PowerPoint: Because You’re Not Thinking Like Steve Jobs

10. Everything You Know About PowerPoint Is Wrong

11. Everything You Thought You Knew About PowerPoint Is Wrong

12. Everything You Need to Know About PowerPoint

13. To Deliver a Killer PowerPoint Presentation, Forget Everything You Think You Know

14. Your PowerPoint Presentations Could Be So Much Better! Here’s How

15. Your PowerPoint Presentations Could — and Should — Be So Much Better! Here’s How

16. How to Make Ugly Slide Decks Beautiful

Addendum (2/19/2016): And the winner is...

Which of These Cognitive Biases Have You Committed?

gambler’s fallacy	believing that a coin toss is more likely to come up heads if the previous five flips were tails
anchoring	the tendency to rely heavily on one piece of information—usually the first thing we learn—when making a decision
the Ikea effect	disproportionately valuing things that you’ve labored over
unit bias	assuming that a “portion” is the right size, which accounts for our tendency to finish off an opened bag of cookies

—The Happiness Code

If You’re Tardy, You Lack Integrity

In my years of reporting, I've never quite had an experience like being late-shamed by Lululemon founder Chip Wilson https://t.co/jO0iKkdRuO

— katie rosman (@katierosman) February 2, 2016

New York Times reporter Katherine Rosman relays this story from her interview with the founder of Lululemon:

I was 15 minutes late by the time I arrived, disheveled and apologetic. Mr. Wilson was seated with eight young women at a square table set for 10.

He is an imposing figure, 6 feet 2 inches tall, with a large head shaved bald and the scruff of a beard. He stood and helped me off with my parka, an old-fashioned gentleman.

When he rejoined his guests, all employed by Kit and Ace, he asked a question: What would happen if he were to arrive, say, 15 minutes late to a design meeting?

If he were 15 minutes late to such a meeting, he went on to explain, the designers might get the idea that it’s acceptable to deliver to the production department a bit past deadline. Then? The product would arrive late at the stores, which could lead to items ending up on the clearance rack.

“If we’re selling the product at a discount,” he said, “there is less money to market the product. If there is less money to market the product, then a different type of customer than the one we’re seeking will come into the store. There will be less money to put into the product’s quality and, ultimately, less profit. The whole system falls apart” ...

“Now we know,” Mr. Wilson added, “that when we have breakfast with Katie, we don’t really have to be there when we say we will be there.”