Newsletter – February 2024

Navigating geopolitics, comparing automotive to maritime, green economy, leaders – winners and losers, media relationships …and more

Navigating Geopolitical Storms: a starter guide

In today’s interconnected world, geopolitical conflicts can send shockwaves globally across every segment of society, from governments and humanitarian organisations to businesses of all sizes and ordinary individuals. Once the initial shock subsides, and after we reflect on our role as global citizens in support of humanitarian interventions in the affected regions, we start to […]

Amazon or Red Sea: big stories, two approaches

We started with geopolitics and how maritime grapples with being caught up in leading stories and world events. Commercial ships, more often than not, can appear as pawns in the game. So, what are we to say to the bigger story… and who should be saying it? Consider a river-grounding under pilot. Consider this river […]

The Motor City to Maritime – 8 Mile, and then some

Growing up in the suburbs of Detroit, Michigan, the centre of the U.S. automobile industry, I was fully immersed in car culture. A mere 10-minute drive from my home would take you to the front door of Ford Motor Company’s global headquarters. Drive a little further, and you are at the gates of General Motors […]

Green economy – so how is it going with hydrogen?

The innovation in bringing new fuels into the market economy through technological reconfiguring – and reimagining – is an exciting space for maritime. Navigating this space and its challenges is UK ship owner and operator, Carisbrooke Shipping.         Carisbrooke Shipping has partnered with Carnot Ltd whose consortium has been awarded £2.3M to develop a zero-emission […]

Trump, Trudeau and Zelensky – comparing media personas

In many ways it’s hard to think about three leaders who are more dissimilar than Donald Trump, Justin Trudeau and Volodymyr Zelensky. From contrarian provocateur (Trump), to woke empath (Trudeau) to inspirationally defiant (Zelensky) the three men are (rightly) perceived very differently. What they have in common is that all three are very effective communicators. […]

An Unexpected Firing

On Friday, November 17, OpenAI announced that company CEO Sam Altman was stepping down. This came as a massive shock to anyone following the goings-on at the buzziest tech startup in the world. Not only was Altman generally well-liked internally and externally, but under his tenure, the valuation of OpenAI had skyrocketed to $90 billion, driven […]

The calm before the storm: Building rapport with the media ahead of a crisis

Picture this: within the premises of a prestigious international educational institution in India, a child is brutally murdered. The grief-stricken parents are traumatised, questioning if it is all just a terrible nightmare. And now imagine a video message released by the school’s top management just four days after the incident, with them taking no responsibility. […]

Port of Vancouver: why the location matters when you have a crisis

Many people ask us – as communication experts: how can we predict when any one incident will attract media attention? Our answer: it depends. In short, we recommend a four-question test: (1) can you take a picture of it? (2) Does it connect to a larger story? (3) Can people beyond the immediate stakeholders feel […]

Is there room for more commentary and opinion in our news?

I reconnected with a bunch of former classmates at a recent alumni gathering. We did a quick status update – most of us are still in the communications trade. Unsurprisingly, we started talking about the media landscape, what has changed and what has stayed the same. The conversation livened up when we discussed a recent […]