Employee Communication

For Immediate Release 96: The crisis that keeps on giving

Neville Hobson Leave a comment Artificial Intelligence, Business, Communication, Employee Communication, For Immediate Release, Marketing, Public Relations, Reputation, Social Media, Social Networks, Technology, Trends, Workplace

In the July installment of The Hobson & Holtz Report, Shel and I talked about these topics: A 15-year-old participating in a work experience program took over the Twitter account of the beleaguered Southern Rail in the UK. The response to #AskEddie was undoubtedly a welcome break for Southern Rail’s social media team, but what did it ultimately accomplish? The online publication Quartz experiments with display-type ads in the text of stories that let users ask an artificial intelligence-based chatbot named Hugo for more information about just the stuff you’re interested in. Will artificial intelligence eventually take over the creative side of content marketing? Takata’s air bag crisis is in its second decade, leading ultimately to the once-mighty company’s bankruptcy. […]

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Cyberattack: The lack of serious intent for the NHS is not a role model

Neville Hobson Leave a comment Business, Communication, Employee Communication, Politics, Public Relations, Society, Software, Technology, Web, Workplace
Nurse at computer

One of the lingering impressions I have of the NHS is of an organization that’s cornered the market in laser-printer labels. That’s not to criticise or belittle an incredible public service in the UK that, in my experience, offers outstanding healthcare services at zero or low cost to patients. The provision of care is peerless; it’s how the organization is administered that isn’t. I recall hospital visits and physio sessions a few years ago when I suffered a leg injury where my appointments with different services in the NHS system exposed me to the admin side of things. While a particular specialist would be able to see my patient record on her computer screen, invariably she’d be unable to share […]

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Generation Z vs Millennials: There’s quite a difference

Neville Hobson Leave a comment Business, Communication, Employee Communication, Marketing, Politics, Social Media, Social Networks, Society, Technology, Trends, Workplace

For much of the past decade, Millennials has been the generation that was the comparative one whenever anyone talked about behavioural and other differences between generations in contemporary society. Not only in the cultural and consumer contexts but also in the workplace. It’s fair to say that marketers and brand managers now understand a great deal about that generation in terms of behaviours, expectations, preferences and other consumer indicators. Employers understand much about them in terms of workplace expectations and behaviours. Yet I wonder whether there’s a fixation on Millennials that doesn’t see how time has passed and that there’s a next generation that requires attention, far more than has been given thus far, apparently. That generation is the so-called […]

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How to put AI into cognitive perspective

Neville Hobson 2 Comments Artificial Intelligence, Business, Communication, Employee Communication, Hardware, IBM, Innovation, Marketing, Public Relations, Society, Technology, Trends, Workplace
cognitivedress

Among the big topics that will dominate the news in 2017, a prominent one will undoubtedly be artificial intelligence or AI. It’s a huge topic, one that gathered momentum in 2016 to grab our attention and showcase both opportunity and risk with news and opinion often focused on a dystopian future that has plans to eliminate jobs currently done by human beings and replace them with robots. (Or maybe not.) Wherever you look, there’s so much differing opinion on the impact of AI and automation on people and jobs that, at times, it’s hard to know how to separate the wheat from the chaff. While a great deal of media coverage and social commentary and opinion has been on the consumer focus of AI – just look […]

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Trust: the key to employee advocacy success

Neville Hobson 8 Comments Business, Communication, Employee Communication, Ethics, IBM, Marketing, Public Relations, Social Media, Workplace

One of the most credible research efforts into trust in organizations is the Edelman Trust Barometer, a report published annually since 2000 by the Edelman PR firm. The 2016 report, published in January, surveyed 33,000 people in 28 countries worldwide and provides rich insights from the analysis of respondents’ opinions on a wide range of topics under the broad umbrella term ‘trust.’ You can read the report for detailed information. I referenced this report in a presentation I gave last week during the B2B Marketing Expo in London about employee brand advocates and ways in which my employer IBM embraces such advocacy. Trust is the primary foundation of every initiative or activity that involves someone advocating something or someone else, […]

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