Chris Christensen and Jen Phillips joined host Shel Holtz to discuss some disturbing data: Most employees don’t know what makes their company different from the competition — and can’t explain it to customers. Other topics included the fact that U.S. travelers make 140 different website visits (on average) before booking a trip (do you know your customers’ path before they make a decision on your product or service?); some companies have turned insults and attacks by the President-elect into badges of honor — and merchandise for sale; getting people to share your content isn’t as big a deal as some marketers think, so what does it take to amplify your content (and what should we be measuring)? There’s much more, including Dan York’s tech report and a digital assistant for gradma.
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Three IABC Fellows — Priya Bates, John Deveney, and Mark Schumann — joined Shel Holtz for this week’s FIR to talk about the need for businesses to prepare for the prospect of a tweeted attack by the President of the United States, Muslim inclusion as an element of TV advertising, the increasingly common requirement that employees host Facebook Live broadcasts, Mariah Carey’s New Year’s Eve lip synch fail (and the even worse blame game that followed), why the layoffs of white-collar employees whose jobs were replaced by IBM’s Watson should be on every communicator’s radar, and conversation as they new platform based on the number of AI-conversation-fueled products introduced last week at the Consumer Electronics Show. Dan York reports on databases being held for ransom and Russia’s demand that Google and Apple remove the LinkedIn app from their app stores.
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The post FIR #69: Shut Up Already, Mariah Carey appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

Artificial Intelligence is on the panel’s mind — among other things — as C.C. Chapman, Neville Hobson, and Dan York join Shel Holtz for the first episode of 2017 and the beginning of our 13th consecutive year of podcasting. Our conversation covered the impact of a second consecutive presidential administration planning an arm’s-length relationship with the press while employing social media more to communicate directly with the public; businesses making preparations to address the prospect of an attack from the president; five industries whose futures are threatened by technology (and what they can do about it); and much more.
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The post FIR #68: Did any of us actually say any of this? appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.