By Leo Valiquette
It’s that time of year again, when pundits and armchair quarterbacks of every stripe offer up their insights on the year past and their predictions for the year to come.
This isn’t one of those posts.
After the year I have had, it’s clear that knowing what’s coming often matters less than how you chose to deal with whatever comes.
My wife and I have an eight-year-old son who is a high-functioning autistic. He may also, as we have learned in the past month, have mild epilepsy and ADD.
We could have chosen to take these latest diagnoses as bad news, or we could rejoice in the fact that we may have finally fingered the culprits responsible for the challenges our son has been having in school that could not be explained by autism alone.
We have made a conscious choice to embrace the latter. Because now we feel we have something tangible, definable and actionable. The source of the problem, and there is no denying there has for some time been a problem, is no longer a mystery. Now we can deal with it.
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This is the next entry in our “Best of” series, in which we venture deep into the vault to replay blog opinion and insight that has withstood the test of time. Today’s post hails from December 2011. We welcome your feedback.
By Francis Moran
More than two decades ago, I was working with a public relations agency in Halifax, Nova Scotia, that was helping a resource development company counter considerable opposition within fishing communities to its proposal to drill exploratory natural gas wells on Georges Bank. It was a classic case of a clash between a critically important but fading industry — the fishery — and a new and incredibly promising industry — offshore hydrocarbon extraction. We mounted an open and consultative information campaign in the fishing communities most dependent on Georges Bank. We held countless meetings in and around those communities. We hired a local lad, the son of a fishing family, who had become a geologist and had worked in oil and gas exploration to head up our community efforts. And we organised a critical political gathering — a dinner in Halifax to which we invited scores of influential business, political and community leaders to hear directly from the company CEO.
I wasn’t at the dinner but my colleagues told me what happened and I am paraphrasing in the quotes below.
The CEO, almost a caricature of the good old boy cigar-chomping American oilman, got to his feet after desert and, as part of his prepared comments, told the assembled dignitaries, “The problem with you’all is you don’t know how to take risk.”
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By Daylin Mantyka 
It’s officially the end of the working week, which means that it’s time for our usual Friday roundup where we’ve compiled a short list of the top articles we read and loved. Grabbing our attention this week were posts from Global News, Duct Tape Marketing, Ingenium Communications and ventureburn.
Social media 2013 year in review: vigilante justice
In this informative piece, Heather Loney recaps three cases of social media vigilante justice that happened in the last year: The hunt for the Boston Marathon bombers, Anonymous and justice for Rehtaeh, and the Roast Busters teen sex ring. Heather talks about both the harm and good that these social media rallies can cause and insists that coming together as a online community should be to make a positive difference.
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By Francis Moran
When I moved to Ottawa in the late 1980s to head up the national capital office of what was then Canada’s largest public relations firm, the Internet was not yet even a gleam in Al Gore’s eye. My mandate was to build the company’s then-non-existent federal government business, and that usually meant large-scale, big-budget, multi-disciplinary communications efforts in support of major policy issues of the day. Unlike the current administration, where virtually all communications efforts are partisan propaganda masquerading as helpful information, the Conservative government at that time seemed to understand that it had to explain what it was doing if it was to secure a social license for what it was doing. And in that pre-Internet age, that meant print. Maybe some radio, possibly TV if it was a really big campaign, but mainly print.
Before I actually won any of those big contracts to develop and implement a six- or seven-figure campaign, I got my foot in the door by conducting audits, or evaluations, of past campaigns. Auditing past efforts required me to compare the outcome of the campaign to the stated objectives, determine whether the material produced had said the right things and whether it had said them to the right audiences.
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By Bob Bailly
I’ve written a lot on this blog about the concepts of neuromarketing – a predictive model that uses findings from the sciences concerning the brain (neuroscience and psychology) to improve sales and communication skills.
It’s based upon the simple concept that human decisions are made in the most primitive (from an evolutionary perspective) parts of our brains – aptly described as our “old” or “reptilian” brain.
We know this because neuroscientists have been able to identify how our brains function under a wide range of activities using modern diagnostic equipment; they can now see what the physical effects are as various regions of our brains work, play, think and conjure. The biology observed from these electro-chemical reactions is truly amazing in its complexity and design, yet all we are really “seeing” are the electro-chemical indicators of a brain at work – we really don’t have a clue what makes a brain into a mind. In reality, neuroscientists and philosophers don’t even really have any clear understanding of what a thought really is. We know what our minds can do, we know that the origination of thought comes from our brains, but frankly the understanding and language to describe the link between brain and mind does not currently exist.
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Lessons in customer service from Kijiji and Co.
December 10, 2013 by Leo Valiquette
Fish tanks, fishing boats and Fisher Price toys for the baby’s crib. Even jobs as sushi chefs. There’s no shortage to what you can find on Kijiji, Used Ottawa, Craigslist and the like […]
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Runaway trains
December 09, 2013 by David French
Recent events in the news regarding “Runaway Trains” have provided an opportunity to highlight one of the realities of the invention and patenting process: It is not always the original invention that is most important for commercialization […]
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Great articles roundup: Startups, social media, innovation and public relations
December 06, 2013 by Daylin Mantyka
It’s Friday — which means that it’s time for the weekly roundup. This week. we have informative content from Fast Company, socialnomics and Spin Sucks […]
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Crowdfunding is not marketing
December 05, 2013 by Francis Moran
The first time I heard a company suggest that they were going to do a crowdfunding campaign not to raise money but to raise awareness, I thought it was one of the stupidest things I had heard in a long time […]
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The decline of Internet advertising
December 04, 2013 by Chamber of Commerce
In its quarterly earnings call in October 2013, Google beat analysts’ predictions yet again. But the downward trend in its return on the cost per click (CPC) of its Adwords program continued. The trend began several years ago and appears to be steepening its descent […]
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What can your business learn from the Toy Testing Council?
December 03, 2013 by Leo Valiquette
If you are not familiar with it, the Canadian Toy Testing Council is a 55-year-old non-profit that enlists the volunteer aid of families to subject toys to the most rigorous testing possible – at the hands of kids […]
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November roundup: What does it take to bring technology to market?
December 02, 2013 by Daylin Mantyka
Last month’s contents were newsworthy and informative. Leading the pack was Francis Moran’s post on angel investors and crowdfunding, followed by Maurice Smith’s post on the definition of ‘Digital Media’ […]
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Great articles roundup: Public relations, growth, social media, tech trends & customer service
November 29, 2013 by Daylin Mantyka
Friday has rolled around yet again, which means we’ve compiled a short list of the top articles we read and loved over the week. Grabbing our attention were posts from Spin Sucks, Fast Company, Social Samosa, memeburn and velocity […]
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