Which audience is most important for your business? Many say it’s clients or customers. But often the most overlooked and valuable audience is your employees.  Whether it’s communicating about the post-COVID return, your mission and values, or your new offerings, how you engage your employees is critical to your business success. This week on HearSay, Michael and Lee welcome Larry Moscow and Katie Cronen to talk about all of that and more, including why some words like “agile,” efficient,” “innovative” and “transformational” might not be effective and what language you should use instead.

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So much is written about how important purpose is to a business especially now. But what is purpose? How do you become a purpose driven organization rather than just a company with a purpose statement? Podcast alumni Katie Cronen and Sachi Pettit join Michael and Lee to talk about identifying scalable stories, getting your purpose in front of the right people, and the value of a master narrative. They use poignant examples from companies like Toyota, Airbnb, Google, and Hershey to help you find the symbols that bring your company’s story to life.

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What’s the difference between a glass half full and a glass half empty? A school with the most graduates and a school with the largest alumni network? Plant-based protein and synthetic meat? In this week’s edition of HearSay, Michael and Lee are joined by colleagues Will Howard and Katie Cronen to talk about framing — the heart and soul of m+p’s language expertise.  Join us for some of our favorite framing examples and why it’s an important exercise for companies.

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maslansky + partners’ Senior Vice Presidents Maria Boos and Katie Cronen join Michael and Lee to talk about the language of customer experience and why it’s so important to get the language right. Especially now, what makes it harder? How can we do it right? We share what we have learned from companies in the marketplace today and work that we’ve done in the past.  They cover the one question all communicators should be able to answer, how to define success, and the importance of intuition and simplicity.

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Michael and Lee are joined by colleague Sachi Pettit in a conversation about when companies should speak out and what it takes to be a leader, especially on difficult issues. They talk about confronting racism, equality, and how to find common ground even when it seems impossible. They talk about specific case studies from Proctor & Gamble and a project where they found a way to engage even the most skeptical audiences in the climate movement.

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What do the phrases white glove, high-touch, and clean have in common? They’ve changed meaning and use for safety precautions and standards in a global pandemic. But the language shifts we’ve seen go beyond safety: birthday parties, happy hour, weekend getaways, middle seats on airplanes, virtual banking. This week, Michael and Lee welcome colleagues Catherine Farr and Will Howard to talk about words that changed meaning over the past year. And the lifecycle of the pandemic lexicon.

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Is it possible to persuade folks to take the COVID-19 vaccine? In this week’s edition of HearSay, Michael and Lee talk to colleague and pharma expert Sarah Hendry about the unique challenges in getting people vaccinated. They touch on cognitive biases at play, past healthcare experience that may impact today’s hesitancy, missed opportunities at some key moments, and whether its even possible to find common ground with anti-vaxxers.

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