The end of an innovative era for digital communication

The world is still mourning the passing of Steve Jobs, the former leader of Apple Inc., especially communication professionals and technophiles who anxiously await the newest creations in technology that will advance our personal and business lives in both epic and subtle ways.
As a former Business Manager at Apple, Steve’s passing marks the loss of [...]

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No small i when leaders become the brand

One wonders today what the biggest news is and will be: the iPad 2 or the presence/absence of Steve Jobs. Leading up to Apple’s event, there seems so be more media attention on the latter.
There is ongoing debate as to whether CEOs should or shouldn’t become part of their company’s brand.
Richard Branson aligns himself with [...]

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The impatience of Jobs

Apple’s Steve Jobs’ decision last week to pick out his competitors specifically was a surprising move. There seemed to be a strong element of “I’ve had enough and I’m not going to take it anymore!” to his news conference, which is understandable. Perhaps for the first time since the Newton, an Apple product was losing [...]

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The great “What-if?”

What you don’t know is more interesting than what you know. It’s a fundamental tenet of the news business. Read any reputable (or disreputable, for that matter) news outlet and at least half of the stories will be about not what happened, but what might happen.
Apple understands this. Like perhaps no other company in history, [...]

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Jobs’s absence a branding dilemma

News of Steve Jobs’s leave-of-absence from Apple is a blow to the company, but it needn’t have been such a massive challenge. It’s never a good idea to have a single person, no matter how tempting it might be to do so, to embody a company.
Since 1997, Jobs has done a tremendous job of turning [...]

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The Rogers neighborhood

Here in Canada, as in many other countries, the iPhone 3G went on sale July 11th. There were the predictable media stories about long lines and people camping overnight to get their hands on the precious gizmo. As usual, relatively few journalists had anything negative to say about the product; Apple can apparently do no [...]

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