Insights
Why Marketers & Scientists Hate Each Other 2: Marketing Isn’t Science Communications
Note from Bob: This week, I’m writing a shaggy little series on marketers and scientists, and how to make that unpromising but all too common pairing work better. See all the emails.
Over the more than 20 years I’ve worked with scientists, I’ve heard a constant refrain from them: marketers are terrible to work with.…
Read MoreWhy Marketers & Scientists Hate Each Other (It’s the Papers)
I’ve worked for more than 20 years with researchers as a communications and marketing professional. I’ve heard every complaint both sides could make about the other — and probably so have you. For me, the usual stereotypes (marketers are fluffy idiots, scientists are literal idiots) stopped being amusing years ago.…
Read MoreAssessing Your Writing Skills
A list member writes:
… Read MoreThis morning while working on a proposal with some super collaborators I found myself thinking that my writing skills could use some work. I know they always can, for everyone, but then I wondered:
How can I assess my writing skills to highlight current strengths and weaknesses without going back to college?
Blood Bags, Parking Tickets, WEIRDos & Big New Stories
I’m fascinated by the recent study in Science that argues the medieval Roman Catholic Church’s prohibitions against incest were crucial in laying the foundation for “individualism, nonconformity, and the inclination to trust and help strangers,” traits the authors associate with the evolution of “WEIRD” societies — western, educated, industrialized, rich and democratic.…
Read MoreDon’t Play Numbers Games
Among my top-five most-hated science communications tactics: let’s write a letter to X journal and get Y number of people to sign it. That’ll get their attention and change things!
Sadly: while Y might get their attention (briefly), it’s never nearly enough to change things.…
Read MoreNick Cage’s Laws for Q&As
The best Q&A in the history of the world: David Marchese’s New York Times interview of the actor Nicholas Cage, which ran in August and blew the heads off of about 20,000 Hollywood agents and publicists.
I haven’t watched a Nick Cage movie in probably 20 years (“Con Air”?), but even I found it compulsively readable.…
Read MoreThe Coming Agitation
The Agitator, a must-read newsletter on fundraising trends and strategy for non-profits, last week posted a series on audience building amidst the ever-shifting sands of Google and Facebook. (In two words: treacherous.) Some takeaways:
- More than half of all Google searches now end in no clicks (because Google is dominating many searches with its own information boxes — and because people on mobile don’t click as much);
- Organic reach on Facebook has dried up — clickthroughs are now all ad-driven, and those ads are getting and will get more and more expensive.
Data Viz Solution: Small Multiples
I love how Pew Research Center displays information — especially in ways that allow you to make quick comparisons and immediately grasp differences.
But I didn’t know how to describe how Pew does this so well until I read this article by the Center’s design director, Peter Bell.…
Read MoreHow to Nail a Microtargeted Research Campaign
How can you engage exactly the grass-tops people you want talking about your ideas, expertise and new research?
Katy Napotnik of The Urban Institute reveals Urban’s blueprint for doing so in a Medium essay that every CEO, director and comms director at research-driven organizations should marinate in.…
Read MoreMetabolism
You had a fresh analysis about an issue dominating the news last month — one that was going to make all the hot takes look silly. But you waited too long to pull a pitch together for an op-ed and media, so you just tweeted a grumpy thread to your followers and hoped somebody would find it.…
Read More