Writing Boots

On communication, professional and otherwise.

Why I’m not at the IABC confab: I’m too old for this sort of thing

06.13.2011 by David Murray // 9 Comments

Taking place this week is the International Conference of the International Association of Business Communicators. It's the most important professional conference for the most impotent professional communicators. And it's in San Diego.

Do I wish I were there?

I do not.

(Yes I do.)

I remember my first IABC conference. It was in Boston, during one weird week in June, 1994. On the way from Logan Airport to the hotel, the Ragan editorial entourage was caught in the Boston Gay Pride Parade. "The fucking Gay Parade?" bellowed our incredulous senior editor, to an equally mystified police officer. (Back then, it was news to most people that gay people lived in Boston; we thought they were all in New York and San Francisco.)

The first night we were there, my roommate Steve Crescenzo and I consumed an unfathomable amount of clams, and Guiness beer. The former had their effect on me, causing an unspeakable hazmat situation in my bed. Think, Exxon Valdez. The latter had its effect on Steve, who required an emergency wake-up call notifying him that the keynote speech he was there to cover was underway.

The same week, another editor's wife had an aneurism and nearly died, I got married, and in my honeymoon bed listened to live radio coverage of O.J. Simpson being followed around Los Angeles in a white Bronco.

That's what I think of when I think of IABC.

But we could handle it. We were in our twenties.

But we got older, and IABC never conferences never got any saner. In Toronto one year, Steve fell out of a parked airplane straight down to the tarmac. In Los Angeles another year, I made such an angry, drunken fool of myself at a dinner, that the next day I needed to create an alter-ego named "Mickey" to blame it on. There are IABCers who still know who Mickey is, and recoil at the name.

Steve created an online communication community where there was none, by galvanizing just about everyone in the business in a common rage—against him. They were reacting to "Fear and Loathing at the IABC International Conference," an article I had commissioned him to write, for the Journal of Employee Communication Management. I can't remember much about the piece now, but it was 6,000 words long and began with Steve threatening to strangle a flight attendant with his seat belt.

Once in Dallas, another colleague and I found our midnight way to the grassy knoll, and the moment we found the Zapruder viewpoint, a black limosine passed slowly before us, left to right, and then disappeared under the overpass. So mystical an experience was this, that Ed and I were later nearly arrested for singing the National Anthem at the top of our lungs, in our hotel room.

As I look back over the IABC conferences I've attended, I remember late-night pool swimming-pool sneak-ins, crying rookie writers and a weird all-night TV-watching session with Steve, during which he compared the two of us to "the old grandparents in the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory."

And afterward, always: The inevitable confrontation titled, The Crumpled Receipts, and the Grumpy CFO. "You stupid asses," he would begin.

And I haven't even brought up the annual Sunday night shenanigans at the Canadian hospitality suite.

"It was midnight on Sunday, June 4, in Vancouver, and people were dancing with foam moose antlers on their heads," began my Ragan Report coverage of the 2006 show, one of the last I attended.

People were signing International Association of Business Communicators' Chairman Warren Bickford's T-shirt, with Bickford in it. And a woman was standing before PR consultant Charles Pizzo with a pleading look on her face and a big red wine stain on her Edmonton Oilers hockey sweater.

The notorious annual party at the Canadian hospitality suite was in full swing, and the IABC's 2006 International Conference had officially started. Over the next three days, almost 1,500 communicators would spend three days communing, kibitzing, laughing and even crying together. It was the usual IABC love fest—at least as emotional as intellectual, as important as a symbol of professional togetherness as an honest-to-goodness professional development opportunity.

"Cold water," Pizzo advised the woman.

I could use some of that right now.

Next year, the IABC show is here in Chicago.

I'll be able to walk there (in my Writing Boots).

It's walking home that'll be the trick.

Categories // Uncategorized Tags // Canadian Hospitality Suite, IABC International Conference, San Diego, Steve Crescenzo, The Ragan Report

The new communication disease: the “valueless video”

04.05.2011 by David Murray // Leave a Comment

Corporate editors have committed the sin for years, with photography: Communication clichés like the grip-and-grin plaque ceremony, the ribbon-cutting-with-giant scissors, the ground-breaking with shiny shovels.

When comperterized graphic design took the place of x-acto knives and paste 25 years ago, people went absolutely wild with fonts and for several years corporate newsletters newsletters looked like ransom notes.

You know how these mindless, meaningless practices took hold? Because it was cheap and easy to stage and make these photos and use extra fonts, and they satisfied the box-checking, pseudo-creative instincts of not-very-talented communicators.

Well, you know what's also cheap and easy to make these days?

Videos.

Which is why we're starting to see videos inserted as a part of nearly every communication campaign, even when the video does nothing to amplify the message.

Yesterday President Obama told followers he's officially running for reelection. He sent a letter, which he interrupts halfway through to say, "I'd like to share a video that features some folks like you who are helping to lead the way on this journey."

So I watch the video. I figure it's important. And I'm curious to know just what President Obama means when he talks about folks like me.

These numbnuts are nothing like me! "I had this perception that politics was all show. It was all soundbites," says one woman in the video. "But politics is how we govern ourselves."

Now you know darn well that this video didn't get made because somebody in the reelection campaign said, "Hey, there's this brilliant woman who recently learned politics is important, and we've just got to get her on camera to tell her story. It would be perfect for the reelection announcement!"

No, it was, "We gotta have a video. How long will it take us to find people of every color and gender to say a bunch of semi-realistic nice things about President Obama in a documentary-style video bullshitfest?"

To say this video did more harm than good for the reelection announcement is to falsely imply that it did some good.

Similarly in the corporate context, the popularity of video was surely behind its use for the purpose of the sharing of the new vision and mission for a credit union.


I mean, can you imagine a less visual story than the mission and the vision for a credit union? Hence, the agonized metaphor of president carrying around the giant puzzle pieces. This should have been a quick-hitting intranet story.

And here's the problem with valueless videos, even if they aren't hilariously campy.

Unlike photographic or design clichés, whose only harm is to tell the audience that the publication is written by dullards for dullards, valueless videos necessarily grab the faithful reader and drag him away from the main message, probably for good.

After being told by President Obama that that the imbecile woman in his video was just like me, do you think I returned to read the rest of his letter, which probably went on to ask for my support?

Hell to the no. I figured the dummies in the video had the campaign covered.

Them, and the dummies who made the video, because they thought, "We gotta have a video."

As Steve Crescenzo wisely suggests in the current issue of ContentWise, do video only if spoken words and moving images are the very best way to get your message across—or the only way to help your readers grasp it fully.

Hey, I love video; I think it's a way to show the flesh and blood behind the corporate life. I think it's an outlet for spontaneous creativity in communication. I think video, for many uses, has the potential to be more powerful than print.

Hell, I run an awards program for corporate videos.

But it's called the Strategic Video Awards.

For a reason.

Categories // Uncategorized Tags // communication trends, ContentWise, desktop design, grip-and-grins, prose, Steve Crescenzo, strategic video, valueless video, video

How to think about video (first, get a brain)

03.29.2011 by David Murray // 1 Comment

I'm the new editor of ContentWise, a six-times-yearly ezine that goes out to a few thousand lucky but hungry dogs like us who make a living making words and pictures and videos and stuff.

For my first issue, a special thing on video, I leaned on pal Steve Crescenzo to tell us when to use video and when only writing will do. It's not rocket science. "Problem is, too many communicators are just churning stuff and reacting to stuff," Steve says. "They just never go through that thought process." His points are illuminated by winners of the inaugural Strategic Video Awards.

Go here to see the issue, and if you like it, go here to subscribe.

Like its motorcyclist editor, ContentWise is handsome, and it's free.

Categories // Uncategorized Tags // ContentWise, David Murray, Steve Crescenzo, Strategic Video Awards, video communication

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