It’s time for a code of ethics for persuasive technology in marketing and communications

Nothing can be more central to who we are as people than the choices we make. And we in the marketing and communications industry make our living affecting those choices. Now, we have access to increasingly powerful persuasive technology – new ways to find, analyse, and persuade people. It is time for a code of […]

Twitter bans political ads. Is it the right move?

We’ve been discussing this a lot in the team here at Edelman London. I think this decision will be harder to implement than it sounds. It’s like my colleague Penny Lipsham said: “You can take the political ads out of Twitter, but you can’t take the politics out of Twitter.” You can ban political ads […]

Checkmate – Facebook’s influencer marketing gambit

Mark Zuckerberg made big news last week when he announced that Facebook is changing the way its algorithm works. Zuckerberg positioned this as a move aimed at maximizing user well-being. There may be research to back that up. But it’s also a canny move that will give Facebook a way to capture an ever-bigger slice of the […]

Influencer Marketing: Facebook is Staking its Claim

For a long time I’ve been wondering when Facebook would reach out and claim a slice of the huge and juicy influencer marketing money pie. With influencer marketing budgets growing at an astonishing rate year-on-year, it seemed like it was only a matter of time before the biggest social media platform in the world tried to take a cut. […]

Letter to my MP: Stand Up for Democracy and the Rule of Law

This is the text of a letter I sent this morning to my Member of Parliament in London: UPDATE: Victoria Borwick, my MP, answered my letter within a week. I’ll append her response after my text. Victoria Borwick MP House of Commons London SW1A 0AA Dear Ms Borwick, I am one of your constituents, […]

A Manifesto of Openness

For a moment, all has been quiet on the beach of history. The last wave has receded, and with it the blood has almost drained, hissing, into the dark foaming sea; the blood of Ypres and of Gallipoli, the blood of Moscow and Stalingrad, the blood of Normandy and Berlin, the blood of Iwo […]

TEDxUoN: Communication and the power of video games

This post is the text, more or less, of a talk I just gave in Nottingham for TEDxUoN. The summer that I was eighteen years old, I went on a bike trip to Ireland. I borrowed my older brother’s bike and got my own plane ticket. I was going alone. It was the first really […]

Why the Budweiser Puppy Must Be Destroyed

This video embodies all that is wrong with Old Advertising: It’s a genuinely touching piece of visual storytelling. It shamelessly checks every box: Story of separation and longing – check. Set in a pure sunlit rural locale – check. Background characters are handsome/beautiful, all-American – check. Soundtrack is a recently popular bittersweet lovesick ballad – […]

Six reasons Guardian Witness will sink or swim

Today the Guardian launches a new participative journalism platform, Guardian Witness. Like CNN’s iReport, or pure-play citizen journalism outfits like Citizenside, Guardian Witness allows news readers to become contributors and participate in the making of the news. It’s already getting lots of reactions online. So – will it work? 1. Experience The Guardian has form […]

The Great British Class Survey rides at last

My first job when I moved to the UK was as a receptionist at a TV production company in Kentish town. (Well, I was actually hired to move in furniture, but worked up to answering the phones.) The boss there was an energetic, garrulous guy named Ian. He could spin off a dozen concepts for […]

Philip Trippenbach

Communications strategy in the age of intelligent machines

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