Patterns of Adaptation: How the communications industry is adapting to generative AI

Yesterday I joined the Unconference on AI at Berghs School of Communication, one of the world’s leading creative industry schools. It was a fascinating chance to hear from professors, students and practitioners trying to figure out how to incorporate AI tools in their work. The pressure is on; according to recent research, it seems likely the communications and marketing […]

A Four-Dimensional System for Quantifying Social Influence

Influencer marketing and engagement work continues to grow and become more complex. We need a robust framework for assessing (and ideally quantifying) a person’s level of influence. We can do this by breaking influence down into four dimensions: Relevance, Authority, Reach and Accessibility (the RARA system). Together, these dimensions allow a quantifiable, data-driven and robust […]

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 […]

Individual influence and the collapse of trust

This year we’ve seen a huge decline in trust across the globe. Trust in government, in business, in NGOs and in the media has dropped to some of the lowest levels seen in 17 years, as reported in the Edelman Trust Barometer survey of 33,000 respondents across the globe. What lessons can communicators draw from […]

The Narrows – Four trends changing how information flows and news spreads

If you’re reading this, you probably got to it through an algorithm. That’s really common these days – and it’s a trend with a surprising dark side. Either you came here through a social media link, or you found it via a search engine. In either case, the algorithms that determine who sees what on those platforms […]

Digital communications and smart munitions

Working on integrated content marketing strategy is a lot like building cruise missiles. It’s creative, of course, rather than destructive. Instead of trying to inject a hundred kilos of high explosive into a bunker protected by ferroconcrete, we’re in the business of propagating ideas into minds guarded by cynicism and limited attention. But aside from […]

We create fame. We spread ideas. (Want to join us?)

You’ve probably never heard of the company I work for. But our product is all around you. In fact, it’s inside you. We make ideas, and we put them in people’s heads. Essentially, we create fame. What does that even mean? A company whose business is to create fame? Communications companies like the one I work […]

The Three Fundamentals of Powerful Interactive Communications

On the morning of 14 November 2008, a 15 year-old boy was rushed to hospital in Laholm, Sweden. He was suffering from an apparent epileptic fit, brought on by exhaustion and dehydration. Investigating doctors discovered that the cause of his illness was self-inflicted. The boy had been playing Wrath of the Lich King, an expansion of […]

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 […]

Kill it With Fire: why Gamification sucks and Game Dynamics rule

This is a transcript (sort of)of an Ignite session I just delivered at the Melcrum Digital Communications Summit in London.

Philip Trippenbach

Communications strategy in the age of intelligent machines

Communications