Conversation Agent - Valeria Maltoni

Making Headlines with the Wrong Story

Instead of investigating the funneling of Euroscepticism into Brexit and the reasons why Britain, once a land of ambitious colonizers, is descending into a dramatic spiral, The Economist decides to make fun of Italy. Perhaps cucumber on pizza (must be a British thing) can paper over the Government's embarrassment for the ridiculous twists and turns of the last few days. But the resignation of a Prime Minister is an opportunity for introspection. Ridicule may be entertaining, but it's rarely productive. According to the weekly report, Britaly is “a country of political instability, low growth and subordination to the markets.” The... Read more →

The Emotional Toll of Believing in the Wrong Story

It's 1860, the year before the end of “Kingdom of the Two Sicilies.” In 1814, the Congress of Vienna had put together the Kingdom of Naples (the southern half of Italy's “boot”) and the Kingdom of Sicily under the rule of a Bourbon, in Naples. This is the backdrop for a spellbinding story. “For everything to stay the same, everything has to change,” says Tancredi in Giuseppe di Lampedusa’s 1963 novel, The Leopard. The Salina family is an upper-class family of landowners, with some minor titles. Setting the tone of the patriarch’s life, di Lampedusa says, “Between the pride and... Read more →

Making the Story up as we Go

The “point of view in the American novel” was an assignment I relished during my course on American literature at the University of Bologna. I started the paper by describing a scene from Hitchcock’s Rear Window: A man in the semi-distance looking inside the apartment across and the yard below him. From the activities taking place in his view, the character develops a narrative piecing together clues made of body language and action. Third party observational narrative feels real to the moviegoer who becomes immersed in the sequence of events “as seen or described” by someone else. You watch the... Read more →

How Disinformation Became Part of the Current Narrative

Genuine two-way communication is not just dissemination. Information doesn't equal indoctrination. There's a line between getting attention and agitprop. Providing proof or evidence is not the same as the truth. Truth is a conclusion the other person gets to make. These were some of the principles I discussed in a conversation at Web 2.0 On November 19, 2009. You can see the visuals I used at the link. I cautioned communication professionals to exercise some self-awareness: Is what I'm saying true? Have I presented my client or product in a fair manner? Am I still listening? Have I made my... Read more →

3 Books to Make Sense of What Was, What Is, and What Could Be

Value and the good are synonyms in Aristotle's thought. You can see it play in 'beauty.' Beauty poss... Read more →

How the Employer Brand Dies in Applicants Inboxes

Applicant experience is buyer experience in recruitment. Buyers are people who come to you once. Based on the experience, they may decide to walk away and never come back. Or, they could come back again and become customers. In some cases, they might tell everyone they know about you. Your choice whether that's positive or not. Based on what they say, other people may buy, or not. The roots of complacency Companies make this mistake all the time. They seem to think that only employee experience and marketing prowess counts to their employer brand for reputation. Top companies to work... Read more →

Brands that don’t Need to Steal Energy to Survive, Thrive

I was reading an article about a study by Minneapolis agency SuperHuman about marketing and women above 40. How brands get it wrong. It was 2017, I forgot where they published about it. But I remember I seemed to agree 300 percent with the gap they observed between what women want and look for and marketing messages. Companies still get it wrong. For this reason, I've been shopping (almost) exclusively in Italy for years. Less stereotype, more fun. Women in their prime are severely underserved in American culture: from travel to food to apparel and lifestyle. At work, too. But... Read more →

If I Ruled the World

Have you ever wondered what could be if you ruled the world? I have. And since there's no chance of that happening, I'm with Umberto Eco on supporting political empathy. There's so much we would accomplish if interests were not financialized so much. Along similar lines, you can accomplish a lot if you don't care who gets the credit. Trust less what you read and more what you create. When everything becomes commercial, everything is subject to manipulation. So each of us and our communities need to do the work of parsing and reflecting. Which is not the same as... Read more →

A Conversation on Post-Industrial Economics with Esko Kilpi

Esko Kilpi was the founder and principal of Esko Kilpi Oy, a research and consultancy firm based in Finland working with the challenges of knowledge work and digital work environments. I didn't know Kilpi, and his death (January 2020) means I won't be able to have the conversation with him. The article from October 2015 I wanted to discuss is no longer online. But I had the presence of sharing it in its integrity by email. I shared thoughts about it with a friend in a short thread. To this day, email continues to be the most underutilized social network.... Read more →

What Happens to the Brand in Acquisitions?

When a brand dies, we hardly even notice anymore. And yet, a rebrand is not a superficial thing. Forget customer pledges. Unless you truly intend to keep your promises. There are consequences to the business and the community beyond what happens to followers and fans in social media. In 2015, DuPont announced their new sustainability goals for 2020. The following year would be a difficult one. “For practical purposes, DuPont doesn't exist anymore,” said Abraham Lenoff, chemical engineering professor at the University of Delaware after DuPont merged with Dow Chemicals to create DowDuPont. In an article about the death of... Read more →