Conversation Agent - Valeria Maltoni

How 'Revenge' Ruined Travel

We closed down just as the world started reopening up. ‘Revenge travel’ is a media buzzword we can trace back to 2021. Just when the world began to reopen. It was than that people decided to make up for lost time. The thought of avenging or punishing goes with the idea that the virus was the enemy. It fit the metaphor. Indeed, many past mistakes and misdeeds came to the fore during the critical period of the pandemic. But ‘revenge’ is not, as some pundits said, another way of saying ‘life’s short, I want to connect with humanity and nature.’... Read more →

How Seemingly Senseless Acts Make Life Worth Living

The value of rituals in life… and in commerce. Carrie walked into her mother’s home to find her sitting on the floor, surrounded by relatives and friends. She was wailing after having just buried her son. Nobody seemed to be able to offer any consolation—in fact, any attempt had her cry harder. “Why don’t you make us tea, mom?” It took an instant. All of a sudden, her mother stood up, composed herself, and went into the kitchen. Several minutes later in she walked with a tray filled with a hot teapot steeping, lovely china cups and biscuits. Hot tea... Read more →

Get Ready to Face Resistance for Your Originality

Most people embrace new ideas only after they’ve become widely accepted. There’s a reason why you keep seeing the same posts throughout social media. Different avatars and logos, similar stories. If you’re a student of history, you’ll see the phenomenon more clearly with the benefit of distance. Paradigm-shifting ideas have always encountered resistance. Because they challenge our thinking. As individuals—and culture—we get into grooves. People say they want creativity, but deep down they don’t. What they want is acceptance and belonging. And that means going with the flow. Hence the sea of sameness. We love the work of original artists... Read more →

Stereotypes

The soundtrack that flattens culture to amplify margins—the gain temporary, the collateral effects long-lasting. But it doesn’t have to be that way. It’s what you get when you try to compress a whole idea into a formula. An attempt to capture a category of things with a simple, generalized belief. You declare: ‘I expect you’re the kind of person/people who does/do that.’ Spam and marketing done on the cheap are all about stereotypes. They speak to the minimum common denominator possible— ‘as long as they’re paying attention.’ Often, the message needs to agree with the client/customers based on their expectations.... Read more →

Life’s too Short…

to be a copycat of someone else. If machines have personalities, it’s our doing. ChatGPT sure has been in the news lately. I’m not surprised to see it all over social media feeds, given how monolithic those feeds tend to be. “ChatGPT this, ChatGPT that” say the marketers like proud parents of a new toddler to anyone who will look their way. It’s not GPT3’s fault that humans have a well-documented propensity for conning each other. Two years of pandemic isolation behind screens may have exacerbated the issue of bullying in the workplace. Complex PTSD is real. Two intelligent discussions... 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 →

"Me, Inc." and Autonomy

“You are a brand.” From this simple thesis Tom Peters put forth in a book: Brand Called You, came an article in Fast Company magazine. The personal brand movement started in earnest. It was 1997. I revisited the concept at the The Blog Herald more than ten years on. Especially for those of us who worked in communications for organizations it was an intriguing thought. They were the times of still substantial budgets, good agency fees and media empires. Agencies were building brands through sheer push: design for recognition, make a big enough media purchase, and talk it up in... Read more →

What's the People Version of "Don't Judge a Book by its Cover" and "You Pay More for Higher Quality"?

Elizabeth Books is a bookshop in Western Australia. The self-proclaimed home of the blind date with a book. Blind tasting for books is the opposite of using differentiation in look to stand out. With the added benefit that you could discover an amazing writer you would have never considered otherwise. What happens if you take away differentiation in look? The idea of judging a book from its cover falls apart. See what peaks your curiosity from a short summary instead. You might pick up a topic or subject that could surprise and delight you. This is also marketing, only counter-cultural... Read more →

A Compass and a Lifeline: 3 Readings

Before entering the corporate world, the two main things I worked on, were writing and researching/analyzing. I started with the hardest part: short poems. I was six. Then I built from there with short stories and essays. My stories were good, my essays borrowed from them in character development. The first full on research and analysis project I did was for my finals in middle school. This was in 8th grade. I was 13. My idea is that you could string together all subjects under one umbrella topic. The school district was brand new and they were experimenting with methods.... Read more →