Last week, golf brand Callaway released a co-branded ad with content company Good Good Golf to promote a new driver. In the ad, a man pushes over a woman while she attempts to grab a Callaway driver, before standing over her and threateningly saying: “Do not touch my new driver.” When Callaway's CEO publicly apologised, he confirmed the company had reviewed and approved the ad before it went out — signed off by people who thought it was a good idea.

There is a common mistake in B2B communication that most teams make without realising. They assume that what works in B2C will work in B2B. So they borrow the frameworks. The single-minded proposition. The one clear promise. The emotionally-driven headline built for one audience, one moment, one decision. And then wonder why their message doesn't land.

Message survival isn't about making your communication bulletproof. It's about understanding that your words will be stress-tested the moment they arrive (by context, by history, by the fears already present in the room). The communicators who get this right don't just write well. They read the environment first. And they design a message that holds its shape for their multi-audience — no matter who touches it.

Most companies' crisis comms are written to protect themselves first and reach their audience second. McDonald's egg apology uses the standard corporate playbook differently. Which is why its response is worth paying close attention to.

When Oracle laid off employees via a 6 a.m. email, the message did a few things right. It was clear. It was compliant. It told people what to do next. From a business perspective, it worked. But from a communication perspective, it failed in the one place that matters: the moment it was read.

A huge part of your audience doesn’t even have a desk. They’re on the shop floor. In a hospital corridor. Driving between sites. Standing in a warehouse. Walking between meetings. Checking their phone between tasks. Your message isn’t being read in a quiet moment. It’s being scanned in the third space. The in-between moments of the workday.

When a senior leader announces their departure, communications teams have to move fast. Legal needs to sign off on every line. HR needs to control the sequence of who hears what and when. The departing executive wants their legacy framed on their own terms. And leadership wants one clean message one announcement — that puts the whole thing to rest. The result is a letter that becomes a vehicle for everyone's needs. And the one set of needs that gets ignored in that proce

Only 12% of employees read internal communications in full. This isn't disengagement because 91% of employees say internal communications feel relevant to them most or all of the time.

If you've ever handed off a project to a freelance writer, designer, or marketer and gotten back something completely off-base, the problem usually isn't the freelancer's skill. It's the brief. A vague brief produces vague work, and a few rounds of "this isn't quite it" revisions, eaten deadlines, and frustration on both sides. The good news is that a great brief doesn't need to be long. It needs to be clear. Here's what to include.

Is your B2B Blog Becoming the Most Ignored Page on Your Entire Website - Filed Away, and Never Thought About Again? Go to any B2B company's blog right now. Scroll through the last ten posts. I'll tell you what you'll find.

How misaligned messaging is costing your organisation your audience's trust and how to fix it Your sales team calls it a "growth platform." Your website calls it a "workflow solution." Your CEO calls it "the future of how teams work." Your Head of Partnerships, when pressed in a meeting last Tuesday, called it "kind of like Notion, but smarter." You are all talking about the same product. But your audience has no idea. The Problem Nobody Wants to Name There's a particular kin

The environment your message enters is made up of specific, traceable things. The last restructure and how it was communicated. The promise leadership made six months ago and failed to keep. The question that went unanswered in the last town hall. The rumour that circulated for three weeks before being officially confirmed. Every one of those things is shaping how your high-risk message will land.

When B2B companies communicate hard news, the instinct is almost universal: lead with the business logic. Explain the strategy. Justify the decision. Present it the way you'd present it to your board. We've all read them.

Recently, The Walt Disney Company shared a memo with employees about upcoming layoffs. To the writer, it read exactly like what modern corporate communication has come to look like calm, empathetic, measured, and carefully constructed. Yet, for many, the reaction was the same: it felt off.

In a rare act of institutional self-awareness, the United Nations published an analysis of its own unread output. The findings were stark. But the proposed solutions, however sensible, missed one thing that would have made the biggest difference. They ignore them because nothing signals why it matters to them right now. From Vivien specialises in Multi Audience Messaging

The Curse of Knowledge states that the more you know about a subject, the harder it becomes to imagine what it's like not to know it.