This article was first published in September 2012, as President Barack Obama neared the end of his campaign for a second term in the White House. What was significant at that time was that nobody — except a canny statistician called Nate Silver who used “Wisdom of Crowds” polling techniques — was able to call [ more » ]
How Olympians Took Triple Gold at the Charisma Games
“To the victor the spoils” – but not always the power to charm. As they handed out the gold medals at the London 2012 Olympics, it’s easy to see that magnetism and charisma don’t always belong naturally to those who become the world’s fastest, strongest, or highest. And in four years’ time, those athletes who [ more » ]
A Brazilian billionaire with more chutzpah than true charisma
Keeping a car in your living room might sound like a weird aesthetic judgement — even if the vehicle is worth US$1.3 million and judged by many to be a work of art and the most desirable of all super-cars for the super-rich. But if you lived in Brazil, a country with one of the [ more » ]
Could the right colour help your brand to project Charisma ?
Ever wondered if there is a colour associated with success in business? Could use of colour really influence the fortunes of companies, and might it be true that companies of similar size, industry sector or even geography tend to use the same colours in their corporate identity and branding? The answer is yes, yes, and [ more » ]
Rhetoric: the ‘Once and Future MBA’ of the Power Persuaders.
We think of persuasion as a very modern attribute from the world of advertising, consumption, polling, shareholder communications, PR, marketing, lobbying, politics. Wrong: it’s a science that’s as old as the hills — or rather, dates back to Classical antinquity. Whenever and wherever people have exercised power, they’ve used persuasion. I want to delve back [ more » ]
Corporate Storytelling: the Wave or Particle Theory?
In school, teachers ask us to imagine that electricity is both a wave passing through material such as a copper wire, and the agitation of static copper particles within the wire. When it comes to understanding the function of storytelling inside organisations, the same teaching could be helpful. No story works without a narrative, or [ more » ]