By Daylin Mantyka 
Even though we took our usual holiday break in December, we still covered a lot of ground on the blog throughout the month. Leading the pack was a well-received piece by our resident neuromarker, Bob Bailly, followed by a to-the-point post on improving your presentation skills in the new year.
In case you missed any of it, here is a handy recap of our posts, as ranked by the enthusiasm of our readers:
December 11: Would you kill the Fat Man?, by Bob Bailly
December 18: Five keys to your presentation success in 2014, by Anil Dilawri
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By Leo Valiquette
Happy New Year.
The holidays are behind us and it’s time to get back to the grindstone. But while routines are a good thing, slipping back into poor habits, biases, and preconceptions that limit our professional success are not. Consider this a time to wipe the slate clean and make a fresh start.
I personally don’t care to make resolutions. Instead, I look back and consider what lessons I learned over the past year and how I can apply these in a positive way to my life and work over the next 12 months.
So in the spirit of a new year, here are some thoughts to guide founders, executives, and managers of any growing concern as they work to bring their technology to market and earn their time in the spotlight.
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From all of us here at Francis Moran and Associates, happy holidays and the very best for 2014. We will resume our regular blog postings on January 2.
By David French
I was recently sitting at a hotel bar and overheard a circle of businessmen talking at a nearby table. I couldn’t help listening in. What I heard spaced over about an hour was strangely familiar:
- I thought I was going to get rich when I put my new patented invention on the market. Why isn’t it happening?
- It seemed like a good idea to copy my competitor’s layout. Why am I being sued now?
- I wrote some code like what I need now at my former employer’s business. I think I will check my old laptop and use it again.
- Let’s put our daughter and son’s names together and use that as our trademark. I’m sure “Mercedes-Ben’s” will stand out in the marketplace.
- There’s no point in checking name registers in the United States; we’re never going to sell product in the U.S.
- Mike is our key man in sales. I’m sure if he invents an improvement to our product that this will belong to the company.
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By Daylin Mantyka 
It’s Friday and so time again for our weekly roundup. This one happens to be the last of 2013. Over the week, we’ve read great content from Social Media Explorer, Marketing Sherpa and Startup Professional Musings.
All I want for Christmas is…for the 80/20 rule to be abided by
All Tracey Parsons wants for Christmas is for marketers to be better marketers. More specifically, all she really wants is for the 80/20 rule to be followed and abided by. Sure, social media platforms can be a marketer’s dream, but there’s no reason to push your brand’s greatness over and over again. Be smart and provide value. That’s all Tracey asks for.
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Damn it, Beyoncé: Now all the pundits will say marketing is unnecessary
December 19, 2013 by Francis Moran
It didn’t take long after music megastar Beyoncé dropped her latest release onto Apple iTunes with no advance warning or usual hype-fest for the armchair pundits and marketing deniers to trumpet that marketing was now dead [...]
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Five keys to your presentation success in 2014
December 18, 2013 by Anil Dilawri
The good news – 2013 was a good year for most businesses. The bad news – most business presentations delivered in 2013 still sucked. Whether it’s an investor pitch, an elevator pitch, a customer update, or an important sales presentation, here are five ideas to help make your presentations remarkable in 2014 [...]
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Becoming a more successful you in 2014
December 17, 2013 by Leo Valiquette
It’s that time of year again, when pundits and armchair quarterbacks of every stripe offer up their insights on the year past and their predictions for the year to come. This isn’t one of those posts [...]
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Best of: I’m sick and tired of hearing that Canadians don’t take risks
December 16, 2013 by Francis Moran
This is the next entry in our “Best of” series, in which we venture deep into the vault to replay blog opinion and insight that has withstood the test of time. Today’s post hails from December 2011. We welcome your feedback [...]
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Great articles roundup: Social media, Gen Y, communications and entrepreneurship
December 13, 2013 by Daylin Mantyka
It’s officially the end of the working week, which means that it’s time for the Friday roundup where we’ve compiled a short list of the top articles we read and loved [...]
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Communications by warehouse in the Internet age
December 12, 2013 by Francis Moran
When I moved to Ottawa in the late 1980s to head up the national capital office of what was then Canada’s largest public relations firm, the Internet was not yet even a gleam in Al Gore’s eye [...]
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Would you kill the Fat Man?
December 11, 2013 by Bob Bailly
Over a number of my previous posts, I’ve written a lot about the concepts of Neuromarketing – a predictive model that uses findings from the sciences concerning the brain (neuroscience and psychology) to improve sales and communication skills [...]
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Lessons in customer service from Kijiji and Co.
December 10, 2013 by Leo Valiquette
Fish tanks, fishing boats and Fisher Price toys for the baby’s crib. Even jobs as sushi chefs. There’s no shortage to what you can find on Kijiji, Used Ottawa, Craigslist and the like [...]
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Tweets by @FrancisMoranRecent Comments
Samantha Halle : Thanks for sharing, Linda! It's always interesting to consider varying perspectives on what a PR professional's role is/should be. After hearing the "What do PR people actually do?" one too many times, we decided that it's time we showed the world what PR is all about (a picture is worth 1,000 words, after all). PR Baton is a photo relay that uses Instagram to show the world what a day in PR looks like one photo at a time. Each day, a different PR professional (called a runner) takes over the PR Baton Instagram account and documents his or her day in five to seven photos, helping answer the question, “What do PR people do?” Visit http://bit.ly/prbaton to see what PR looks like or to sign up!
Les relations publiques : le premier support du développement de l’entreprise. | RÉFLEXIONS PUBLIQUES, le blogue du cours «Rédaction en relations publiques» (UdeM) : [...] est clair que les deux éléments utilisent des médiums et une organisation similaires pour entrer en communication avec leurs publics cibles. Par contre, les relations publiques ont un [...]
26 Ways to Use Visuals in Your Social Media Marketing « MindCorp | Newsfeed : [...] The Importance of Developing a Social Media Image Strategy by Alexandra Reid [...]