IABC/Toronto Blog

All Work and No Play Makes Communicators Bad at Their Job

By Ravi Singh

On a recent Friday, as work let out and we made our way to the nearest Subway station, a co-worker and I discussed our respective plans for the upcoming weekend. I hoped to spend the majority of the weekend buried in the book I ...

How do you like our new blook?

By Barb Sawyers

You’ve probably noticed our new blog logo, look and other changes.

Volunteer Cathy Ledden, RGD, explains how she came up with the new design. “The concept combines two words, communication and conversation, s...

Why Your Communication Plan Sucks

By Bryna Jones

Yes, I said it: your communication plan sucks.

No, no – I didn’t mean yours specifically.

I’m sure your communication plan is great…just great…

[Awkward pause]

But there are plenty of communication plans out there that need help! Here are five reasons that an organizati...

Why Are You A Communicator?

By Louise Armstrong

Why are you a communicator? Have you asked yourself that question lately? Can you answer it right away or do you need to think about it for a while?

I’ve been thinking about it since attending IABC’s Leadership Institute conference in Miami last week. Mark Schumann, ABC, raised the ques...

Language heats up with scandal

From voter suppression to Pierre Poutine, biker burner phones and dirty tricks. You can tell by the language the 2011 election scandal is heating up.

Earlier in the week, I was disappointed to hear Bob Rae talk more like a lawyer than an opponent, when he accused the Stephen Harper government of “voter suppression,” a term straight from the Canada Elections Act that reporters dutiful...

Five Screenwriting Rules to Improve Your Writing

By Bryna Jones

I’m currently enrolled in a fiction screenwriting course through Ryerson University’s Chang School of Continuing Education. Part professional development, part exercise in creativity, practicing the art of screenwriting is helping me to hone my communication skills, and is pushing me to think about wri...

More words that must die

By Barb Sawyers

Communicators, unite. Please join my crusade to stop the overuse and misuse of kick ass, onboarding, serial entrepreneur, evangelist, story and similarly abused words.

As with my tirades about think out of the ...

Have your say: TTC takes top marks in 2011 IABC/Toronto report card

By Scott Fry

IABC/Toronto’s Marketing Communications team awarded the TTC top marks in its annual report card on Toronto’s top newsmakers. The TTC’s launch of its new subways trains scored better than three other evaluated campaigns, Councillor Ford vs. Libraries/Margaret Atwood, the Launch of BIXI Bikes in ...

Jerry-rigged or Jury-rigged – A Guide to Commonly-Confused Words

By Louise Armstrong

Late on Christmas Day, I was having a drink with my parents and my husband. He was telling us about how my son’s new railroad track was missing a piece so he jerry-rigged something to make it work. "I think you mean jury-rigged," I piped up annoyingly. "No", he answered, ...

Old Lessons for a New Game

By Ravi Singh

There’s no question that instantaneous publishing is one of the wonders of the web Currently, Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, Youtube, etc. all allowed us to instantly share the doings of our day-to-day lives. Now that these platforms are all accessible from mobile devices, our ability to share content has o...