This is the first of three articles exploring changing landscape of technology and the corporate meetings and events industry. The iconic line from the 1960s Bob Dylan song “The times they are a changing” seems to be a common refrain every decade or so, and in the intervening half-century since that song was composed, the times have thoroughly changed. We have seen generations of technology race by. We went from records to cassettes to CDs to iPods to music streaming…
Author: George Bothwell
George Bothwell has spent a career leading marketing and communications strategies to build corporate reputations in North America and Europe. He has acted as the senior marketing and/or communications officer at Bank of Montreal, Barclays Bank and Atomic Energy of Canada. In these capacities, he has held the corporate responsibility for special events including annual meetings, franchisee events, media conferences, financial analysts’ briefings, employee meetings and major sponsorship programs such as the Olympics. He began his career in the Government of Canada where he was Departmental Assistant to the Minister of Industry, Trade and Commerce; Secretary to the Foreign Investment Review Agency; and Vice Consul and Trade Commissioner at the Canadian Consulate in Philadelphia. After leaving the Government of Canada he was Vice President of Communications and Environmental Affairs for Coca-Cola Canada and Director of Packaging for Coca-Cola Europe. He has managed marketing and communications programs in Canada, the United States, Europe and Asia. During his career he has lived in Ottawa, Toronto, Philadelphia, Brussels and London. He currently runs a consulting practice focusing on marketing and communications issues.
Articles by George Bothwell
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The case for harvesting data
As the Cambridge Analytica controversy dominated headlines, a number of commentators excitedly speculated that Facebook had been discovered engaging in data manipulation. I expected that they would soon follow with dark hints that the Ford Motor Company was manufacturing automobiles. Seriously? What business did they think Facebook was in? As the controversy unfolded, data analysis was characterized as a digital dark art thatneeded to be regulated and restricted. It was maligned as dishonest, pervasive and intrusive, and with little mention…
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Prevent becoming a commercial casualty by avoiding current events debates
On February 14, 2018, a mass shooting occurred at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. Seventeen people were killed and 17 more wounded. It seemed yet another tragic shooting of numerous innocent victims that provokes intense political and media interest for a few days and then is eclipsed by other events. In this case, the Parkland shooting has gained a momentum that has grown in news coverage, causing a number a special interest groups to wade into the…
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Social media: Just because you can, does not mean you should
Americans touch their smart telephones 2600 times per day, as cited in a study by The Economist. According to Group M, Americans spend, on average, almost four hours per day of personal time online, over four hours per day in Britain and almost five hours in Hong Kong. That does not include being online at work! These statistics highlight the seemingly unstoppable growth of social media in our lives. The benefits of this new technology have been extraordinary. Anyone can…
