Welcome to our blog, Cobalt-60.

Demonstrated progress in sustainability can help build relationships and show your company’s authentic commitment to environmental and social issues.

In this article, we explain how to create a simple, concise internal communications strategy that you can use in any industry.

Ten corporate communications best practices every science-based company can use to increase engagement, promote understanding and win customers.

The COVID-19 outbreak serves as a great reminder: brands are about human interaction, not logos.

The last time you bought a car, did rational thought or emotions guide your decision? Read on for more on rational versus emotional branding and how it affects consumer behavior.

Imagine internal and external communications as two partners in a well-functioning, long-term relationship. Like any great partnership, they’re better when they work together and play off of the other’s strengths.

We get it, the communications landscape can be a bit confusing. So we broke it down for you.

Effective messaging isn’t only about what you say — it’s also about how and when you say it to whom

Also called vision boards or inspiration boards, mood boards are tools for communicating a feeling, theme, persona or mood for a design or a style in a way that can be quickly absorbed and understood by those viewing them. Mood boards can be used to confirm that all stakeholders are on the same page or get feedback if not. Join Cobalt Communications Art Director Mark Miller on an exploration of this vital design tool.

Swearing in the workplace used to be a no-no — no questions asked. But as three-piece suits have been replaced by khakis and no-tuck shirts, so too have we become more casual about the occasional oath or obscenity. Research shows that swearing can play an important role in communication, though there are some who argue it has no place in civil discourse.

Sun Tzu, author of The Art of War, is often regarded as one of history’s greatest military strategists. According to the Chinese general, if you want to defeat your enemy, you must know them as well as you know yourself. The same is true if you’re marketing a brand — to succeed, you must know your competition.

Ali, Namath, Secretariat — we remember winners because they overcame staggering odds to reach the pinnacle of their sport. But if there’s a winner, there must be a loser. History’s winners and losers can teach us a lot about how to communicate effectively. In this article, we consider a few classic victor vs. vanquished duos to uncover important marketing lessons.

Leaders of all kinds may feel they’re working 24/7 to take their organizations to the next level. There are this year’s trends and this quarter’s results and next quarter’s forecasts to worry about. You’ve built 7 highly effective habits but may feel frustrated enough to scream those 7 dirty words or commit one of the 7 deadly sins. Let’s reverse-engineer successes of organizations that have made it to where you want to be.

Today, it’s easy to see brand positioning at work in some of the most recognizable brands, such as Netflix and Whole Foods. But even if you don’t have the resources of these big consumer brands, even if you’re a small B2B businesses, you can apply the principles of positioning.

The quest for perfection is everywhere, and it’s easy to get sucked in. But perfection can be detrimental, especially to small business owners or marketing managers who have long to-do lists and fewer productive hours to get things done. Let’s take a look at some of the consequences of an unhealthy obsession with perfection — and how we can use perfection to make us more productive.

Every time consumers shop, they face a plethora of products of all types, even for the most mundane items. At first glance, most shampoos, light bulbs or televisions may seem the same or at least very similar. So advertisers are constantly looking for ways to differentiate their products and make them stand out. Using science is one way to do that. But is the science real or is it soft, squishy and skeptical?

Cobalt Communications president and director of strategy, Leslie Harris, has been named a Board Member at Large for the Mid-Atlantic Society for Healthcare Strategy and Market Development (MASHSMD). Leslie and her fellow board members will be working together to grow MASHSMD’s membership through engaging and educational networking events that bring together healthcare marketing and communications strategists from across Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania.

At Cobalt, we take understanding seriously. But what does that really mean? What is understanding? When someone attains understanding, what have they achieved? In this post, we try to understand understanding more deeply.

Achieving understanding can always be “easier” on an audience … but can’t always be “easy.” When creating infographics, you should strive to facilitate understanding, but if you oversimplify information too much or fail to give readers additional opportunities to dig deeper, then you may be falling short as a communicator.

Eclipse mania may be fading (along with the white-hot images on our retinas), but the idea of an eclipse — an obscuring of light from one celestial body by the passage of another between it and an observer — made me think about how this phenomenon applies to communications. Is it possible to behave in such a way or deliver messages in such a way that the audience only remembers the person sending, not the content being sent?

Call it a slogan. Call it a cutline. Call it a tagline. Whatever you call it, just don’t dismiss it as a piece of throwaway marketing language. A powerful tagline can help you differentiate your business and attract new customers.