Get online professional development from IABC On Demand

Speaker: Roxy Tomacder, Corporate Communication & Aloha Experience Manager, King's Hawaiian What's W.A.T.A!? As communications professionals, we are like "ninjas" behind the scenes defeating challenges and with no expectation for praise. In addition, we are constantly called upon to meet the needs of multiple (if not all) departments within our organizations that we lose sight of our purpose.  W.A.T.A! is an acronym representing foundational elements to trigger a focused communications plan. In this session, you're invited to learn this method and apply it to any future communications projects!  Read more

Speaker: Diana Hong, Managing Director, CRA, Inc. What the research and our experiences show is that during virtual work, our networks narrow down - our strong ties get stronger and our weak ties get weaker. Even within a team, we find that our day to day fills from more meetings with those whom we closely collaborate with and little to no interaction with others we used to see in hallways, break rooms, cafeterias, near the printer or coffee machine. But research also shows creativity and career opportunities come from casual collisions - from the expanded network beyond immediate connections or people you know in passing. So how do we reconcile this? We're in an era of work that means it's about time to better leverage hybrid or fully remote work environments. In this session, we'll cover pointers from academia, real-life examples, and suggestions for organizational communications leaders through presentation, exercises, breakout sessions, and live polling. Read more

Speaker: Laurence Simard, Communication advisor, PCN Physio Are you hoping your organization was a little less hierarchical? Is your organization in the process of flattening its structure? Have you joined a self organized team? If so, you may be wondering how to maximize your impact as a communication leader in this less traditional business model.  Get inspired to reinvent your role as leadership structures shift in your organization. A 200 employees healthcare business lets you in on strategies and tactics that brought efficient communications into its new leadership structure.  Get insights on how to: - Understand how your internal clients will evolve and how to adapt to their changing needs - Help colleagues navigate the high information flow by ensuring cohesiveness of the messages, timing and relevance. - Coach and provide the right tools to colleagues so they can communicate efficiently  It's about time traditional leadership models evolve and when they do, communicators will be ready! Read more

Speaker: Kelley Teahen, Vice President, Communications and Marketing, Parachute Leading up to cannabis legalization in Canada in 2018, there was a concerted public relations effort to show the relative harmlessness of cannabis. As an injury prevention charity, however, Parachute could see from the evidence the harms that increased with more-open cannabis use: unintentional childhood exposure in the home; and increase in impairment-caused injury on our roads. We received funding from our federal government to address these two issues in national public relations campaigns: But how to reach cannabis users who are dismissive of any kind of fear-mongering about their now-legal recreational drug of choice? Parachute VP Kelley Teahen will walk you through the research, campaign development and execution of campaigns "Know What Impaired Means and "High and Locked", where we used humour and a peer-to-peer approach to reach our audiences. The presentation will use participant polls and chat Q&A to engage with the campaign process and creative asset review. Read more

Speaker: Maliha Aqeel, Director, Global Communications & Digital Channels, Fix Network World Purpose-driven brands see more market share gains, grow their competitive advantage faster and achieve higher employee and customer satisfaction. A global study from Accenture found that consumers support companies whose brand purpose aligns with their beliefs and reject those that don’t. But how do consumers know what is the brand’s purpose? Content!  Marketing and Communication own the brand story; it’s about time they placed Purpose in the center of their content strategy. Each piece of content should articulate why the organization exists, what problems it is here to solve and how it creates deeper connections with consumers and the community through the work it does.   This session breaks down the DNA of purpose-driven brands with examples of how these brands use content to bring their Purpose to life.  Read more

Speaker: Judith Quin, Vocal Confidence Specialist, Your Whole Voice You work in communications, right? So when was the last time you avoided a challenging conversation? When was the last time you avoided delivering a presentation, speaking in a meeting or at conference, or had your video turned off because you hate being seen?   It's about time that ALL company staff know how to verbally communicate with clarity because the stress of speaking up, sharing your voice/ideas/opinions/challenges is destructive to too many people.   However, as someone who works in communications there is obviously more pressure for you to be good with your words, to deliver a point clearly, or speak in public with ease and confidence.  This doesn't mean that you have those skills though.  This session will destroy the myth that public speaking is scary, give you tools to manage nerves when speaking 'in public' and help you turn those challenging conversations from confronting to constructive. Read more