Michael Maslansky advises Fortune 500 corporations, industry associations, major litigation practices, and non-profit organizations on Language Strategy and messaging issues. Clients that have sought his counsel include FedEx, Morgan Stanley, Procter & Gamble, UBS, and The Walt Disney Company. He has also worked with a wide range of industry associations including the Financial Services Roundtable, Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturer’s Association, the Personal Care Products Council, the Direct Marketing Association, and the New Orleans tourism industry.
How CEOs, companies, and entire industries communicate—whether during crises, in advertising and public relations campaigns, or with investors, Congress or the American people—often means the difference between success and failure. Clients from PepsiCo to eBay to Microsoft to Starbucks turn to Michael to understand the public mood, challenge conventional wisdom and transform not just what they say to key audiences—but how they say it.
Michael shares with clients his in-depth understanding of hot-button issues in banking and financial services, healthcare and pharmaceuticals, corporate social responsibility and non-profits, technology and consumer products, and litigation and politics. Over the years, he has helped Fortune 500 companies position and differentiate their brands and products during good times, and protect their reputations during crisis.
Michael’s book, The Language of Trust: Selling Ideas in a World of Skeptics, reviews the communication challenges that companies and industries face today and offers proven tools for building trust and credibility with consumers, regulators and the general public.
His strategic analysis builds on insights from his unique combination of expertise: battle-tested communications experience combined with a deep understanding of public opinion. He has conducted hundreds of research projects in over 20 countries using his firm’s trademarked polling and focus group methodology, lauded by The New York Times, The Washington Post, The New Yorker, 60 Minutes, Nightline and PBS’s Frontline, among others. Michael is one of corporate America’s leading communications and research strategists.
Prior to m + p, Michael founded MarketResearch.com, a leading market intelligence company where he served as president and remains on the board. Previously, he led a distinguished career as a corporate attorney with Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz.
Michael Maslansky helps communicators understand the challenges of effectively communicating their message to skeptical audiences. Based on a decade’s worth of research studying real-world examples of how people interpret and respond to messages, Michael presents a series of approaches that helps use language to rebuild trust with any audience.
Trust is dead. Now what? In a world that too much spin has created, how do communicators overcome the skepticism and mistrust to get their message heard? More and more organizations are finding that even when they have a good story to tell, no one wants to listen. Or worse, they listen and refuse to believe what they hear.
Using timely and entertaining stories, Michael will teach you the four principles of credible communication (be personal, be plainspoken, be positive, and be plausible), seven “anti-trust laws”, and the dirty dozen of the worst words and phrases to use in English including “guarantee,” “free,” “implement” and “it is”. You’ll also learn a “New Word Order” for structuring your messages in a completely new way.
Want to show your attendees what their customers really think? Want to make your event truly interactive? In this extremely powerful presentation, we conduct a live, Instant Response dial session, with 25 research participants, which provides a unique and dynamic view into the minds of your most important target audiences.
The goal is to provide address important issues or challenges for your attendees and help them understand and overcome communication challenges between them and their customers, voters or the general public.
We have run these highly customized sessions at industry events (to highlight the public’s reactions to important political and legislative issues), sales conferences (to train financial advisors on how to better attract and keep clients) and management training conferences (to show a company the challenges it faces in shifting public opinion). In every case, the audience has delivered exceptional reviews.
During this session, Michael moderates a live focus group and tests messages tailored to the event. Using hand-held dials, participants will react in real time with their second-by-second reactions projected on large screens for conference attendees to follow. The audience is then able to ask questions of the research participants.
Because these sessions allow your attendees to get new insights directly from their target audience, it has the ability to change minds and behaviors in the way few other presentations do.
What to Say, How to Say It, Why It Matters
If you're trying to sell something-whether it's a product, a service, or an idea-you are facing a new era of consumers who listen less and question more. The Language of Trust is for anyone who must sell ideas, products, services, or even themselves to a public that just doesn't want to hear it.
Based on pioneering consumer research, The Language of Trust shows you how to regain the confidence of your clients and customers and communicate with them on their terms. You'll learn what words to use, what words to lose, and how to structure your message to overcome skepticism and build and keep the trust of your audience.