Communications Strategy Group

Ladies and gentlemen, friends and neighbors, just in time for summer, it is our pleasure and our privilege to announce the grand opening of a unique spectacle, a never-seen-before scene of wonders galore, where anything is possible and nothing is ordinary — Marketing World! 🎪😮

Today for your awe and entertainment we unveil this week's featured attraction, the one, the only, the GRAVICOM! This terrifying test of toughness is designed to simulate the actual experience of crisis communications! No sooner do you enter than the floor drops! The walls begin to spin! Your heart begins to race and your mind melts like mozzarella!

But wait: CSG has a few tips at the ready to see you through any bout of crisis comms, real or simulated:

Preparation is everything
Never get caught on a ride you're not ready for. A clear communications plan with defined roles, pre-approved messaging and assigned responsibilities transforms chaos into positive momentum.

Lean on others
Crisis comms is no amusement without your friends. Coordinate with media contacts and stakeholders early to make sure approved messaging is reaching the right people through the right channels. Going it alone keeps you spinning instead of moving forward.

Recover with intention
When the rush ends, it's time to recover. Stabilize your messaging, reassure your stakeholders and ease into the shift from crisis mode back to forward momentum. When you handle a crisis with aplomb, the event can even turn into a net positive for your brand.

The thrills of Marketing Worlds may be fictional, but the need for solid crisis comms is all too real. If you want a partner who can help you with that, CSG is always ready.

Visit our site to learn more.

Has your marketing team stalled out with AI? We may have an answer as to why.
CSG's CPO Peter whipped up a thought-provoking article about how AI fluency is becoming baseline literacy for marketers. In his view, it's what separates the teams that are compounding their advantage from the ones that are still retyping the same prompts over and over.

The short version is that the chat window is one tool inside a larger system, not the whole system. Marketers who understand that distinction are producing more and building leverage that doesn't disappear when someone changes jobs.

It's a great 10-minute read! Check it out on the blog.

CSG's K-12 Director Jaimee recently attended AASA 2026, where she gathered some interesting insights about how school districts are managing their day-to-day operations. Anyone who's trying to reach these audiences should be aware of what she found out.

The top two takeaways:

1. Superintendents are now CFOs. They spend a lot of their time worrying about capital planning and budget decisions. With these responsibilities occupying a big chunk of their time, superintendents have to delegate some of the instructional decision making to the roles directly under them. Make sure you're talking to the right people!

2. Districts don't want one-off products. They want solutions that strengthen existing systems or create entirely new ones — i.e., change at scale. So, marketers should move away from discussing product features per se and instead highlight ways that their clients' offerings streamline operations and improve outcomes across an entire district.

Read Jaimee's AASA recap article on the CSG blog for more detail on these points and other key tips!

“What AI-generated language is revealing to those who read carefully is that the real craft of writing has never resided in the words.” This and other pearls of wisdom await you in an insightful article by CSG Editorial Director Annetta, as she explores the consequences of the generative AI explosion for writing and thinking.

Annetta offers a perspective on the matter that befits her background and her current work: Editing, not composition, is how people add value now. What do you leave in? What do you leave out? Which ideas need more context? Which need less? These questions were always the keys to successful communication, and they’re more important than ever.

Read her article on the CSG blog now!

Rejection: not just for middle school dances anymore. In CSG's Behavior Design approach, Rejection is one of six core motivators, tapping into some urgent impulses at the very center of the human condition.

Here's how it works. The pair of motivators we group under Belonging drive human behavior either as Acceptance (the warm glow of being "in") or Rejection (the cold 😱 feeling of being left out). Most brands tend to lean toward Acceptance. "Join the community! Be part of something!" Very wholesome. Very effective on its day. But not right every day. Rejection, meanwhile, says, "Everyone else already did this. But you didn't. Interesting choice."

That's why "Only 3 spots left" may outperform "Spots available," and why "10,000 businesses already switched" may outperform "Consider switching."

These messages tend to draw us in whether we know why they work or not. We all want to stay where people are and where things are happening rather than wandering the wilderness alone. Welcome to being human.

As strategic communicators, we have an obvious stake in keeping up with changes to the language and the culture in which we work. CSG copywriter Jason has some thoughts on how those processes unfold (among other things), and he put them all in a brand-new article on our blog. Check it out, you might have fun!

The breach of Instructure (Canvas's parent company) potentially exposed data on 275 million people and touched nearly half of all higher education institutions in North America. In the hours that followed, some institutions communicated clearly. Those caught unprepared had to go silent or swap the ransom note for a "scheduled maintenance" message before any real statement had gone out.

In a new article, CSG VP Brianna Schmitz uses the Canvas situation as a lens for what crisis readiness actually looks like in education, and how much it costs not to prepare. She walks through CSG's CLEAR framework: a structured approach to calculating scope, leveling up your crisis team, engaging stakeholders from the inside out, monitoring in real time and reviewing after the fact.

The question is when a crisis will happen, not if. And the organizations that respond with clarity are the ones that built their plan before they needed it.

CSGer Emily has a literary streak, and all the proof you need is the spectacular multi-book report she wrote for our blog. Get an in-depth look at her faves (and anti-faves) from Goodreads now, so you can start stockpiling stories to keep you company by the pool this summer! 😎

Many busy people are stretched thin by the routine demands of life, to the point that two appliances breaking in the same week can seem like persecution by the gods. One way to deal with this is to improve your work environment so that it begins to feel calm and predictable. This gives you a break from the outside chaos and lets you enjoy the positive parts of your job all the more.

CSG's COO Molly has descended on the CSG blog to argue in favor of process (good process, that is) as a means to achieve this goal. She says process has an image problem, but it's actually the key to removing stress that drains your energy all day without you noticing. Read her article now and start building, in her words, "one corner of sanity."

What actually drives purchase decisions? More often than we admit, it's identity as opposed to features or price. People want to belong to groups they admire, and they're drawn to brands that signal membership in those groups. Acceptance-based marketing works by positioning a product or service as an essential marker of belonging to an expert community, a successful demographic or a forward-thinking industry.

For our clients, finding that angle might mean spotlighting the thought leaders who rely on their product, leaning into category dominance or identifying the cultural moment where their brand fits naturally. The specific strategy varies by client, but the underlying psychology is remarkably consistent across industries and audiences. It's one of the most reliable tools in CSG's behavior design toolkit.