Lecture recording is available for the CCA community for education purposes.

Mass media and our most cynical memes say we live in a post-fact era. So how do our audiences, buyers, and end users invest their trust? And how can our organizations influence them?
 
The old influences are gone: whether we’re picking a restaurant, reading the news, selecting software, or buying new telco services, expert opinions hold less sway than reviews from “people like us.” Time to inflate those filter bubbles—and let them burst. Today, consumers and citizens alike turn inward for the truth. By designing for empowerment, the smartest organizations meet them there.
 

We must empower our audiences to earn their trust—not the other way around—and our tactical choices in content and design can fuel empowerment. Margot will walk you through examples from retail, publishing, government, and other industries to detail what you can do to meet unprecedented problems in information consumption. Learn how voice, volume, and vulnerability can inform your design and content strategy to earn the trust of your users. 

Let’s address the tough questions: How do brands develop rapport when audiences let emotion cloud logic? Is there a place for vulnerability in corporate strategy? And what’s the role of command and control consistency in the creative work of a corporate enterprise? Learn how these questions can drive design choices in organizations of any size and industry—and discover how your choices can empower users and rebuild our very sense of trust across society itself. 

Purchase Margot's book, Trustworthy.

https://www.booksmith.com/book/9781989603925

Margot Bloomstein (she/her)
Founder, Brand & content strategy consultant, Appropriate, Inc. Fostering trust in your brand and beyond.

Margot Bloomstein is one of the leading voices in the content strategy industry. She’s the author of Content Strategy at Work: Real-World Stories to Strengthen Every Interactive Project (Morgan Kaufmann, 2012). For more than 20 years, Bloomstein has led workshops, keynoted conferences, and advised marketing teams around the world. She developed the popular message architecture-driven approach to content strategy and created BrandSort, a tool embraced by consultancies to help their clients clarify their communication goals. Bloomstein shaped the communication of corporate social responsibility at Timberland, crisis response at Harvard University, and cultural tourism in the state of Nevada. Her clients also include the American Montessori Society, Fidelity, Lovehoney, Scholastic, Sallie Mae, and the Rhode Island Public Transit Authority. A participant in the inaugural Content Strategy Consortium and featured speaker at SXSW, Margot Bloomstein keynoted World Interaction Design Day, Content Strategy Forum Frankfurt, and UX in the City: Manchester. She advises Women Talk Design, a platform for speakers in design, and teaches in the graduate program at FH Joanneum University in Graz, Austria. She earned a BFA in Design and Anthropology at Carnegie Mellon University. She also guest lectures at universities, where she especially likes to focus on her work for Lindt & Sprüngli. It offers a vital lesson: if you get the opportunity to work for a chocolate company, do it.

About California College of the Arts

Located at the center of innovation and technology in the San Francisco Bay Area, California College of the Arts is home to a world-renowned faculty of practicing artists and entrepreneurs, and a diverse community of makers that are boldly reimagining the world. Offering 22 undergraduate and 11 graduate programs in fine arts, architecture, design, and writing, CCA’s creative culture is built around the ideals of interdisciplinary collaboration, sustainability, and community engagement.

Access Statement: 

Closed Captioning will be available by AI live transcription. The lecture uses a slide presentation. All content from the slides will be read aloud or described.  Please email access questions to Nina Eve Zeininger (ninaevez@cca.edu).

California College of the Arts campuses are located in Huichin and Yelamu, also known as Oakland and San Francisco, respectively, on the unceded territories of Chochenyo and Ramaytush Ohlone peoples, who have continuously lived upon this land since time immemorial. We recognize the historic discrimination and violence inflicted upon Indigenous peoples in California and the Americas, including their forced removal from ancestral lands, and the deliberate and systematic destruction of their communities and culture. CCA honors Indigenous peoples—past, present, and future—here and around the world, and we wish to pay respect to local elders, including those of the lands from which you are joining us virtually today. If you are unsure of who's land you are currently residing upon, we encourage you to visit native-land.ca.