I had dinner last night with a former PR agency colleague of mine at The Dutch, surrounded by men in starched shirts making the most of their expense accounts.

The fried chicken looked great, though I opted for Zeitgeist Salad (obscure fruit + bitter greens + hazelnuts, don’t pretend you haven’t seen it on the menu of every Manhattan restaurant you’ve been to this winter).

My favorite moment of the evening was the warm feeling of contentment that washed over me when she said she’d spent the week “PR’ing” her company’s upcoming Superbowl ad — a pointless chore I am…

First, and it’s important not to skip this step: fall in love with a surfer. Make sure he never takes you surfing.

Make sure he tells you at eleven o’clock at night at Lil Frankie’s over spaghetti con limone, after you get into a terrible fight about whether New York City was really authentically “better” in the late 80s/early 90s, and he accuses you, in a quasi-yoga instructor voice, that you have “ego issues,” and when you return from the bathroom with tears in your eyes — did I mention this is the first night you’re staying over at…

Shocker: I was a little flip this morning on the FCS Future of Financial Marketing Panel. Upon reflection, I wanted to unpack and contextualize one of my comments.

Right at the end, an audience member brought up something those who’ve been working in tech the past 10+ years know in our bones: despite fintech being presented as “new,” large financial institutions have been on the forefront of adopting, building, and buying technology for ages.

“There are a lot of unsung CTO heroes and stories to tell,” he said. And I’m sure there are. But the question is, should financial services…

Sunday night, I made my way back to Brooklyn after spending five days at a corporate event in the Alps. Yeah, that’s kind of a humblebrag. If not for the elite company, definitely for the quantity and quality of cheese consumed.

I hung out with a hundred or so fintech weirdos in a tiny town called Méribel where it was possible to 1) pet a baby goat and 2) convince the CEO of a blockchain startup to wear a glittery party hat while talking about WEF’s strategy for fixing the global supply chain, all in the same twenty minutes.

I’m…

No Mom, I’m not moving back to Louisiana

I came to New York City in 1999 to work for 24/7 Media. A company, as I learned from a focus group in advance of our first brand advertising campaign, known as the “Mandee of ad networks.” But it didn’t matter. I didn’t care. I was living in NYC, working in tech, putting my highfalutin undergrad internet theory to use.

My first boss was a rollerblading woman named Nancy from the OC who had recently made the jump from publishing to startup land. She was 26, wise, and offered to let me…

After a bit of snafu-ery with another outlet at the end of 2015, this post finally appeared on the Communications Week blog a couple weeks ago. Here it is on Campisi turf. I know how excited you are to read yet another PR person’s take on virtual reality. Stick with me, it’s a quick read.

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VR is the topic of conversation among all communications professionals I know. From Adam Hirsch’s remarks on our innovation panel at Communications Week, to dinner with my friend Bekah on the West Coast who’s in-house at IAC, to the woman I met at a…

Read this first.

1. Technology is not good or evil. Instead, judge the humans that make it and the people that use it. Yes, it’s true that game developers and device manufacturers often intentionally imbue technology with addictive qualities (Google Ian Bogost; you’re welcome), just like the makers of Chicken McNuggets perfect “mouthfeel.” But the chicken isn’t the one fucking you over. The final paragraph of this article is straight-up Hitchcockian. Just replace “The Information” with The Birds or, perhaps, The Blob. If it’s everywhere, as you say, perhaps what you really have on your hands is filter failure. The…

In the past 24 hours, I’ve gotten requests for feedback from airlines (jetBlue, Virgin Atlantic), various news websites (via Foresee), a candidate to our Graduate Assessment Day (“can you tell me why I didn’t make the cut so I can improve in my future endeavors?”), clients, colleagues, people I manage, friends, former boyfriends, and yes, my dentist, who now texts me to wish me Happy Birthday, remind me to schedule biannual appointments, and solicit my opinion on the quality of his service.

I’m sick of being asked to give feedback.

Ten years ago, I was finishing up an MFA in…