The Royal Belgian Football Association was a non-profit organization based in Brussels, Belgium that had a goal to organize, develop, and promote all forms of football in the country. To achieve this goal, it regularly interacted with many stakeholders including fans, commercial partners, association members, referees, and brand stewards. In 2021, the association was eager to digitalize these interactions through the use of its mobile app and added many features to the app over the next two years to support a fluid road map. However, during those two years, the performance of marquee teams was disappointing. More than ever, it seemed important to engender continuous digital engagement with stakeholders as a basis for further commercial growth. In March 2023, the director of marketing and communication and the director of digital, innovation, and technology were reviewing and assessing the association’s digital strategy, especially during the previous two years, and strategizing about the future. Their assessment revealed several important questions about how to prioritize digital initiatives in the future.

The Royal Belgian Football Association was a non-profit organization based in Brussels, Belgium that had a goal to organize, develop, and promote all forms of football in the country. To achieve this goal, it regularly interacted with many stakeholders including fans, commercial partners, association members, referees, and brand stewards. In 2021, the association was eager to digitalize these interactions through the use of its mobile app and added many features to the app over the next two years to support a fluid road map. However, during those two years, the performance of marquee teams was disappointing. More than ever, it seemed important to engender continuous digital engagement with stakeholders as a basis for further commercial growth. In March 2023, the director of marketing and communication and the director of digital, innovation, and technology were reviewing and assessing the association's digital strategy, especially during the previous two years, and strategizing about the future. Their assessment revealed several important questions about how to prioritize digital initiatives in the future.

Sustainability is high on the strategic agenda and is here to stay. While some companies have been sustainable since inception, others are repositioning themselves to be associated with sustainability values. In both situations, communicating about sustainability is key but requires delicate handling to avoid misleading perceptions. Authenticity and emotions are therefore key dimensions of sustainability communication, which match with strategic storytelling elements. Storytelling is discussed in this article as a powerful mechanism to bring about the desired change in individuals, communities, organizations, and society. Drawing from the literature on storytelling, we present, discuss, and illustrate a framework with four strategic elements for companies that want to be successful with sustainability storytelling, which we refer to as the 4 A's: Aim (the "why" of the story), Actors (actively engaging stakeholders and associating with partners), Aspiration (using an aspirational context), and Action (using the right media to bring your story to life). We also emphasize that a holistic approach is key to doing sustainability storytelling the right way. We conclude with general recommendations that managers must consider when conducting sustainability storytelling.

The COVID-19 pandemic that erupted in 2020 forced businesses across the world to adopt virtual meetings. With many people working from home, software platforms like Zoom and Teams became ubiquitous, but their widespread use also revealed many weaknesses and limitations. While technologies for virtual meetings have existed for decades, these technologies have advanced significantly in recent years, and today range from audioconference facilities to telepresence rooms with high-resolution video and sophisticated virtual presence features. The available alternatives differ significantly in costs, complexity and capabilities, and choosing the most effective technology for each meeting setting is not always easy. This is important, since after the pandemic, virtual meetings will move from being a necessity brought on by the pandemic to being a widely accepted alternative to traditional face-to-face meetings. Consequently, the questions of when and how to meet virtually will become even more significant. In this article, we describe a decision-making framework for choosing when and how to meet virtually, based on matching the appropriate communication capabilities with various meeting objectives and taking into account meeting size and duration. The framework is based on extensive empirical research conducted in partnership with several major U.S. and European companies.

The Royal Belgian Football Association (RBFA), the governing body of Belgian football, had experienced tremendous success on the pitch and wanted to capitalize on its success with business growth. However, the football industry was challenged by increasing internationalization, commercialization, and digitalization. Engaging diverse stakeholders, including a changing demographic of fans, through digital channels became pivotal.<br><br>Against this backdrop, the RBFA initiated a strategy revision, rolling out a new app in March 2021 for an integrated and expanded digital experience for stakeholders. With the postponed 2020 European Championship scheduled to commence in June 2021 and Belgium among the favourites to win, the RBFA needed to prioritize its offerings to the fans and other stakeholders and determine what resources would be needed to fully operationalize the new digital strategy.

The Royal Belgian Football Association (RBFA), the governing body of Belgian football, had experienced tremendous success on the pitch and wanted to capitalize on its success with business growth. However, the football industry was challenged by increasing internationalization, commercialization, and digitalization. Engaging diverse stakeholders, including a changing demographic of fans, through digital channels became pivotal. Against this backdrop, the RBFA initiated a strategy revision, rolling out a new app in March 2021 for an integrated and expanded digital experience for stakeholders. With the postponed 2020 European Championship scheduled to commence in June 2021 and Belgium among the favourites to win, the RBFA needed to prioritize its offerings to the fans and other stakeholders and determine what resources would be needed to fully operationalize the new digital strategy.

In October 2015, three senior managers at BNP Paribas Fortis, the leader in retail banking in Belgium and a subsidiary of the BNP Paribas Group, were discussing how to take the bank’s latest service, “James,” to the next level and grow its customer base fivefold by the end of 2016. Launched in 2009, James was a unique investment portfolio advice service that substituted web conferencing technology for face-to-face interaction between advisors and affluent banking customers. An important feature of the James banking experience was that each customer mainly interacted with the same advisor, and was able to do so from virtually any location, outside regular office hours. The use of technology to build strong customer relationships from a distance proved beneficial for both the customers and the bank. Now the BNP Paribas Fortis managers had to decide how to expand James’ customer base, outpace the competition, and organize for growth. How could they grow the country’s current base of nearly 20,000 James customers to 100,000 in just one year?

In October 2015, three senior managers at BNP Paribas Fortis, the leader in retail banking in Belgium and a subsidiary of the BNP Paribas Group, were discussing how to take the bank's latest service, "James," to the next level and grow its customer base fivefold by the end of 2016. Launched in 2009, James was a unique investment portfolio advice service that substituted web conferencing technology for face-to-face interaction between advisors and affluent banking customers. An important feature of the James banking experience was that each customer mainly interacted with the same advisor, and was able to do so from virtually any location, outside regular office hours. The use of technology to build strong customer relationships from a distance proved beneficial for both the customers and the bank. Now the BNP Paribas Fortis managers had to decide how to expand James' customer base, outpace the competition, and organize for growth. How could they grow the country's current base of nearly 20,000 James customers to 100,000 in just one year?