The Right Way to Fight Movie Piracy

Reacting to this story about the ”Pirates of the Caribbean” sequel earning $401 million its first weekend by opening in theaters worldwide nearly simultaneously, Thomas P. Barnett calls it “a good way to combat pirating,” meaning the illicit copying of new movies onto bootleg DVDs sold in advance of the movie’s opening in overseas markets.  

What the motion picture industry has perhaps figured out is that they were fertilizing the market for bootlegs with a mindless strategy of rolling out popular films in different markets over a period of months.  Well, it wasn’t a mindless strategy 20 years ago.  It was a way to manage the various costs and levels of effort associated with launching a big film — the ads, the PR, distribution of the film canisters. 

But now, PR- and advertising-fueled awareness of a sequel-ized hit featuring big stars like Johnny Depp can permeate most of the known world in mere days, especially a young market craving to be plugged in to whatever’s hot. There was an irresistable entreprenuerial temptation to service that market illegally.  If the movie-in-demand is playing at a theater down the street, there’s less of a reason for anyone to buy a bootlegged copy.

Rather than using copyright law to stretch a bunch of legal tripwires that, when triggered, make felons out their biggest fans, entertainment property owners ought to take a cue from Disney’s success story and give the people what they want.  They’ll pay a reasonable price for it if they’re given a chance.  You, the entertainment companies, have built this demand.  So service it.

“Wake up, you sleepyhead, you can sleep when you are dead.”

Watch this.

This is X-treme creativity on the part of an advertiser.  Surely no green light for this ad a year ago, but now, I guess if you want to put your brand name in front of people, you can't mess around.  Your ad has to be something that will make people grab their friends by the collar and say "Look at this. Right now!"  

Scoble Ankles

Robert Scoble's decision to leave Microsoft for a podcasting start-up generates a lot of comment today in the blogosphere. Scoble, an intelligent guy and a fine writer who conveys a winning personality in his blog Scobleizer, was characterized as the guy who "put a human face" on Microsoft. His departure from Microsoft was amicable, but from the media reaction, one would think this is a grievous loss for the software behemoth. From FT.com:

The internet was buzzing on Monday as bloggers digested news that Robert Scoble, the technical evangelist” whose Scobleizer weblog made him one of the foremost ambassadors for the world’s biggest software group, is to leave the company to join a Silicon Valley start-up.

The move, reported at the weekend, raises fresh questions about the importance of high-profile bloggers to companies that encourage employees to talk about work in their online journals.

(snip)

The move illustrates the challenge facing companies as they try to get to grips with a world in which the reputation of individual bloggers can come to be closely associated with – or have a big impact on – the reputation of a company’s own brand.

This is pretty silly. Scoble was an alternative source of information about Microsoft, and it spoke well of the company that it didn't fire him for filing posts that had a candid tone to them. But he was not Microsoft's "human" face. That honor still belongs to founder Bill Gates, one of the most recognized humans on the planet, and Steve Ballmer, the current CEO whose utterings are carefully parsed in the business and technology press.

Robert Scoble's left pinky was warmer, fuzzier and more "human" than Gates and Ballmer combined, but that doesn't change their relative impact on Microsoft. If Scoble's job was to take the focus off these two gentlemen, he failed. But I don't think that was the idea.

I think Scoble was driven to blog because he genuinely loved Microsoft and the people who worked there, and had a knack for articulating his passion about his company–and about his life. When I think about Scobleizer, I think about his incredibly honest posts about his mother, who died recently, and how the experience affected his view of his family and his life. I enjoyed his dispatches from the tech-conference circuit. They were human and humorous.

Frankly, I tended to discount whatever Scoble said about Microsoft, for two reasons. He was a marketing guy. You can't sell a product you don't believe in, and part of the psychology of salespersons is the ability to auto-generate the kind of belief needed to sell. Secondly, I'm not obsessed with Microsoft. I know Vista's coming, for example. But I won't be the first to try it. I realize I live in Microsoft's world, but I don't think about it much.

I want to see more businesses–big, small, and not-for-profit–hosting blogs. But over-reliance on one individual — and a lower-level employee at that — doesn't make much sense as a strategy.

To me, one point of a company blog is to dramatize the firm's expertise; to take its potential customers on an intellectual journey that parallels the company's growth, evolution, and new offerings. Another point is to demonstrate the commitment to transparent decision-making that companies' stakeholders increasingly demand — as Elizabeth Albrycht discussed in this required-reading post, and this follow-up. (I wrote about her ideas here.)

Scoble did some of the first, although it was mostly his intellectual journey. He wasn't in a position to do the second, because he wasn't a decision-maker.

The kind of blog I would envision as helpful to a company would be highly customized. There is no off-the-shelf strategy, and never will be, for this kind of communication. It must be flexible — a place where conversation about a new product could comfortably share space with responses to a crisis, or outlines of a decision-making process underway in real time.

I would look at a company blog as a cyberspace auditorium — a place targeted readers will want to go to hear from, and interact with, interesting people with relevant information to offer, whether they were executives, academics, customers or employees. Sometimes it might be an arena, where adversaries debate. The blog would become an essential experience for anyone who envisioned themselves as a potential customer, or who had any significant relationship with the company in question.

Above all, a company blog has to give its audience a reason to come back frequently — a hook. Robert Scoble's hook was: "How honest is he really going to be?" After awhile, the hook became Scoble himself — a guy we liked and rooted for. But as he said himself many times, he was just one person at Microsoft. For businesses, non-profits, public-sector agencies and others, the trick will be to create your own blog format, one that allows us to read and hear the many voices that make up your universe — and help us figure out how you fit into our lives.

Another PR Tactic About to Bite the Dust

Global warming is a good metaphor for how the changing communications climate is affecting the array of PR tactics that hundreds of PR agencies offer their clients. Glaciers are melting, seas are rising, once-fertile forests turn to desert, and giant flies have begun to attack — but some species are too slow to move, and will die right where they stand.

It was not so long ago that my staff and I would draft "sample" letters to the editor, and distribute them, on a small scale, to average Dick and Janes to send to their local newspapers as if the letters were their own. We justified it thusly: The words might be ours, but the decision to sign and send was voluntary on the sender's part. The sender also is free to change our words as much as they want. Our drafts are merely suggestions. We'd never see the final product unless and until it ran. However, to be honest, when it did run, it usually looked just like our "sample."

I was never in charge of a campaign that did a nationwide letter-to-the-editor campaign, but the tactic is the same, and is based on the same intellectual premise: That your campaign represents all that is true and good, and is thus widely supported, but without being prompted your supporters might not state the case as eloquently as you, Mr. or Ms. PR Professional, would do.

By helping them, you could make extra sure that your supporters repeated your carefully-crafted "key messages," which you have told your client will carry the day. You are also helping to overcome your supporters' inertia, which might prevent them from taking a public stand on their own. After all, unlike you, these supporters aren't billing a client, so they can't be expected to go about their PR duties so diligently, right? They might not write at all. They might get distracted by, you know, life.

Well, attention all polar bears — the ice is almost gone, and you're about to fall into the Arctic Ocean to be nibbled to death by guppies.

David Mastio of InOpinion, a blog that promotes his newpaper op-ed consulting business, has made it a personal cause to expose AstroTurf letter-to-the editor scams, and protect our nation's editorial pages from running what are essentially unpaid political ads.

Check out the state-of-the-art letter-to-the-editor generators — an increasingly common tactic of the right and the left, as well as corporate-sponsored campaigns — from Hands off the Internet to Focus on the Family to MoveOn.org to advocates of The American Horse Slaughter Prevention Act.

If you click on this link, or this one, you can see how it works. On the net neutrality site, you're given a choice of six pre-written paragraphs containing all the key messages. On the anti-gay marriage site, you've got 20 to pick from. You pick the ones you like, in the order you like, and then with a couple more clicks, a letter over your signature is sent automatically to your local newspapers, based on the geographic information you provide.

Figuring out if a letter to the editor is AstroTurf-generated is easy to do nowadays. If you see a letter to the editor that looks suspiciously PR-ish in its use of phrases, all you need to do is highlight a distinctive sentence, and run it through a Google search. If you've guessed right, you'll find published letters to the editor with nearly identical text but different authors, running in newspapers all over America.

Prompted by one of Mastio's links, I copied this phrase into Google: "Although we don’t eat horses, we slaughtered 88,000 last year for export to countries that do." This is a talking point for advocates of the American Horse Slaughter Prevention Act. Based on the search, I found this precise phrase in 138 citations of letters to the editor, from newspapers from Tucson to Boise to Miami to Chicago. The context for the letter is the unfortunate breakdown of Kentucky Derby winner Barbaro, so all of these letters were sent in the days immediately after the May 20th Preakness race when it occured. There is no web site I can find where this draft letter was offered, so I'm assuming the letter senders were prompted by e-mails from an animal rights organization.

Mastio's anti-AstroTurf letters-to-the-editor campaign has been noticed by some of A-list bloggers like Andrew Sullivan, Ed Driscoll and the PR-industry-focused Holmes Report Blog, which is what brought my attention to it. Mastio's linked to a couple of places where supporters of the groups he's busted defend the tactic. For example, Gary Schneeberger of Focus on the Family wrote this to the Seattle Times:

Calling it "willful deception" for groups like ours to help readers write letters to the editor is ludicrous; all we offer readers like Elisa Baggenstos is the assistance of a professional communicator to put what is in their hearts into publishable form.

If it's unethical for someone to sign his or her name to a letter largely written and/or edited by someone who writes and/or edits for a living, then where's the outrage over commentaries that appear on this page under the name of a congressman or senator? Certainly, Mr. Pluckhahn is aware those pieces aren't written by the congressman or senator him/herself, but by a staff member who helps compile the lawmaker's convictions into a well-written whole.

But Schneeberger and other campaign organizers who agree with him miss the point. Nobody would mind if Elisa Baggenstos asked a professional communicator to put what is in her heart into publishable form. The problem comes when hundreds of other people use the same professional communicator's exact phrases, but sign their own names to them. It's a form of trickery and deceit on the part of the respective campaigns, who are trying to create an illusion of grassroots support by fooling newspaper editors into believing these letters are a spontaneous response to an issue of concern among the paper's readers.

It is also, by the way, cynical and patronizing to assume, as Schneeberger does, that Focus on the Family's supporters are too inarticulate to express their heart-felt opinions in their own words.

The practice seems to be growing but I predict its swift demise, because it is so easily detected and foiled. Newspaper editors should be able to sniff out a suspected AstroTurf letter, and can confirm their suspicions with a Google search like the one I did about the 88,000 slaughtered horses. I assume they would not knowingly publish a letter that has already appeared in another newspaper over a different signature.

If the newspaper editors won't do the detective work, I'm sure the adversaries to the campaigns using AstroTurf letters will. This is exactly how the left-wing bloggers busted Ben Domenech, the conservative writer who had been handed a blog by the Washington Post — proving his plagiarism with just a few clicks. As Schneeberger's unfortunate statement demonstrates, AstroTurf letters to the editor are a tactic that, once exposed, cannot be defended without damaging your cause.

VNR Producers Fighting Back*

I've been wondering when the PR industry would own up to the fact that Video News Releases — now very controversial, and seen as deceptive — have been a standard public relations tactic for maybe two decades. Some form of VNR is (or was until recently) a standard part of any major product launch or corporate initiative. But when the press started writing stories about VNRs appearing on television (where else would they go?), nobody in the industry defended them very publicly. At least, not that I saw.

In fact, with the major exception of Richard Edelman, the PR industry is still tip-toeing around this issue. But the companies with the most to lose, the VNR producers themselves, have decided to organize. I can't blame them. From PR Week:

Several broadcast PR companies are discussing plans to band together to fight the latest wave of public scrutiny of the sector, PRWeek has learned.

The action comes in the wake of news that the FCC is investigating the use of VNRs by several news stations that, according to a recent report by the Center for Media and Democracy, didn't disclose the corporate sponsorship of the video releases.

Organized by Medialink, the new group comprises more than a dozen companies including MultiVu, West Glen Communications, and News Broadcast Network.

"If the FCC is considering an inquiry, we've got to take that seriously," said Medialink president and CEO Larry Moskowitz. "It is frightening to all of us to have the government take a seat in the newsroom as a censor."

Moskowitz said the group is considering reaching out to industry organizations such as PRSA and the Radio-Television News Directors Association, as well as freedom of speech and democracy groups.

Ironies abound here. It was government's use of VNRs that put the stink on this tactic — including the White House. Now the same government wants to regulate them? Okay, but first, stop buying them!

Even more ironic is that the "broadcast PR companies" are vendors to PR agencies. So why would they need to "reach out" to the PRSA (Public Relations Society of America)? Shouldn't it be the other way around? It's the PRSA membership's client work, and their clients' freedom of speech, that are potentially at issue. Why aren't they defending themselves?

The bad guys here are the TV stations that broadcast this content as news without telling anyone that it came from a PR agency. The "broadcast PR companies" have nothing to do with the decisions made by station execs. The PR agencies that distribute these videos could admonish the stations to identify the clips as PR content (as Edelman suggests) but in the end, the stations themselves decide what goes on their air.

Here is a link to the Center for Media and Democracy's report on Fake TV News. The Center takes credit for spurring the FCC's probe.

The Center sees a much brighter line between broadcast TV news and VNRs than I do. What's the bill of particulars against VNRs?

• That they aren't news? That's for the individual stations' news directors to judge. Many VNRs are loaded with news value, although it's obviously a one-sided presentation. But is anyone stopping news directors from presenting the other side?
• That you've got actors pretending to be reporters? Uh, hello? That ship sailed long ago. There are far more actors, models, comedians, disk jockeys, ex-athletes, and ex-politicians who are presented as journalists by news stations than by PR agencies. There is no license for journalists. The charge of impersonating a TV reporter doesn't have the same weight as impersonating a doctor, a lawyer or a general.
• That they run on TV news programs without being identified as PR? Again, talk to the news director. He or she can put up a graphic in front of the VNR saying where the footage came from. No one's alleging the videos arrive in a plain brown wrapper, or that anyone at the news station is being fooled.

It comes down to news judgement. Once upon a time, I worked with a company on a video documentary about a high-profile client, and we hired a high-profile TV personality to serve as host. For a few months, this video ran frequently on local-access cable channels. We didn't pay them. They ran it because they thought it was interesting and they had space to fill.

More typically, I commissioned B-roll and provided it to local TV channels. No fake anchors; just video clips that might help illustrate the story we hoped the news outlets would tell. Often, it was footage the station couldn't have gotten for itself, such as an event that took place out of town. Sometimes, too, we'd recognized that the TV station didn't have crews available to cover our event (in other words, we got shut out), so we would messenger over our own edited video version of the event. Of course, we edited the footage to show off our clients, but most of our editorial decisions were made based on what we thought the news stations would find interesting and worth airing.

The campaign against "Fake News" strikes me as somewhat overblown. It's such an easy thing to fix. News directors should from now on indentify on-screen the source of the video footage they're showing. Knowing that some news directors are too lazy to take that step, perhaps PR agencies should do it for them — as a convenience, in the name of transparency, not to head off regulation. Do those things and the issue goes away.

Or will it? Like many PR controversies of late, I think there's a bigger question on the table — the legitimacy of PR. PR equals spin equals lies. That's what many Americans think, and they're sick of it. Americans are tired of being pitched. They want to zap commercials, watch commercial-free TV, and block pop-ups. They recognize that corporations and government agencies have information for the public, but they yearn to hear it straight, not "strategically."

As I think back on it, it's clear to me that many standard PR strategies were designed to manipulate the media, because the media is assumed to be the filter for information reaching the public. Paradoxically, that's why so many PR campaigns don't ring true. They're designed with reporters and editors in mind — an alien subculture to most Americans.

VNRs and even traditional press releases — their point is to take advantage of the media's laziness and need to fill news holes with limited budgets. There's something surreptitious about doing business this way — like a teenager waiting for his parents to fall asleep so he can sneak out of the house, instead of asking permission.

So, what would happen if you took the news media out of the equation entirely? Wouldn't that change the way corporate America and government agencies talk to the public? Or would PR advisors still believe it's necessary to spin?

*Extensively revised and expanded.

The Secret to Making Money from Blogs

You can't make money blogging, or at least you can't make much. At least not now. Well, actually nobody knows. I don't have any ads on this site, the main reason being nobody has ever asked me to put their ad on this site. Maybe advertisers are missing a huge opportunity!

But I think I've figured out the secret to making money from blogs. Get someone to pay you to monitor them.

That's the conclusion I draw from Deborah Brown's op-ed (subscription required) in the current PR Week. Deborah Brown is senior director at Peppercom, a much-awarded small firm with offices in New York, San Francisco and London. She's got a common-sense approach to what she calls "digital media" that reminded me of the John Prine lyric, "It don't make much sense, this common sense don't make no sense no more."

For example, she says:

It’s also critical to understand that your company cannot state the same key messages via digital media that are allowed in other marketing initiatives such as advertising. With digital, the customer is in complete control. You need to understand how to communicate and connect in a new environment in which you have little or no control.

This is true, but it is fast becoming a cliche. Realizing you have little or no control is good Zen discipline, but pretty soon the clients are going to start asking their PR people for something more than a list of "what-not-to-do's." From my perch, I think we're at the point where an old economic idea, "Creative Destruction," needs to be applied to these new realities. From Joseph Schumpeter's Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, written in 1942:

(T)he contents of the laborer's budget, say from 1760 to 1940, did not simply grow on unchanging lines but they underwent a process of qualitative change. Similarly, the history of the productive apparatus of a typical farm, from the beginnings of the rationalization of crop rotation, plowing and fattening to the mechanized thing of today–linking up with elevators and railroads–is a history of revolutions. So is the history of the productive apparatus of the iron and steel industry from the charcoal furnace to our own type of furnace, or the history of the apparatus of power production from the overshot water wheel to the modern power plant, or the history of transportation from the mailcoach to the airplane. The opening up of new markets, foreign or domestic, and the organizational development from the craft shop and factory to such concerns as U.S. Steel illustrate the same process of industrial mutation–if I may use that biological term–that incessantly revolutionizes the economic structure from within, incessantly destroying the old one, incessantly creating a new one. This process of Creative Destruction is the essential fact about capitalism. It is what capitalism consists in and what every capitalist concern has got to live in. . . .

"Industrial mutation" — there's a term I'd like to see the PR blogs use more often! The fact is, in a breathtakingly short period of time, mass communications has undergone a profound mutation, to which the PR industry and current practices might not successfully adapt.

In PR Week, Brown quotes Christopher Barger, "Blogger-in-Chief" at IBM, saying the customers "want relationship building" and not "traditional messages." From this article and dozens more like it all over the PR blogosphere and trade media, you get the idea that some PR industry leaders see "relationship building" as just another tactic in the PR professional's arsenal.

I don't think so. Training in the PR industry is notoriously poor, but from what I remember, it's mostly about dealing with the news media, elements of good writing, client relations and "managing for profitability." There aren't many PR agency GMs who could instruct staff to go forth and help clients "build relationships" via "digital media" and have any confidence in how their employees would translate those words into action. Chaos would ensue. It might be funny like "The Office" is funny. But a client shouldn't pay for people to do something they aren't qualified to do.

I don't mean to knock Deborah Brown. Her article is good as far as it goes. She has a clear view of the mutation process, and how control is slipping away. The rather tentative tone of her article is probably appropriate. Nobody really knows what to do, and she doesn't pretend to either.

However, she did make one suggestion that made me laugh.

Monitor…monitor….monitor…know what’s being said about your company, but know when it makes sense to react.

Digital monitoring: It's a tactic PR people can certainly do. It's just like media monitoring, except more billable hours, since, according to a Pew Internet & American Life Project report,

As of last December, 35 percent of Americans had posted to a blog, created a Web page, shared online photos, or otherwise generated content. That proportion is more than double the 16 percent that had posted any content to the Web in January 2002, when Pew first researched the topic.

Can you imagine how many of those posts mention a brand-name company, one that might have PR people in-house or under contract? Monitor… monitor… monitor… monitor… monitor… monitor… monitor… monitor… monitor… monitor…

Blogging as Lobbying*

Remember how you'd cringe when Greg on The Brady Bunch would talk about a "groovy chick?" I have a feeling a lot of people will have flashbacks like that if they delve into the "Net Neutrality" debate. Because both sides are supplementing the usual battery of PR and lobbying tactics with blogging! Cool, daddio!

First, and most painfully, we get this soporific blog entry attributed to former Clinton spokesman and now Washington communications consultant Mike McCurry and attorney Chris Wolf, who run the telecommunication industry-backed "Hands off the Internet":

We need the freedom to figure out the answers to numerous questions: Who will pay for the pipes that will deliver the next generation Internet? What is the best way to ensure packets of information get across the Internet in the most efficient manner possible? How will traffic be managed when 100 million movies are being downloaded at any given moment?

These are complex questions, and over the coming months, we will do our level best to explain not just why the Save The Internet crowd is wrong, but where their online supporters have their wires (or these days, their wireless) crossed. And that’s why we’ve set up shop here in the blogosphere.

We’ll drop in from time to time, but for now we’ll turn this over to the Hands Off the Internet team, who will keep this blog updated and alive, hopefully even lively.

I'm not holding my breath. In "About Us," they describe those krazy "Hands off the Internet" kids as "a nationwide coalition of Internet users united together in the belief that the Net's phenomenal growth over the past decade stems from the ability of entrepreneurs to expand consumer choices and opportunities without worrying about government regulation."

In other words, this is a coalition of executives at ISPs who need to maintain high shareholder value, and are bored with the money they're already making from all of us who pay them for high-speed access.

Corporations are about growth. Shareholders don't want to be told, "The cable modem/DSL market is nearly saturated and we're going to be fighting an expensive fight simply to retain the customers we've got." For the stock price to rise, the ISPs need to charge more, and apparently figure they should have the unfettered ability to offer new services to justify premium prices. Content providers are free to create content that opens up new streams of advertiser or subscriber revenue — why not the ISPs?

This ISP hunger makes the content providers — big players like Google and Microsoft, but also entrepreneurial netizens who have faith that the next killer app is a gleam in their eye — nervous.

The ISPs control the pipes. What if they decide they want to make money off of searches, or user-generated wacky videos? Couldn't an ISP somehow disfavor Google or YouTube in favor of similar providers they control? What if you had a great new idea? Doesn't this give ISPs leverage to extract payment or even co-ownership in return for access to their customers?

Hence, "Save the Internet." Actually the net neutrality advocates are somewhat less centrally-directed, I think because a constituency exists that is motivated by actual beliefs, not just corporate prompting. Some have started their own activist sites, but "Save the Internet" seems to be where the big money is being directed. But, unlike "Hands…", "Save the Internet's" blogroll includes lots and lots of real bloggers, from bigfeet like Instapundit and Atrios, to dozens of obscure local bloggers, to "Charmed" star Alyssa Milano.

Of course, they've got a blog, too — one that basically repurposes the press releases posted in the press section. Blog entries announce Moby's support, the Christian Coalition's support, an endorsement from the San Jose Mercury News, and lots of long statements by someone called "tkarr" who does not otherwise identify himself. (Presumably, it's Timothy Karr, a Net activist who runs Free Press, but his name never appears anywhere on the "Save…" site.)

Here's how a recent "tkarr" post begins:

The telco cartel wants to gut the Internet and portion it off to the companies that pay their broadband tolls. Companies like AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth seek to get rid of Net Neutrality so they can muscle aside the real online revolutionaries — the small-guy innovators who historically have made the Internet a beacon for democracy, economic growth and new ideas.

In the words of Internet architect Vint Cerf, the Internet is “innovation without permission.” That is the genius of the network that has proven to be a wonderland for new entrepreneurs and ideas, with all the intelligence residing with the end users and not those who control the pipes.

Now, large phone companies like AT&T have unleashed a million-dollar-a-week spending spree to influence Washington decision-makers, pass telco-friendly regulations and change the Internet forever. They want to control online content by placing gateways on the on-ramps and exits to the information superhighway. This is why people on the right and left have joined with every major consumer group, Internet rights advocacy and public interest organization to fight AT&T and their lobbyists.

I mean…it's mostly not a blog. A good blog for "Save the Internet" might be something actually written by a lobbyist. A diary that documents the political warfare as it happens, rather than a compendium of talking points and press releases. Their frontline PR person could contribute to it, too, with accounts (even transcripts) of their discussions with the press.

Don't just lecture us, engage us. The net community is more than just a constituency that will write e-mails and sign petitions. They want a conversation.

I'd give the same advice to the "Hands off the Internet" folks. Right now, they look like a classic AstroTurf campaign, dressed in netizen drag. They are campaigning in exactly the manner you'd expect from a "telco cartel." But lots of people would enjoy reading a blog written by a personable guy like Mike McCurry. He shouldn't hand it off to the "team" (i.e. the underpaid, anonymous flacks responsible for regurgitating the talking points). Write the darn thing yourself!

For a reasonably balanced and comprehensive summary of this issue, I can recommend this piece on Wikipedia. I'm pondering where I stand. I know which side I'm leaning toward, but I want to read more.

My one request to both sides: No blogs from Harry and Louise. Please?

*(Post edited and expanded 5/24, 8 a.m.)

(UPDATE:  The Wall Street Journal posts a debate between McCurry and Craig Newmark that is well worth reading.  What's interesting is both sides claim they are only working to preserve the status quo.  They can't both be right.)    

Verify, Then Trust

Sounds like Elizabeth Albrycht gave an good talk about Web 2.0/social media at the Demos conference in London. She puts her speakers' notes on her blog today. Albrycht is a specialist in corporate PR, and her talk is focused on the ever-higher bar of transparency that corporate communications of any kind — advertising as well as communications about corporate decisions — must meet.

Albrycht's metaphor for transparency is scientific inquiry and the way scientific facts are validated:

In order to test the potential fact constructed by the original researcher, other scientists perform the same experiments in an attempt to duplicate results, confirming the fact, indeed, exists. In order to to that, they must follow the same paths as the original researchers, provided by the latter through references, data translations, and so on.

I don't want to get into all the gory details here, but the basic idea is that the reason facts are credible is that they can be traced backwards to their origin, and re-constructed.

In order for our messages to be received with some degree of credibility and trust, in today's questioning, distrustful atmosphere, we need to move away from the message delivered as a fait accompli, but embrace communications as something to be tested, then provide the instructions and/or information needed to make those tests. You could even call this process a conversation.

So, what would transparent corporate communications look like? The questions we as professional communicators have to ask ourselves is what information do we need to provide so that others can reconstruct our decisions. Everything from minutes to meetings to interviews with the participants could be made available. They might not agree with the decision we took, but they will at least understand the reasoning, which might buy some goodwill, for one.

We also need to decide when to provide it and how to provide it. Is it only made available when a problem arises? Is it easily searchable on the website and available via a link? Or does the person inquiring have to jump through a variety of hoops?

It's all far more compelling than any comment I could add to it. PR people, especially, should take a look.

Can PR “Manufacture” Tom Cruise’s Religion?

I've always liked PR Week, and just started subscribing to it. It doesn't really take a position in the newly urgent debate over what kind of effective PR can be done in this period of ferment in the communications world, but it interviews interesting people in and around the industry who do have strong views, so it's worthwhile.

That said, PR Week's editorial (link for subscribers only) on Tom Cruise made my jaw drop. The editorial notes that Paul Bloch, co-chairman of Rogers & Cowan, has taken over as Cruise's publicist; and that the deployment of this respected PR veteran might have come too late to save Mission: Impossible III's box office from "the vitriol, the 'you're glib, Matt' bit on Today, the Oprah couch affair, and the Scientology tents." Probably so. But then:

The calculus of celebrity is a wildly unpredictable formula, such that the greater the depths of self-immolation, the greater the potential for a cathartic return to the fold. Americans have this seemingly endless capacity to forgive the celebrities they love, or hate. They also tend to have a relatively short memory and love nothing more than the drama, the pathos of the prodigal star. Martha Stewart's stock is up again. So is Kobe Bryant's. Who knows, but even Mike Tyson may return, a lesser George Foreman, perhaps born again and pitching lean cuisine and mufflers.

The key to resuscitating Cruise will be putting him in a metaphorical closet: fewer appearances, less talking, more smiling. Bloch should take a page from the studio system, circa 1940, when studios had stables of stars who were tightly controlled, whose public "personalities" – including details of their private lives – were as manufactured as possible.

These are some odd comments. Cruise hasn't "self-immolated." He's not on drugs, or accused of a crime. No, he's a faithful adherent to a religion that many people find bizarre and cult-like, and his association with the religion shines a weird light on what would otherwise be perfectly normal life events like falling in love and becoming a father.

Is PR Week suggesting Cruise separate himself from Scientology? Or, more disturbingly, are they suggesting he should pretend to separate himself from Scientology? How would he do that? To use PR Week's word, should Rogers & Cowan "manufacture" another religion for him? Will they start sending him to a Presbyterian church or a Buddhist temple? Or will they stage a Cruise defrocking? Religion is pretty personal. Cruise has a First Amendment right to worship however he chooses, and Americans' respect for that right has benefited Cruise. I don't think the movie-going public would believe it for one second if Cruise suddenly renounced Scientology.

Certainly, Bloch can tell Cruise, "quit talking about Scientology, quit talking about psychiatrists, quit talking about depression medication. You're not the expert on those things. You're an expert on acting and your movies — focus on that." Classic PR advice. But "manufacturing" a personality and a private life for Cruise? It's absurd to think that would work.

Worse, PR Week giving that advice plays right into the public's worst impressions of the PR industry — that we "manufacture" a false reality. Sure, some PR campaigns undoubtedly are built around false information, but that's a bad and dangerous practice that most PR folks I know don't follow. Especially nowadays when (to flip Mark Twain on his head) a lie can get around the world 15 times, but the truth will catch up in the 10th lap.

This is ‘New Media’ Advice? It’s SO Last Century

Hugh Hewitt, the articulate Republican cheerleader, syndicated radio host and blogger, portrays himself as consultant to all "center-right conservatives" in their battles against enemies in the media, politics and academia. He writes at least one book a year, in which he provides unsolicited advice to Republican candidates, conservative activists, high-school students and born-again Christians. He's been on the radio somewhere or another for at least 15 years, and spent time as co-host of KCET's "Life and Times." He flogs his books so mercilessly on the air, it's apparent that he believes his book sales figures are an indicator of the nation's well-being.

In addition to being a committed activist, churchman and attorney, Hewitt claims to know something about communications — trumpeting himself as an avatar of the new media as it triumphs over the liberal-biased "old" media. One of his most popular books is "Blog: Understanding the Information Reformation That's Changing Your World."

So I was struck by this post of a few days ago, "Secretary Rumsfeld and the New Media." In it, Hewitt discusses an interview with Rumsfeld, focusing on the advice he gave the secretary about communications in the new media era:

The SecDef has staked everything on transforming the way the American military fights wars. I worry that all those efforts will be at least compromised unless the Pentagon gets its best minds thinking about how to explain the conflict and its many dimensions to the American public.

(snip)

The information war –fought not just by the Pentagon, but also by the White House the Department of Justice, the intelligence community–has become, like logistics, the realm of professionals*. Let's hope the U.S. gets as serious about it as it is about logistics.

Some suggestions:

The Secretary of Defense and the Chair of the Joint Chiefs are the two most important voices in the military. They need to engage media in lengthy, one-on-one question-and-answer sessions at which other journalists are allowed to attend but not participate.

Volume is not a substitute for quality. The DoD does in fact put out an avalanche of information every single day –too much, in fact. The Pentagon all too often steps on its lead story, and all too often does not respond to breaking information that the terrorists lob on to the battlefields of the information war. The rapid response of the military to such disinformation has to improve.

Finally, the particulars of any day's battles does not matter nearly as much as the strategic overview of the course of the war. Repetition is hated by the Beltway press corps, always eager to get a scoop or at least a new lede.

But repetition is the core of information war.

Finally, new media is far more powerful in its reach than the credibility-challenged and ideologically-compromised old media. The old press rules from the days when the New York Times or the Washington Post made the weather are still in place. They can be upended.

How is this advice — basically PR advice — any different from what Edward Bernays might have suggested to Rumsfeld 80 or 90 years ago at the dawn of the public relations industry? How is it any different from how politics was conducted under under Reagan or Clinton, the two most successful practitioners of the Pat Caddell/Mike Deaver/James Carville "permanent campaign" model that was engineered based on the PR-advertising principles formed when TV networks and a handful of newspapers dominated the news ecosystem?

Isn't this approach precisely what new media acolytes rebel against? That whole "message of the day," "don't step on your own story," "rapid response," top-down media management? What I thought new media is about is transparency, providing more not less, and showing faith in the ability of news consumers–"prosumers" in Alvin Toffler's lexicon–to do their own filtering and editing.

A "new media" approach would have Rumsfeld communicating constantly and candidly, the good news with the bad. Don't have a message of the day, don't shade anything to gain a specific headline. Most Americans have stopped reading newspapers anyway. Instead, use the media tools now available to transmit a body of knowledge about the war to engaged members of the public, who will then be motivated to educate their peers. Rumsfeld or a trusted, high-level spokesperson could do this actively, identifying bloggers with a sympathetic viewpoint and beginning an on-the-record conversation with them. They could be bolder still, and carry on conversations with unsympathetic bloggers, too.

Like most PR problems, Rumsfeld's is not really a PR problem, it's a fact problem. In the initial weeks of the Iraq war, the news was good, thus the PR was fabulous. Now, three years on, the war is a bloody grind, the news is mixed and the significance of each development murky. You can't change that reality with a new policy on granting interviews!

But Hewitt is worried about the enemy's propaganda, and so is Rumsfeld. In the SecDef's words (from his interview transcript):

This is the first war that's ever been conducted, in the 21st Century, in an era of these new media realities, where you have the internet and 24 hour talk radio and news and bloggers and video cameras and digital cameras and instant communications worldwide. And the enemy understands that they can't win a battle out on the battlefield in Iraq or Afghanistan. The only place they can win a battle is in Washington, D.C. So they have media committees, and they get up in the morning and figure out how they're going to manipulate the American media, and they do a very skillful job.

This is a misdiagnosis. It might be the first war in a time of blogging, but it's certainly not the first war in which an enemy deployed propaganda through whatever media channels were available at the time to frighten, demoralize or mislead.

The Nazi takeover of Europe derived from a series of expert bluffs, until finally the bluff became reality. But it goes back much farther than WWII, to past millenia when the media of choice were memorized lines of poetry and the misinformation spread, virally you might say, by clever spies. Sun Tzu, writing in the 6th century B.C.: "Hence to fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting." And, his Strategy 7: "Create something from nothing." Propaganda is not new, and it would surprise me to find out that our nation's war planners were unprepared for it.

Will a "message of the day" media strategy stop the Iraqi insurgents from using the media to broadcast terror and convey a sense of futility to the American public? I don't see how. But the public reaction to scenes of bombs going off and kidnapped reporters isn't the problem anyway. It's the political reaction to the presumed public reaction, of which Hewitt's commentary is symptomatic. He apparently thinks the public's dwindling support for the war stems from the enemy's manipulation of the news media, while with his next breath he claims the news media's influence is waning.

The fact is, Bush and Rumsfeld are quite lucky that the public has tolerated the Iraq war for as long as it has, and it's a testament to the public's sophistication that the media manipulation, the staged acts of terror, have had so little impact on policy. Despite Bush's low poll ratings, I see little to resemble the Vietnam-era public anguish with regard to Iraq. Sure, the war has many critics, but back then, average middle-class people were urgently demanding the end of our involvement in Vietnam, and politicians of the president's own party responded by promising immediate troop withdrawal.

The Vietnam war was an atrocious mistake, but the public's abandonment of it was in large part the result of enemy propaganda. The North Vietnamese were successful in making the militarily disappointing Tet offensive appear to be a rout. Thanks to the perception that Tet succeeded, Walter Cronkite famously declared the war unwinnable. In 1968, that meant a lot.

Who is today's Walter Cronkite? Who pretends to speak for Mr. and Mrs. America? If anyone tried, they'd find Mr. and Mrs. America leaving some nasty comments on their website. Friends of Donald Rumsfeld do the SecDef no favors by telling him to lead a PR effort to combat enemy propaganda, if that effort will distract him from his real job, organizing a winning strategy so America can get its troops home soon. Because, as Sun Tzu says, "There is no instance of a country having benefited from prolonged warfare."

Blogger with a Guitar

Palm smacks to the forehead: Of course! Neil Young, blogger.

Hasn't Neil always been a blogger? Haven't all his albums been spontaneous reflections of whatever's going through his head and happening in his life at the moment? The rap on Neil was that his recording techniques were often slipshod, that he had no filter, he released too many albums with too many bad songs drowning out the great ones. But that's been his aesthetic since 1970. Write it, record it, put it out.

I remember Rolling Stone's review of "After the Gold Rush," complaining Young hadn't spent enough time on it. From that 1970 review:

Neil Young devotees will probably spend the nest few weeks trying desperately to convince themselves that After the Gold Rush is good music. But they'll be kidding themselves. For despite the fact that the album contains some potentially first rate material, none of the songs here rise above the uniformly dull surface. In my listening, the problem appears to be that most of this music was simply not ready to be recorded at the time of the session. It needed time to mature. On the album the band never really gets behind the songs and Young himself has trouble singing many of them. Set before the buying public before it was done, this pie is only half-baked.

Time has proven their judgment on that classic album to be wrong, but a good many of his subsequent albums, which he approached in the same haphazard way, are terrible. So what?, Neil seemed to say. I can always write another one, and maybe it'll be better. He's hit the mark enough times that you're compelled to at least check out anything he does.

Neil Young also freely, merrily contradicts himself — especially about politics. He's about the only baby-boom era classic rocker who had the nerve to release a few songs over the years with almost jingoistic right-wing messages. He hates the Iraq war now, but in the post 9/11 "Let's Roll," he waved the bloody shirt.

You've got to turn on evil,
When it's coming after you,
You've gota face it down,
And when it tries to hide,
You've gota go in after it,
And never be denied,
Time is runnin' out,
Let's roll.

Long ago, Young embraced Ronald Reagan for a time. But he's also tacked way to the left many more times, as he does with the new music on "Living With War."

"Living With War" is an audio blog. If you delve into his web site you'll learn he wrote and recorded all its songs in just the past few weeks. At this writing you can't buy it, and you can't download it, but you can listen to it as an audio stream, so long as you're willing to hear it from the beginning. You can't skip tracks. Eventually it will appear in CD racks, but by that time it will be a souvenir. Its impact is being felt right now. Bloggers all over the world are invited to link to it. He wants his fans to hear it now, while its themes are still hot.

This is a real Marshall McLuhan moment. Up to now, the Internet has been seen as just another channel to present music. But "Living With War" is music for the Internet. I don't know if it's the first example, but given Neil's fame and huge international fan base, I predict it will have immense influence.

Talk About Zen P.R.!**

I know I was going to shut up for most of April, but this is too interesting to overlook:

At first glance, the video looks like a typical 30-second car commercial: a shiny sport utility vehicle careers down a country road lined with sunflower fields, jaunty music playing in the background.

Then, white lettering appears on the screen: "$70 to fill up the tank, which will last less than 400 miles. Chevy Tahoe."

The commercial is the product of one of the advertising industry's latest trends: user-generated advertising. On March 13, Chevrolet introduced a Web site allowing visitors to take existing video clips and music, insert their own words and create a customized 30-second commercial for the 2007 Chevrolet Tahoe.

In theory, the company was hoping that visitors to its Web site would e-mail their own videos around the Web, generating interest for the Tahoe through what is known as viral marketing. By the measure of Chevrolet Tahoe videos circulating the blogosphere and the video-hosting Web sites like YouTube, that goal was achieved. But the videos that were circulated most widely like the commercial that attacked the S.U.V. for its gas mileage, may not be what Chevrolet had in mind.

Nor was the ad using a sweeping view of the Tahoe driving through a desert. "Our planet's oil is almost gone," it said. "You don't need G.P.S. to see where this road leads."

Youtube.com is full of examples of these user-generated Chevy Tahoe ads that attack the whole idea of Chevy Tahoes as responsible for global warming or imminent oil shortages. But they're not all environmental lectures. This one takes a Freudian perspective on the whole notion of conspicuous consumption, as does this one, albeit more crudely.

A couple of months ago, I wrote a post about the potential for a Maybelline cosmetics site to be hijacked by those who hated the product. It appeared to me that the Maybelline people had probably accounted for that possibility, and figured that since negative comments were going to be made anyway, why hide from them? Chevrolet's advertisers have apparently come to the same conclusion, according to the New York Times:

A spokeswoman for Chevrolet, Melisa Tezanos, said the company did not plan to shut down the anti-S.U.V. ads.

"We anticipated that there would be critical submissions," Ms. Tezanos said. "You do turn over your brand to the public, and we knew that we were going to get some bad with the good. But it's part of playing in this space."

Drew Neisser, the president and chief executive at Renegade Marketing, a New York agency specializing in nontraditional marketing that is part of Dentsu, said companies had such a strong desire for user-generated advertising that they were willing to accept the risks. "There's this gold rush fever about consumer-generated content," he said. "Everybody wants to have consumer-generated content, and Chevy Tahoe doesn't want to be left behind."

Is it just that they're "willing to accept the risks?" Or are marketers finally deciding to participate in the real conversations about their products, the ones that say "yes, but…?"

Wouldn't it be great if political ads were opened up this way? Where, instead of shoving a message down your throat, a candidate would allow voters to express themselves about their platforms? And why are only advertisers of consumer products taking this alleged "risk?" Wouldn't a smart PR campaign also make room for critics and for, y'know, reality?*

I'm confident the people at Chevrolet are aware that some consumers will never buy an SUV strictly due to environmental concerns, and that others are conflicted and would appreciate some respect being given to their hesitancy. Letting customers joke about it shows the company is in touch. Going a step further would be to say, "We hear you" and respond in a way that treats these concerns thoughfully.

*(The best example is, of course, Amazon. If you put your product on Amazon, customers can review it. Many people, before buying a product, will check to see if it's on Amazon — not only to buy it there, but to see what other consumers think. Consumer reviews on Amazon have been decisive in many purchases I have made, both positively and negatively. Marketers obviously think it's worth "the risks" of having their products trashed in exchange for having them sold through Amazon. So why shouldn't you take the next step, and let consumers have their say on your own site…and then get into a conversation with them?)

**A few additions and edits made on 4/5/06.

“G-L-A-M-O-U-R-O-U-S”

Blogger and columnist James Lileks has cornered the market in digging up old display advertisements and other printed reminders of the best-forgotten. Readers in LA should not miss his parsing of the 1977 Frederick's of Hollywood catalogue, which used to be something only people in this city knew about.

Page after page after page of big hair, big zippers (or, as they call them "unzippers"), and copy written by a genius of sleaze and strategic capitalization.

DRAPE SHAPE Draped-and-shaped cowl neck adds fabulous FLATTERY to your bustline. Back-zipped TUNIC and pull-on flare PANTS in Chevacette Acetate knit.

CLING THING Cuddle your curves in a SUPER-SMOOTH clingy dress. Slight gather add extra emphasis. Slips on and OFF in an instant. Peach or mint polyester knit.

Most of the graphics are drawings, but almost every page has one photo of a woman with a humongous pile of hair on her head with one word next to it: "WIG!"

If you're my age, 1977 didn't seem like so long ago. But now I know for sure, it was a way way long time ago, because I don't remember meeting anyone in those clothes…maybe you had to be this guy.

(Thanks to Boing-Boing's Mark Frauenfelder.)

iDon’t Get It

The digital smackdown between France and Apple over a pending French law that would require the iTunes Music store to allow music downloads onto devices other than iPods is another reminder of a digital-age phenemenon that I don’t get.

What is the value proposition that causes iPod and iTunes to be the dominant portable music format?

If you buy an iPod, you can only get music from one place: iTunes. On iTunes, you can only listen to fragments of songs. If you want to hear the whole thing, you have to buy it, for 99 cents. At that point you own the song, just as if you’d bought a CD of one song for 99 cents. Which is great, if you’re sure you want to keep playing that song the rest of your life. You can burn it onto a CD. But you can’t put the song onto any other portable device–only an iPod.

There’s another alternative. You can become a subscriber to another online music store, such as Rhapsody, Yahoo! Music or Napster. You pay them a monthy fee. There are usually two pricing tiers — neither of them more than the price of a typical CD. The lower price allows you to stream almost anything they have, i.e. listen to the whole song as often as you want on your computer, or to burn it and keep it like iMusic does, for an additional fee of about 79-89 cents.

For the slightly higher price, you can also “subscribe” to tracks, which means you can store them on your computer to play even when you’re offline, and you can download them onto your portable device. Eventually, your “rights” to that song will expire if you don’t reconnect your device with the subscription service. And you can’t burn it onto a CD, unless you pay that extra fee.

Myriad portable devices can take downloads off these competing music services, from dozens of manufacturers. Microsoft has finagled its way into this picture with the “Plays for Sure” logo, which is actually helpful. When I got a Creative Zen for my birthday, I was able to give my Rio to my son, knowing that I could put subscription music onto his and mine from the same service.

That’s a very different world from the restrictive one that Apple has built.

Go back to the lower-tier price. If you have a laptop and can pick up wi-fi, the ability to stream music means you can set up a playlist of, say, 200 songs (any number really), plug the earphones into your computer and just listen while you work. I’ve done this many times. Sometimes I’m in the mood for Handel. Sometimes I’m in the mood for the Rolling Stones. Rhapsody lets its listeners create playlists, and sometimes I listen to one of those. One weird day, I even created a Bee Gees playlist. Not too bad, actually!

You can’t do that on iTunes, unless you’re happy with 200 30-second fragments.

I am not endorsing weird French laws. Mon Dieu, non. If Apple wants iTunes to only play on iPods, that’s their right.

But thanks to subscriptions and streaming, I’ve been able to discover, or re-discover, vast libraries of music I would’ve never paid to try. Not just the Bee Gees, but a long list of current rock bands, old jazz masters, and favorites who just had more music out there than I could have kept up with before.

Take Johnny Cash. Most everyone knows the great version of Trent Reznor’s “Hurt” that Cash recorded with producer Rick Rubin a few years before he died. But Cash completed four CDs with Rubin, and more songs that didn’t fit into those CDs were released later. A great version of the Beatles’ “In My Life,” the country chestnut “Streets of Laredo,” and literally dozens of others. Who has the money to buy all of that? But now I’ve heard a lot of it. Recent box set surveys of Duke Ellington and the Band are now, almost in their entireties, on my MP3 player.

Another example: I bypassed CDs by the New Pornographers many times, just because I didn’t like their name (still don’t.) But checking them out on Rhapsody has turned me into a huge fan of their expertly crafted pop-rock (imagine the Mamas and the Papas, backed by Led Zeppelin, singing songs by Brian Wilson). Listening to the New Pornographers turned me on to one of the band’s singers, Neko Case, who has grown from a Patsy Cline-like alt-country cowgirl into a brilliant, uncategorizable singer-songwriter. If you want to listen to her new album, “Fox Confessor Brings the Flood,” you could test-drive it on Rhapsody before deciding if you want to buy it. Or, if you’re a subscriber, you could put it on your MP3 player — as long as it’s not an iPod.

That’s what confuses me. iPod gives you fewer choices, but it’s far and away the standard, outselling everything else. When Donald Fagen released his new single “H Gang,” the press release said it was available for purchase on iTunes. And it was. But it was also available for streaming, downloading or purchase on Rhapsody and presumably other services, but that fact was not mentioned in the news releases. Is it supposed to be a secret?

This might be a PR problem. The benefits of subscription services have not been reduced to a soundbite. Napster, Yahoo! and Rhapsody are all competitors against each other as well as Apple. Apple is selling hardware as well as its online service, so its incentive to market heavily is greater.

To me, it’s a hiccup in the market, one I hope is corrected, because the subscription model opens doors for people to get exposed to new music in ways iTunes’ does not. And with the demise of commercial radio as a proselytizer of music, I would hate to see the subscription alternative fail.

Proselytizing for Fun and Profit

If you want to read a succinct case study of successful Word of Mouth marketing/PR campaigns, the Los Angeles Times has it for you today. Charles Duhigg profiles the eight-year old, Silver Lake-based firm M80 that charges its entertainment clients healthy fees to find the “superfans” of entertainers like Rob Zombie or TV shows like “Highlander” and then get them to make superfans of others they encounter, especially on the Internet.

The fans don’t get paid. You can’t fake their kind of passion and you can’t buy it. Do the superfans feel used? Not really. They’re fans. My son will be eternally grateful to the superfans M80 unleashed on behalf of the satirical cartoon “Family Guy.” Deployed to promote the DVD, their activism forced Fox to order new episodes of the show.

But that’s not all the superfans get out of the experience, according to the Times:

Who are M80’s superfans? Kathleen Mayo of Austin, Texas, discovered the company when she was surfing the Internet to confirm rumors that one of her favorite television shows, the sci-fi epic “Highlander,” was about to come out on DVD.

Mayo, 32, had spent much of her life feeling socially uncomfortable. In high school, she said, “maybe 10 people out of 3,600 even knew my name. I was used to being ignored.”

But through M80, she discovered a community of other “Highlander” fans who were eager to teach her how to be outgoing enough to approach strangers online.

“M80 gave me a reason to put myself out there,” said Mayo, who estimated that she spent as many as 10 hours a week volunteering. “M80 team members taught me how to start a conversation. It’s been so important in helping me come out of my shell.”

You can check out M80’s “Online Team” site for yourself. They’re recruiting fans for eight or nine different entertainment properties, from a WWII show called “Over There,” to DVDs of chestnuts like “Hill Street Blues” and the movie “9 to 5,” to a singer named Rocco Deluca, “recommended if you like: Jeff Buckley, Ben Harper, Travis.”  You can even become a member if you want to unleash your inner superfan…or overcome social anxiety disorder.

Dave Barry on “the mutant version of news that is evolving online”

On CNN’s “Reliable Sources” this morning, former Miami Herald columnist Dave Barry was questioned about a recent comment that “Newspapers are Dead.” From the transcript of the interview by host Howard Kurtz:

BARRY: …I think about my son, who is 25, very smart, likes to think of himself as well-informed. Neither he nor anybody that he knows, as far as I can tell, reads a newspaper. He might call me up sometimes and ask me if there was something in the newspaper that I should tell him about, but that’s a widespread — I mean, I’m not the first person to observe that. And…

KURTZ: Is that because he is reading news online, or is he just tuned out of news altogether?

BARRY: I think it’s a combination. I used to say they were reading the news online, and I think they still sort of are, but they read this kind of mutant version of news that is evolving online where there’s the traditional news sources like “The Washington Post,” but there’s also blogs and there’s also email and there’s also who knows what. And I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing.

I just think newspapers — and again, I’m not the first to observe this — have to sort of accept the fact that it’s not so much the news that people don’t want, it’s the paper that’s getting harder and harder to be — you know, to include in people’s lives. Especially younger people.

KURTZ: Is that because newspapers, in an age of caution and political correctness and all of that have gotten boring?

BARRY: Yes. That is part of the reason.

I mean, I really believe that if I were to try to start my career now, writing essentially the same kind of just sort of weird column I wrote, it would be much more difficult for me to be accepted because I think editors, because of the shrinking readership and because of the limited news hole (ph) now, are much more cautious about what they’re willing to put in there, and they’re competing against media that are not cautious, that are — that like to be edgy, and we know who wins that fight usually.

So I think that’s — that’s one reason. But I also think that people kind of — including people my age — are spoil(ed) by the Internet. We like the idea that we can affect it, that it’s not just the — you know, the all-powerful news medium telling us what’s true and what’s not, and that’s that. And maybe we can write a letter to the editor, and maybe three weeks later they’ll print it.

Now people don’t accept that. They like to know, well, what is your source, and what other sources are there, and who disagrees with you? And they like to be able to put something on the Internet themselves if they find a flaw. And obviously we get lots of nut balls doing that, but there’s lots of really smart people doing that too.

(snip)

KURTZ: But that’s fascinating to me that you feel that if you were starting out today with the same column, you would have trouble, you know, getting a foothold in the business.

What about these podcasts? Your wife, you mentioned, Miami Herald sportswriter. And she recently covered the Olympics, and I understand her editors asked her to do podcasts.

What was your reaction to that?

BARRY: I thought that was pretty stupid. I mean, you know, it’s like, the newspaper business is kind of grabbing at everything now. For a while they didn’t even know what a blog was. Then they didn’t want any part of them.

Now they want everybody to have a blog. So now they’ve heard about podcasts, and they suddenly think everybody should be doing those. Or at least some people do. And it’s nuts to — in the case of my wife.

Here she is, she’s going over to cover the Olympics. They want her to be at the speed-skating venue and record something that, you know, can appear on the Internet as an — as an audio file about an event that’s on television.

You know, it seems like a little bit — we’ll get it all sorted out. I’m not — you know, I think there’s probably a place for podcasts. I just don’t think, you know, essentially reading a news story into a — into some kind of recording device is the answer.

Nothing terribly unfamiliar, but interesting coming from one of the most successful newspaper writers of our time. Worth pondering in light of Reuters’ CEO Tom Glocer’s recent comments about bringing the blogosphere into the mainstream news media.  If Glocer’s words are taken to mean, as Barry says, “essentially reading a news story into … some kind of recording device,” that sounds like a dead end.

The Marketers Still Want Me!

As I watched my 15-year-old son approach adulthood, and as I spent time talking to friends and former employees still in their 20’s and 30’s, I believed that, slowly but surely, the world was passing me by.

Especially the world of consumer marketing. So often have I read that advertisers only want to peddle their wares on media aimed at the 18- to 49-year-old demographic–a land where I once dwelled but departed with fond memories a few months ago–I figured nobody wanted my money anymore.

So I would spend the years of my dotage seeing ads for products I don’t need, don’t want, and don’t even understand. I would grow increasingly cranky as stores filled with foods that would send me immediately to the emergency room; clothing that would never fit me made from synthetics fabrics that give me a rash; and iPods with screens so small my fading eyesight would only register colorful swirls, like the light shows they used to play behind Grateful Dead concerts–only much, much smaller.

I was wrong. From Forbes.com, the following review of a book that dispels that myth:

In his new book The 50-Plus Market ($40, Kogan Page, 2006), Dick Stroud refers to this slightly older group as the “Charmed Generation,” the last to hail from an era of reliable defined-benefit pensions, low debt and low-cost home ownership. Retiring to relative comfort, they figure to be steady spenders for many years to come. For businesses, capturing these people is not only advantageous but imperative, Stroud argues, since the group that’s coming in behind them is so saddled with debt and future commitments.

Only 5% of all worldwide advertising budgets are geared to consumers 50 and over, while 80% is poured into the 18-34 segment–a shrinking market. That’s like Eastman Kodak putting 80% of its marketing and research and development budgets into traditional film and standing by while competitors cash in on the explosion in digital photography. The argument that the money on youth marketing is well spent because you’re “hooking ‘em for life”? Forget it, he says, there’s no such thing. People of all ages try new brands all the time. A person will always leave your brand if he perceives a better value elsewhere.

Wellll…I don’t know how “charmed” I am exactly…. but the point seems valid. The reviewer continues:

Marketing strategy, (Stroud) argues, is being driven more by stereotypes than by evidence.

“Marketing theory isn’t affected by age bias, but marketers themselves are,” Stroud writes, blaming the bias on a marketing industry population that skews under 35 on the lack of an institutional commitment to break out of a comfort zone.

That includes technology, where studies show that two-thirds of Americans over 55 are now online. Few companies are selling to them effectively through the Web, though, since most Web sites are built by young people for young people. Older customers are there and ready to buy, Stroud argues. Make the design and sales process a little simpler, and you’ll get them.

I used to be concerned, when I worked at a PR agency, that as I got older, I would get out of touch. I saw examples all around me of executives even older than me, using expressions that dated back to the 1940s in pitches aimed at a bunch of 20-somethings. “We can do everything, from soup to nuts,” was the title of one of our PowerPoint slides. I wasn’t convinced that was the best title for the slide. Did these people really think the two extremes are “soup” and “nuts,” and that everything the would-be clients want falls in between? Doubtful.

But by trying to stay ahead of the times, PR and marketing people have, in fact, fallen behind the times. Young is the new old. Old is the new young. And even though I’m in my 50s, smart marketers will still try to hunt me down. I better buy some new shoes so I can outrun ‘em. Maybe something endorsed by Joe Montana.

http://technorati.com/tag/public+relations” rel=”tag”>public relations

Careful Not to Laugh — You Might Scare Away Progressives

In reviewing some of the post-Oscar scribblings, I was pointed by someone to this column from last Friday’s Boston Globe. Apparently, when the Democratic Party takes power again, laughing at politicians will be forbidden. The first comic they’ll round up is, surprisingly, Jon Stewart.

Stewart’s daily dose of political parody characterized by asinine alliteration leads to a ”holier than art thou” attitude toward our national leaders. People who possess the wit, intelligence, and self-awareness of viewers of ”The Daily Show” would never choose to enter the political fray full of ”buffoons and idiots.” Content to remain perched atop their Olympian ivory towers, these bright leaders head straight for the private sector.

Observers since the days of de Tocqueville have often remarked about America’s unique dissociation between politicians and citizens of ”outstanding character.” Unfortunately, the rise of mass media and the domination of television news give Stewart’s Menckenesque voice a much more powerful influence than critics in previous generations. As a result, a bright leader who may have become the Theodore Roosevelt or Woodrow Wilson of today instead perceives politics as a supply of sophisticated entertainment, rather than a powerful source of social change.

Most important, this disturbing cultural phenomenon overwhelmingly affects potential leaders of the Democratic Party.

Wow. So this guy (Michael Kalin, a “2005 graduate of Harvard,” according to the byline) thinks future American progressive leaders like his Harvard classmates can be dissuaded from entering politics and public policy by a few jokes? If true, wouldn’t that suggest their progressive convictions weren’t all that strong to begin with?

“Hey, I’d like to save the world from poverty and war, but I’m afraid people will make fun of me.” People like that — don’t you think it’s okay if they stay out of politics?

$612.5 Million…

…is all it cost Research in Motion to get NTP Inc. to drop its patent lawsuit so BlackBerries will keep working. According to ComputerWorld:

“We are pleased to have reached an amicable settlement with RIM,” said Donald E. Stout, NTP’s co-founder. “We believe that the settlement is in the best interests of all parties, including the U.S. government and all other BlackBerry users in the United States. NTP is pleased that the issue has been resolved and looks forward to enhancing its businesses.”

Government BlackBerry users had fretted that losing their service could cause them problems, and had asked a federal judge last week to be exempt from any order to shut down the service.

I hope the government and all other BlackBerry users realize that their desperate pleas about how crucial the devices are to the functioning of our nation and its economy probably boosted the price of the settlement.  And you’ll all be paying for it.

So what happens to the “work-around?”

Let’s Run “Global Frying” Up the Flagpole…

Back in 1990, when I worked for Mayor Bradley on environmental issues, I attended a Sierra Club press conference where several celebrities introduced public-service announcements in which they would be featured talking about global warming. It was the first TV campaign around the issue, so it was significant — even though I never actually saw any of the PSAs run on the air.

One of the performers was Daniel J. Travanti, star of one of my favorite TV shows, “Hill Street Blues.” He wore a heavy beard, and looked more like Grizzly Adams than Capt. Furillo. He decried the public’s seeming lack of concern about a problem that threatens to make heavily populated parts of the earth uninhabitable. “Maybe we should call it ‘global frying,’” Travanti suggested.

Sixteen years on, here’s out-of-the-box marketing thinker Seth Godin elaborating on the same point:

Global is good.
Warm is good.
Even greenhouses are good places.

How can “global warming” be bad?

I’m not being facetious. If the problem were called “Atmosphere cancer” or “Pollution death” the entire conversation would be framed in a different way.

Environmental educators, scientists and activists have so far failed to overcome the invisibility of the global warming issue to people who “don’t see your coal being burned…(and) don’t live near a glacier,” Godin said. There are universal principles for marketing new ideas that the environmental community should deploy:

Human beings want:
totems and icons
meters (put a real-time mpg or co2 meter in every car and watch what happens)
fashion
stories
and
pictures

95% of the new ideas that don’t spread–even though their founders and fans believe they should–fail because of the list above.

Does this mean future generations will let us off the hook for doing so little about global warming? I’m not sure the lack of persuasive totems and icons will exonerate us.

Great marketing minds and designers ought to pick up Godin’s challenge. Maybe one of the major schools of design could team up with an environmental foundation to sponsor a design competition to make the invisible more visible. Not just more ads; constant reminders designed into our products. Meanwhile, PR people who supposedly know how to tell an arresting story should dig into the scientific literature and find ways to make more vivid the kind of world that global warming will bring us.

But remember: Be credible. No more “Day After Tomorrow” horror shows that only cause backlash. If you can only sell the global warming story through exaggeration, you discredit the whole idea.

That Billboard…It’s Alive…!

ZDNet’s “Emerging Technology” blogger Roland Piquepaille points to a New Scientist report that will surely cause immense ripples among advertisers — as well as consumer activists who believe no one should market anything to us without our permission.  How’re you going to stop this?

The night sky could soon be lit up with gigantic three-dimensional adverts, thanks to a Japanese laser display that creates glowing images in thin air.

The system is being developed by the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) in Tokyo, in collaboration with Burton Inc and Keio University.

“We believe this technology may eventually be used in applications ranging from pyrotechnics to outdoor advertising,” says a spokesman for AIST. According to Burton Inc, the technology might also be used for emergency distress signals or even temporary road signs.

The display utilises an ionisation effect which occurs when a beam of laser light is focused to a point in air. The laser beam itself is invisible to the human eye but, if the intensity of the laser pulse exceeds a threshold, the air breaks down into glowing plasma that emits visible light.

And:

The researchers behind the demonstration system plan to upgrade it to a higher pulsing rate, which should produce more dots and so smoother images. Future versions should also include moving pictures and AIST claims it should be possible to scale the system up to produce displays of any size. However, only white flashpoints can be created so a colour display will not be possible.

If you flip to the New Scientist story, don’t miss the comment thread it generated. “Peter” had this to say:

The technology sounds fantastic, but use it constructively, like at airports for approach vectors or to mark lanes in the air for our new flying cars or for other safety or emergency information applications. Satellites could project grid points above the ocean for search and rescue, yatch racing markers at night, etc etc.

The minute i see a nike swoosh or ‘enjoy coke’ in my night sky is the minute I begin researching homemade GPS guided nuclear weapons.

How dangerous is the beam, what would happen if a bird or light plane just happened to get in the way, does it produce ozone? what are the long term side effects? wiill the beam ionise enough air to effectively become a lightning conductor down the beam and into the equipment sending it (if its a nice bright ‘coke’ symbol then we can only hope)? How much power will it really take to project a big 3d coke symbol, probably hundreds or thousands of kilowatts.

“Help us Obi-Wan Kenobi, you’re our only hope!”

Mario…Save My Brain!

I’m 50. Well let me back up. I grew up in a household with four brothers. Even when I was 15 and my brain was young and dew-covered, I didn’t always call them by their correct names. But now that I’m 50, all kinds of memories seem a little further out of reach than they were ten years ago. Don’t get me wrong. The offsetting benefit of experience adding perspective makes up for the fade-out of things I used to remember.

I want to be able to use that experience for at least another two or three decades. But if I can’t remember stuff…wait, what was I saying?

Fortunately we live in a time when functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) can track what’s going on inside our skulls, showing us with great precision the brain locations were different work is done. For example, the Max Planck Institute in Germany recently discovered the precise spot inside our brains where complex grammar gets processed — a key trait that separates humans from other species. (Hat tip to ZDNet’s Emerging Technology Blog.)

There is a spot inside your brain that lights up on the fMRI when you need to process a simple linguistic concept: Subject, verb. Article, noun. Apes are also equipped with that capability. We, humans and apes, can understand the difference between a likely combination that conveys information, and an unlikely combination that conveys nonsense. However, when you have to understand or create a complex sentence, what lights up is an area of the brain that apes never developed.

English majors like me will be glad to find out that the ability to understand a complicated sentence provides an evolutionary advantage. Adept use of parenthetical phrases got you better mates.

This kind of knowledge is more than just scientifically interesting. It can help us prolong the useful life of our most precious physical asset.

Our brains age, but the effects of aging can be reversed. University of Illinois scientists, using the same fMRI imaging technology, discovered the brain can be exercised; and that those who train their brains can restore their ability to think and remember.

For the new study, researchers in (Professor Arthur F.) Kramer’s lab looked at areas of the brain known to be associated with executive control — scheduling, planning, juggling multiple tasks and working memory. These areas, the ventral and dorsal prefrontal cortexes, are tied to cognitive declines in aging.

Participants were 32 men and women, ages 55 to 80, and 31 younger adults. They were divided into control and experimental groups, with the latter receiving training on a time-measured task of identifying green or yellow Xs and/or whether a letter on the computer monitor was a B or C. Researchers then analyzed comprehensive fMRI data compiled before and after training of various parts of the brain and of changes in performance and times involving the tasks.

Before and after results were dramatic in ventral regions of the brain, said lead author Kirk I. Erickson, a psychology postdoctoral research associate.

“You can see,” Erickson said as he pointed to graphs showing results of activity in the left ventral region, “that even though the older adults start out with a lower amount of activation before training, those who were trained actually increased the amount of activity. You see a convergence with the young people. After training there are less age-related differences. Older adults begin to look more like the younger adults in brain activation.”

This is big news to people like me. Where can we learn these exercises? I can tell the difference between green and yellow. Hook me up!

Like magic, the consumer market responds. Specifically… Nintendo. The Mario Brothers guys. The study isn’t even officially published yet, but…

Brain Age: Train Your Brain in Minutes a Day for Nintendo DS is a fun, rewarding form of entertainment everyone can enjoy, as it helps players flex their mental muscles. Brain Age is inspired by the research of Professor Ryuta Kawashima, a prominent Japanese neuroscientist. His studies evaluated the impact of performing certain reading and mathematic exercises to help stimulate the brain.

Brain Age presents quick mental activities that help keep your DS brain in shape. Activities include quickly solving simple math problems, counting people going in and out of a house simultaneously, drawing pictures on the Touch Screen, reading classic literature out loud, and more. You can also play sudoku, the number puzzle game which has become an extremely popular feature in U.S. newspapers.

On your first day of exercise, you will take a series of tests and get a score that determines how old your brain is. This number is called your “DS Brain Age”. By performing daily exercises just minutes a day over weeks and months, the better you’ll get at the exercises and the lower your DS Brain Age will become.

Of course, baby boomers, the most paranoid about losing our edge, aren’t big users of electronic game consoles. They came on the pop culture scene a little late for us. But Nintendo has sure figured out a way to get our attention, haven’t they? And for those of us with kids, what are we supposed to say now?

“Kid, turn that infernal machine off and do your homework.”

“Dad, don’t bug me. I’m training my brain.”

“D’oh! Move over son…”

I’m sure more products like this are on their way. These next few years are going to be very surreal as consumer marketers start handing us new tools for self-transformation.

“More, faster, better, now.”

Seth Godin thinks signs are everywhere that we are becoming a “culture of dissatisfaction.” No matter how much you like your current (fill in the blank), someone will tell you that you can, should and deserve to get something better — now.

We’re using electronic media to spread this benchmarking message far and wide. Because there’s always a company offering a better or cheaper or faster product, or a person who’s more clever than Oprah or cuter than Tyra, it’s easy to shop around, to demand more, to be constantly dissatisfied.

Every day I get angry email (not angry with me, fortunately, but angry nonetheless) from consumers of all kinds complaining about perceived slights in customer service. Looked at with a clear eye, most of these complaints don’t make a lot of sense. Yes, the correspondence could have been a lot more thoughtful, but these are organizations that are largely doing a great job, at a great price. Doesn’t matter. Someone else is often more, faster, better, now.

The problem with this emerging culture, aside from the fact that we’re unhappy all the time, is that it doesn’t give marketers a chance to build products for the long haul, to invest in the processes and products and even operating systems that pay off over time. The problem is that when brands fizz out so fast, it’s hard to invest in anything except building the next hot brand.

Godin’s post ends up with advice to marketers — build relationships with your customers for the long-term. But I’m not ready to skip to the answer yet, if there is one. I think he’s onto something with broader implications for our politics and social relationships, and we need to ponder it.

Yes, it is in the American grain to be cynical about politics, and impatient with government. What’s different is the velocity. If political leaders can’t make a quick score, they give up and move onto something else, because they assume the public won’t stick with a long-term plan. They believe this because of what you, as voters, as constituents, tell them. But, I suspect, you’re still not getting what you want.

Is it Something About LA?

LA Observed links to a Crain’s Chicago Business piece documenting the latest outburst of investor negativity toward the Los Angeles Times and its dragging effect on the Tribune Company. A few pertinent grafs:

“They’ve been throwing anything they can think of at that paper and nothing seems to work,” says media analyst Edward J. Atorino of New York-based Benchmark & Co. “Wall Street likes the company, and we love Dennis, but if results don’t start improving . . . it’s going to be merciless.”

For Tribune executives, the Los Angeles problem is “critical, and it’s the most troubling kink in the turnaround story,” says Eric McKissack, CEO of Chicago-based Channing Capital Management LLC, which holds more than 600,000 Tribune shares. “It’ll be very difficult to turn the company around without turning the Times around….”

“When Tribune bought the Times, there was a sense that it was an underachieving paper that could be turned around with the right management,” says James Goss, an analyst with Barrington Research Associates Inc. in Chicago. “Well, it’s six years later, and I think they’re beginning to understand why Times Mirror couldn’t figure it out.”…

I don’t even have to look. Patterico, Hugh Hewitt, Michelle Malkin…Crain’s just made their day. The Times is getting its just desserts, that liberal, out-of-touch bastion of political bias. I’m sure they’re dancing across their laptops tonight.

But, just to be contrarian, let me propose something that the Times-bashers in the blog world might not have considered. Could it be the problem is not some failing at the Times — not its quality, not its politics, not its ad rates?

Could it be… Los Angeles?

What is the Los Angeles economy about, nowadays?

• International trade, an amorphous global enterprise that happens to transit through LA’s sea-and-airports, barely stopping long enough to add significant value to the local economy. The professionals engaged in international trade are perhaps more interested in the Asian Wall Street Journal or the Financial Times of London. As long as the ships, planes, trains and trucks keep moving, that’s all they need to know about Los Angeles.

• Real estate, which is all about hot neighborhoods and new “edge city” developments, not the city as a whole.

• Tourism, which is about generating feature stories outside the LA market to draw visitors in. Tourism is also not a source of high-wage jobs.

• Entertainment media, for which the Los Angeles Times will never be most important source of news. Arguably this is a failing of the newspaper’s editors over the decades who looked down at “Tinseltown,” while the New York Times and Wall Street Journal assigned top reporters to the beat. Now entertainment news is so ubiquitous, the Times has no leverage to grab the lead it should never have relinquished in the first place.

Add in the fact that Los Angeles has some of the highest rates of illiteracy — in any language — in the nation. That’s no good for selling newspapers.

We’ve got people who buy things. Los Angeles is at the center of one of the two biggest markets in the nation. That should be the good news, and is probably the basis for the high ad rates the Times tries to charge. But now we’ve got an exceedingly diverse population, not the broad, general interest market for which the Los Angeles Times was designed.

When the Times was so thick that comedians joked about the Sunday Times causing hernias, those pages were mostly filled with mid-market department store ads, placed by stores that, like the Times, tried to appeal to everyone. Most of those stores are out of business now.

But that’s not all of it. Something’s gone out of Los Angeles — confidence, a sense of identity, a belief in the future. A thriving newspaper is, at some level, a product of boosterism. Los Angeles has a lot of paid advocates, but few boosters. That’s a big change, historically.

Way back in about 1989 or so, my friend Joel Bellman wrote an op-ed for the now-defunct Herald-Examiner, in which he said (as I recall) 1984 was Los Angeles’ “last good year.” At the time, I worked for Mayor Tom Bradley, so of course I challenged his implication that the mayor wasn’t a boon to the city anymore, and saw political danger in it. But I’ve thought of that essay many times since it ran.

Los Angeles has had a tough couple of decades since the triumph of the 1984 Olympic Games. Once upon a time, we accepted progress as a given. Nowadays, we accept decline and the intractability of our problems. Schools, traffic, housing costs, the environment — who is telling us these things can get better? Well, sure, lots of people say so, especially when there’s an election coming up. But who really believes?

For many Angelenos, it’s just a matter of how much longer they can hang in there, or how well they can insulate themselves from what everyone else seems to be suffering from. People who feel that way really don’t really want to read the newspaper. Opening it up each morning is too depressing. They want to keep their world nice and small, and manageable. A cocoon.

The Times does almost nothing to build this community’s confidence in itself. Maybe that’s too much to ask of it. Probably, most reporters and editors would quit if their publisher told them boosting Los Angeles’ future was now their job description. But I don’t see the Times recovering until Los Angeles recovers a sense of itself as special; and if the Times wants to play a role in that, it would certainly be in the institution’s self-interest.

Love Not For Sale

Continuing the thought, as Vin Scully would say… 

In the previous post, I teed off from a story in the New York Times business section about Robert M. Greenberg, a digital media pioneer, to raise questions about how many of the new ideas for slipping advertisements and PR spin into the public’s latest digital pursuits will actually garner the desired attention, and lead to “sales” — which I broadly define as “the message” getting through sufficiently to influence individual choices. 

So, I’m flipping through other sections of the Times that I skipped this morning, and found this column in the Sunday Styles section by Daniel Jones, summing up all he’s learned since he started writing on the topic “Modern Love.” 

You might want to read his clue-filled column if you’re trying to figure out how to utilize digital media to a marketing advantage. But don’t expect good news.

Here’s the problem.  Digital media has, forever, blurred the lines between the media we turn to for entertainment and enlightenment, i.e. TV, radio and newspapers, and the media we utilize for communications.

The way Daniel Jones sees it, when we turn on our computers, we expect to find love and sex on the other end.  Not merely depictions of love and sex. Actual liaisons. 

According to the personal accounts I’ve read, men and women today are apt to plunge into love affairs via text message, cut them off by PowerPoint, lie about who they are and what they want in forums and blogs and online dating sites, pretend they’re young when they’re old and old when they’re young, ignore the people they’re physically with for those who are a keystroke away, shoo their children off their laps to caress their BlackBerrys, and spend untold hours staring at pixilated porn stars when they should be working, socializing, taking care of their children or sleeping.

It begs the question: Has electronic communication officially become the most seductive mistress of all time?

For all the role-playing and infidelity one associates with life on-line, Jones also notes the life-changing experiences that result from cyberstalking, which he says “nearly everyone” does. You can find and reconnect with a past love, check out a potential date, monitor your ex, or mix and mingle via online dating.

When people are following this pursuit of love, my sense is, that’s not the only thing they’re  doing.  Attention is splintered among many different interests and needs.

They’ll pause from writing their seductive PowerPoint to check out how the Clippers are doing. They don’t want to see any ads; they want the score and then, click, back to their romantic lives. Soon enough, they’ll be watching a downloaded “Sopranos” episode, but insert their own break at the moment of their choosing, to flip to their inbox to see if the beloved has replied.  Or, they’ll watch a movie, but unblock their Instant Messaging only for special people who are allowed to interrupt. And, of course, make ample use of cell phones, Dodgeball and GPS to shadow their soul-mate while they cruise around town. 

Nowhere in all that multi-task romancing is there room for a message from our sponsors. I suppose that much is obvious to most marketers. “Vote for me” is a turnoff if deployed at an intimate moment. 

But, as more and more of life moves online, how is a marketer supposed to know where the customer’s attention is focused? Is it on business, personal life, education, or just chilling out?  Increasingly, that’s all going to happen within the same device: A convergence of telephony, web surfing, music and video player, contact list and portable office. 

This convergence will tend to make every moment a private one, where marketing is unwelcome, and where the device owner will demand total control of his or her own mindspace. 

The old models for advertising and PR depended, as Greenberg said, on a more linear focus.  We’d sit ourselves down on the sofa the same time every week and watch “The Beverly Hillbillies” – ads and all.  We’d read the newspaper first thing every morning, and through it absorb what the political spinners wanted us to know.  If we didn’t want to be pitched, we would just turn off the TV or radio, and shut the magazine or newspaper.  For most of the day’s waking hours, we were completely unplugged.

Now we take our communications media with us wherever we go. We have to. Our kids need to reach us, or our boss, or that woman you met online last night (at least you hope it was a woman.) That being the case, we don’t want any messages coming through our media that don’t fit our specific, ever-shifting agendas. 

If we want to be marketed, we’ll click our way into that marketing space, of our own volition.  Otherwise, it’s “How did you find me here? Leave me the f*** alone!“  That’s the challenge. Where, in this kind of environment, will there be any room at all for marketers to make impressions?  

Blue Smoke in a Box

If you’re interested in marketing, advertising and PR, you probably started this morning’s lengthy profile of Robert M. Greenberg in the New York Times business section, but about half-way through started wondering if the story would ever deliver on its promise to tell you how Greenberg believes “advertising needs to be shaken up, and shaken up immediately.”

I mean, Greenberg certainly has been an innovator, as the story amply documents. He was a pioneer in use of digital graphics, first in motion picture titles, then in advertising. If you remember being amazed at seeing Paula Abdul dance with Groucho Marx, or Woody Allen shaking hands with Calvin Coolidge and Babe Ruth in “Zelig,” it was Greenberg who was doing the amazing. The story is heavily freighted with these bits of digital history.

And yeah, Greenberg agrees with everyone else; it’s tougher for anyone marketing anything out there because,

“It’s not about linear communication, and the millennials understand that; it’s about symbols and icons and you click here and you click there and you control it,” he says. “Corporations have to create products that people want and customers are going to help them make that decision — and that means quality, imagination and transparency.”

This sounds right, but I would imagine that anyone responsible for putting this kind of insight to practical use might feel like they’re being asked to put smoke in a box. Well, the New York Times isn’t here to help you do your job. Neither am I…but at least I have been close enough to the process myself to understand the desire to find out what, really, is next.

So, in case you got IM’d in the middle of reading the story and want to get the takeaway, here it is:

Too many agencies, (Greenberg) believes, are tethered to a “30-second TV spot” mentality because “agencies get paid based on 30-second spots and that financial incentive keeps them from changing their model.” Whip up those spiffy Super Bowl ads and those catchy print ads as much as you like, he says, but their impact is fossilizing and the companies that foot advertising bills are increasingly aware of it.

Direct mail remains the most heavily used advertising medium because its impact is clearer and more response-oriented than most print, TV and radio ads. Spending on Internet advertising still amounts to a small fraction of that for other media, but it has measurable impact. And digital interactions can be tailored in an infinite number of ways.

Other marketing frontiers are arising, and Mr. Greenberg is happy to tick off some examples: quick response codes embedded on movie posters that allow trailers to be downloaded directly onto cellphones placed near them; billboards used by companies like Dove that let consumers vote on themes or messages by cellphone; instant messaging and ads streamed through game consoles like Xbox or online gaming networks; and wireless services like Dodgeball that help people find peers at bars and restaurants within a 10-block radius after they pinpoint their own location by sending a short text message to the service.

Ah dunno. I’m about 30 years too old to be a millenniel, but this all sounds like a combination of annoying and useless to me, and a diversion from a marketer’s perspective. You ever watched someone play a game on Xbox? I’d sooner take a piece of prime rib out of a pit bull’s mouth than interrupt a serious gamer who’s about to reach the next level on Halo with an instant message or an ad. If the ad is somewhere in the background, they’re apt not to register it beyond a vague sense that some idiot must’ve paid a lot of money for a meaningless placement.

As for voting with your cell phone? I hear pitches all the time to do this during ballgames. Hit some four-digit code if you think the manager should put in a left-hander. I never do it, and I love second-guessing the manager. You’d have to be really bored to vote on a Dove ad. The idea of being able to use your cellphone to cast votes like this, or momentarily control an electronic billboard in Times Square, or download a movie trailer; all that might be a testament to your cell phone’s heretofore hidden powers, but it doesn’t add much to the value of the billboard that first caught your eye.

Dodgeball is, of course, a fascinating idea, which isn’t all that new even though it’s yet to be widely applied. Still, isn’t that just another “gee-whiz” feature for your cellphone, or iPod, or heart monitor, or whatever device the technology gets attached to? It sells what? Maybe the bar where your friend is hiding from you, but I’m not sure what else.

In short, I’m not overwhelmed by the vision of the future described in this morning’s story. Greenberg seems like a brilliant visualizer, but either he has no better handle on the future than I do, or the reporter nodded off at just the wrong time. The search for the truly new and useful continues…

The Payola Factor, Continued

When I wrote the post below, I swear, I was unaware of this story:

Hundreds of radio stations are under investigation by the Federal Communications Commission in the payola scandal rocking the music industry, ABC has learned.

“The FCC staff is working with voluminous evidence right now. It’s a complicated and wide-ranging investigation.” FCC Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein told ABC News in an exclusive interview.

“This is potentially the most widespread and flagrant violation of FCC rules in the history of American broadcasting,” Adelstein said. “We’ve never seen evidence of such a systematic betrayal of the responsibility of broadcasters.”

Payola — or pay-for-play — is a practice seemingly as old as the recording industry itself. In the past the money went to rogue disc jockeys in exchange for increasing the airplay for individual songs and driving those songs to the top of the charts. In the modern version, the money goes to the bottom line of the radio stations and the conglomerates that own them, according to New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer.

“We have people in suits coming in with documents rather than cash payments under the table to a DJ,” Spitzer told ABC News Chief Investigative Correspondent Brian Ross.

And:

Spitzer said record company documents obtained in the investigation of Sony BMG and Warner, both of which have settled with the attorney general, revealed payments for songs that became major hits, including Jennifer Lopez’s “I’m Real” and John Mayer’s “Daughters.”

Other artists whose songs are named in the Spitzer documents include Jessica Simpson, Celine Dion, Maroon 5, Good Charlotte, Franz Ferdinand, Switchfoot, Michelle Branch, and R.E.M. The record companies allegedly paid radio stations to increase airplay of those artists’ songs.

Some of the above-mentioned artists are critics’ favorites, some most definitely not. Given the recent revelations about pay-for-punditry, however, one might reasonably wonder why critics champion certain recording artists who (at least to my ears) don’t merit the hype.

I’d assumed up til now that it’s only because I’m an old guy that I couldn’t feel the Franz Ferdinand magic.

Attention Music Marketers: Don’t Read This!

I have to assume today’s teenagers are just as intelligent as the kids I grew up with. I know they’re far more worldly. The ones who read, read interesting books. Electronic games are hellishly complex and require rapid analytical skills. Even some of their favorite TV shows are pretty hip.

So why is this generation stuck with such horrible pop music? Science might have the answer, and it’s a depressing answer indeed:

A new study reveals that we make our music purchases based partly on our perceived preferences of others.

Researchers created an artificial “music market” of 14,341 participants drawn from a teen-interest Web site. Upon entering the study’s Internet market, the participants were randomly, and unknowingly, assigned to either an “independent” group or a “social influence” group.

Participants could then browse through a collection of unknown songs by unknown bands.

In the independent condition, participants chose which songs to listen to based solely on the names of the bands and their songs. While listening to the song, they were asked to rate it from one star (“I hate it”) to five stars (“I love it”). They were also given the option of downloading the song for keeps.

“This condition measured the quality of the songs and allowed us to see what outcome would result in the absence of social influence,” said study co-author Matthew Salganik, a sociologist at Columbia University.

In the social influence group, participants were provided with the same song list, but could also see how many times each song had been downloaded.

Researchers found that popular songs were popular and unpopular songs were unpopular, regardless of their quality established by the other group. They also found that as a particular songs’ popularity increased, participants selected it more often.

So, obviously, the trick to success in pop music is to create the perception that everyone else likes a song before anyone even hears it. That must be why payola is so hard to stamp out. You can’t count on songs rising on merit. Better to manufacture popularity than have to wait for it.

I know, payola ruled in my day, too. God bless the mobsters of 1967 who got the Young Rascals, Aretha Franklin, and the Doors to the top of the charts, is all I can say.

(This story came from LiveScience.com)

Update 2/10/06: I guess payola is alive and well.  See the post immediately above.

The Zen of PR: Polls in a Bubble

Nice touch by Richard Edelman, quoting Shakespeare on his blog to illustrate the concept that the most reliable information is that which you can validate from the experience of trusted peers.

In a scene from Richard III, Prince Edward wants verification of something he’s heard — that Julius Caesar built the Tower of London. When told there is documentation to prove that fact, the prince replies, “The truth should live from age to age as ’twere retailed to all posterity even to the general all-ending day,” which Edelman interprets as meaning “without peer to peer communication, there is insufficient substantiation of claims, whether historic or in any other vein.”

Documented proof, especially nowadays, can be distorted or even faked. But if a witness you trust tells you something, its truth is given much more weight — even if that’s all you have to go on.

PR executives must think about this fact 24 hours a day. Their firms are hired to help companies gain market share, enhance their reputations or achieve a legislative goal through the dissemination of carefully crafted and controlled messages. The company’s spokespersons must repeat those messages every chance they get, but a PR campaign doesn’t cross the finish line until trusted others are repeating the messages.

In the old days, those “trusted others” came from the ranks of leaders and influential people, including journalists, but also elected officials, other business leaders, professors, celebrities, nonprofit directors, activists. The algebraic formula of a PR strategy might be: Meet with leader X. Persuade leader X. Enlist leader X to persuade leader Y. Leader Y gets quoted on TV. Leader Y’s followers buy the product.

Nowadays, we aren’t so willing to give someone our trust, regardless of their mantle of authority. We will instead tend to trust someone like ourselves. So, how does a PR practitioner bridge that gap? The math no longer works in their favor. If your target market is, say, one million consumers in a given segment, those one million people might have one million different peers they believe.

I think there are three possible responses to this conundrum. I’m still trying to figure out which one I believe.

1. Business as usual. Blogs and other new media are just more and different media outlets. You can influence them from the top down, just like old media; you just have to come up with new strategies. If your message is presented persuasively and creatively, bloggers will repeat it, just like reporters. The evidence for this can be found in political blogs. Howard Dean’s talking points are disseminated by Democratic bloggers uncritically, even less critically than the so-called liberal media. The same goes for the right-wing blogs, many of which proudly proclaim they are “Blogs for Bush.” Even when these blogs actually criticize Bush (on immigration issues, typically), they still declare loyalty. That’s more than Bush gets even from Fox News.
2. It’s All Over But the Shouting. There are a range of interesting thinkers — from marketing, from the Web 2.0 world, from the news media — who think PR is a big loser in the evolution away from “legacy” media. Bloggers are a PR person’s nightmare, compared to the old-fashioned journalist. They are passionate, partisan, highly knowledgeable, cannot be bought for love or money, and feel no obligation to be fair. They hate being spun, and have great fun mocking “clueless PR people” and their bad pitches.
3. The Zen Approach. If the magic of spin has worn off, no worries. PR people can still play a role, as facilitators of conversations (in the cyber-sense) that, indirectly, accomplish the same goals old-fashioned PR used to aim for: Building awareness and trust. These conversations can be between the client and the consumer (or voter, or whoever makes up your target audience); or the conversations can be among members of your target audience, in a space created for them by the client. Where the conversations go, nobody knows, and nobody tries to control. Let it be. The fact that such conversations are happening benefits the brand. The client appears to be open, authentic and transparent, unafraid of critics, and that stance enhances their reputation.

The Zen approach is probably most reflective of how the Web works. However, how many clients are ready for it? If they’re confident the conversations would go well — because the product, customer support and other features are best-in-show — why do they need PR help? And if they’re not so confident, why should they pay a PR firm for what could end up as an exercise in masochism?

I anticipate that we’ll start seeing more examples of the Zen approach in 2006. What got me started on this post was an Adweek story about the cosmetic company Maybelline’s new Web site for a new makeup line, Pure, aimed at teenage girls and young women.

Built by aQuantive’s Avenue A/Razorfish, the site, WhatisPure.com, will debut with polls on issues close to the hearts of the 18- to 24-year-old female target: beauty, fashion, music and Tom Cruise, among others. Visitors will be encouraged to create their own topics, share them with friends and upload personal photos.

One thing the site will not do much is hawk products. Instead, it will carry only a small link to product information at the bottom of Web pages. “We were thinking of the ways to talk to our consumer that she’s not accustomed to being spoken to by a CPG (consumer packaged goods) brand,” said Kristen Yraola, director of Internet at Maybelline New York.

(snip)

Yraola said the average Maybelline Pure customer is a typical MySpace user: young and comfortable with the Web as a two-way medium. To reach her, Maybelline is advertising WhatisPure.com with a two-week blitz on MySpace, featuring rich-media ads with poll questions for girls to answer. It is relying on visitors to spread word of the site to their friends to build an audience, Yraola said. One concession to the freewheeling nature of such sites: Maybelline will screen all content before it goes live.

(If you have a teenager, I don’t have to explain the allusion to MySpace, a web version of Pleasure Island from “Pinocchio,” where kids can easily post their own websites, exchange photos, enter chat rooms and God knows what else.)

The Maybelline site is very odd, silly, but entertaining and potentially addictive. Bubbles float and pop across the screen, asking poll questions in which both answers have the word “pure.” You can submit your own poll question, but only if you give them an e-mail address.

The first two bubble polls I saw were:

Global Warming? Pure Science Fiction or Pure Sad Fact

Ponchos? Pure Out or Pure Still Cool

You click to vote, then see the results instantly. (FYI, Global Warming is “Pure Sad Fact” to 94 percent. Dick Cheney will be heartbroken. And he better ditch his poncho.) The viral aspect is an easy link to AOL’s Instant Messenger, that immediately opens into a window where a “check out the web address” message is helpfully written for you.

It’s Zen in the sense that my AIM message to my friend might say: “This site is pure…crap.” Only my friend will see it, but still, Maybelline has effectively made it easier for me to dis their marketing and their products. If I was an Alpha Girl, my entire high school class might be led to declare Maybelline terminally uncool.

How Maybelline might respond is: “Yeah, that’s too bad, but those conversations are already going on. Some people don’t like us. Why hide from it?” Meanwhile, when you sign up, you can opt-in to get Maybelline spam, and there are a few other places, not very obtrusive, where you can link to content that markets the product.

Does this site work? Is it worth the money Maybelline is investing in it (and in advertising it)? As a 50-year-old man with a son but no daughter, I will probably only find out when Maybelline or its web vendor issue a press release–which I will read skeptically. But for the girls they’re aiming at…”the truth shall live from age to age.”

Advertising…on Eggs?

Adrants points us to Eggfusion’s site — a company that will put “born on” dates on one side of an egg … and an advertising message on the other.  Eggs are “a unique, impression-rich media vehicle,” they say; and consumers will embrace the concept because, along with the ads, they’ll be able to verify their eggs are fresh.

Why stop there? Nobody eats the skin you peel off fruit, like oranges. They’re perfect for advertising.  Better than eggs, because eggs stay in the carton, inside the refrigerator, their important messages going to waste until — crack.  Fruit is put in a bowl, right where everyone can see it, and it takes longer to peel.  Impressions-wise, an egg doesn’t hold a candle to a banana.

It would make more sense to put little sound chips on eggs, so that every time you break one, you would hear a commercial jingle.  Go ahead. Take my idea. Just send me a carton.