Andrew Lark

HEADLINE STYLES

Great story on Poynter on headline styles... here's a snippet:

ALL CAPITALS Type set in all capitals is harder to read. When ascenders and descenders are eliminated, words become rectangles and are harder to recognize. This is particularly true for long lines of text. THE ALL CAPS STYLE IS HARDER TO READ. WHEN ASCENDERS AND DESCENDERS ARE ELIMINATED, WORDS BECOME RECTANGLES AND ARE HARDER TO RECOGNIZE. THIS IS PARTICULARLY TRUE FOR LONG LINES OF TEXT SUCH AS THIS. Reserve the all-caps style for small amounts of type -- one- to three-word headlines, labels, headers, and other navigational items that only use a few words. Sans Serif typefaces tend to work better in all-caps than serif faces. In this case, the serifs get in the way and erode readability and reading speed. In addition, using all capitals takes up more space...

Citizen Marketers

Great post over at the Church Of the Customer on Citizen Marketers. Some great pointers to Citizen Marketers:

• George Masters and his homemade iPod ad
• The volunteers who market the Firefox web browser (24 million download in 3 months)
• People who create fan sites like this one for the Broadway show "Brooklyn the Musical"
• The quirky guys behind the campaign to bring back Surge cola
• The creators of TiVocommunity.com
• Customers who post photos with their reviews on Amazon.com
• The people who created ads for the "Bush in 30 Seconds" contest from Moveon.org

Also love the mind maps from their Customer Evangelism University.

Watch out for those Counterfeit Minis

The brand assault continues from Mini... the newest twist being a Counter Counterfeit Commission to prevent, you guessed it, counterfeit Minis. I'd only want the original - with racing stripes of course!

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Edelman On Trust... Transparency

Edelman significantly thickened PRWeek with a chunk of it's 2005 Annual Trust Barometer. Kudos for a) doing marketing and thought-leadership, something that most agencies seem to be asleep at the wheel on; and b) for a really timely piece of research. One quote really captured my attention:

"Sacrifice control and perfection of a message for speed and free-flowing discussion. The paradox of transparency holds that companies benefit more when they disclose fully what they know - bad or good - as soon as they know it. This is truer than ever."

And this:

Employees and "an average employee like me" are more credible than CEOs.

Communicators are still way over-vectored on the c-suite and on broadcasting it's voice. Too much of a companies communications channels are vectored to the top of the pyramid. Blogs are a revolutionary force in this respect. They run against what communicators have so long fought to do - keep the voice of the employee under wraps. As blogs liberate the voice of the company they'll, somewhat ironically, become the most potent force for restoring the credibility of corporations. Look no further than Scoble at Microsoft to see this in action...

Storytelling

I've long believed that great storytelling is the cornerstone of great communications. Spot a great communicator and you spot a great storyteller. It's pretty much non-negotiable. Bill Breen - who consistently churns out great stuff for FastCompany has a good read on Marcus Buckingham in the March 05 edition. Marcus, who authored the brilliant - First Break All The Rules, now has a new book - The One Thing you Need to Know... About Great Managing, Great Leading, and Sustained Individual Success. Well, that pretty much covers all bases! I'm looking forward to reading it... In identifying three approached to finding the clarity - as a leader - that your followers will require he points to:

1. Take a Time Out
2. Practice Your Storytelling
3. Show Us Your Hero

He says of storytelling:

"As a leader, you must practice over and over what to say to describe where you're taking people. After you've found the right words, stick with them - in emails, in meetings, in speeches. Doug, Degn, head of WalMart's general merchandise, uses seven words to describe his customers: "the people who live paycheck to paycheck..."

Forbes is also on to storytelling. Daniel Pink in A Story Goes With It, says "Once upon a time businesses could ignore story. Doing that today, though, could spell the end." While that's a little dramatic (actually, it's way too dramatic) he makes some great points about the importance of storytelling. Unfortunately, most of his examples are the unauthentic kinds of storytelling - copy for direct mail catalogues - as opposed to what Marcus is advocating. One of the key ingredients to great storytelling is authenticity and in this respect Blogs lend themselves perfectly to the art. The message is the medium in this respect. Storytelling is ads makes for more effective ads, but not more potent stories. In other words - don't confuse great copywriting with great storytelling. Anne Mulcahy, CEO of Xerox is quoted on the back page of FastCompany:

"Stories exist at all levels of a corporation.... It's much more powerful than the precision or elegance of the strategy."

The same issue of FastCompany has an interesting piece on Andy & Kate Spade. On Branding, Andy says:

THE BIGGER YOU GET THE SMALLER YOU SHOULD ACT. Never, never start thinking like a big company. Otherwise you become a corporate, and there's no interest in that.

(to which I say AMEN!)

NEVER BELIEVE ANYTHING YOU'VE DONE IS SUCCESSFUL. Challenge it every second, every day.

(not so sure on this one. challenge everything, yes! but also celebrate successes)

BRAND CONSISTENCY IS OVERRATED. The brand doesn't have to look the same, but it has to feel the same. An element of newness and surprise if important for every brand.

(damn right. this is the core challenge facing rules obsessed brand marketers)

BRANDS SHOULD HAVE SOME MYSTERY. Customers should never understand the whole picture of a brand

(absolutely).

YOUR PEOPLE ARE YOUR PRODUCT. They are the vehicle through which everything happens, and they define what you put out.

(um, kind of. the product is the product. the people are the people. but OK, the people matter more. they bring the brand to life. they make it happen. but it's simplistic to isolate customer experience like this. for instance, I love Jack Spade bags - I love the stores - I've always found the people courteous and pleasant - but man, your inventory sucks. you're nearly always out of everything I ever ask for. sigh!). And I'm very envious of the brand you've been able to build.

You Are All Crazy

Another GREAT piece from the Opinion Journal on Blogging... brilliant summary of all we've been called:

"Salivating morons." "Scalp hunters." "Moon howlers." "Trophy hunters." "Sons of Sen. McCarthy." "Rabid." "Blogswarm." "These pseudo-journalist lynch mob people."

This is excellent invective. It must come from bloggers. But wait, it was the mainstream media and their maidservants in the elite journalism reviews, and they were talking about bloggers!

This is a really great piece - out of difference to copyright and right to traffic I'm not going to summarize it more, BUT YOU MUST READ IT.

Intel's Internal Blog...

Dean at the Merc snags a copy of Otellini's internal blog and the Web is abuzz... From this morning's Good Morning Silicon Valley - the eZine I look forward to most (other than Flavorpill...

...Otellini reveals a new side in "AMD suXorS" blog post: So now that we've reached this postmodern understanding that all official corporate communication is, if not a charade, part of a ritualized dance where meaning must be divined between the lines, where do you turn to hear an executive talk straight? Why, to his or her blog, of course, because blogs are required by longstanding Unwritten Net Law to be BS-free...

"Hollywood has always had a love affair with Apple Computers. In movies ranging from 'Mission Impossible' to 'Shallow Hal,' Apple products are positioned to in ways that say you are 'Cool' if you have an Apple Computer or IPOD. My kids will settle for Intel Inside PC or Laptop but they want an Apple computer. Beyond paying for product placements in movies, developing a better relationship between Intel and Hollywood is great way to make Intel the "Cool" computer company of the future

I've long maintained that the internal blog is where the action is. Now if we could just read more of them. For therein lies the paradox of blogging. You want conversations to be as personal and private as possible - you don't want to use the same tone internally as you might have to externally - but anything posted digitally to more than one other person is likely to end-up public so why not just tear-down those walls - the transparency is likely to be positive in the extreme...

"Paul wanted another way to communicate with employees,'' said Intel spokesman Tom Beerman. "It is meant for employees only, and that explains the tone and nature of the subject matter"

And hey Dean, don't be a meanie, post everything you've got.. don't serialize the data, be transparent...

So Let Me Get This Straight...

At CNN you aren't allowed to accept gifts but you can give them? Or, you can't take "bribes" but you can give them...? OK, so this is all history and past tense - and the gifts were probably crap, but it does point to the importance of David Berlind's media transparency channel...

A Nice Little Blog Innovation... Blink

Hylton's got a nice little Blog innovation over at Corante [disclosure:: I write for Brandshift on Corante].

"...the intent of the Blink is to differentiate its content from the longer, meatier posts and to provide a space in which you can provide short pointers to interesting items/articles/blogs that don't require much commentary. As well as to provide a vehicle that allows you to dump things into the blog, integrates a linklog, keeps the blog fresh, etc..

Take a look at Suw Charman and Copyfight to see this in action. This is great in terms of architecting information delivery in the sense it provides a simple way for the reader to visually filter content on the blog outside of category clicking...

The Death Of...

Here we go again. More "death of" remarks... This time from the Economist which, in an otherwise great story on Robert Scoble, ponders if Blogs are the death of traditional public relations. Seems blogs are going to be the death of everything...

Bruce Lowry, PR boss at Novell, another software firm, also wants to get his executives blogging. Boring old press releases—where everybody is constantly resigning “to spend more time with the family” and what not—are totally ill-suited for responding to most PR issues, such as rumours or independent commentary, he says. He can imagine blogs completely replacing press releases within ten years.

Ten years from now? That's what I call hedging ones bets. Many a PR pro is hoping its going to happen lots quicker than that Bruce. And maybe you could drop a note to the SEC asking them if it's OK for blog entries to be regarded in the same light as press releases in terms of fair disclose.

I tend to agree with Schwartz - also quoted in the article:

(Scoble)... thinks that there will always be a place for traditional PR, with its centrally controlled corporate message, alongside the spontaneous cacophony of blogs. Microsoft's official PR boss will not even comment at all on the subject. Sun's Mr Schwartz is also circumspect. “It's not the end of PR but the end of the old PR department,” he says. “The clarifying force will be credibility and reputation.” The truth is, nobody yet knows how corporate blogging will evolve.

The important message is that social networking technologies and participatory communications will force structural change on PR departments. Change in terms of the people required, budget allocation and focal points. And as with all change involving networking technologies, the advantage will go to the first movers.

NYT Multimedia...

This is interesting. They've probably done this for ages and I've, well, totally missed it, but the NYT carries an interesting narrated slide show on the goings on at HP this week. And, narrated by none other that Gretchen Morgenson. Ends with a link into a story by John Markoff.

Brandshift

I've finally started contributing to Brandshift... the new branding blog over at Corante. Sorry for the delay guys... My thanks to Stowe and Hylton for the encouragement. I'm zeroed-in on the intersection between branding, communications and social networking technologies. So, lots more to come.

My First post extends some of the thinking here on FryGate where I try to make the point that:-

This new medium - these new communities and conversations - are set to reshape branding. Brand marketers have been stuck on transmit for decades. The smart ones who looked to have the very act of marketing become a conversation were quickly isolated as guerilla or viral marketers. The Blogsphere changes that. Use it to simply transmit, or purely for stunts, and you miss its enormous potential.

Susan Getgood makes some great points and hits on the transparency issue I touch-on at Brandshift:

On the other hand.... we need to figure out how to tell a blog that has the reporting or opinions of a true live person (whether we think they are a wing nut or not) from a blog that is an invented piece of fiction (funny or sad, effective or lame, it doesn't matter). Why? Because we rely on blogs to be the voices of real people, people like us with whom we will agree some of the time, and disagree others. People we can respect and trust.

Any successful brand is built on trust. Trust is granted where transparency exists.

Quote Of The Week...

Care of Good Morning Silicon Valley...

"What would she get if the firm
had done well? A country?"
Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, associate dean of the Yale School of Management, is boggled by former HP CEO Carly Fiorina's $21.1 million severance package.

Hey, and everyone needs a pack of these...

The Lincoln Fry Fracas Unfolds...

Dan comments on McDonald's use of a fake blog as part of it's recent Lincoln fry ad campaign. He also points over to Kevin Dugan who while liking the campaign is equally appalled that someone would create a fake blog.

I'm not likely to win any points here but hey, it's all about free speech right? Creating fake blogs given the righteousness of the blogspehere isn't a particularly smart thing to do. But part of me says lighten up gang - they're having a little fun. A bit like all those newspapers that demonstrate at least a modicum of wit on April Fools day. From the get go I saw the blog as nothing other than fun marketing campaign - a little goofy, silly and OK, lame...

The great thing about the blogsphere is all points of view are represented - we all get to express our thoughts on acts like this. And, at the same time, I suspect provide a useful little virtual focus group for the marketers at McDonalds.

And all this chatter, increases the viral buzz behind the campaign. In fact, it might be the case that unless you are really, really offended by something you blog nada on the grounds that all you're doing is fanning the flames of the very thing that annoyed you in the first place.

And I wonder if at some point the major Blog engines start to control the very medium they are spawning. Maybe only real blogs are allowed? Now were getting into censorship, which begs the very question we started with - Is there anything wrong with a fake blog?

PROTS...

Some thoughts from the road...

Transparency remains one of the banner issues for communicators and our industry. I've been pretty vocal on this so sorry if this is getting tiresome. But the more I read from communicators the more I wonder if there isn't a need for a deeper and more focused dialogue on the issue - like a group of us get in a room and hash it out. David Berlind and Dan Gillmor have been speaking to the issue from both a media and PR perspective. But where are the communicators?

This got me thinking on a couple of fronts...

Is transparency an issue for communicators? The straightforward answer is YES! But it isn't that straightforward. It's going to require that in-house communicators sit down with their legal and finance teams - especially the security lawyers - and develop a shared view of what transparency means. The outcome might be a set of behaviors, practices and polices that really articulate what transparency means in the context of the business - a kind of playbook. Transparency runs deeper than fiduciary responsibility - it cuts to the core of an organization. So this ain't just an issue for the lawyers, accountants or PR people. It's as much a cultural issue as a procedural one.

At another level we need to do a whole lot about this issue immediately. Starting with the development of a common set of standards. David Berlin has a cool idea called JOTS - Journalist Online Transparency System. We might call ours PROTS - Public Relations Online Transparency System. The two should sync where at all possible.

PROTS would cover a whole range of ground. It might include protocols for using third party spokespeople. And the use of anonymous spokespeople. In this instance, transparency is greater than anonymity. In other words, say who you are, what your title is and what you are saying. Don't hide behind the veil of "spokesperson".

David also has some thoughts regarding the use of email. We need standards here quick.

What about posting transcripts of interviews and the like? This is one manifestation of transparency. I don't buy the argument that we shouldn't do this on the basis that executives say screwball things in interviews that might slip by the journalist only to be escalated with the posting of a transcript. OK, on occasions the brain does disengage from the mouth and all kinds of things come out. Maybe posting transcripts will make spokespeople think a little harder. After-all, every interview is on the record - and if you don't want it on the record you could agree to switch the tape and transcript off. Not exactly full transparency but better than what we have today and this would allow for casual or confidential conversations to take place. In other words, conversations can take place outside of the interview.

Can technology help? Yes, but communicators will first need to resource for transparency. This is a new workload. I remember my first weeks at Nortel - there was a really impressive guy who'd been a communicator for decades. And he had big files of interviews and the like. Big files. What this taught me is the importance of "keeping the record" and archiving everything. I fear this had been largely lost on many comms teams today. Perhaps the pursuit of transparency will actually enhance institutional memory.

Imagine an RSS feed on major interviews that would provide all the information for people that are interested?

More to come on this. Please send me your thoughts. One of my questions is - do we push for our existing industry bodies to do this, or do we take it on and publish a reference doc for PRs to contribute to...?

More On Transparency...

This time from Chris Shipley:

In a blogosphere of connected, fast-breaking posts, you can't control the story. It's that simple. Paradoxically, the best way to control a story is to let it go. The more openly and honestly you expose the corporate story -- the more transparent the company becomes, the better off your company will be.

Nothing new there. In fact anyone that's had to deal with El Reg or C/Net will be pretty familiar with this credo.

What is new is the thinking behind and on David Berlin's Media Transparency Channel. All credit to David for engaging in conversations rather than just transmitting. His latest post has some of my comments on PR Transparency. I think David is the first to shine light on the symbiotic relationship between media and PR - and the transparency conundrum that results.

"It's about journalists figuring out how to best deliver transparency without being disrespectful to the people that give them their competitive advantage (as journalists)."

I'm working a longer post on this so will leave it at that for now. David and Chris make the right point which is embrace transparency before it embraces you.

Great Branding Blog From Evelyn

Read on. Is really insightful. Stowe adds to this with some thoughtful commentary on the rise of social brands:

The rise of social brands -- through social media -- is driven by our need to push aside the control of large, impersonal organizations, and participate in the essence of invitational brands: to define ourselves and find meaning through our involvement in the implicit communities of use surrounding products and services.

This is not just another way of looking at self-identification by class, or economic bracket, or being in the in crowd. It is a direct expression of an emergent, bottom-up exploration of our relationships to each other and our purpose in the world, where the goods and services we acquire and apply become a medium, in effect, where we interact with others.

Stowe also points to a terrific read from John Winsor.

We are in the twilight of a society based on data. In the coming years, brands and companies will not thrive on the basis of their data, but on the strength and meaning of their stories, creating products and services that evoke emotion. Products will become less important than the stories they convey and the way those stories are interpreted. It is a return of the ancient form of narrative. Companies need to have stories to tell – stories that inspire action. And companies must themselves embody those stories with congruency and authenticity.

Jay Interviews David

Great interview with David Akin over at Pressthink.

Okay. It's the Internet that's changing journalism. If that's the case, why blog?

David Akin: The blog is an increasingly important tool for newsgathering and for maintaining a connection with the community or ecosystem of those that you report on. That last part was the bit that surprised me as I started blogging. It has made my print reporting interactive.

I write; I publish. And that used to be the end of it. Now, I write, I publish and a community of people who have special knowledge or who are deeply interested in the topic amplify, correct, modify, or extend the reportage. For a beat reporter, this is fabulous, because I now have more knowledge about my beat.

I haven't seen this work for my television reporting and I think there are a couple of reasons. First, blogs, like newspapers, are a logocentric medium and TV is not. Second, you can't easily link to TV pieces or "quote" TV pieces or respond in the same way as the original piece, that is, with video.

Recommend This...

Chris has an interesting piece on recommendations:

"In a sense, you can think of all your filters as being part of orthogonal trust networks, often with the only common member being yourself.  They rarely, if ever, overlap. Thus any service that tries to condense all of your different planes of influence into a single dimension is going to fail, at least as far as useful recommendations go. That isn't to say that such services shouldn't offer playlist sharing and Amazon wishlists, only that I'm likely to find better advice elsewhere."

His point is that recommendations from within your existing networks aren't necessarily the best, or, for the newest, bestest, coolest products. He recalls Bill Joy's quote:

""No matter who you are, most of the smartest people work for someone else."

The same might be said of recommendations. No matter who you are,  someone you don't know has found the coolest stuff.""

I tend to agree that what lives in the recommendation engines is becoming less and less valuable as a recommendation. They seem, more than often, to be engineered from within a review or fan base. As communicators we are going to have to increasingly look outside the established networks for the orthogonal recommenders. I've been speaking of this for awhile now as the difference between right-field (known to you) recommenders vs. left-field (surprising) recommenders. Smart buyers will move to the left field while triangulating off the right, and, ignoring the pay-to-play engines.

Blinks For Feb 2.

Christian Science Monitor on blogging and the Apple thing. Do we have First Amendment Rights?

Ultimately, the issue comes down to whether bloggers act like traditional journalists, says University of Iowa law professor and First Amendment specialist Randall Bezanson. Simply expressing opinions to a tiny audience doesn't count, he says. If so, "then I'm a journalist when I write a letter to my mother reporting on what I'm doing. I don't think the [constitutional] free-press clause was intended to extend its protections to letters to mothers from sons."

Probably not. But what if Mom fact-checks and posts the letter on her blog for thousands of people to read? Is she a journalist then? Courts may make the final call.
Christian Science Monitor, Feb 2, 2005

FT futureizes on search and its application in managing our daily lives...

In the future... finding information would not involve going to a separate place - a search engine - to ask a question. Instead, the answer would present itself wherever you happened to be, and in the most appropriate form. "Search will become more and more important and less and less visible," says [Craig] Silverstein at Google. "It will be ubiquitous and invisible." At that stage, depending on your point of view, Google and its rivals would either be one of the most powerful forces shaping everyday life or just another invisible cog in the great Information Age machine that is being created out of the internet.

You know you've arrived when... You've got a Wikipedia entry... And the Long Tail has definitely arrived as a concept. Here's the definition from Chris' About page:

"The Long Tail is the yellow part of the sales chart at left, which shows a standard demand curve that could apply to any industry, from entertainment to services. The vertical axis is sales, the horizontal is products. The red part of the curve is the "hits", which have dominated our commercial decisions to date. The yellow part is the non-hits, or niches, which I argue in the article will prove equally important in the future now that technology has provided efficient ways to give consumers access to them.

The two big points of the Long Tail theory are these: 1) The yellow part potentially extends forever to the right; 2) The area under that line--the market it represents--may become as big as the hits at the left."

Shhhhh... Don't tell anyone... Apple Computer is lowering the price of its iPod only in Korea according to Seoul's JoongAng Daily... Which kind of supports my thesis that we've yet to really see the impact of innovation in the MP3 player space. Apple has established incredible first mover advantage and built an even more incredible ecosystem. But will that hold off Asian and US innovators? It's not till you start looking at the new generation of players that the iTunes paradox becomes apparent - on the one hand you get mountains of choice and on the other, less choice of players.

According to the Opinion Journal:

Local representatives even asked the media to "keep quiet" about the price cuts, saying that headquarters feared opposition from other Asian countries.

So remember, if you're in the media, don't tell anyone about this!

Speaking of PR... here's a terrific little essay on Bullshit.

Tech Policy Blog launches... care of the 463.

Marketplace on PR Goes Blogging...

Blogs aren't just for individuals anymore. The web log, or blog, is being seen by many in the corporate world as a good internet marketing tool. Public relations experts, CEOs and customers are starting to realize the benefits of web diaries.

Ask A Silly Question...

In the "ask a silly question, get a silly answer category" is this headline from AdAge:-

. IS A SUPER BOWL AD WORTH

$80,000 A SECOND?

Well... HELL NO! They go on to flag a new survey which suggests it is...

Super Bowl ad rates have notched their annual mind-numbing record -- and it turns out that marketers paying $2.4 million to Fox for 30 seconds of fame may be getting a great deal.

An online survey last year of 500 consumers by InsightExpress found that while 54% of Americans planned to watch the game, 50% were watching specifically for the commercials and 58% said they pay closer attention to ads during the Super Bowl than those they see every day.

“That people are actively engaged in seeing the ads also helps the ROI,” Mr. Hess said. “It’s well known in experimental psychology that if you discuss something after seeing it ... it helps reinforce the memory.” AdAge, Feb 1, 2005

Um, yeah.... Get some PR going folks. Same eZine also carried this headline...

SONY PAYS $25,000 A

MONTH FOR GAWKER BLOG

First, that seems bloody cheap - sorry, really great value - and sets the bar pretty low for Blog sponsorship. Second, what an incredibly smart thing to do. Gizmodo is quickly becoming one of the key sources for all things geeky. What a great place to reach the early adopter audience. Apparently the ads don't stop there. Sony will be advertising on the new LifeHacker site. Denton also launched Gridskipper today.

Sony's ads on LifeHacker and Gizmodo will include standard-size leaderboards, medium rectangles and skyscrapers. LifeHacker's editorial scope comprises software downloads, spam filters, spyware and e-mail applications among other topics. "If you have a buddy who tells you everything that's cool online, LifeHacker would be that buddy," Mr. Denton said. Gina Trapani will edit the site. She is a blogger known for Scribbling.net, a personal journal that also discusses technology.

Gridskipper is a bit of a yawn... at least for me. Too much like Wallpaper/Surface. I much prefer - so far - the Flavorpill eZines which are content rich.

BTW - AdAge has the stupidest, most annoying subscription scheme I've ever encountered. Get over it gang and open up that site... Dan said it well:

Newspapers: Open Your Archives

Apple Has The Most Sizzle...

BrandChannel reports that Apple has pipped Google at the post to become the leading brand in their Readers' Choice Awards. The do note:

However, Apple’s cultural symbolism was not economically symbiotic. Its worldwide computer market share dropped to less than two percent in 2004 to a 1.87 percent share in Q3 of 2004 (down from 2.19% in Q3 2003).

So let me get this straight... You can be a great brand and have declining marketshare in major categories? Hmmmmm... Doesn't sound like much of a proxy for business success. Far too many brand marketers focus on brand awareness and not business outcome. Ok, so now I'm whining...

One interesting new entrant in the Awards, Al Jazeera.

Rounding out the top five 2004 Global Brands is a surprise winner: the Arab-focused, 24-hour news source Al Jazeera. Based in Qatar and offering an alternative to BBC or CNN, Al Jazeera has over 35 million viewers (overwhelmingly Muslim) and 30 bureaus worldwide. As the issues of 2004 hovered heavily around the Middle East and Islamic populations, Al Jazeera’s relevancy soared.

Here's their little chart:

.

NewComm Forum Keynote...

Sorry for the delay in posting. Had all kinds of hassles uploading from Napa. You can download a copy from my iDisk. Given this has just been ridiculously difficult and time consuming (longer than giving the keynote itself!) I've also posted a copy to my xDrive (sorry, silly log-on).

EPIC - Great Marketing Needn't Cost

Had an email conversation with Robin Sloan regarding EPIC 2014. It's a fascinating dialogue that points to how cool marketing and thinking needn't cost a lot. It makes me think of the quote Jonathan Schwartz sometimes uses (attributed to Bill Joy I think) - "Innovation happens elsewhere". Now Robin is working at INdTV in San Francisco, and Matt Thompson is working at FresnoBee.com in Fresno.

Robin says:

"... EPIC 2014 was made by two young journalists, Robin Sloan & Matt Thompson, while they were both working at the Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, Florida...

Re: cost -- EPIC was totally home-brew, so the only cost was in terms of time spent on it. Hard to see how much time we spent on the ideas -- they kinda bubbled up over the course of many weeks -- but the actual Flash production came out in a frantic rush over three or four days. I'm quite sure a seasoned Flash producer (which I'm not) could crank out something as cool & stylish in a week or so.

I gotta admit though, both the narration (by Matt Thompson, the Fresno Bee guy) and the music (by electronic musician Minus Kelvin) account for a lot of the movie's effectiveness. So keep that in mind."

Update:- we had to drop the zip link due to bandwidth issues. So, if you want the file beam me an email.

He makes one last point which is great news - "And keep your eyes peeled -- an update is coming in a week or so that will take EPIC to the year 2015."

Analyst Blogs...

I think Stowe might have already flagged this one but Tekrati looks at the current state of Analyst Blogs. Apparently 10% of the 350 firms they track have blogs with Jupiter leading the pack in terms of volume (some 20 plus). I'm following James and Stephen over at Redmonk most closely. Charlene Li over at Forrester is becoming a bit of a rock star as well. Gartner's group blog has some interesting stuff - and is a good approach - but lacks focus.

Some Missives From NewComm...

This was a different kind of blogging conference. Attendees were predominantly communicators there to learn about blogging and social networking technologies.

Congrats to Elizabeth and team for putting on such a great event. It delivered on two fronts. First, plenty of networking time with great people like Stowe, Heath Row of FastCompany, Tom Formenski, Anita Campbell, Rennee (I will have a nickname for you soon!) and Evelyn Rodriguez.

Second, the education bias of the event was well placed. I attended a few of the workshops on the first day. Guillaume has plenty of links to commentary and content.

My keynote opened the second day. My one big disclosure/caveat is that I’m technically employed by Sun but winding down my work there, and I hold Sun stock. So, that should partly explain my enthusiasm for the company. Ok, so I'm completely paranoid about disclosure and ethics these days....

Second caveat is that this is what I remember as much as I can remember. (Stowe made me drink too much - HE MADE ME!). Seriously though, it's interesting watching folks blog on the event (which is much, much harder than it looks - you need to be able to triple task, type at light-speed, report and absorb - and stay sane) - folks hear different things, see different things, write different things than you thought you said, said, or intended to say. Tip for Communicators: don't blog your own events - hire a pro to do it, or give bloggers passes and access.

Since I'm technically not a Flak for the moment I disregarded all the communications counsel I've been giving people for decades and produced 87 slides. It was awesome - at least for me. It also meant I needed to pick-up to a Ferarri-like pace at the back-end of the preso. Tip for communicators: do as you preach. No more than 20 slides for any preso.

I opened with the EPIC 2014 webisode. I first encountered this at Pegasus News. Thanks to Ian Kennedy who pointed out this was originally created by Robin Sloan. So full attribution, congratulation etc. to Robin. People raved about it. Blogs are wonderfully self correcting in this respect.

I’m going to post longer notes in the next few days along with some of the scrapbook of stuff I assembled when researching the keynote. Active Voice has a good overview. Tom has a nice wrap-up on the workshop delivered by Alice Marshall on "How to Pitch Bloggers". Neville Hobson has tons of other links and highlights.

I'll update more over the weekend. Thanks again for all the kind comments, thoughts, delicately delivered corrections.

News Blinks...

Jeff Nolan has some interesting thoughts following a panel with PR pros. Jeff is right in that communicators are just starting to fully get with the social networking revolution. More need to read blogs, write blogs, turn-up those RSS feeds and readers and get behind the social networking revolution. Thanks to hyper-blogger Steve for the pointer.

Couple of Jeff's comments are worth further discussion. Having seen and tracked the data on release click throughs and readership from the newswires and also company news sites people do, in mass, read news releases. They also are a 'technical' communications tool (for the media and disclosure purposes). Where he is right is that mediums like the blog are steadily increasing as a news desimination and triangulation vehicle. And at some point in the future they might just replace the need for a press release in order to satisfy fair disclosure. Jeff says:

My advice to professional marketing communication people is to get engaged with blogs now by reading and observing. Learn the etiquette and patterns before deciding to tackle strategy for dealing with blogs.

The creed of the professional communications executive over the years has been to control the message. Get over it because there is no chance you can do that in today's world. At best you can shape a message by guiding and honestly responding to blog content where appropriate.

At the NewComm Forum Stowe made some really interesting points that expand on this. Network effects advantage the early adopters. As the network multiplies outward those who established the early advantage of linking, commentating, and engaging in the conversations are advantaged. The Blogosphere will favor the early movers. Tip for Communicators - Stowe gave you this one... If for some reason you don't have the confidence to jump into the blogsphere, start sticking your toe into the water by commenting on other blogs. Before you know it, you'll be up to your neck in the blogosphere.

Another thought that Jeff had that kept coming up at NewComm was the need for Communicators to focus on search engine optimization. I made the comment that you need to search, but you also need to hire people to do search. Tip for Communicators - hire search optimization specialists for every campaign, program and brand you manage.

The Gartner Meta Thing...

One of the free eZines I like is the AR Insider from KCG. Subscribe here. One of their writers has some tough commentary on the Gartner/META acquisition. Here are some of the highlights. First, they make the fair point that:

"...vendors that tend to get creamed by the analysts in M&A are the ones who make the announcement, but don't seem to have any real plan for migrating customers, honoring contracts and articulating a go-forward plan and vision."

On that basis they go on to recommend that companies don't renew old Meta subscription based services until both Meta and Gartner management can tell you why you should.

Given what has been communicated so far, we feel that the chances of you getting what you want from the transaction and not having at least some of the value of the subscription vanish are very slim.

They go on to give a couple of reasons:

"...Many of Meta's top analysts will leave as part of the acquisition.

...Lack of Communication or Plan. As of yet, Gartner nor Meta executive leadership has not stepped forward to offer anybody, not even their best clients (nor many of their senior analysts and managers) any indication as to what the new combined entity will look like and most importantly, how current Meta clients will be accommodated.

...Lack of Management Direction Leads to Stupid Sales Rep Tricks. This is where it gets almost unbelievable. The behavior right now of Meta's sales force is pathetic. I don't mean evil or even hyper aggressive, I mean pathetic in its dictionary definition - dismal, sad, pitiable, weak or feeble... we have seen the evidence and it isn't pretty. We have seen over a dozen emails over the last three weeks from Meta sales reps to our clients, where they have tried, in vain to conduct business. We have seen denial "There is a good chance the acquisition won‚t go through", we have seen obvious misstatement "Meta will not be merged into Gartner anytime in the foreseeable future (let‚s see Gartner management sell that one to Wall Street) and we have seen obvious desperation." "Just sign now and we'll figure out the details later".

...The Bottom Line. So, you have a 50:50 chance that your key analyst (which, of course, for vendors is more important than the firm) will still work there, you have no guidance as to how any business you do with Meta now will translate into similar services with Gartner as the deal consummates and you have rudderless Meta sales reps trying to tell you that business is usual and nothing has changed."

KCG deserves a huge amount of credit for flagging what is, isn't or might be going on here. Sign-up for the newsletter.

You're Fired!

Interesting piece in the Chron this morning on employers firing bloggers for breaching variours company policies. Included a quote from Schwartz:-

"Well over 1000 (Sun employees) have been given space for blogging. There's no restraint on what they can blog about. We provide tools and expect them to use them responsibly. Restricting what you can write on a blog is the same as restricting what you can say in an email or a phone call. And if they aren’t speaking as an employee, well, we live in a country that values free speech." -- Jonathan Schwartz

Tim Bray, another Sun blogger also has some interesting pointers on blogging sensibly.

News & Views Jan 24

Shit. January is nearly over. Where'd it go!

You Gotta Pay To Play. So after a week chatting about that Ketchum thing there's this little doozy flagged by Dan Gillmor. In a bitchy letter to Wal-Mart the erstwhile editor of the National Newspapers Association - Mike Buffington - all but says that in order to get coverage, you need to advertise. Screw having something meaningful to say, something of local interest or importance, something your readers might like to read about. No:

"So why is it that community newspapers in America are good enough to help you fend off critics with free PR, but we're not good enough for your paid advertising?

You can't have it both ways.

Based on a number of previous conversations I've had with newspaper publishers and editors across America, I don't think you will find very many who are willing to give you the requested free PR space to fend off attacks from your corporate critics.

I believe my view is one held by many newspaper publishers: If Wal-Mart wants to communicate valuable information about itself to our readers, then you can purchase our valuable advertising space to do it."

OK - so now we're all clear. What's between the ads in newspapers is PR-space and to get that all you need to do is advertise. And, if you have valuable information you'd better advertise as well. Brilliant! I'm not sure he could have crafted a more insulting letter to journalists and PR professionals.

IT Conversations has a great Podcast from the Gillmor Gang with some lucid comments by Stephen O'Grady of Redmonk. Lots of chatter on Schwartz's blog which this last week had an interesting post on Network Intelligence.

Couple of comments on the podcast. The notion that lawyers might shut down Schwartz's blog is, well, unlikely if not a little amusing. The Sun team is smart enough to take counsel and as Jonathan has pointed out he has to worry about SOX, fair disclosure and all those other issues a section 16 officer has to.

What the conversation does point to is a central issue facing all communictors, evangelists and managers of corporate blogs - how to ensure your obligations as an employee in a public company are considered when posting to blogs. I don't believe the law differentiates between a personal and private blog in this respect. What it does look at is fair disclosure of material information and today, blogs are not regarded to represent fair disclosure in the same way that a wire service is.

Bloggers as Employees. So while much of the debate focuses on the difference between a journalist and a blogger, we might also start focusing on the blogger as employee... are they different from your mainstream blogger? This is a similar issue that has resulted in Apple going after ThinkSecret. Simply put, bloggers aren't seen as journalists, blogs aren't seen as media outlets.

Open Dialogue. Take a look at Jonathan's latest blog, an open letter to IBM. While it would be easy to view this soley as smart PR it is something more potent - transparency. I can't think of any more public and effective way of speaking with the Sun community and enlisting support. Dan Fraber touches on this over at ZDNet:

Sun is using blogs, open letters, Web sites, and customer testimonials as guerilla warfare, take-it-to-the-streets tools to force a much larger competitor to accede to its needs/demands. It's becoming totally embarrassing for IBM. It's hard to imagine how IBM can come up with any reasonable excuse that the IT community (customers) would accept and save face at this point. Given the public forum and the support Sun has built up among customers and other vendors for its request, IBM should just bite the bullet and port the apps.

At the end of the open letter, Schwartz says, "We stand at the ready to help you tear down this wall." It's not an epic battle of communism (Berlin Wall) versus democracy, but we can expect to see more companies using a similar tactic--using public forums rather than just backrooms to alter the course of business.

Yes, blogs will alter the course of business. But it takes the guts and savvy Schwartz is consistently willing to show for that to happen. Sun is also demonstrating a willingness to use Blogs to further what is right for it's customers - something IBM doesn't seem so willing to do.

Listen to the podcasts coming out of the “Blogging, Journalism and Credibility: Battleground and Common Ground" conference. David Weinberger makes some interesting points on the incompleteness of Weblogs. I find all my entries are generally incomplete - and that I do change my view as folks chat to me about my postings. David also makes the important point that Blogs are the key to having an online community:

You can’t have a weblog if your style of writing is that you finish your pieces. Therefore, anybody who works in a profession which depends on completed documents– journalism, academia, law, engineers, medicine– it is impossible to develop community. Posted on the Conference Site - not sure if he actually said this.

Accepting incompleteness is going to be a real challenge for communicators. We're trained to write perfect, polish like crazy and present views set in stone. But central to blogging is incompleteness and community - both of which are tangental in some respect to all we have been taught.

Entertainment Break. If you love web radio, you gotta love KCRW. I'm now listening to more on my computer than on traditional radio. Tip For Communicators: Turn that staid news site into a fully-fledged broadcast channel. Feedroom is a great and economical way to get going.

Opensource Analysts... Alex Barnett and Tom Murphy have more detailed posts on Redmonk's recent moves. Stephen O'Grady - the other half of Redmonk has five pointers on why the open source analyst model might work:

1. Open Source is as Applicable to Industry Analysis as it is to Software

2. Great Ideas Come Can Come from Anyone

3. The Group Mind is Smarter than the Individual

4. An Idea's Power is Proportional to Its Audience

5. Proprietary Analysis is a Myth

6. Open Source is About More than Source Code

Blogging Ethics. Some interesting ideas on blogging ground-rules and ethics and a story over at AP.

Great Graphic. I've been a big evangelist of PR people using graphics to tell stories. Here's a great example of a graphic that tells a story.

Hardball. A great incentive to read the book from Fast Company. Tom Peters hated it - which is a stunner in so far as Tom's positive on just about everything. Here are some of the tenets of playing Hardball:

Unleash Massive and Overwhelming Force. After Eagle Snacks grabbed a 6% share of the salty-snack business, Frito-Lay responded with an all-out war of quality improvements and price cuts. Eagle ultimately folded.

Threaten Your Competitor's Profit Sanctuaries. First, Japanese automakers attacked the U.S. car market, capturing more and more share while the Big Three gorged themselves on profits from SUVs. Now the Japanese are moving aggressively into that market.

Take It and Make It Your Own. In other words: borrow, mimic, copy. Microsoft does it, of course. But so does Ryanair, which has copied Southwest Airlines and transformed the airline industry in Europe.

Break Compromises. Don't go along to get along. If everybody in your business is closed on Sunday because, well, that's the custom, you should open your doors

Keynote week... I've been working hard on my Keynote for the NewComm Forum this week. Really looking forward to it. WIll post notes, thoughts, copy of the preso and transcript here later in the week.

Have a good one!

Transperancy...

David Berlind has a great piece on transparency over at ZDNet.

Wherever there has been a gross injustice because of a broken system, the muttering "transparency" usually isn't far behind.  If we can go behind the scenes, we'll spot trouble before it happens, and the actors--knowing we're there--will all behave better. David Berlind, ZDNet, Jan 18, 2005

First, he deserves applause for recognizing transparency as a major issue for all journalists. Equally, PR practitioners at every level need to recognize that transparency is priority in every aspect of our business. From providing spokespeople through billing and into measurement. An understanding and implementation of transparency (which is rooted in ethics) would have enabled us to avoid the Ketchum issue.

Second, David makes some great points with regard to the application of technology to improving transparency - and provides a salient example. But moreover he nails it in that we have to earn our reputation and then protect it through our actions. There is no fine-line here. Just a solid yellow. Cross it - become opaque - and integrity goes out the window. David provides a great example of this in the story.

At the end of the interview with UserLand CEO Scott Young, he offered to send me a book by Rogers Cadenhead on how to use Radio UserLand.  I accepted the offer.  It's not unusual for vendors to provide journalists who are reviewing their technology with additional documentation.  But, as I played the recording back and thought of how transparency was in effect, I couldn't be absolutely certain that all members of ZDNet's audience would see it the same way.  I'm not going to send my address to Scott Young and, instead, if I decide that I need the book, I will pay the $24 charge for it with my own company's money.  Already, transparency is having its effect.

Technology can help close the credibility gap - for media and PR - but only if underpinned by transparency and a solid code of ethics.

Transparency is as a major issue for tech communications which are largely opaque (at best). For a long time the media published endless diatribe from a major customer of a major Linux vendor without ever revealing that that the CEO of that company also held a large amount of stock in said Linux vendor. Just a few weeks ago a read an article about a telco equipment vendor switching server suppliers without any reference to the fact that that vendor had a competing technology to its incumbent server supplier. Not only should it have been switching but it shouldn't have even been using that suppliers technology in the first place.

Before technology can address the transparency issue - or drive us towards more of it - we need to rethink practices and resources - and educate on ethics - which should be a priority for every PR department and agency. We should not assume that people arrive with a clear understanding of ethics, the policies and practices that underpin them and the resulting transperancy. Behavior needs to be taught.

The stuff that seems to be a nuisance - producing transcripts following keynotes, setting up webcasts, posting notes from interviews - need to become embodied in the day-to-day practice of communications. And communications teams need to be resourced to do it. Action for Communicators - resource the little stuff and the big stuff will take care of itself. And, get on with the little stuff. Post those transcripts when the article hits. Get them out within an hour or so of a keynote.

Jay Rosen recently called for CBS to start posting transcripts from its interviews - a great first step to restoring credibility post-Rathergate.

And, never provide a non-employee spokesperson without revealing if that person is paid and the position they support. Maybe companies should start publishing a paid spokesperson (and industry analyst) registry on their sites? Maybe all publicly funded campaigns should have the same registry? Maybe our industry bodies could maintain that registry?

We all have a right to engage in promotion and propaganda. But if we do so without transparency then we cross an ethical line that will ultimately harm us. Not just you, but all of us. And the very ideas that we seek to promote will be undermined. Steve Hayden said it well in a piece in Fortune on blogging:

“If you fudge or lie on a blog, you are biting the karmic weenie. The negative reaction will be so great that, whatever your intention was, it will be overwhelmed and crushed like a bug.”Steve Hayden, vice chairman, Ogilvy & Mather

So, wrapping-up, to steal a line - and edit it - from Jay, after trust me journalism, communications and spokespeople must come openness..

The Kethum Crisis & Us

Apparently we're all bad, bad people for not jumping on the Ketchum issue:-

Bloggers Are Missing in Action as Ketchum Tests the Conscience of PR

"Maybe this is the way things are done all the time in PR today. It's one of the most plausible explanations we have for the Ketchum contract, the apparent fraudulence of which is roughly parallel to the memos in the Dan Rather case."

First, Jay is so, so wrong. There's been plenty of dialogue flying around on this. And lets not be so arrogant as to assume that dialogue needs to take place here - although fair point that more might of. From me as well. Richard Edleman's commentary is commendable as was that of Paul Holmes.

And since when does anyone get to set the nature or volume of the editorial agenda - and the hypicrosy is a little rich - there are dozens of issues I see media bloggers absent on - circulation, ethics, disclosure, inaccurate reporting, advertiser bias.

OK - so enough of the "ain't we all bad bloggers" side-show... And on to the real issue, which for me is as much about media ethics as it is about PR ethics. So lets start there.

In all the materials I've read and looked at there doesn't seem to be anything explicity in writing calling for Williams to provide positive commentary - although this is implicit in the payment. Bias and space was bought. The media were hoodwinked. Or were they just asleep at the wheel? Either way, Ketchum employees and Williams should not have knowlingly engaged in such flagrant media and public manipulation, made all the worse for doing so with public funds. And neither should go without some kind of censure that would include the return of misused public funds. That was our money. We'd like it back.

Ketchum is a fine company with hundreds of ethical hard working employees. There initial response has done them irreversible reputational harm but they at last seem to have come to thier senses.

The issue of Williams disclosing the payment is also an important technicality in my mind. Spokespeople are paid to speak every day, by every sector of industry and government. And the media fails to force disclosure every day. In fact I still beleive that the majority of jounralists do not engage in any kind of fair disclosure with regard to thier interest, sources and content. We need a clear disclosure standard managed and monitored by our professional bodies and, most importantly, by the media. And the media need to embrace a disclosure standard of their own.

Saying that, the PR Industry has a code of ethics provided by our various industry associations. These seem to have been broken. If we can't self-police then someone will do it for us. Elliot Sloane touches on this in his commentary on Richard Edelman's blog:-

So far, I appear to be the only pr firm CEO to have withdrawn from the Council of Public Relations Firms in protest over this "trade group's" defense of one of its largest and most significant dues paying members. My colleagues and I see this as a defining moment for our firm and we are public with our convictions. There's plenty of room on my rock if someone wants to join me.

Kudos to PRSA president Judith Phair called Ketchum's situation 'a shame, disturbing and harmful'. But what is the PRSA going to do? Phair did make the point that:-

“clearly contrary to the PRSA Member Code of Ethics, which requires that public relations professionals engage in open, honest communications, and fully disclose sponsors or financial interests involved in any paid communications activities.”

OK - so now what? Nothing? We all just move on? Enforce the code of conduct or it's not a code at all. At least the National Association of Black Journalists was discussing action against Williams.

We need to get our industry organizations - both media and PR - in a position to take action for such flagrant breaches of our codes of ethics. For all of us that have not engaged in those organizations (me included) it's time to do so.

“I thought we in the media were supposed to be watchdogs, not lapdogs,” said NABJ Vice President-Print Bryan Monroe, assistant vice president-news at Knight Ridder. “I thought we had an administration headed by a president who took an oath to uphold the First Amendment, not try to rent it.

At the end of the day I welcome the commentary and do agree we need deeper dialogue and discussion of the issue. More than anything, we need our PR industry bodies to stand-up and take action. Lisa Stone has a pretty reasonable list of other questions that deserve answering.

Mid-Week Take Wed 19

About TIme! James over at Redmonk speaks to the evolution of the analyst industry in some of his most recent posts:

We're going to be following up with a nod to the meme... Taking an editorial stance based on available information. We find new ways to package information so it wil me more appealing - in narratives, for example. Part of RedMonk's business model is too package information in stories rather than reports.

This is refreshing. Are citizen analysts going to eventually drive traditional industry analysts out of business? I doubt it. But boy is technology going to ignite a more vigourous conversation about what is happening in the industry. Content (analysis) will become more freely available and accessible than it is through the costly models of traditional analysts today - and less linked to their clients (and source of revenue). And the smaller firms such as Redmonk are in a better position - both from an economics and credibility standpoint - to fuel it by driving conversations out of board rooms and into the blogsphere.

If nothing else, Redmonk deserves big points for a) blogging like they do and, b) being so clear about their business model. James' blog is a must read.

Love Those Zines. I'm an eZine fanatic. Amongst my faves are Cuisine Mag out of New Zealand and Flavorpill (which produces are range of others in the city/design/style category).

Flavorpill's most recent SF edition points to a new eZine with intriguing design - IntoTheStorm - which it wraps as:

With just about every rag these days offering a Face-like barometer of cool, digital 'zine Into the Storm offers a refreshing take on style-mag journalism. The clincher is the examination of ideas and concepts rather than gadgets and parties: think Franz Ferdinand on Russian art, Nicholas Hawksmoor's London churches, and how literature got hip again. Issue two is deliriously self-referential, subtitled "Everything Style Magazines Forgot To Tell You". Spot-on advice includes how to create a global trend and how to talk your way into a nightclub. ("Create a diversion by faking a drug overdose or screaming class war from a megaphone.") (KW)

The only drawback to all three (at least from my reading) is the lack of RSS feeds. These would make my life so much easier. Tip for Communicators #4 - RSS every content category you can. Create feeds and feed'em.

Speaking of RSS, take a look at the new news site sponsored Fabrica, the philanthropic arm of Benetton.

Every hour, 10x10 scans the RSS feeds of several leading international news sources, and performs an elaborate process of weighted linguistic analysis on the text contained in their top news stories. After this process, conclusions are automatically drawn about the hour's most important words. The top 100 words are chosen, along with 100 corresponding images, culled from the source news stories.

Then hop on over to Wordcount an interactive presentation of the 86,800 most frequently used English words created by Number 27. Brilliant work. Ah, what the heck, visit here as well.

That Apple Thing. I've been getting lots of comments and questions on my comments on Apple. Here's an edited response with the caveats a) I’m not a lawyer and b) haven’t been able to get a copy of the lawsuit.

Apple’s Lawsuit, if they continue with it, will be an unfortunate test of who is and isn’t media, fifth amendment rights, and the power of the blogsphere.

Apple’s ‘news power’ comes less from PR itself and mostly from the stunning products and business models it has launched (although they do some pretty smart things). More than anything Apple is riding a wave of innovation and market success – and those of us have been around long enough know that the wave does break at some point. When this happens they might wish they’d banked a little more goodwill in the blogsphere.

Having spent the last 17 years trying to keep products under wraps till launch I do empathize with Apple. But suing journalists for reporting will do nothing to stop this happening again. Sure it’s easier to pick on the little guys but this hardly sets any example for big media (who wouldn’t have been sued if they’d done it). And, I’m not sure the little guys could buy the resulting publicity. So why not focus on re-emphasizing to employees the importance of keeping products under wraps and leave it at that (I would be with Apple if they fired the employee that leaked the information).

The notion of Bloggers as Journalists is worth a longer conversation – in the blogsphere. I don’t think we should confuse the two - although someone can clearly succeed at being both. Nevertheless, they should have the same ‘rights’ to free speech, reporting with perspective, protecting sources etc... Yes! Thanks to Katie Payne for flagging this story on the Bloggs vs. Journalist debate.

That the one company that has so long stood for the right things now stands for limiting free speech is a tragedy. To anyone that owns and Apple and loves the brand, the notion that this is nothing more than a PR stunt is asinine. There are better and more subtle ways of working with the fans that feed you. Forbes said it well:

Apple's current lawsuit alleges that "Unauthorized disclosure of product news diminishes the interest of both the mainstream and trade media in the launch of a new product."

Huh?

Can you think of another company whose product news garners more coverage--regardless of unauthorized disclosures--from the geek and mainstream media?

See you later in the week.

News & Views Jan 17

Companies would be so much smarter for using Smart Cards. The Merc has a cover story on the use of Smart Cards by the military - all very similar to my days at Sun (the Smart Cards - not the military). The overall solution was so much better than the conventional badge access used by many corporations. My Java Card - as Sun calls them - allowed me access to the building and also served as my primary security log-on for computing. I just slid it in my Sun Ray and bingo, there was my compute session just like I left it. The WSJ also covers this in today's Technology Report with a story on the savings resulting from Sun Ray-like technologies. These devices are as much a productivity boon as they are a cost saver.

Looking Back At Apple Week. It's amazing to me how effective Apple's PR machine has become. Or maybe how wrapped-up in Apple the media and public is these days. Apple is locked in a seemingly unstoppable positive news cycle.

First, let me say that I'm a die-hard Apple fan and Powerbook user - and I'm nothing like these guys - and I'm not about to switch Skyler! But I found last week's announcements underwhelming. The new cheap desktop seemed to be a refresh on the Cube - albeit tipped on it's side, encased in metal and much cheaper (the Cube started at around $1800). This isn't a cheap desktop though. This is a cheap desktop. Or this. While not many Journalists picked-up on this, the Merc did take a look at iLife and the new iPod shuffle. Neither particularly innovative products. I do like and recommend iPhoto and iTunes but have little interest in the rest of the package and wonder why I am forced to buy them.

It also bugs me that there is still no specific launch date for Tiger and that none of these new products were on display at the Apple Stores over the weekend. From my POV this is a massive marketing oversight. I get the whole "building buzz" thing but believe we've moved to an increasingly real-time marketing environment. No one but the die-hard fan (that's me) is going to keep coming back for second looks. The rest of the market simply moves on. Tip For Communicators #1 - Make Sure People Can (At Least) Experience The Products You Launch! Apple has done a good job of this on the Web, but what's the point of the Apple store if I can't experience new products there with all the evangelizing power of the best trained retail team in the business.

Tip For Communicators #2 - Build An Awesome Demo Foundry! Both Bill Gates and Steve Jobs' demo crashes also continue to be a talking point. One thing I will be eternally grateful of at Sun was the quality of the demo team - they were simply the best. All communications teams should be investing in a 'demo foundry' that brings cool technology to life. An in between keynotes they can produce stunning content based on their technical smarts and insight - take a look at Sun's Science Notes...

Hi-Tech Marketing Confuses Marketers - No Kidding! I'm on a bit of a Merc roll. Great story via AP on how Tech marketing confuses customers.

High-tech companies don't release products anymore, they provide solutions. And those solutions don't simply run a program or play a song. Instead, they enable experiences, optimize agility or make people's passions come alive.

Say what?

Here are some of the worst offending buzzwords highlighted by AP:

Solution: Instead of making a product or offering a service, technology companies "provide solutions." Whether the solutions solve actual problems is a different matter. Bandwidth: Technically refers to the capacity of a communications line, but is now used much more broadly. For example, people might say they don't have enough "personal bandwidth" (translation: time) to do a project. Paradigm: An example or model. Scalable: The ability of a computer or system to get bigger, typically as more users are added. Synergy: Usually means that combining forces produces a better product - although that's not always the case in the software world. Also seen in reference to corporate mergers. Robust: Implies that a product is bug-free and will work under rigorous circumstances. In many products, this claim can be debated. World-class, best-of-breed, bleeding-edge, state-of-the-art: Variations on the claim that this is a unique and superior product. E-anything: Something that is now being done online or in another electronic space, such as e-commerce or e-mail. Win-win: A deal where everyone allegedly benefits.

Tip For Communicators #3 - Scan For Hollow Words and Phrases. Take five or so of you most recent press releases, web articles, brochures and scan for the repeat offenders. Circulate the list and get them out of your materials.

The Naked Corporation & Communicator. Interesting opinion piece by Gordon Crovitz of Dow Jones in the WSJ this morning looking at new proposed rules from the SEC that will allow Internet broadcasts of IPO roadshows. Well about time! Technology will continue to drive transparency, leveling the playing field just as it has done before.

In the mid-1800s, James Rothschild foretold the impact of the Internet. His family had become the world's leading banking institution by setting up offices throughout Europe, gathering intelligence and delivering it in private letters by courier and sometimes by pigeon, tipping one another off to the latest news. They used this confidential information to move local markets. But Rothschild began in the 1850s to complain, "The telegraph is ruining our business."

Crovitz also makes some interesting points on the nature of financial markets as early adopters:

Technology changes tend to revolutionize the financial industry first because it's early adapters in the markets who can most easily justify the effort and expense of embracing innovations. Wall Street was the first neighborhood to be "electrified" by Edison, and after the lighting of offices, an early commercial use of electricity was to power ticker machines that sped financial information (often originally transmitted by the telegraph) to traders and brokers.... It may take some time before our culture can adjust to always-on information. James Rothschild called it "a crying shame that the telegraph had been established," delivering market news even as he took the waters on his summer vacation. "One has too much to think about when bathing, which is not good," he wrote. Our wired, 24/7 world gives us the unprecedented privilege of limitless access. It also imposes new obligations on us to become more informed and, as regulators yield to the tide of information, to make the most of our new knowledge.

Citizen Journalism Site To Debut. Via Steve, TakeBacktheNews.Com will debut next week.

And then there is this little doozy... My faith has been restored in the media...

Have a great week!

In Hot Water...

This entry falls partly into the big gripe, Tom Peteresque - "why can't companies be insanely great" or even try category. Having just spent a good hour trying to get someone to take a look at a Heat'n'glow fireplace (glowing so much you could heat Los Gatos) and an AO Smith water heater (glowing too little) my frustration cup overrunneth...

First, their web sites are visually OK. But if they would apply some basic rules they actually might fall into the barely working category (same category as their products):-

1. If I click contact, guess what, I might want to call you. So provide a phone number. I'm not interested in your stupid email forms and then sitting waiting for a response (it's been six hours now). This same advice goes for all the phone companies - like duh! you think they'd want to encourage more voice and less data traffic... Also, categorize your contact information - not all dealers are ever the same so why should I have to do the leg-work to find one that will work for me.

2. Make sure your fields work. AO Smith's warranty field just doesn't work. And make sure they work on multiple browsers. And, don't overdo them. Make them brain dead simple - like, "what's your email", and, "what's your problem".

3. Update your site. I mean really update it. Having called dealers listed on both sites only to find out they don't either service the equipment or are no longer dealers, I can only assume that neither company has the most basic grasp of what is on their site.

Ongoing service needs to be viewed as integral to the brand experience. Post sales is where most of the brand experience happens. My experience of both companies product and service is now so tainted it's unlikely I would recommend buying either their stock or products. Companies need to realize that while we buy a product we only borrow or rent the brand. I might have to keep what I either inherited or bought - but I don't have to ever come back to the brand.

Moreover, the Participatory Communications Revolution means that we all now have a voice - the web has been turned into a massive recommendation engine. It's time more companies focused on recommendation as a measure of success - it's the metric that can really capture how good you are doing on total brand experience. These guys get an F so far and can have their brands back.

Moving On

Today I announced that I’m moving on from what has been an incredible three years at Sun. When I joined the Company I was handed a huge challenge and together with the team we stepped up to it. All of them - from media and analyst relations through events, marcomm and Diana on the web - can take a lot of credit for helping all those connected to Sun understand that the turnaround is afoot and that Sun is back.

I want to thank all my team – Sun-side and agency-side - for all your support and friendship over the past three years (about ten years in the real world :-). Your kind words over the past day mean a huge amount to me. I am immensely proud of all we’ve done together and the perceptual change we’ve been able to drive in the market. The real story will be told by you as you shine a light on Sun’s successes – and what the new Sun stands for. We’ve built an amazing foundation on which that story can now be told. You are an immensely talented group and I'm certain you will continue to build on our successes and momentum. Take care of each other – I’m proud to have been able to work with you all.

This wasn’t a decision I made lightly. I have huge respect for Scott (and all of Sun's leadership team) and believe Sun is back on offense, so the time is right for me to make my next move.

This is undoubtedly one of the most exciting times to be a communicator. A confluence of technologies – from blogs and podcasting to wikis and digital media - are radically changing marketing, supply chains and how buyers/consumers make decisions. The web is a platform that is changing forever the way communications occurs (citizens as journalists, commentators and pundits is the earliest sign of this change). New communities of influence are emerging.

It's also a huge time of personal change for me as Kristen and I look forward to the arrival of a baby girl in April.

So now you’ve got a hint as to where my head is heading... Keep an eye on my blog for announcements.

I’ll also pen a longer note in the coming weeks on my time at Sun and some of the things I learnt. It’s an incredible company staffed and led by some of the brightest minds on earth. It’s a company with the right strategy, and the right leadership - all at the right time. Ok – so not everyone gets this but as the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer said "All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident."

Kia Kaha!

Pew Report On Blogging

Worth a read.

By the end of 2004 blogs had established themselves as a key part of online culture. Two surveys by the Pew Internet & American Life Project in November established new contours for the blogosphere: 8 million American adults say they have created blogs; blog readership jumped 58% in 2004 and now stands at 27% of internet users; 5% of internet users say they use RSS aggregators or XML readers to get the news and other information delivered from blogs and content-rich Web sites as it is posted online; and 12% of internet users have posted comments or other material on blogs. Still, 62% of internet users do not know what a blog is.

Blogs On the BBC

Great story on blogging over at the BBC. While essentially a short primer it reinforces my view that participatory journalism and the growth of social networks on the web change everything.

"We are entering one era in which the technological infrastructure is creating a different context for how we tell our stories and how we communicate with each other. "

Andrew Nachison, Director, Media Center

Current growth rates are just stunning ~

US research think-tank Pew Internet & American Life says a blog is created every 5.8 seconds, although less than 40% of the total are updated at least once every two months.

Also, Dan's last column at the Merc runs today. We'll miss his reporting on all things tech at the Merc but I am sure see more from him here.

Gartner Buys Meta

And the consolidation continues as Gartner buys Meta. Wonder what probability we should assign to the likely success of this one... and the the value of the combined information?

Stunningly, Gartner valued Meta at $162 million on $122 million of revenue. Wonder how they get there given the nullifying of duplicative services by customers?

Anyway, good luck to all my friends at both.

A Wing & A Prayer

Dan comments on the airline debacles over the weekend. (Actually, he breaks the news as far as I am concerned - didn't read this anywhere else.)

Having just spent an unreasonable amount of time travelling between San Jose and Kansas City I have little sympathy for troubled airline employees. They are the root cause. Lousy service, lame marketing and appalling attitude come together to make this possibly the worst service experience one can pay for.

While checking in, my bag made it all the way to the conveyer and was heading nicely to the plane. Now my wife had filled it with Christmas loot so it was pretty heavy (Thomas Keller's new book, Bouchon, weighs a ton). Anyway, I pointed out to the AA employee at the desk that she might want to tag it with one of those heavy labels - I didn't want anyone getting hurt lifting it. She promptly grabbed it and pointed out that I need to pay $25 more due to the weight. That's the Christmas spirit! That's the way to treat a multi-million mile, Exec Platinum member! That's the way to treat someone who is actually looking out for you. That's the way!

Tom also points to the fact that few of these employees show any kind of initiative.

I'm thinking that what we need is a virtual fine system. You can select your airline and virtually fine them for their behavior. Other players would watch that the fines are reasonable and the system isn't being manipulated. Then we announce each month the worst violators. Anyone want to help me code it?

The good news is that two market forces are at play - choice and convienence. Two signals of commoditization. Now that the big airlines have lowered the bar so much there is little to keep me from fleeing to Jet Blue and Southwest (and soon Virgin - yeah!) other than all my miles. But here is the rub with them. Once you get as much as I have, you actually don't care.

If the Government inisists on bailing out airlines, lets also throw out the execs that got them in this mess. And let's take a hard look at the Unions protecting such appalling employee performance. Better still, lets suffer through a period of time in which Darwin gets to swing the axe and this mess gets well and truly sorted out.

It's time for a change.

Ten Ways Communications Will Change In 2005...

I've taken a shot at a few predictions for 2005 - with a particular bent towards communications and blogging. These are more a list of thoughts (some a tad repetitive), in no particular order, that I've been noting over the past couple of months. Here goes:-

1) Blogs become a prime-time communications vehicle. (Thought I'd start with an obvious one.) Communicators begin to grasp that blogging isn't about 'reach', it's about participating in and facilitating the building of communities. Community building becomes the new mantra for communications professionals.

For the present, most still miss this point but generating Opportunities To See (OTS) via traditional media is increasingly considered against the backdrop of the ability of blogs, RSS and direct content feeds to speak to audiences in a more meaningful way and set the news agenda.

All that talk about the death of advertising and rise of PR... it's true. Blogs are effectively tipping fuel on this fire. A recent article on Sun said it well ~

"Opening the company up to external scrutiny by launching a raft of blogs, for example, is doing more for the company's image than any ad campaign ever could."

Audiences are thought of in new terms resulting in 10-20% of big budgets shifting to viral campaigns and the blogsphere. As ad budgets shift, so do communications budgets. Communicators recognize the effectiveness of cascading information from informed influencers to the mass market. A new set of 'Super Blogs' force communicators to invest time with rock-star bloggers.

Comms teams fund bloggers - some inside their company, some outside - to blog events, shows and happenings (happening today in some places).

And... Blogging becomes the new must-have ingredient in communications plans. Blogs break at least three of biggest stories in Tech, much to the chagrin of online sites and big media. Blogs are increasingly used to level the playing field by reporting corrections to inaccurate reporting. Blogs start to be used for the posting of interview transcripts and notes.

2) Media and audience fragmentation continues to accelerate. Podcasting. Webisodes. Blogging. Everything changes more. Traditional media's power to reach audiences continues to be diluted by new technologies which more effectively reach target audiences. Skills transfer becomes important as communicators in all sectors start paying more attention to their colleagues in political comms and lobbying who have deep experience of grassroots communications. More big revolts happen in the blogsphere as the manipulators turn-up the noise. Less savvy communicators continue to stumble around drawing the wrath of bloggers.

3) Managing how news is triangulated becomes as much of an issue and managing the news itself. Communicators struggle with how to use, manage and monitor news aggregators who are pulling together content using either people, machines or algorithms as all the news that isn't fit to print reaches hundreds of millions of eyeballs.

4) Company news sites become massively content-rich and important distribution vehicles. Company blogs will aggregate to the corporate news page providing stakeholders and media with a direct view of what's going on inside. Video costs will continue to plummet driving richer content to the web. Sites start to feature streaming audio and 'podcasting' as a news distribution tool. Communicators start building content assets.

5) The revolution in communications procurement and supply chains continues. Agencies and consultants face more law suits related to billing. While most of these are as unreasonable as those occurring today, they force the industry to double-down on supply chain management and reporting. Dynamic bidding will become a component of 90% of all major contracts (and agencies will put up futile resistance). Agencies continue to struggle with differentiation at the highest level.

6) Measurement sophistication increases. The shift to understanding the impact of communications over the output continues. Output equals OTS while impact equals business outcomes, changing minds, influencing decisions, and moving markets. Energy shifts to the latter. The first communications dashboards start to hit the market.

7) More people get fired for blogging. But more get hired. If you are posting outside of guidelines, without consent, or without commonsense, you are asking for trouble. Debates rage over whose responsibility it is to monitor internal blogs. Dealing with blog related issues takes-up an increasing portion of corporate communicators time. More corporations create official blogs. Then they start enabling customers to blog. And, if you're good enough, the customers even start making your advertising for you, or paying for it - expect more of this. Unfortunately too many will be "flobs" - fluffy marketing hype masquerading as blogs.

8) The First OpenSource Analysts emerge (both industry and financial). Smaller niche analysts, CIOs, sys-admins and developers start to aggregate their smarts and intelligence, providing insight, advice and content once only available from the big three. Rather than projecting the wisdom of the firm, these blogs focus on drawing knowledge out of the IT community.

9) Brand Experience becomes a major consideration for all communicators. Not branding, brand experience. Communicators will increasingly come to grips with how a company's communications are a defining element in determining brand experience. In effect, communications is part of the product. Virgin gets this, AA doesn't. Bad brand experiences manifest themselves more quickly and visibly in blogs and recommendation engines posing a new communications challenge for all marketers. A friend relayed a great example of this. Apparently reviews of the Ford Windstar as reported by new mothers (citizen journalists) on the Palo Alto & Menlo Park (PAMP) mothers web site are terrible - mothers telling mothers, "don't buy one", with all the authority of Car & Driver. The local Ford dealer is probably wondering what the hell is going on and pouring more money into advertising - all to no effect? Macro communications issues manifest themselves in micro environments courtesy of the web.

And here's a counterview - brands become more important. As technology drives conveinence, brands have more appeal than ever. Call them what you will - lovemarks, brands, passionpoints... (yuk)... there will be more of them and more of our decisions will be driven towards them.

10) OpenSource Publishing will continue apace. Communicators will look to harness the power of their communities, aggregating blog content into a powerful, sponsored publications - some will challenge the traditional trade-media news dynamic by breaking news and providing deep insight. Long relegated to 'last call' status, communicators are forced to pay real attention to local media and citizen journalists backed by online-publications that give their voice a real reach. Media call-down lists will start to include bloggers.

Big prediction. We have entered the era of Participatory Communications. The ability of big media or the PR elite to control communications is on the decline. Communications power has begun to shift back to communities and will only accelerate in 2005.

So, this is a starter list - I'm also thinking through one on the technology shifts that will change the way we communicate (little more geeky). Give me your thoughts and comments. Would be great to continue building out the list.

Watch The Persuaders

Frontline have posted the full show. A must watch for all communicators.

My only gripe was with the assumption that PR people were too scared to participate. So, someone approaches you with an idea that is clearly going to be less than favorable to your industry... but the good news is that you get to set it all right. Um, Yeah, Ok. Or, as the delightful student at Starbucks said to me today when I pointed out she had made me a Late and not a Cappuccino - "Like, whatever".

Maybe the PR folks actually heeded their own counsel. Now that's a first! And a few of the ad folks would have been smart to seek PR counsel.

Anyhow. Entertaining viewing.

I Wish...

Lot's of lists floating about at this time of the year. This one really caught my eye. Adam Penenberg has penned an pretty interesting list of what he hopes will happen in online media during the coming year.

I was really intrigued for by the first two. The challenge of copyright and licensing of content will be one of the defining issues of the coming year. Looking at Google's news portal - as I do each day - it strikes me that most of the publications will be overjoyed with the visibility Google gives them (I mean it's not like I was visiting RealEstateGates.com, Radio Free Europe, or the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner). But it will be a defining issue for the big guys.

The second concerns the evolution of blogging. His second para is something I'm especially conscious of. Too many blogs, this one included, spend too much time ruminating on news rather than reporting, creating, or commenting on it. The great advantage of RSS is that I get to see what you have to post when you have something meaningful to post. Frequency isn't the issue. Expect to hear less, but more from me in the New Year.

Quick Blog...

From NYC where I'm to judge the PR Week awards, see customers and drop by one of our agencies. I was intrigued to read that Starbucks is about to start serving muffins. Was thinking about how stupid this is (in brand terms) and then stumbled across Laura's blog which pretty much nails my view...

The answer is not to mess with success. Strong brands stay focused. Strong brands stand for singular ideas in the mind. Starbucks should stay focused on coffee. Look at the success of their recent Pumpkin coffee promotion. So forget the egg muffins Howard and stick to the great coffee.

Down in New Zealand our coffee houses (and we have more, better, cooler of them than anywhere here) serve stunning food and even better coffee (when you have a 'long flat white' you'll understand). The combo works well. The coffee house is a destination for a snack, lunch or, a cuppa. There the brand experience is defined also by the food served. All kinds of eclectic twists result.

But how an english muffin - the 'same' English muffin available at McDonalds - with carefully manufactured ham and cheese improves or adds to the (my) Starbucks brand experience escapes me. When we, the customer, said we wanted food, I think we meant, well, food.

But then I do have like $40 left on my Starbucks card... who would have thought a company could get you to prepay for your daily addiction all under the guise of convenience... and... the other reason I'm such an enthusiastic shareholder is their ability to move on from mistakes quickly - remember those milkshakes a couple of summers ago. Great idea but they subjected us to interminable waits for our daily fuel. The things we have to put up with to get going in the morning...

Nurses Rock...

At least in terms of honesty according to Gallup (sign-up for the 30 day free trial to read more). TV reporters (#15) faired slightly better than Newspaper reporters (#16). Advertising practitioners ranked one above car salesman... ouch. According to Reuters...

Car salesmen brought up the rear with only 9 percent rating their honesty and ethics as high. That was one point lower than for people in advertising.

Journalists did not fare much better in public approval. TV reporters (23 percent) and newspaper reporters (21) ranked below auto mechanics (26) and nursing home operators (24) on the list.

Now there's an idea...

James over at Redmonk points to an interesting response from one British entrepreneur to the BBC story on the effectiveness of email as a communications vehicle. Simply ban it.

Not sure that would work at Sun but would definitely free up a couple of hours each day! Actually, about a quarter of my day according to a study by the American Management Association. Hmmmm... that's like two movies, at least one sail around the Bay or even a big lunch in the city.

I should be getting a fee...

For my unending promotion of Lakoff's book "Don't Think Of An Elephant". Holly Yeager at the FT (the site with the annoying log-on and pop-ups) penned a short piece on it today.

And here's another from The Chronicle on how the Democrats are looking at Lakoff's advise.

"It's all about words and craftsmanship,'' said Rep. Sam Farr, D-Carmel, of Lakoff's advice. "He shows us that we ought to take the Republicans' words and show why they don't work, why they just aren't so.''

Taranto at the Wall Street Journal writes some of the first criticism of Lakoff's thinking - or at least the implementation of it.

You see the problem: It's not as if the Dems don't already do what Lakoff is recommending. Indeed, the supposedly groundbreaking insight this professor of linguistics and cognitive sciences is offering is nothing more than a commonplace of political rhetoric: Generally, it is good to describe things you're for in favorable-sounding terms and things you're against in unfavorable-sounding ones.

The Dems seem to think Lakoff invented euphemism and dysphemism. Judging by the examples in the Chronicle piece, we'd say he isn't even very good at employing them. "Public protection attorneys" as a euphemism for trial lawyers is simply laughable. (Actually, "trial lawyers" is a neutral term; it has negative connotations because trial lawyers have a bad reputation.) Calling same-sex marriage "the right to marry" seems unlikely to persuade anyone that the definition of marriage should change.

Fair point. Bottom-line is that while Lakoff's recommended words might not be ideal, the process and thinking he has developed remains as powerful as ever. And as an observer of the latest election, did the Democrats need a message that more clearly resonated or what?

Master/Slave...

Reuters reports that master/slave, as used in the computer industry, was the most politically incorrect term of the past year.

We found 'master/slave' to be the most egregious example of political correctness in 2004," said Paul JJ Payack, president of The Global Language Monitor.

"This is but one more example of the insertion of politics into every facet of modern life, down to the level of the control processes of computer technology."

In computer terminology, "master/slave" refers to primary and secondary hard disk drives. But a Los Angeles county purchasing department told vendors in late 2003 that the term was offensive and violated the region's cultural diversity. The county's department of affirmative action undertook a hunt to replace it on packages.

Well, that changes everything.. In our terms it looks like this...

The V6M6HS baseboard consists of a VME master/slave interface, global DRAM, a local 100 Mbyte/sec PCI bus and four TDM (Time-Division Multiplexed) serial buses for inter-module, inter-board communications.

Now I can't remember ever using the term in a press release but it's definitely well used (pops up all over our site). So email me your alternatives.

Thankfully it wasn't the only offender:-

The phrase "non-same sex marriage," was used by a former congressman who did not want to offend gay people by using the term traditional marriage, Payack said.

Also on the list this year were "Red Sox lover," to use in place of "Yankee hater," "progressive" for classical liberal, "incurious" rather than more impolite invectives for President Bush, "insurgents" instead of terrorists in Iraq, "baristas" for waiters, and "first year student" rather than freshman.

Media Trends...

stumbled onto a good synopsis of media trends... pretty broad and misses most of the blogsphere. Here's a quick summary:-

1) A growing number of news outlets are chasing relatively static or even shrinking audiences for news. (more to read...)

2) Much of the new investment in journalism today - much of the information revolution generally - is in disseminating the news, not in collecting it. Most sectors of the media are cutting back in the newsroom.

3) In many parts of the news media, we are increasingly getting the raw elements of news as the end product. This is particularly true in the newer, 24-hour media.

4) Journalistic standards now vary even inside a single news organization. Companies are trying to reassemble and deliver to advertisers a mass audience for news not in one place, but across different programs, products and platforms.

5) Without investing in building new audiences, the long-term outlook for many traditional news outlets seems problematic.

6) Convergence seems more inevitable and potentially less threatening to journalists than it may have seemed a few years ago.

7) The biggest question may not be technological but economic. While journalistically online appears to represent opportunity for old media rather than simply cannibalization, the bigger issue may be financial.

8) Those who would manipulate the press and public appear to be gaining leverage over the journalists who cover them. As more outlets compete for their information, it becomes a seller's market for information.

To which we can add:-

9) The transformative economics of the Web drive micro publishing to new levels,

10) Participatory Journalism and the "evolving personalized information construct" change everything, and

11) Audiences, driven by mistrust of media, increasingly turn directly to the source for information, and; the source, empowered by the web has the capability to "print" in real time.

Email Isn't the Problem...

Gerry Griffin shot me this story (which features him) on the ineffectiveness of email as a communications tool. Gerry's onto something here. Email isn't the problem. Neither is it's ubiquity or volume.

The problem is that the average employee takes little time to communicate effectively. Or, they haven't developed the skills. Or, like it has for many, email has become like an arcade game in which we win by shooting the bastards down as they flood our inbox. What is said matters less than the quickness of the finger. This eventually develops into a deep form of gaming addiction in which we have to be ready 24x7 to fire!

Here are eight of my rules:-

1. Do your best to restrict email to a couple of windows every day. Don't sit there hammering away. Your communications effectiveness generally declines the further you progress through the pile;

2. Use the title bar to headline you email. And make it entertaining;

3. Take the time to write short emails - you know how it goes - didn't have time to write a short memo so here's a long one;

4. Use rules to eliminate the junk and sort newsletters and the like into a reading folder;

5. A mentor of mine - Michele Moore of Dell - taught me the trick of the 'tickler file'. I have one in my directory and drop into it things that can be dealt with later or that need to be chased;

6. Doing both 4) and 5) unclutters your inbox and gives you room to focus of communicating;

7. Never email in anger (do as I say, not as I do...);

8. Clearly articulate the decision or action you require in the first sentence.

Remember - you don't do email. You communicate.

(btw - Gerry is an ace media trainer - best I've seen. I've learnt a ton from him.)

Entertaining Look Into Media Revolution... Maybe...

Lotsa hype but well worth a look. Perhaps the longest webisode I've ever watched while not being aware of who it was by. What this points to is eerily likely.

Pegasus News is a really cool notion. An interesting exploration of the future of news. Both point to the transformative effect technology and citizens and, "the evolving personalized information construct", will have on the future of public relations.

Pegasus News is a local news company that is reinventing the model of local market content and advertising. We intend to launch our new model in every major U.S. city with a monopoly newspaper -- for starters.

Our beta test will take place in Dallas, Texas in late 2005. We will distribute content via a website, e-newsletters, RSS feeds, a daily print edition, SMS messaging and any other medium we can think of. Except for carrier pigeons. They smell bad.

btw - there is many a day when I wish the media as I know it didn't exist... :-)

A little PR crisis brews in the blogsphere...

A few folks are pointing to this item for sale at Target...

This looked like it first popped on Saturday. Now if someone had been participating in the blogsphere - let alone tracking company postings - they might have picked this one up.

Why Blog?

In the past few weeks I've been asked several times by journalists, "Why Blog?". The question is a fair one. Most suspect it infringes on work that should be getting done or fun that should be being had. Some regard it as bizarrely self indulgent. Others look on it with a certain suspicion, as if we 'citizen journalists' are pulling readers from their publications.

In answering the question let me give you a few caveats. First, I generally don't blog during working hours - I'm just too busy. Second, my blog is purely personal with a business bent. It's not sponsored by my employer, Sun - although I could have much more easily and inexpensively taken advantage of our corporate blog platform. Third, this is my second, more successful (by my own terms) attempt at blogging. And fourth, I don't subscribe to the notion of "citizen journalists" - I'm guided in my writing by neither the professional reporting rigor or writing standards of a working hack. It therefore seems unfair to co-opt the term. With that said and done, here is why I blog...

1. I love to write. Just love it. And this is a great vehicle for doing just that. Pure and simple. I don't do all my writing here. But I do do some of my worst.

2. I'm intrigued by the unique twist blogging affords the blogger to engage in a dialogue with really smart people. I get to explore and share ideas - and for my time I get a return in the form of emails and comments. The investment is a small price to pay and I get a much accelerated thinking cycle for a much smaller time investment than that available to me via speaking opportunities and the like. My blog is also a forcing mechanism, driving me to think harder about issues and ideas.

3. My blog has become an archive of sorts. I blog to create a little library of ideas, links and content. Better here than buried on my hard disk. Here the links quickly triangulate other ideas and thinking.

4. This is the most effective electronic medium to stay in touch with my team, friends and professional colleagues. I simply point them to my thoughts and ideas. Emails get buried in the daily avalanche. I'm not sure that anything in hard copy can find them in our flexible office environment. I'm also finding that I'm getting thoughts and comments from across the organization. This is interesting. Email scales well vertically. Blogs scale anyway.

5. The blogsphere will only survive if people write as well as lurk. I genuinely believe it is going to transform my profession - communications; and industry - technology. As my big boss says, better to be the windshield than the bug. So, to be the windshield - sort of.

Harry Eyres crafted an interesting piece on writing journals for the FT Weekend Edition a couple of weeks back with the great title 'A kind of manure kept in a box'. The FT Weekend edition has become one of my favorite reads. He poses the question 'Does journal-writing foster a sterile self -absorption that is simply a waste of the writer's time?'. Good question for those journaling in their Moleskine. Eyres answer is no.

My journals are not intended for publication - in fact they contain highly sensitive material I would not want anyone else to read. But though they are private pages, they form the background to much of the more public writing I do.

Ok, from time-to-time our blogs are a little self-indulgent. But on the web the blog/journal is an open door and fire starter. More than anything, and like Eyres, my blog forms a backdrop to my thinking.

The question that quickly follows "Why blog?" is "What's the benefit". I'll answer that one soon...

News To Go...

It wasn't going to take long but a number of companies are now providing RSS readers and connectivity for mobile devices. Check out 79BMEDIA if you have a Blackberry. Check out this project to get your RSS via SMS and here for WAP. Standalone has a reader for you Treo users.

It's all a little geeky and not for the luddite (yet), but its getting there). Nooked seems to be carving out a leadership position in the communications space.

MoBlog...

Take a look at MoBlog... terrific idea for sharing all those moments captured on a mobile phone. Thanks to Alfie for the heads-up.

I'm wondering if this isn't also a platform for communicators of all sorts to quickly distribute images from events and other happenings. While we can do this directly to our sites today I really like the idea of the images landing in a community who are, well, interested in the visual over the written. The opportunity to extend the reach of those images will be even greater - a kind of citizen Corbis.

I experienced the power of this when Mary blogged images from our SunNetwork event in Shanghai. Her blog was a much more efficient means for us to get images in the hands of media back home.

I can see the speed only accelerating as we capture images on one megapixel and above phones and beam them directly to the web.

Get A Clue...

I find all the log-ons to media sites incredibly annoying. OK, it's a small price to pay for all that wonderful content.. um... yeah...

Seems that the FT could do with some PR help though. UK journalism site Journalistic points out that to access FT press releases you need to, well, register. So much for transparency.

Surely this is a SNAFU they'll be quick to fix. The very notion that you need to buy the product to get information about the company is absurd.

This isn't their only PR gaffe of late. Spin Bunny points to an incident in which:

Andrew Gowers made a glowing speech about  the success and planned future success  of the esteemed publication. But then the daft bugger went backstage, forget to take his clipmike off and the whole audience heard him take a call on his mobile.

Amongst the tirade of abuse dished out as commentary on how the meeting had gone, he was heard to dismiss it as the usual load of bollocks and a waste of time.

This is actually one of the things I love about the blogsphere - there is just nowhere to hide.

Desperate Marketing or ApologEvent?

I don't watch that much American football - to me it represents the triumph of project management over sport. So it wasn't much of a surprise to see ABC pulling all kinds of stunts to attract viewers.

ABC Sports apologized Tuesday for an "inappropriate" opening of the Philadelphia Eagles-Dallas Cowboys Monday Night Football telecast involving a sexually suggestive locker room meeting between Eagles wide receiver Terrell Owens and ABC's Desperate Housewives' star Nicollette Sheridan.

So, ABC issues an apology - but to who? The dads and teenage boys watching - who probably loved the stunt? Or to all the mothers and women - my guess, but probably not watching the stunt but rightly pissed as the moral ineptitude of it?

I'm all up for creative stunts as a key ingredient in any marketing campaign. I've never watched Desperate Housewifes' but have been subjected to the advertising. I wonder if this isn't a a misplaced stunt - not only misplaced in terms of audience targeting and timing but also in terms of audience sat - why attract people to a show that they ultimately won't enjoy...?

Rudy Martzke hits on the miscues well:-

• The skit was carried at the start of MNF at 9 ET in the East when many youths still are watching. That's 6 PT, when even younger kids might be watching with their parents.

"It was sexually blatant in the family hour," said Charlotte viewer Will Hawkins, 68, who has a 12-year-old daughter. "It crossed the line. ... I turned the whole thing off, and I hope most of the sensible people did."

• The segment was shown despite NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue's crackdown on entertainment acts on NFL shows since CBS-owned and -operated stations were fined $550,000 by the FCC for the baring of Janet Jackson's breast during the Super Bowl halftime show.

There is no question that this represents bad PR for ABC. They were quick to issue an apology - good move. But I wonder if they listened to their PR teams prior to executing the stunt? The counsel here should have been pretty straightforward - "this might seem like a cool stunt but in the wrong slot, targeted at the wrong audience and we're trying to re-negotiate our contracts... and its really going to offend people... remember that Madonna thing... don't do it." I wonder if brand/advertising people actually engaged here - would be interesting to know.

Whether they were or not, this demonstrates the gaping void between advertising execution and smart and sensitive public relations. Unless of course this was all a carefully executed media stunt.... Cuban makes this p0oint - are these simply "apologevents".

The environment is perfect for both of us. We want as much media coverage of our programming as we can possibly get. You need things to cover. So here is the deal. From our end, we are going to create “Apologevents”.

An Apologevent is where we plan an event that we know we will have to apologize for.  The Apologevent will be designed to entice all the “Im shocked by anything” viewers to call their local stations, their newspapers and of course Inside Edition, The Insider, etc to remind them of how inappropriate the Apologevent was and how shocked they are.

Juvenile...

Now sometimes we're accused of being a tad juvenile over here in Sun PR (it wasn't me that tried to stick the "HP UX, Rest In Peace" tombstone in front of HP HQ this Halloween!)...

I'm glad to see others engage in similarly witty behavior - seems O&M let their domain ogilvymather.co.uk expire last week. Viral agency Asa Bailey nabbed it and then posted this little gem in place of the usual, incredibly stimulating and illuminating, corporate Ogilvy 360 degree brand management stuff. Pepper has the full story.

As Tim pointed out to me, not the first time this has happened. One monday...

A quick aside, it was O&M that apparently created these ads for Ka - they deny doing so. The cat ad is just plain mean while the pigeon is an all time classic... scroll to the bottom of the page for links...

Ford's European operation and Ogilvy & Mather, its advertising agency, began an investigation into how a proposed ad — which both insisted had been rejected — had begun circulating on the Internet.

The car maker said the advert was conceived as part of a "viral" campaign, where short videos are released on to the Internet and redistributed by e-mail, as people find them funny. But it insisted it was not meant to be developed. As an alternative, a clip showing a comedy pigeon being thwacked by the bonnet, had been chosen.

"It was done as a proposal somewhere deep down in the bowels of the agency," Ford said. "As soon as we saw it we said absolutely not. We are appalled — this is not something we want to be associated with."

Not the first time this happened either. Nokia headed down an equally sick but amusing track with this little number. What do European ad agencies have against cats?

My point here is that a) no agency or comms team is infallible (and that we're mostly sick); b) too much great work gets lost in the bowels of an agency and c) marketing can be fun afterall...

Better go renew those domain names folks. Have a great weekend!

(btw... while you're wasting time, take a look at the latest episode of Inside Jack...)

Tiring....

All this nonsense it getting to be too much. Advertising is dead. Branding Is Dead. Everything is dead... Oh my goodness... Give me a break. Seems all you need to score a page in a prominent magazine is to declare something dead. The blogs are entertaining though...

Proclamations such as these cloud what is really happening. We're going through one of the most challenging, energizing periods of change marketing has ever seen. eMarketing is redefining the cost structure. Citizen journalists, blogs and the web are altering the information landscape. Buyers are becoming active recommenders and reviewers. New brands are being created at a faster and faster pace, and being made to a broader and broader audience. And the Long Tail is changing the way we think about our inventory, distribution and product mix.

Nothing is dying. It's all changing. It's all alive and well. It will all be very different. Sleep easy.

I wouldn't have known if I hadn't read a blog...

Foot in mouth, another media outlet mouths off about how blogs aren't important... And TV is? Who watched CBS this week? Tell me, honestly... About 11% of the country watches broadcast TV right?

What's really interesting is that I wouldn't have known that blogs wern't important but TV was if I hadn't read a blog. Sigh!

Persuasion...

Thought The Persuaders was great. A little disappointed it didn't probe more into public relations - it started getting there towards the end.

I'm not sure if it is true, but O'Dwyers claims that PR Execs went to ground when asked to participate. (also blogged by Pepper). Sounds like nonsense to me. And, if it was true, why not report that on the show and flag the "shadowy world of PR"? 'Journalists' aren't normally that slow to miss an angle as good as this.

PR EXECS GO UNDERCOVER

The Public Broadcasting System will air "The Persuaders" on November 9 to explore the inner workings of the marketing and advertising businesses.

The program intended to have a PR focus, but PR executives refused to "go public" about what they do, Justin Vogt, a producer at ‘Frontline,'" told O'Dwyer's.

This website met with three "Frontline" producers earlier this year, and provided a list of top executives for the program to contact. "They were very informative, but would only speak off-the-record," said Vogt.

Kevin Roberts, CEO of Saatchi and Saatchi Advertising, is among those interviewed by correspondent Douglas Rushkoff. Roberts talks about the importance of establishing an "emotional connection" between consumers and brands.

Doug Atkin, of Merkley + Partners says effective advertising goes beyond emotions. Marketers are trying to create a passionate zeal for their products equal to "cultists or religious fanatics," he said.

Atkin considers General Motors' Saturn unit a "mass cult brand," pointing out that more than 45,000 people a-year spend part of their vacation time visiting its car plant in Tennessee.

Social critic Naomi Klein scoffs at emotional branding, saying that in the end it is about choosing a laptop or a pair of running shoes.

Recently read Kevin Robert's book Lovemarks - a Tom Peterish rant on the future of brands - which from my POV is mostly correct. One point he makes that I find communicators struggle with day-in and day-out is that most if not all products are at parity. We all dream of launching the break-away product but few get to. So, why does so much of our communications work focus on the product and not the brand experience?

What was also interesting for me was how the media we're clearly jumping on this. The NYT's ran a story on Clotaire Rapaille this weekend. And aside, why journalists think Rolls Royce is still a status symbol is beyond me... Anyway...

Here's Rushkoff's blog.

The Cascade Of Influence...

Old communications rules said that information cascades from the most reputable source outwards - in a very linear and exclusive fashion - often based on a media scoop. Thus, we sought to influence the most important folks in our respective ecosystems.

New rule. Listen to the ecosystem. Information emanates from inside the ecosystem. Thoughts, observations, news... they all are replicated and filtered. And the more they are, the more they reach outwards towards the masess. Linear communications models are dead.

There is a great example making it's way around the web. Steve Rubel has captured it nicely on the IAOC website.

The Kryptonite Bike Lock Company is one who should have listened. Consider the following chain of events. On September 12, 2004, a forum poster at bikeforums.net noted that he can open his Kryptonite lock with a Bic pen. One day later, one of his fellow bikeforums.net forum members posts video of lock being picked, verifying the salacious claim. Before I go on with the story, think for a moment what might have happened had the company been listening and using monitoring tools and had learned of this incident while it was in this early embryonic stage. They might have been able to have prevent what happened next.

On September 14, Metafilter – a group edited site - picked up the trail. This was quickly followed by Engadget and dozens of other bloggers. Still, Kryptonite remained silent, probably unaware of the tsunami that was at their doorstep.

Finally, just a few days after the initial forum post, the story leaped into the mainstream media with a story on September 23 in The New York Times. “The Pen is Mightier Than the Lock,” the Times headline screamed. Finally, only after the New York Times ran their story, did the company awake from its slumber and post a statement on their Web site. But by then it was too late. AP and dozens of other media outlets had picked up the trail.

While I am offering my own perspective on this, the message is the same. Communications will be less about communicating and more about listening. Thanks to Steve for a terrific story... RSS his site, well worth the read...

Real-Time Recommedations...

In continuing to think through how we measure communications effectiveness I keep coming back to the notion of recommend - something our COO and President, Jonathan Schwartz inspired us to think about.

As communicators we get caught-up in all kinds of abstract terms. Terms like Reputation. Which normally involve substantial research to do justice to. What I like about Recommend is how practical and real it is. "Would you recommend Sun?" is much easier to get a handle on than "What do you think of Sun's Reputation".

You can also capture Recommend scores very quickly and cost effectively. "Social' recommend engines are a fountain of data and insight. Pew just did some more work on their growing influence and, the increasing participation of people in them:-

Pew Internet & American Life Project: Rating systems

Twenty-six percent of adult internet users in the U.S. have rated a product, service, or person using an online rating system. That amounts to more than 33 million people. These systems, also referred to as "reputation systems" are interactive word-of-mouth networks that assist people in making decisions about which users to trust, or to compare their opinions with the opinions expressed by others. Many Web sites utilize some form of this application, including eBay, Amazon, Moviefone and Amihot.

The usage patterns the report reveals point to a future in which decisions will be increasingly made based on recommend by third parties. The informal ecosystem of unpaid reviewers.

An earlier Pew Internet & American Life survey conducted in 2003 showed that 44% of
U.S. internet users above the age of 18 have contributed their thoughts and files to the
online world. This group of users, made up of more than 53 million American adults,
has participated in posting photographs, written material, or audio files to Web sites,
maintained their own site, ran a Web cam, or undertaken some other method of adding
content to the Web. That same survey found that 13% of internet users have their own
Web site and 21% have allowed other users to download files from their computer,
including music and video files.

Ultimately we are going to have to communicate with even more influencers. This is going to require scaling communications beyond 1:few. Blogs and Wikis have much to offer here. For me this is a good thing - Lee says it well,

The more voices that are in the mix, ... the better off everybody is," said Lee Rainie, director of the Pew group. "There's more wisdom in groups than there are in individuals no matter how expert they are."

I'm not suggesting that online rating engines are a panacea - but they are a useful, real-time tool that communicators, for the most part, do not use today. Take a look at how you can incorporate Recommend into your dashboard using them as a source. It will also increase your relevance in the executive suite.

New Mag...

launches... looks like another Fast Company. Oh God save us!

Actually I'll hold all comment until I've read a hard copy which should arrive by snail mail sometime this decade - unless I see one in the mail room in which case I'll steal it (all in public interest of course). Will Worthwhile be worthwhile...?

Watch what you write...

You might get fined... I'm not sure but Mark Cuban's fine by the NBA might be the first tangible punishment doled out to a blogger (other than gettting fired!).

(Quick segway while we are on flying... I know the flights to NZ cost a fortune but this is ridiculous.)

Anyway, Mark can't get fired... fined yes, fired no. Here's how the BBC covered the Queen of The Sky... A Delta employee fired for including photos of herself at work - kind of at work - but just the same...

Queen of the Sky, otherwise known as Ellen Simonetti, evolved into an anonymous semi-fictional account of life in the sky.

But after she posted pictures of herself in uniform, Delta Airlines suspended her indefinitely without pay.

Ms Simonetti was told her suspension was a result of "inappropriate" images. Delta Airlines declined to comment.

Complaint lodged

"I was really shocked, I had no warning," Ms Simonetti told BBC News Online.

"I never thought I would get in trouble because of the blog. I thought if they had a problem, someone would have said something before taking action."

Thank goodness we don't have to wear uniforms. What were the NBA thinking! The one thing they need is buzz and they seem determined to kill it... It really wasn't that bad. Really. And you can guess where I sand on the firing...

All this points to is the need for companies to have a widely published and simple blog policy. Like, "don't do anything stupid or disclose anything that is confidential - but if you want to support us in your free time, have at it".

More to come.

This Is So NFB.... This is So NFB....

One of my team (thanks for the heads-up Steph) was just asked by a hack if an event we're holding is 'off-the-record', NDA, or NFB? ...NFB?

That's "Not for Blogging" folks. And I am sure it's going to be asked more and more. Apparently this jounro had just been instructed that an event was NFB - which is totally understandable if it was under NDA or OTR. If you know what I mean.

Seems companies are not just worried about something appearing in print over time - an event that might actually, dare I say it, be able to be 'managed'. Now they are also worried about an event being spontaneously blogged, live from the floor.

My view is in general, lets leave it up to the media - if they feel a blog can offer a new or different perspective, have at it. This is less of an issue with a formal event where the real-time view from the floor is better than reading about it three weeks later. Say a JavaOne or a SunNetwork.

It's more of an issue with the informal get-together. Here you've got to have the the confidence that journos will exercise common sense as to the appropriateness of blogging a portion of any event - however big or small, formal or informal. Information taken and delivered out of context is as bad as lies, drivel and misrepresentation.

It's going to be a real challenge for PR to define a NFB policy. OK, we can just say it. But doesn't that undermine the value of blogs in the first place? Why hold an event and not allow blogging? In fact, as I discovered a year or so ago, you'd better have a WiFi network in place to enable it. Wouldn't a ABP (Always Blog Please) be better for transparency?

But now that you've asked, our events are totally blogable... unless we say otherwise :-)

The New Tipping Point?

If you haven't read Chris Anderson's piece on the Long Tail you'd better... Usage of the phrase are popping up everywhere. The Long Tail has many other names - like, "The Network Effect". Or, is it "Viral Marketing".

Actually, Chris has crafted a very unique view of how the web coupled with the infinite inventory and access of the web are driving new purchasing behaviors and market phenomenon. This is actually incredibly stimulating as a notion for all marketers. It points to the need to look beyond the 20% that account for 80% of the revenue towards the massive incremental revenue potential of scaling the 80%.

To get a sense of our true taste, unfiltered by the economics of scarcity, look at Rhapsody, a subscription-based streaming music service (owned by RealNetworks) that currently offers more than 735,000 tracks.

Chart Rhapsody's monthly statistics and you get a "power law" demand curve that looks much like any record store's, with huge appeal for the top tracks, tailing off quickly for less popular ones. But a really interesting thing happens once you dig below the top 40,000 tracks, which is about the amount of the fluid inventory (the albums carried that will eventually be sold) of the average real-world record store. Here, the Wal-Marts of the world go to zero - either they don't carry any more CDs, or the few potential local takers for such fringy fare never find it or never even enter the store.

The Rhapsody demand, however, keeps going. Not only is every one of Rhapsody's top 100,000 tracks streamed at least once each month, the same is true for its top 200,000, top 300,000, and top 400,000. As fast as Rhapsody adds tracks to its library, those songs find an audience, even if it's just a few people a month, somewhere in the country.

This is the Long Tail.

Something to Say...

Why is it that those who have something to say can’t say it, while those who have nothing to say keep saying it?
               —Anonymous

I recently sat on a CMO Council panel in lovely Monterey. It occurred t me as I sat up there with my fellow panelists how different this was from keynoting an event. And, that we really only train our spokespeople on how to deal with keynotes.

Guy Kawasaki's latest book - The Art Of The Start - is indispensable for anyone looking for proven counsel on communications basics. If you are too cheap to buy a copy, take a look on Always On - he covers the basics of sitting on a panel really well. Here are the first four:-

1. Control your introduction. Bring a copy of your bio and hand it to the moderator to introduce you. Don’t depend on what the moderator came up with. And, like in speeches, cut the sales pitch about your organization. To make your organization look good, be an informative panelist not a loudmouth braggart. (Note from me ~ write this in a single paragraph. I'll often hand my biog to the moderator and rather than reading the first para they go on, and on, and on... do as I say, not as I do).

2. Entertain, don’t just inform. Answering the moderator’s or audience’s questions is only half the job of a panelist. The more important task is to entertain the audience. You can do this with a penetrating new insight, humor, or controversy. Always be asking yourself, “Am I being entertaining?” (Note from me ~ this goes for keynotes as well. Scott McNealy and Steve Jobs probably have this down better than anyone. Too many CEOs forget that in most instances - the audience paid to be there!).

3. Tell the truth—especially when the truth is obvious. Most people expect panelists to lie when they encounter a tough question, so if you don’t lie, you establish credibility for your other answers. (Note from me ~ and don't talk about anything you even vaguely think you shouldn't talk about. It's just amazing to me how often an executives brain disengages from the mouth and all kinds of things that really shouldn't be said pop out.)

4. Err on the side of being plain and simple. Often a moderator will ask a technical question, so the temptation is to answer with a technical statement. This is usually a mistake. Keep it plain and simple: Enough to show that you know what you’re talking about but not so much that it makes you incomprehensible to 80 percent of the audience. (Note from me ~ that means if you have to read your slides you shouldn't use them. If the audience is reading while you are speaking then you just introduced a level of complexity you don't need.)

Get to Always On our Barnes & Noble for the rest... I'll drop my full review of The Art Of the Start up here when finished. In the meantime, also get a copy of The Highest Goal by MIchael Ray. A real stunner. Hey - you might even get free shipping for buying both at once.

Control Room...

If you haven't seen it, Control Room is well worth a look. Revealing look at Al Jazeera. This reinforced my view that news is a product rooted in the ground from which is was birthed - it's biased and subjective. The more extreme the reporting, the less objective it becomes. And, it's a product subject to as much manipulation by media relations pros as ever - many of whom are seemingly oblivious to the trade they ply.

Communications Opensourced...

A NYT Article on Newton fanatics got me thinking about how the blogsphere is effectively the open-sourcing of communications.

As ''The Cult of Mac'' notes, Newton loyalty has attracted the attention of the academy. Albert Muniz, an assistant professor of marketing at DePaul University, has been studying ''brand communities'' for about a decade. Our real communities, it has been said, are disintegrating. We don't know who our city councilman is; we shun P.T.A. meetings; we've never met our neighbors. But Muniz argued in a paper on the subject (written with Thomas O'Guinn of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) that brand communities, ''based on a structured set of social relationships among admirers of a brand,'' are real communities. He acknowledges that it's more typical to cite the culture of consumption as something that undermines social togetherness rather than creates it. ''But our point of view is: This is a human phenomenon, we are social beings,'' Muniz says. ''If community gets lopped off over here, it will emerge somewhere else.'' Groups of Saab, Bronco and Macintosh admirers -- all studied by Muniz and O'Guinn -- even possessed ''a sense of moral responsibility'' (albeit a ''limited and specialized one'').

As communicators we foster both communications within and to our communities - internal and external. Increasingly though, (at least in high-tech) the most important communications aren't occurring from the company but by it's communities. There is no question constituents turn to company web pages for basic information such as news releases, financials, etc - by important I mean in a deeper way than just information. The dialogue that shapes the way this information is perceived is increasingly occurring outside the company firewall and domain within the community through blogs, wikis and other vehicles.

As the NYT story points, this will inevitably lead to our communities transcending our brand lifecycles and corporate directions.

Some companies will do everything they can to manage the dialogue - to shut down dialogue on dead products. At best all they will be able to do though is enable it.

Illumintating...

Dan Gillmor's latest post is illuminating. I recieved a similar note from a different PR firm pitching their blog 'manipulation' - sorry, 'influencer', and measurement services. It's in the round file on the floor.

We would all be wise to spend time understanding what the blogsphere actually is. It's a conversation. And a rich one at that. It requires listening as much as it does 'speaking'. If you can alter the debate by participating in it - more power to you. But I fear that the communications tool-kit used by most to shape and respond to online debate is going to be of little use in this new world. I'm more and more convinced that you don't manage the blogsphere - it's unmanageable. Your only hope is to embrace the sphere, participate in the dialogue or watch from the sidelines.

Media tracking services are as much a commodity as blog tracking services - with a difference. Blog tracking services are actually less valuable in that the dialogue moves at light speed. Your tracking is out of date before your report on what is happening. Aside from that, tracking is much less valuable than participating.

Just as traditional journalists (thanks for the link Dan) point to their role as the gatekeepers of news, I hear more and more PR people complaining about their declining role as the transmitters of the news. Get over it. We're at about an hour before daybreak for a new era in public relations and news reporting. It will be interesting to see the impact on traditional news wires as we reach the inevitable tipping point where news comes to us first through the blogs in our RSS reader.

This new era is going to place a greater onus on PR folks to really know their content, position and evidence. It's going to require that they have a point of view - not just their executives or product people (maybe they'll align, maybe they won't - maybe it would be nice if they didn't from time to time?).

And, I don't say this lightly, it's going to require agencies really raise the bar. To participate in the blogsphere they will need more than experience, executional savvy, content and writing skills - they will need content and subject matter knowledge. Agencies will then need to free their pros from the tyranny of hourly billing rates to engage in the dialogue - not just for their clients, but for themselves. What a new business tool that is going to create.

OK, so now I've upset a whole lot of people off I'm going to get back to work...

The game is afoot.

For The Record...

Awhile back Dan Gillmore made an interesting suggestion. Steal a leaf out of the playbook of Don Rumsfeld and post all interview transcripts to the web. This was a terrific move on his part and I think sets the standard for all public officials.

Aside from delivering total transparency on what actually happens in interviews - which, surprise, surprise, generally bears no relation to what gets printed in the article - this would have the added benefit of leveling the journalistic playing-field. So to speak. And we get to see not just what the media what to print, but also what the interviewee wants to say.

Quick segway - what will also happen is the slightly less savvy PR pro will alter transcripts and post them to the web as the official record - as Mr Rumsfeld's team did - thereby creating a whole new news cycle and story. (thanks to my old colleague David Chamberlin for shooting over the link).

Now, nearly every journalist I've polled on this idea has been vehemently opposed to it (except Dan of course). No surprises there. What is surprising to me is some of the more the extreme views. For instance, you can't post the interview even after the article has been published because it's (and I quote), "my intellectual property". Um, yeah, right...

Pissing off journalists is generally bad PR practice so I'm not sure who will make the first leap to doing this, but it will happen. I'm definitely more keen on recommending it to our management team and here's why.

An article by Glasser in the the latest issue in the Online Journalism Review (and Tim Porter's blog) has an interesting piece that points to the attitude of traditional journalists. Seems Mark Cuban felt a little hard done by given an article published by Kevin Blackistone, a Dallas Morning News sports columnist. They'd exchanged emails in March about Cuban's basketball team, the Dallas Mavericks - part of which was published... Mark felt Blackistone quoted him out of context (that's never happened to an exec before!), so Cuban published Blackistone's original email to him... And the story goes on.

Glasser asked Blackistone what he thought of this...

"I didn't think much of being surprised by having what I thought was a private exchange with Mark Cuban posted on a public Web site. That is a reason I stopped responding to readers years ago, because I discovered they started posting my personal responses to them on message boards."

As Tim rightly points out this was a public exchange so he shouldn't have been surprised. What this really points to is a general reluctance by traditional media to open the window to the reporting process and expose their bias towards the story or the subject matter. Why not let the facts shine - someone once said that sunlight is the best disinfectant. Today, blogs and web make it incredibly economical and easy to shine sunlight on stories.

This is where publishing transcripts could get really interesting. It would be much better to simply publish all transcripts post publication than selectively address stories that somehow piss you off. Or, here's a novel idea, why don't the publications make the entire transcript available on their web site - in raw form.

Nixon was wrong, the press isn't the enemy. Lack of transparency is.

Media Bias & Fair Speech...

This is one of the more popular topics in the blogsphere these days. Tends to peak with every election and then dies down. Now, as a PR pro, anytime I talk about media bias or point out acts of sloppy journalism - which are generally far exceeded by acts of sloppy PR - I'm pretty quickly dismissed, heckled, or ridiculed. In this respect, Bloggers are quickly becoming my people (OK - not really, but you get the point).

Pressthink got me on this train of thought, focusing on Chris Satullo's, editorial page editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer, story on bloggers... Cries of 'media bias' hide sloppy thinking (Philadelphia Inquirer, Sep. 26, 2004).

Rather's mistake was sad, but no watershed. This aging anchor is no more the embodiment of journalism than Paris Hilton is a typical farm girl. Mainstream media is a term so loose as to disqualify any assertions that follow it. Let's, by all means, discuss how journalism falls short. Let's explore how it can flourish in media new and old. But let's see the screaming about media bias for what it is: at best sloppy thinking, at worst Orwellian poison.

But spare me the chatter about bias. Of course the media is biased. Get over it. Journalists, bloggers, and even PR pros should revel in it.

Media conglomerates are not a synonym for journalism. They employ some journalists, and many who only pretend to be. They enable the craft, but also inhibit and cheapen it.

The great journalists rise above the fray. They report. The product might be biased, doesn't mean all journalists are. And this is where PressThink's manifesto is right on. We need to rise above media and fully comprehend the importance of Press.

Satullo is right ~

Journalism, done right, buoys democracy; hence its place in the First Amendment.

This point is going to play out in the blogsphere. I wonder how many executives are not blogging because they lack the rights to speak freely and pursue absolute transparency? In fact, any enthusiasm they might have for speaking openly is being restricted by new legislation.

Andrew Gordon in PR Week hit on this in a story regarding Siebel -

SAN MATEO, CA: Siebel Systems is defending itself on First Amendment grounds against a charge of violating Regulation Fair Disclosure - claiming it violates companies' rights to free speech. The enterprise-software maker raised the defense in its mid-September motion to dismiss a charge brought in June by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), according to the San Francisco Chronicle. "Regulation FD works an unprecedented and remarkably sweeping infringement of corporate speech," the Chronicle quotes the motion as stating.

Other PR Pros seem to think this would set a dangerous precedent by allowing companies to hide behind the First Amendment. I think the reverse is true. There is less chance of anyone hiding today than at any other point in the history of business. Hide where? Transparency is the new watchword and the requirement of any legislator should be to foster it by encouraging free speech, not limiting it... So to steal and reframe from Satullo:-

Business, done right, buoys democracy; hence free speech for executives should have an equal place in the First Amendment. Or, in the words of Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, "If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies, to avert the evil by the process of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence.

Reputation Online...

If you've bought a book on Amazon you've probably glanced at the review by Amazonistas. If you've bought from the eBayistas you've no doubt scanned their ranking. This real-time definition of reputation by the customer will eventually become one of the dominant drivers of sales for us all. The convergence of reputation management and eCommerce is inevitable.

Lee Gomes explores this in his Monday column in the WSJ - sorry, subscribers only - but it's worth every cent... seems the economists have drawn a link between not only reputation and the ability of a seller to sell, but also the price they can command...

But not only is reputation important, Prof. Cabral found, but it affects the prices sellers can charge and the amount of merchandise they can move.

Triangualtion 2...

Len and I had an interesting exchange on my thoughts on Triangulation. Here is a slightly edited chunk from our banter...

I live in the birthplace of the American space program. Yesterday I watched the X-prize winning flight of SpaceShipOne on the computer streamed from space.com while every local station broadcast irrelevancies of pop culture (eg, Regis and Kelly interviewing the main guy from a Bravo show). To wit, the major news broadcast networks have become entertainment driven by ad revenues. History in real time comes to us over the Internet. Having grown up watching every flight from Mercury to the latest Soyuz flights, this is a bit disappointing.

Blogs aren't news. But news isn't news either these days. The two most prominent victims of the web revolution have been scholarship and now journalism. As we keep looking for more novel ways to shred the natch, the web looks more like the atmosphere: ubiquitous but a very thin layer.

My tenet is that anything can be news so long as it is expedient and viewed as such by the 'viewer'. This is the distinction between news as a product (big media) and content, information, and diatribe. Blogs can contain news but they aren't solely a news vehicle. What is really disappointing - and I Len makes this point well - is that reporting of news that doesn't fit with the mainstream news product or economics is increasingly being left to professional amateurs - and sometimes professional journalists who are using their own product. Which might be a good thing. A really good thing.

That's classic Boltzman entropy; information is addressable or isn't.  Information isn't knowledge. Triangulation is a good way to put it. The abdication of responsibility by the networks, and the intensely localized and indiscriminate blogging has made the ability to discriminate priceless and personal.   It's been repeated so many times as to be almost noise now, but the problem isn't choosing but how choices are chosen. We now have networks like Fox that select and tailor to a particular political point of view, and a dammed narrow one, yet the distribution power is such that it becomes the chooser of choices.

Blogs like web pages require selectivity.  The neighborhood effect kicks in. The web can make us goofy.  Who has time to read enough?  Who can afford not to?   The problem of very high rates of feedback is destabilization.

One of the things that consistently amazes me about blogging (other than the fact that people actually read my blog) is that people way smarter than me take the time to pen me thoughts and responses that are hugely educational and illuminating. Thanks!

Get The Message...

For about, well, nine years now I've been working a book on messaging. The basic tenet has been that companies, organizations need to master the art of messaging, not just to attract attention and change minds but in order to effectively compete. And, that messaging - as lead by communicators will dwarf the spend and effort put into traditional brand processes.

The two current hot-points in messaging are framing and the challenge to the Universal Message. These two notions together are perhaps the most powerful combination in communications today. They underpin the most effective of messaging campaigns.

UC Berkeley Professor George Lakoff has produced one of the best pieces on framing - essentially the art of using messaging as a competitive tool. Also see his interview on PBS.

Language always comes with what is called "framing." Every word is defined relative to a conceptual framework. If you have something like "revolt," that implies a population that is being ruled unfairly, or assumes it is being ruled unfairly, and that they are throwing off their rulers, which would be considered a good thing. That's a frame.

Parallel to this another movement has been hammering away at the need for a single message to underpin the brand. This notion has been the rainmaker for many a consulting firm who has delighted in pointing out to their clients (read victim) how many messages they have and thereby how messed-up they are. Let's call this the plee for the Universal Message.

Recently a cat-fight broke out in Ad Age between the 'positionistas' and McDonald’s CMO, Larry Light. Larry said at an AdWatch conference he was abandoning the universal message concept in favor of a “brand journalism approach”. No more one message for all. Instead, brand journalism:

“...is a chronicle of the varied things that happen in our brand world, throughout our day, throughout the years. Our brand means different things to different people. It does not have one brand position. It is positioned differently in the minds of kids, teens, young adults, parents and seniors. It is positioned differently at breakfast, lunch, dinner, snack, weekday, weekend, with kids or on a business trip.

“Brand Journalism allows us to be a witness to the multi-faceted aspects of a brand story. No one communication alone tells the whole brand story.

“Each communication provides a different insight into our brand. It all adds up to a McDonald’s journalistic brand chronicle.”

For me, this idea is an interesting one. Laura Ries thinks it's pretty silly.

The notion that McDonald’s should abandon the positioning philosophy and instead adopt a brand journalism approach is lunacy. Brand journalism is just another name for an approach that has been tried and has failed many times before. It is the everybody trap. Brand journalism attempts to make a brand appeal to everybody by using many different brand messages. Brands that try to appeal to everyone end up appealing to no one.

Now while I take her point, the notion Larry is getting at points to the need to infuse brands with meaningful messages and deeper storytelling. Most brand marketers get it wrong. There is clear evidence that a single message presented in an unrelenting integrated marketing campaign winds-up dull and boring. But that doesn't mean message diversity (driven by audience diversity) replaces the need for a clear and decisive position.

So, where I do agree with Laura is that while every company has multiple audiences we need to prioritize them and speak more to one than any other. They are the audience that defines the brand. In McDonalds's case, that's kids (I think). But lets not confuse focusing the marketing effort with focusing the message.

This is a fascinating debate. In converging these two trains of thought - framing and universal messaging - you get at the tenets of effective communications:-

1. Messages must resonate with a single audience first and foremost. They must speak to someone. Everybody is nobody.

2. Messages must be dimensionalized through storytelling. One message can live in many stories, for many different audiences.

3. Messages are being used today to frame competitors as effectively as they are being used to frame brands. Simon Phipps recent blog looks at how Sun's competitors have been doing this to us (the bad news). The good news - we've figured this out! Actually, we've been doing it better than most for a very long time.

4. Even for framing to work, it needs to be underpinned with deep storytelling. Even if that storytelling is, well, a story. You can compete with framing through storytelling.

5. Messages need to be part of the product experience - the experience that can only be had and held by an individual. I liked what Burger King's ad agency was reported to have done with the doors on stores - they had them open either way and then marked the door the the brand message "have it your way". Brand + experience + message. This is a little superficial but you get the point.

Maybe I'll just blog the book... more to come...

The Image...

The image in image is sorely neglected by most communicators. We tend to focus on the words, laungauge and story, often at the expense of the most powerful form of communication - visual. NYTs has a fascinating look at how image is being used by the two political contenders and a witty analysis of the two logos. Actually, it's pretty damning:-

The American flag in the Kerry-Edwards logo is the biggest gaffe of all. Although it has the requisite 50 stars, there are five rows of 10 stars, rather than the correct arrangement of five rows of six stars and four rows of five stars. It looks like a mistake - not a stylized interpretation, like the flag in the Bush logo.

Self Reliance...

Interesting read from the NYT.

Knowing that you can always call for help in an emergency makes people feel safer. But they also tether people more closely and constantly to others, and in recent months a growing number of experts have identified and begun to study a distinct downside in that: cellphone use may be making us less autonomous and less capable of solving problems on our own, even when the answers are right in front of us.

Replace cell phones with email and you've got the same challenge. The more people are connecting the less self reliant they are becoming. While I agree that the best decisions are made through a set of dialogues total connectivity shouldn't be used as an excuse for accountable decision making by the individual...

The Naked Communicator

Awhile back I gave a keynote at a PR event downunder on how the combined effects of legislation, heightened responsibility and the web were stripping communicators and corporations bare. Part of the thesis was inspired by Don Tapscott's great read, The Naked Corporation: How the Age of Transparency Will Revolutionize Business.

His new transparency portal is live. The thesis is straightforward - transparency is triggering profound changes across the corporate world. Firms that embrace transparency will thrive, and those that ignore or oppose it will suffer.

Transparency is far more than the obligation to disclose basic financial information. People and institutions that interact with firms are gaining unprecedented access to all sorts of information about corporate behavior, operations, and performance. Armed with new tools to find information about matters that affect their interests, stakeholders scrutinize the firm as never before. The corporation is becoming naked.

Corporations that are open in response to these pressures perform better. Rather than something to be feared, transparency is becoming central to their success. The best firms have clear leadership practices that others can adopt. They understand that investments in good governance and transparency deliver significant payoffs: engaged relationships, better quality and cost management, more innovation, and improved overall business performance. They build transparency and integrity into their business strategy, products and services, brand and reputation, technology plans, and corporate character.

And that is great news. We've done a few interesting things at Sun. First, the depth of information we provide at earnings is unlike many of our peers. Second, we're also ensuring the behaviors we require are understood through Fiduciary Bootcamps. Third, we're opening our doors, virtually, through blogs. And, we're one of the sponsors of Don's project. Jonathan Schwartz also has in interesting piece on the site.

That's why, in our view, real corporate transparency means going beyond financial statements. It even means going beyond the walls of the company and into the minds of the men and women who are Sun. It means learning what they're doing, saying and thinking about the firm, its products, it community and its future. To enable access to some of our most personal thoughts, Sun encourages employees to participate in publicly-accessible blogs.Blogs bring investors, developers, partners, customers and others who are interested in the soul of this corporation, onto the desktops and into laptops of the folks who make Sun run. No holds barred. Sun blogs let us engage in public discussions about everything from products-in-process and corporate strategy to the prospects-for-world-peace.

Speaking Without Powerpoint Part 2...

Some interesting pointers from Chip Scanlan @ Poytner (ok - couldn't resist that)... on creating a great speech and more tid-bits on PBS...

Lucy Morgan, the Pulitzer Prize winning Tallahassee Bureau Chief for the St. Petersburg Times, divides the speech story assignment into four basic steps:

1. Look for the news. "If the governor or whoever is proposing something new, that's likely to become the lede ... We also look at other content and perhaps how it figures into what the person has done in the past."

2. Check the facts. "You'd be surprised how many people are wrong about something -- sometimes it's as minor as quoting the Bible when the Bible didn't say that!"

3. Gauge the response. "Was the audience asleep or really into it? And where possible we ask them what they liked or disliked -- sometimes they hear things we didn't realize were there."

4. Performance Review. "We also look at delivery -- the gimmicks used to attract attention. Many politicians today use a gimmick that was probably pioneered by Reagan -- having a person in the audience who is an example of something he's talking about."

On 1). This is critical. Look for the headline. And on 3) if you are a speechwriter you should be facing the same direction as the speaker. It's the only way you will be able to tell what is working and what isn't. I can't tell you how many times I see the speechwriter in the audience staring gleefully at the presenter while the audience is, well, snoring...

Triangulation Of News...

My earlier exchange with Stephen Shankland got me thinking about how we triangulate news.

Once upon a time a single news story from a single news source would influence audiences in a profound way. Media relations pros obsessed over the big hit in Forbes or the Wall Street Journal - we argued for hours over who would lead with a story. Sometimes this lead was negotiated as an exclusive. Other times as an advance. Inevitably, outlets targeting narrow audiences (Slashdot for developers, for instance) ranked way down the priority list. They were dealt with but normally after the news broke elsewhere. And normally in anything but a timely fashion. Inevitably this resulted in calls from extremely pissed off journalists.

To some extent SOX and other forces have dealt to this phenomenon. But news aggregators and bloggers are a more powerful force in the transformation of news delivery. They're turning the business of news - and the business of public relations - on its head.

In my RSS reader the New York Times feed is followed by NPR. Then Dan Gillmor, Slashdot, C/Net, Tekrati and Pressthink - Mark Cuban and Tom Peters follow somewhere after that. I've got well over 100 feeds and generally step through them over my morning coffee - well before looking at the Google News NZ edition. Glancing at Google, my news sources range from Reuters and BBC News to The Pakistan Daily Times, The Malaysia Star, and National Geographic. I have a very unique ability to triangulate news.

But, the engines that underpin the news portals don't necessarily reflect the logic or prominence of the media. Nor do the blogs. Blogs tend to be a useful source for triangulating breaking news - wired news. Google news tends to be a little more tired. Their utility is that I can triangulate news in a nanosecond.

As a result, the effectiveness of the leader and media selectivity for public relations practitioners is dead. You could work hard to negotiate the 'positive' exclusive with NewsWeek or Time, but if sitting right beneath the story in my RSS feed is a sneak preview from a geek at Gizmodo, the strategy starts to fall apart. And some of you are smart enough to know that a geek review at Gizmodo is as authoritative and credible as any mainstream journalist (most of the time and with the exception of Mossberg at the WSJ). And if they aren't, I could quickly triangulate it anyway.

In fact, the blog is (arguably) quickly becoming a more credible source for 'fresh news'. I'm really interested in the new Treo 650 (why they wouldn't put Bluetooth in the Treo 600 is beyond me). I don't look to mainstream tech rags or even the company's web site. I look at Gizmodo where an early preview resides. A quality look in fact with a link over to treocentral. and suddenly I'm in not such a rush to own one.

While I haven't seen any research that supports this, I suspect readers instantaneous ability to triangulate news places an even greater onus on media relations teams to get the news out to all the outlets relevant to their audiences in a fairer and more systematic way. If you look at the example above you will also see the need to manage a much deeper and more powerful ecosystem. Content isn't buried in newsgroups any more, it's on the web in living color.

Non traditional news sources are now need to be a key component of companies' communications strategy. Not doing so in my mind reduces the credibility and impact of not just the news but also the company.

And as readers, we will look for diversity of opinion and reporting style. There couldn't be a greater contrast than The Register and The Wall Street Journal but I value them equally as sources. And they are one tab, blog - and one RSS feed, away from my cursor. Media are coming under greater pressure to report accurately and with smarts. Dan Rather can't hide from sloppy journalism. No one can.

New news channels call for new strategies. Effective communicators will increasingly look to instigate a direct dialogue with their audiences and communities outside of the press release or any particular media outlet.

Enter the blog. And as the blog spreads virally through the media food chain the reader can triangulate content, determining the credibility and importance of the news on their terms. News will become less engineered by public relations teams and much fresher.

A new information ecosystem is emerging with new critters altering the food-chain. And some will end up extinct.

B2.0 On Blogging...

Nice piece in Business 2.0 on blogging featuring our very own Jonathan and James.

Have Blog, Will Market Business 2.0, 9/30/04; Thomas Mucha

Jonathan Schwartz is a blogging addict. He is also the president and chief operating officer of Sun Microsystems (SUNW) -- a company at the forefront of a new marketing and communications trend that mixes blogging with business. (For the rapidly shrinking minority who don't know what I'm talking about, a weblog -- or blog -- is a personal journal on the Web that's devoted to politics, science, product reviews, or just about anything else you can imagine.) In his corporate blog, Schwartz, naturally, covers the world of Sun. In his latest entry, which focuses on a trip he took last week to Wall Street, he juxtaposes snippets of his Manhattan dinner conversations with Sun's recent work on "radical form factor compression."

The Sun president's Web writing style -- open, honest, ever geeky -- is a hit. Schwartz's blog reaches more than 100,000 readers per month, a number that has grown exponentially during the blog's three-month existence. "I'm stunned by the breadth of it," he says. Surprise aside, it's easy to see why a busy bigwig like Schwartz might take the time to operate what some view as a nerdish hobby. "It is an efficient way for me to have a focused, one-on-one conversation with thousands of people -- shareholders, customers, employees, and the digerati that circle this industry," Schwartz explains.

The blogging COO is not alone, even at his own company. Sun's chief technology officer, James Gosling, runs his own blog too. So do the company's top marketing manager, chief technology evangelist, and hundreds of other lowly Sun employees. Technorati, a San Francisco-based company that studies traffic on the emerging "blogosphere," reports that today there are about 5,000 serious corporate blogs that, like Sun's, have the backing and at least some participation of senior management. The blogging trend itself is pretty mind-boggling: Technorati tracks more than 4 million blogs and says a new one is created every 5.8 seconds. And a study by the Pew Internet and American Life Project found that more than 53 million people -- 11 percent of all Internet users -- have read or contributed to blogs. So it's no surprise that marketers want a piece of the action.

Shankland Speaks...

Got a few responses on my earlier blog on how news makes the front page. The smartest of which came from Stephen Shankland of C/Net who disagreed - sort of - with my comments on Google news.

"In some ways, Google News is richer than any single news outlet, but the flip side is that Google News favors stories that are widely reported. It's a convenient algorthim that screens out a lot of fringy bunkum, but it also means you miss stories that are important but that the media herd hasn't trampled to yet. In other words, you only get the news that's already a commodity. I'm not sure that disadvantage offsets the advantage of seeing a broader pool of editorial sources."

He's right - You get the news everyone is reading when everyone is reading it, but you don't get the news first. So for us news hounds the onus is still on to dig for news sources that have a tendency to break the news rather than aggregate it. And as far as breaking the news go, Shankland along with Ashlee Vance at El Reg, are amongst the best. No pandering to PR people there - they actually clock the hard miles looking for news...

Speaking Without Powerpoint...

I recently spoke at an IABC conference on Six Sigma in communications. A few of the audience weren't too keen on my dislike for the Sigma obsession sweeping corporations. The "Hate it, Hate it, Hate it" comments really set them off. That didn't surprise me - after all, they'd paid to here someone wax poetically and enthusiastically on Sigma. (Don't get me wrong, you should use Sigma!)

What did surprise me were the comments on the feedback forms that I should use PowerPoint. No particular reason. I just should. Afterall, that was what they were paying for! Take notes? Forget it, I want slides to take home. (Quick reminder folks... most of us speak for free.)

PowerPoint has become an unnatural obsession of communicators. We've totally lost track. What we have to say can only be supported by what we have to show. What we show can't be what we have to say.

Bibek reminded me of my frustration with slideware over real content (just imagine the Gettysburg Address as Powerpoint). And Tufte nailed it. You should definitely buy/read/steal (not from my office) any/all Tufte's books. Wired also said it well. PowerPoint Is Evil. Power Corrupts. PowerPoint Corrupts Absolutely.

"Yet slideware -computer programs for presentations -is everywhere: in corporate America, in government bureaucracies, even in our schools. Several hundred million copies of Microsoft PowerPoint are churning out trillions of slides each year. Slideware may help speakers outline their talks, but convenience for the speaker can be punishing to both content and audience. The standard PowerPoint presentation elevates format over content, betraying an attitude of commercialism that turns everything into a sales pitch."

Tufte uses an excerpt from Louis Gerstner’s Who Says Elephants Can’t Dance? to illustrate his thesis,

"One of the first meetings I asked for was a briefing on the state of the [mainframe computer] business… with Nick Donofrio, who was then running the System /390 business. [I] found Nick, and we got started. Sort of. At that time, the standard format of any important IBM meeting was a presentation using overhead projectors and graphics that IBMers called “foils” [projected transparencies]. Nick was on his second foil when I stepped to the table and, as politely as I could in front of his team, switched off the projector. After a long moment of awkward silence, I simply said, “Let’s just talk about your business.” … By that afternoon an e-mail about my hitting the Off button on the overhead projector was crisscrossing the world… It was as if the President of the United States had banned the use of English at White House meetings."

Jonathan Schwartz, our COO, has a great eye for his presentation graphics. Every slide is just reduced, reduced and reduced to it's Zen-like esennce. They support what he has to say. They aren't what he says.

Other great presenters - at least in my books - Scott McNealy (ok - I'm a little biased on the first two), Steve Jobs ... send me thoughts on others...

So - stand up and speak.
(and anyway don't use PowerPoint, use StarOffice!)

Measuring Communications...

Reflecting on a day at Katie Payne's measurement conference, communicators remain overly focused on measuring outputs versus outcomes. A few of the other speakers also touched on this. During my brief presentation I attempted to get at a new way of considering communications measurement (without slides). I think I jumbled a few of my phrases so here goes a quick clarification.

Measurement needs to address four quadrants:

Quadrant One (top left):- Business Requirements & Results. What are the business results required from the program or campaign? What is critical to quality (CTQs) and who are the Suppliers? (for you sigma fanatics).

Quadrant Two (top right):- Operations. This spans the entirety of the communications planning process. From planning through strategy to ideation and tactics. You will also want to measure operating performance - hours of work against programs, training hours, employee retention. I'd also track your cadence - are you able to bring cadence to the activities that underpin the function. While you need to use Sigma throughout the entire process it is especially important for quadrant one and two. Go get a black belt.

Quadrant Three (bottom right):- Outputs. Here you are measuring all tactical outputs from programs. This is the stuff you do. it might include news releases, media calls, press conferences, media tours, web hits, video streams, editorial boards, etc. You also want to measure the outputs from those tactics. Like - opportunities to see (OTS) key messages and brands, articles, photos used, quotes, media recommendations, analyst quotes. The list in both categories is long and will vary dramatically by industry. We measure about 20 categories here.

Quadrant Four (bottom left):- Outcomes. Simply put, did you change, inform and stimulate minds? Doing both drives your business outcomes. There should be a correlation between Q3 and Q4. The link is that between thinking and action. I like to measure this through ARC. Awareness, Recommendation, and Consideration. Are you aware of the company, brand, product or service? Is it being recommended to you - or - would you recommend it? And, are you considering a purchase - or, even if recommended would you consider the company given your values?

All kinds of buzzwords are used by communicators and marketers in quadrant four. Words like Reputation Management, Brand Awareness, Brand Experience. Blah, blah, blah. At Sun we've simplified it to one word - Recommend. Are we being recommended by media, analysts, influencers and most importantly customers? I love the idea of us all be accountable to a single metric.

Ideally you will measure the communications cycle through these interrelated quadrants. The challenge most communicators face is getting trapped in the left two quadrants. The world of spin and hype. High performance organizations operate across all four quadrants. I saw one present at the conference - Southwest Airlines. They directly measure the impact of news on web traffic, ticket sales and attitudinal shifts. Really smart stuff and I suspect they are all really valued by their leadership team.

Thanks Katie for a great conference and a fun lobster fest. I'll be back for both next year.

Fortune On Blogging @ Sun...

Kirkpatrick's story is out. Mary's blog is a fantastic, whimsical look into Sun. Now if only my Blog were as popular as theirs is...

At Measurement Conference...

I'm in Boston at Katie Payne's great measurement conference. For those of you looking for a cool RSS reader - the question I've been asked most - take a look at NetNewsReader. I also like RocketInfo on my SunRay. RocketInfo is browser-based but with the look at feel of an app. You might also want to mess with Firefox which probably the hottest browser on the market. Mossberg loved it and I agree with his comments on IE - which I haven't used for about three years now.