Outcroppings

Write more effective e-mail using these six quick tips

2012-01-30T09:09:00.000-08:00

Think about how quickly you decide whether or not you want to read an email. Most people decide if they are going to open an email based on their relationship with the sender. If your email recipient doesn't know who you are or has a poor opinion of you, then getting them to open an email is a challenge. Here are six easy steps to get more of your emails read whether you know your email target or not.

1) Unless the sender knows who you are, the most critical piece in any email communication is the subject line and even there you need to get to the point quickly.

2) Personalize it. People want to know that it's them you care about not "to whom it may concern." And while you're at it, make sure you have the recipient’s name right.

3) Get to the point quickly. You may not be able to tell the whole story in the first paragraph, but you better let them know what's in it for them if you want that to continue to read.

4) It's not about you. What you need only matters if they care. Point out what the benefit is to them.

5) Be brief. Email isn't the medium for novels or long essays. If what you have to say is going to take a while, give them a link and make sure there are pictures.

6) Include a call to action. At the end of the email the reader should know exactly what you want them to do or at least be moved to look for further information.

When will Apple fall?

2011-10-18T16:25:00.000-07:00

In the world of technology, it's not if the mighty will fall but when. There are to be sure, a few exceptions to this rule: IBM, Sony, Oracle and a couple handfuls of others to name a few. But it's a small list, and not one is growing by exponential measures.

If you don't think declines possible, look at Microsoft's history.

There was a time when the government and everybody else wanted to break up the big evil Redmond. Bill Gates and company were brilliant. They came up with this idea of having tollbooths on the places where we did most digital commerce. they owned the operating systems on the computers were used and we paid them for that. They owned office productivity software where did all our work and we paid them for that. The almost did it with web browser by wedding Internet Explorer with Windows operating system, but then came along Firefox and Google.

So you say that IBM is well, but there was a time when Big Blue was scheduled to be broken up into little parts just like the original AT&T. Then, a funny thing happened on the way to the disassembly party, IBM got a new CEO who thought better of the idea. Yeah, they sell off some parts, like the PC division. But for the most part company still in tact, but with a higher reliance on high-margin products like services.

My point here is this, if you can't trust Big Blue or big evil to stay at the top of the who can you trust?

I'm not saying that Apple will inevitably go downhill. I hope not. We have three iPhones in my family and I love the iPad. And apple has always been a company that gave consumers what they wanted not what they asked for. But there are no sure bets in technology, so invest in Apple, but make sure you buy little Exxon-Mobile stock as well.

The Upcoming Wireless Patent War

2011-08-01T08:40:00.001-07:00

In an odd story that most consumers will bypass this morning comes the news that Apple, RIM and Microsoft recently bought a block of patents from the once Internet darling now defunct Nortel networks. Why should we worry? Well, many are concerned these companies will use the patents to thwart Google Androids attempt to take over the wireless market. Already, more smartphone run on the Android platform than any other smartphone technology.

Remember the company that held RIM hostage with a vague but eventually enforceable patent and the U.S. government had to step RIM from being shut down. Expect more patent suits rather less in wireless space. See here for more background on mobile patents and who is suing who.

I bring this up because we are headed for an era where patents are being used to protect turf in dubious ways that do not benefit the consumer. Usually consumers lose out in these battles as companies try to use patents to block the rise of technology not foster it.

Paying the Piper for Online Music

2011-07-27T13:11:00.001-07:00

One thing consequence of moving music to the cloud, fewer of us will own music. That is a fundamental change in how anyone in their post-teen years looks music ownership.

Not too many years ago, though eons in the internet age, most people thought that when they bought an album (or collection of songs), they mostly could do what they pleased with the tunes. Listen to music, make tapes for their friends, lend the album so their friends could make tapes; I think you get the picture.

Then came Napster and digital music. Followed by the RIAA and of course the lawsuits.

There is no need to rehash that drama, except to say that it spawned iTunes and the iPod, which made Apple famously wealthy. For the sake of brevity, I have skipped a few steps, but that's the way it happened.

As a consequence of Napster and iTunes, we no longer needed to own the physical album. When consumers gave away that right, they gave away the right to own the music. So, you can listen to your music, but you can't give it away.

Moreover, it's going to cost more. Apple has already raised prices on its most popular tunes. As the current pre-teen crowd grows older, we will have a generation of kids who have always bought music online. Once they get locked into a service, price increases will follow. Look at Netflix most recent price increase. When you have a monopoly, you get to tell people how much they need to pay the piper.

You don't believe me. Check out this HBR blog: http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2011/07/why_im_not_going_near_spotify.html

CIO losing control of the money

2011-07-14T06:03:00.001-07:00

If you want to know who has power, follow the money. According to a recent Gartner survey, CFOs now authorize 26% of IT investments. When you consider 70% of IT spending is of the keep the lights on variety, you realized that CIOs are becoming less and less responsible driving IT innovation.

Book Review: SPIN Selling

2011-06-10T08:22:00.001-07:00

The first thing you have to realize about "SPIN Selling" by Neil Rackham is that it's a book for selling to large accounts, written before anybody else was writing books about selling to large accounts. Yes Virginia, selling to large accounts is different than selling to smaller ones. To begin with, you cannot close the sale in one day; as a result, opening the discussion by trying to closing technique is counterproductive.

Besides, in major sales, the salespeople usually are not in the room when most of the important decisions are made. It's the salesperson's contact who needs to sell within her organization. It's the job of the salesperson to arm his contact with enough information to make her an effective influencer.

Like any good book on sales, Rackham has methodology, in this case a four step questioning process. In fact, the book gets its name from the four types of questions asked: Situational, Problem, Implication and Need Payoff. Rackham says the key to sales is understanding where you are in the sales cycle – he identifies The Preliminaries, Investigating, Demonstrating Capability and Obtaining Commitment – and only to asking the kinds of questions that get you to the next level because sales in large accounts follow a specific sequence over a long timeline.

SPIN Selling process

Situational questions set the context for asking Problem questions that reveal implied needs, like the desire for a more accurate billing system. Asking Implication questions about how many ways a more accurate would help the end-user's company lead to Need-Payoff questions, which help the buyer focus on solutions and benefits.

Speaking of benefits, Rackham notes that benefits come in two varieties: those that can help any customer and those that address your customer's express need. He differentiates the two types of "benefits" by calling the former an Advantage and the latter is a real Benefit. Advantages help close small sales, while Benefits, which address explicit buyers needs, help land big deals.

Yes, the book is dated. Written 1988, it doesn't take into account that your customers already know a fair amount about your product from the Web. At least somewhere in the questioning process, you have to determine how much your customer already knows about your product, if only to dispel mistaken assumptions. Additionally, while the book is very strong on tactics, it mistakenly assume you will only sell to someone lower in the company's organization. It does not provide tactics on how to use the SPIN method to move up the company's organizational ladder, trying to get closer to the person who decides what projects get funded.

All of that being said, nearly 25 years after the book was published it is still a foundational book on large account sales. While the information available to customers has changed, the process for moving a customer through the sales cycle has not.

When the book was released, readers found that its theories ran counter to conventional wisdom because it deemphasized closing techniques in large sales. At the time, most sales books focused on closing. Actually, most sales training focused on closing because, as Rackham points out, closing used to be the one place in the sales cycle that had an understandable and quantifiable result.

But Rackham's studies show that trying to close too early alienates professional buyers, the very person who is almost certainly on the other end of the sales call at a large account. Instead, the SPIN method relies on asking questions to tease out problems and help the client understand how the seller's solution can tip the value equation to the buy side of the ledger.

The foundation of the book is rests on research conducted by Huthwaite corporation's 12-year $1 million research project into sales effectiveness, not just one excellent salesperson's career experience This means the results of the book can be applied across a wide spectrum of businesses and industries, making a great starting point for learning about major account sales.

Now on the other hand, if you want to read anything about closing the quick sale, let me point you to either Tom Hopkins or Zig Ziglar.

Book Review: Leading Change by John Kotter

2011-05-16T09:54:00.001-07:00

Enterprises deploy major technologies to address a pressing need. But studies show that a majority of change efforts fail, expensively. Salespeople lose long-term credibility when their proposed improvements do not take hold. As a technology seller, it's helpful to understand how leaders implement change. Additionally, sales account leaders will often be forced to change how their teams operate. Many of the principles behind change an enterprise processes and a small team's operations are the same.

John Kotter's "Leading Change" is one of the foundation books in the field of change management. First published in 1996, the book's eight stage process for leading change still forms the backbone of many change efforts. Kotter, a Forbes top 50 business guru, is one of the world's well-known experts in writing about leadership and driving change.

This book is about leading change, not managing it. There is a critical difference. Almost by the definition, IT managers are responsible for managing change. C-level executives, the people in an organization to whom top sales people want to become a trusted confident, lead change. The material in this book is directed at executives charged with leading change, especially executives in highly structured companies. Understanding Kotter's eight step change process with help salespeople understand the changes their c-level executives are facing as they attempt to deploy HP solutions.

In a well-structure book, Kotter lists the eight steps in the change process in the first chapter:

Establish a sense of urgency
Create a guiding coalition
Develop a vision and strategy
Communicate the change vision
Empower employees for broad-based action
Generate short term wins
Consolidate gains and producing more change
Anchor new approaches in the culture

Where Kotter shines is in the simplicity of how he lays out the process. Anyone leading change can easily understand what course of action needs to be followed and in what order. His book is meant to be a read as a field guide for leading change.

Throughout the book, Kotter lays out the steps need to make each stage of the process successful. The book is with filled with practical examples of how to complete each stage, and what not to do. Also, early in the book, he lists cautionary tales of what happens when a company does not successfully complete each stage. For example, when Kotter writes about communication the change vision, he mentions a rule of thumb, "Whenever you cannot describe the vision driving a change initiative in five minutes or less and get a reaction that signifies both understanding and interest, you are in for trouble." It's time to go back to the drawing board and get things right.

A testament to the processes outlined in this book is how well the concepts have held up over time. The book pre-dates the rise of the Internet, but is still a foundation book for leading change. In part, this is because Kotter anticipated that in the 21^st century the business climate would change dramatically, moving from a period of calm and stability into our current era of rapid and volatile change. He understood that large enterprises have difficulty responding quickly to change and, accordingly, he wrote a future guidebook. "Leading Change" helps organizations adapt by giving them a means to go from identifying change targets to making the completed solution a permanent fixture in organization's corporate culture.

Others have amplified Kotter's positions. Specifically, Michael Beitler's excellent "Strategic Organizational Change" has a chapter that reviews Kotter's principles, but "Leading Change" is probably more relevant today than it was when was first written.

Although the book is meant to be read by executives leading change, the eight step process can be adapted by anyone leading change, including sales managers. In that way, the book has two benefits for sales managers:

It helps sales managers understand the pressures c-level executives face in moving from announcing a change to institutionalizing it as part of a company's culture.
It sets up a process the can be followed for managers leading change on their own teams.

Book Review: The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership

2011-05-05T06:42:00.001-07:00

If you ask 10 people to recommend five books on leadership, one of John Maxwell's books will be on every list. Of those books, most people cite "The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership" as his best work. It's certainly his most well known. Concise, Maxwell dictates the 21 laws a leader must follow to get others to follow the leader. Using numerous examples drawn from a variety of people from Mother Teresa to the founders of McDonalds, Maxwell show how people have either used the laws successfully or ignored the laws and failed.

Most of the laws are obvious, for example number 14, The Law of Buy In, states that people buy into the leader and only then do they buy into the vision. That makes intuitive sense and has a practical application in the real world. Early stage technology investors often bet on the jockey, not the horse.

Some readers have dismissed the book because the laws are easy to understand. These critics miss two significant points about the power of the book:

"The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership" codifies and reinforces our thinking. For example, Law Number 17, The Law of Priorities, cautions against equating activity with achievement. Maxwell points out that we must constantly review our priorities to make sure that we are steering the ship in the right direction ( Law 4, The Law of Navigation). Far beyond leaving it there and stating only the obvious, Maxwell adds that we must always evaluate our priorities with the 80/20 rule in mind. Focus 80 percent of your time on the 20 percent of your priorities that will provide the largest return. He notes that the rule is applies equally to developing strategic sales accounts as does it in developing people.
"The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership" is a reminder that leadership is a daily commitment. As Maxwell notes in Law Number 3, leadership is a process that "develops daily, not in a day." Reading Maxwell's book reinforces what many of us already know about leadership and reminds us to put those theories into practice every day.

Many books on leadership are long on theory but don't help the reader understand how to put the theory into practice. Maxwell does not fall into that trap. At the end of every chapter, he lists three activities you can do to apply the law to your life. For example, after Law 13, The Law of the Picture (people do what people see), Maxwell asks his readers to:

Make a list of their own core values and compare them to their actions over that past month, noting which activities clash with their core values.
Ask a colleague to watch you over a period of time and evaluate where your actions have clashed with your words.
Make a list of what you wish you people did better and grade yourself on those skills. With that self evaluation in hand, commit to improving your skills where your people are weakest and be a more visible role model in the areas where you are strongest.

Not every leader will have a proficiency in all 21 Laws. Maxwell admits that a few laws where he does not grade out perfectly.

In Appendix A, Maxwell presents a quick leadership test to help you understand your strengths and weakness as they relate to the laws. Completing the evaluation will help you understand:

Skills that you can use to mentor of others,
Areas you need to target for growth and
Areas where you need to form strategic partnerships to achieve your goals.

Even you don't read the entire book, filling out the evaluation and understanding your strengths and weaknesses will help you reach your potential as a leader and manager.

Because "The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership" is well written and well organized, it can be read in three ways:

Cover to cover over a period of days. Like most well-written business books, it's short, and to the point.
As the book is well organized and each chapter contains a complete thought, the book can be read over a long period of time with no loss of comprehension.
Finally, if you just want to know the laws, you can skip to Appendix B to read each law and its one sentence explanation.

Books on leaderships are plentiful, often with competing visions because leadership is more of an art than a science. But Maxwell notes that as with any art, leadership skills can and should be improved through practice. Its evaluation guide in the appendix and chapter endings on applying the laws in your life will help you understand the state of your current skill set and help you plan for growth.

Justified: Appointment Television

2011-05-02T10:58:00.001-07:00

Justified, FX's brilliant show based on an Elmore Leonard short story, has only two rivals for best show of all time, The Sopranos and The Wire. Very good company tied together by a the common link—violence. Which, it's that surprising given that a recently, Harper's noted that eight of the ten most popular televisions shows feature corpses. Nothing fixates the human mind more than matters of life and death.

But while show violence in the three great shows, violence is ever present. Not only do the main characters live comfortably amongst the litter of spent shells, but they purposefully usher in the fear that accompanies violence. The shows' producers know that except for sex nothing engages a television audience more than fear and unlike their European counterparts Americans standards bodies are happy with bullets than breasts.

Tom Boswell, the great Washington Post sportswriter, once said there are two kinds of people, those who watch batting practice and those who don't. And the latter will never amount to anything, because if you don't pay attention to the little things in baseball, the game becomes a series of reactions to batted ball. Most people happily hours spend at baseball games, waiting for the reward of brief violence when bat strikes ball setting players in motion. They are missing the inner game.

Television is different than baseball. Its inner meaning sets the guidelines for the violence. Viewers, lured into a television show by the violence will not stay if the violence does not have a purpose, a greater meaning. Usually this gets played out in the cop procedure or detective shows, cops and robbers. In the days since the sets were in black and white, the good guy always won by the final credit. The hero cannot take the fall and gun fights only matter if you care who is left standing when the smoke clears.

But for good to exist, we need villains. Except for the flying nun, they don't set television shows in convents. Without the devil, God, or god, is a lonely and unnecessary creation. These days, sometimes it's the villains who are more interesting, more worthy of our attention.

Yes, Virginia we can love a villain, especially if we understand the why. In No Country for Old Men, Woody Harrelson says about the villain portrayed by Javier Bardem that he operates under his own code, one where lives are decided on a coin flip. Good bad guys are endlessly more fascinating than good good guys.

We loved Tony Soprano because we understood his fictional mobster code, and know that Tony understood it. The Sopranos worked as a show because it was always about the entire family's struggle to stay true to the duties that mobster code forced on them.

The Wire stopped being interesting to mass audiences when the villains became the nameless and faceless culture that gave rise to the drug lords, not the drug lords themselves. Woman openly wept when Idris Alba died. Evil needs a face we find.

On the face of it, Justified is driven by its lead character Marshall Raylan Givens, a good cop, fast on the draw and good with words. He once talked a convict into giving up a hostage in exchange for fried chicken and a shot of bourbon. Jim Beam is a big sponsor. But in truth, the show gets its direction from the supporting characters, who like Tony Soprano are family man and women, born into their lives, playing roles have been handed down through generations. There is very little room for improvising.

Families and cultures have their own gravity. In Justified, the pull of family is almost inescapable. Except for Raylan, the characters are defined by their birth rights.

Having gone to college and seen some of the world, or at least the U.S.A. before returning home to Harlan County, Kentucky, Raylan is at once an outsider and insider. He betrays a part of his heritage and disowns his father. That father is scheming and lawless scoundrel, aligned with Bo Crowder, the head of Harlan's biggest enterprise, manufacturing and distributing crystal meth. If that weren't enough for family entanglements, a young Raylan worked the coal mine with Bo's son Boyd, an explosives expert.

Towards the end, Rayland was willing to put a bullet in his father to prove to the world where he stood, though is father pulled first so Raylan was justified.

Boyd, on the other hand, returned to the house and eventually the bed of his dead brother's wife. The wife killed the brother by the way, and Boyd had always coveted his brother's wife. Yes, it's complicated, in that small town kind of way. It's actually complicated in a family way, but this isn't time to talk about the Givens generations old feud with the Bennetts, criminal rivals of the Crowders.

The show may be about Raylan, but Boyd drives the action. Boyd, a former white supremacist, tries the straight life, but no one quite believes his conversion to God or the pure life. In Season Two, Boyd does try to make an honest life, going back to the mines to work an honest day for honest pay, but nobody believes him, again. No matter how hard he tries, there is no path for redemption for Boyd. Resurrection perhaps.

Raylan shot and killed Bo in the original pilot episode. But fortunately, the reports of Boyd death were premature. Bo tested well with television audiences and the bullet to the heart didn't find any vital organs.

In a commentary on the same pilot episode, the producers claim that they show is driven by Raylan's anger, but I don't buy. It's driven by Raylan's sense of justice or duty to uphold the law, Boyd's attempt to escape from the bonds of the Crowder family and interplay between the two men. Boyd's scenes with Raylan during his redemption period are magical as both man verbally thrust and parry, like poker players skillfully slowplaying very good hands.

Philosophers and psychologist may debate if people can change over time. In the eyes of the writers of Justified, the answer is no. No matter how far we travel, when we come home we shed our clothes and play our roles. Raylan is an exception, but few of us can escape the pull of family.

What does it say about Leonard's writing that the network could create a whole series from one short story? It says that if you create compelling characters and put them in interesting situations, you have appointment television.

Book Review: Selling to the C-Suite

2011-04-18T06:34:00.000-07:00

Selling to the C-Suite reads like a manual on how salespeople can gain and maintain access to the c-level. This short, easily digestible book contains a wealth of practical information on:

• Why executive involvement starts early in the selling cycle
• How to identify the right executive who is driving the project
• How to gain access to that executive
• How to work that executive and her subordinates
• Why most purchasing decisions are made in response to a business need
• Why most purchasing decisions are made before the RFP is created

Unlike most sales books that are based anecdotal evidence from salespeople, “Selling to the C-Suite” is based on conversations with c-level executives. In 1995 when HP was trying to create a new national sales organization, the company worked with Nicholas Read and Stephen Bistritz to interview c-level executives in North America and at the HP Business School in China. They wanted to understand the executives’ perspective the sales relationship. Bistritz and Read supplemented that research with other interviews, ultimately interviewing over 500 executives.

Their exhaustive research means is used to substantiate the claims they make in the book. For example, when Bistritz and Read write “salespeople who want to build executive-level relationships must enter the picture early in the buying process,” we know it’s because when 80% of executives get involved in major purchase decisions. Once the decision to buy has been made and the selection criteria has been established, senior executives step back.

Major technology purchases are made to solve a particular business problems. The technology purchase only comes into play once the scope of the business problem has been determined. When an executive wants to improve customer loyalty, she doesn’t enter “CRM systems” into the search, instead she types “improving customer loyalty” or asks experts what other companies have done.

Bistritz and Read argue that a salesperson’s goal is to be an expert or a “Trusted Advisor,” someone who can bring value by delivering what the customer’s organization cannot. A salesperson who is a Trusted Advisor is an expert who helps set the search parameters and writes the RFPs.

Trusted advisor status is gained and maintained over time. Bistritz and Read argue that it’s maintained by continuously reporting back on the value that you deliver. In fact, many salespeople miss this final step. They assume that executives know the vendor’s solutions are meeting expectations, but in many cases the executive does not the value the solution delivered. It’s the salesperson’s job to close the loop and report back on the results, establishing that he can deliver on his promises.

The book’s structure makes for an easy read. Seven distinct chapters cover:
Chapter 1 - When do executives get involved in the decision process?
Chapter 2 - A brave new world for sales and marketing.
Chapter 3 - Understanding what executives want.
Chapter 4 - How to gain access to the executive level.
Chapter 5 - How to establish credibility at the executive level.
Chapter 6 - How to create value at the executive level.
Chapter 7 - Cultivating loyalty at the C-suite.

The end of each chapter summarizes that chapter’s two or three major takeaways, reinforcing the lessons learned.

An afterword provides an excellent section on customer research, associations worth following and joining, and recommended readings. We have read many of the books on the recommended reading list and agree with the choices, a few of which may be the subject of future book reviews.

“Selling to the C-Suite” has one failing. While book explains how and when to get in front of the right executive, it’s short on telling salespeople what to say. It preaches providing value to executives, but provides less than one page on how to discuss value in the language of business, the language executives want to hear and what the HP Client Team learns in the License to Practice course.

Hiring overqualified workers makes today

2011-03-15T07:58:00.000-07:00

As a nation, we are entering a new evolution in work, much like the industrial revolution, many job candidates will have to take jobs that pay less and are less to challenging for quite a while. Until the economy recovers AND adds jobs, employers will find many overqualified candidates. Many of those candidates will be happy to have a job and may not be able to leave within in a year.

Smart candidates will make their peace with the current and foreseeable reality. Employers, hire with caution but do not avoid overqualified candidates.

How PowerPoint Presentations are like movies

2011-02-23T07:36:00.001-08:00

There is nothing wrong with PowerPoint, except the way people use it. PowerPoint is a visual media but presenters insist using PowerPoint as a text document. It's not.

Think about the best presentation that you have ever seen. It was image rich and text light.

Most PowerPoints fail for three reasons:
1) Presenters fail to deliver a compelling narrative
2) We can read almost twice as fast as a person can talk
3) Presenters don't understand how the brain processes information

Notice that I did not mention too many words on a slide. I think we all know that's a common trait of bad presentations. Just because you have a lot of words on the slide doesn't mean anyone is reading them. A little more on this bit later.

Similarly, I left out a few other obvious remedies to improve PowerPoint presentations, like remember the audience and rehearse the heck out of it, because, well because they are obvious.

Here's a quick, but by no means definitive set of ideas to improve your PowerPoint presentations. It's a mix of science and common sense.

One note, the suggestions that follow are meant to help people delivering live presentations. If you will not be on hand to deliver the audio track for your presentation, this isn't for you.

Set Expectations
Like a movie, you'd what to know if you are going to see romantic comedy or Transformers sequel. Telling the audience what to expect helps them make connections with information they already possess, easing the burden on working memory.

Develop a narrative
If you go into a bookstore, you'll notice the shelves are stocked with novels, biographies, and history. What do they have in common, they tell a narrative story. Human beings love stories. Use that to your advantage. Give your presentation life by creating a story line.

Start writing the presentation in outline form
Remember when you first learned how to write an essay. The teacher insisted that you write an outline first. There was a reason for it. It created structure and helped you tell a better story. For PowerPoint, the outline is slide sorter view. Begin you presentation not by diving into the normal view but lay out the outline of the presentation by writing in the titles in the slide sorter view.

Write titles in headlines form

Studies show that writing titles in headline form increases retention. A well-written headline sets expectations in the reader. Before you start talking about the image or text on the slide, the reader knows the theme for the slide. Your audience will get used to seeing the main thought the headline and be ready for you to explain it. This reduces the strain on working memory.

Use one main thought slide

People don't hate lots of slides in a presentation. They hate slow presentations with lots of slides and there is a big difference. Your slide should communicate one idea, one concept. Use the slide images and words to reinforce that idea.

People can read 400 words per minute
Speakers talk about 200 words a minute. This means the audience has read the entire slide before the speaker has gotten half way through the slide, which really means your audience is bored before you get through slide one.

People process words as little pictures
Text heavy slides impose a double burden on the audience. They have to spend a lot of mental energy process the little pictures and not listening to you. Wouldn't it be better to give them one picture and explain what it means? By the way, marrying a relevant image with a verbal track increases retention.

Human beings get bored every ten minutes
Nobody knows why. But it's true. This means that every ten minutes you need to give them a compelling reason to listen to you. One of the best ways to do this is change your teaching style every ten minutes. If you have been lecturing for ten minutes solid, introduce an anecdote, use a role play, poll the audience. It also helps if you introduce new topics every ten minutes.

Be consistent handling text and graphics
Do not make the viewer work to understand each slide's structure. Most companies have corporate slide templates used for handling graphics and text. Rather than viewing the templates as confining, look at them as liberating. You no longer have worry about where to place the picture and your audience doesn't have to think about why the text is larger on some slides than other.

Read the experts
Like anything, if you want to get better do your homework. In this case, I suggest the following books:

Beyond Bullet Points, Cliff Atkinson
Resonate, Nancy Duarte
Brain Rules, John Medina
Presentation Zen, Gerr Reynolds

Lessons in Media Relations from Tiger Woods and the NFL

2010-11-23T13:15:00.001-08:00

Buried deep in Sport Illustrated senior reporter Peter King's most recent edition of Monday Morning Quarterback (a must read for any fan of good journalist), he tells the tale of being a beat writer and spending two hours with Bill Parcells, visiting the notoriously cranky coach's childhood haunts.

King notes that he can't imagine any beat writer having that kind of access to a pro football coach these days. The pressures have changed on both sides of the equation.

Those pressures mean less time less time to develop the relationships that lead to that kind of access. While the shrinking outreach of the media has change some parts of how media relations, it does not mean the industry will follow the way of the Dodo. Good PR can still repair images and grow bottom lines.

For Exhibit A, let me refer you to the media barrage Tiger Woods's PR machine has stoked up ahead the Thanksgiving weekend that lead to his fall from nationwide billboards. Tiger's troubles began when it turned out that his family man image was a sham. Restoring Tiger's image as the face of American marketing starts with recreating his family guy image. In the past week, we have been subject to a round of "Tiger Woods the World's Greatest Dad" stories.

Brilliant as a strategy but ineffective as a quick look on Google finds plenty about affairs and divorces but nothing on the good dad Tiger.

Of course, returning to his ways as the most dominant player in golf would do more to reclaim his corporate image than any series of father knows best articles.

Winning drives decisions in the NFL too. In 2010, season tickets sales fell for the third straight year, and three teams that moved into spiffy new homes for the new 2010 season are on the hook for very high construction costs. Even though the television rights paid to the league have climbed faster than basic cable rates (in 1986, the networks combined to pay the league $420 annually while the current contract calls for a shade over $3 billion annually), winning puts fannies in the seats, especially the expensive comfortable ones with licensing and VIP parking.

This season two head coaches lost their jobs in mid-campaign, an unprecedented event in the NFL. Normally conservative owners prefer to clean house at the end of the year. But we live in unusual times and importance of image management is paramount. Ask Tiger's management team.

Many have discounted the power of PR, but in billion-dollar commercial enterprises PR folks have engaged in media relations programs that because they think it will drive top line success.

Over the weekend, Robert Scoble asked the reoccurring question: why do we need the tech media? If you skip down and read iSocialize's metrics of what works and what doesn't, you understand how the media recognition drives sales. Even Scoble acknowledges that Apple watches the media buzz to see what companies to promote, making PR an effective use of marketing dollars for the successful companies.

The death of media and other non-news

2010-11-16T08:12:00.001-08:00

I read another piece on the death of news and thought really? That story has become a cottage industry of its own.

There will always be a place for unvarnished information, if only because people will pay for it. But with a wall of information out there, readers are trying to prioritize their information flow. To do that, they are relying on trusted names, who more than likely share their world view. It's always been that way. Go back to the turn of the century, not this past one but the one before it. Read a respectable news paper. You'd be surprised how strongly the publication's slant shows through. Fox News is only today's version of the Hearst Empire.

Yes, investigative journalism is dying. It's expensive and we no longer think there is a public need. The shame is that without investigative journalism, corporate malfeasance and government corruption will go undocumented as baseless claims fly unchallenged

From a PR perspective, that's not a bad thing. We realize we have the power to communicate directly with our audiences. Media provides third party validation, but the power of media to inform is being sapped by the new methods of delivering content: websites, blogs, Twitter, Facebook. The media may not be happy about it, but the direct link to our users makes public relations, well easier.

Been a while, but I am back

2010-09-23T04:44:00.000-07:00

Time moves on and people do too. Some times they come back.

In the past year, I shed the PR skin that I'd worn for 10 years and took on a new role in the learning and development community working with a company that does sales training for executives and managers at technology companies. I still have a communications role, but I also do a lot of tech work and serve a Guy Friday for special projects. Life changes and you either adapt or declare bankruptcy.

In the short time that I have stepped away from the full time grind of PR, the industry has been transformed, contracted and expanded by social media. A wild ride, and change that came a faster and bigger clip than the introduction of Web 1.0.

It's like I've gone away to college and come home after a year only to find out that my parents moved to a hipper, more sophisticated part of town. There's is no need to waste your time by detailing the changes here, there are better forums for that, might I suggest all of the good work that is coming out of #444pr.

So, now that the neighborhood has changed and I am no longer a full-time resident, what does that mean for this blog? I'm not sure. At a minimum, it will likely reflect my new emphasis on sales training, but I think it's also going to look at two other passions: social media and the changing nature of work.

The last I think is a biggie. Official unemployment hovers around 10 percent in this country, and the number of people who have given up or are underemployed is considerably higher.

Before the downturn became a meltdown, a friend said what he feared was that we would not be able to create jobs for all of the unemployed. Technology has rendered many positions obsolete. And as the cultural barriers to off-shoring recede, more and more professional jobs will be sourced through international competition.

In the next five years, what we think of work, and thus what we think of ourselves will change as much as PR has changed in the last two years. And to paraphase Bette Davis, "Fasten your seltbelt, it's going to be a bumpy road."

Surviving the next five years will require two things: shock absorbers (cash) and a map (insight).

Social Media Users Older Than Most Suppose

2010-03-21T09:01:00.001-07:00

When most people are asked to conjure an image of a social media user, they reflexively think of teen or pre-teen posting pretty pictures on MySpace and Facebook. But that demographic mental picture is in stark contrast with reality.

According to some nifty research published by Brian Solis, it's the 35 and older set who are burning up the bits and bytes staying in touch with classmates from our younger years.

What does this mean for brands and their marketers? The social Web's audience is older, like CBS. So, maybe you can sell insurance and retirement planning via social media, instead of the latest Skecher's design.

In real life, it means there are a lot of people who are using social media to cut across geography to stay in touch. You get older and staying in touch with anyone out of you physical neighborhood gets a lot harder. The social Web lets you tackle friendships on your own time. And isn't that what it's for?

Using the right vehicle to reach the right people

2010-03-04T11:50:00.001-08:00

My extended family numbers greater than 100 people. We have a newsletter. I haven't seen it. Every few years, there is a family trip to Barbados, the land of my ancestors. I know nothing about the trip. Folks wanted to make sure the Burnham Family Tree is up-to-date with profiles and such. I don't contribute.

Communication is to blame. We don't share a common communication platform.

The Web and Facebook would be perfect platforms to share this information, but much of my extended family isn't online, or if they are, it's only surface deep.

Some of this is because people are old. While more and more people go online it's important to note that 30% of adults over 50 don't use the Internet, according to Pew research. (That's the baby boomer generation by the way in case you are keeping score at home.) When you get to Americans over 65, well, Internet usage falls to under 40%.

It also helps to remember that the less money you have, the less likely you are to be on the Internet. My family is not poor, but few are wealthy.

What I am saying is that a great tool for social organization will miss a great many African-Americans.

Here is why this is important: 63% of teens get their news online. If we don't have a presence online to educate the young would radicals, then what the teens are learning won't come from our mouths. The Web, which can be a great leveler for mass communication, doesn't serve the needs of the African-American community, precisely because we are not there. As of 2008, fewer than 50% of African-American were online, and that number skews toward the young.

My point? If I want to learn about my extended family, I'd better pick up the phone and find out who is in charge of the mailing list. If my family wants to reach the next generation, they are going to have to use Facebook. Which do you think is more important?

Interviewing skills

2010-02-28T08:31:00.001-08:00

In an interesting role reversal, I recently had to interview several candidates for an open admin position. Not too long ago, I had been on the other side, acting as interviewee not interviewer.

After screening and interviewing a bunch of people, I learned a host of lessons that I probably should have known but maybe forgotten or didn't take seriously enough. In no particular order, here are those lessons and also some advice my friends who are hiring managers always pass on:

If you have the interview, they mostly think you can do the job. They want to know they can work with you. Well, also they want to make sure you weren't lying on the resume. But mostly, they are looking for fit. Chris Rock once said on a date you don't what to be yourself, you want to be some one people like. I think that applies here too.
Cover letters to tailored the job offering are noticed. Forms letters are too. Which do you think stands out from the pile?
There is an old adage in golf, you can't win a tournament on the first day, but you can lose it. Talking to the screener is a lot like that, you can't win the job talking to the screener, but you can lose it.
Saying you can do anything is not a helpful response. Employers don't need anything done; they have a specific task in mind. They want to know that you can do that thing.
Thank you notes are better than nice. A well written thank you note reminds the interviewer why they plucked your name out of the pile and should remind them why they want to see more of you.
Promptness counts. Given the high volume of resumes for every position out there, most people stop after they get a couple of handfuls of solid candidates. Check the job boards and Craig's List every day. Better yet, set up alerts.
Neatness counts. But you knew that already.
A thank you note from someone who didn't get the job or interview is a very nice touch. Not sure it helps get a job, but it's memorable and if karma counts for anything, people who write those notes should be rewarded.
Research. How can you talk about how you can help a company if you don't know anything about the company? Research.
White space and few important details mean more on a resume than a long list of accomplishments that are too closely packed to read.
Back to the point number one, on an interview think like you are on a date with the person of your dreams. Your goal is to make the interviewer think they want to spend the rest of their life with you.
Putting your salary requirements in a cover letter just isn't a good idea. You may think you are saving time and unnecessary interviews, but in reality you are cutting down the number of interviews you get. Remember, you want the interview. Heck sometimes you may be offered a different position.
Practice your interview skills. Once you have the interview, make sure you shine. Work with an experienced professional to make sure you ace the interview.
Practice your interview skills. It's important enough that I have to mention it twice.

As a PR person, I'd always thought that I was a good candidate and interviewer, that whole positioning thing, but in sitting on the other side of the desk, I'm not so sure anymore. I promise you though, I'll follow my own advice that next time I need it.

He has apologized, what more do you want?

2010-02-20T09:02:00.001-08:00

Rarely has a news statement generated as much coverage as Tiger's statement on Friday. You can read good day after summary here of what worked and didn't during Tiger's time behind the podium. Or you could watch ESPN's almost non-stop coverage of the event. Judging by how much time the Worldwide Leader in Sports devoted to the story, Tiger was their lead story on Thursday AND Friday evening, I have to believe three things:

The company doesn't care about the Olympics, a made for television Lifetime channel event broadcast by another network.

They need Tiger to drive ratings in the long summer months when baseball is the only game on.

The Entire Sports Network was trying its best to displace the Golf Channel as the all Tiger Channel.

As PR people we can talk about what Woods should have done and how he should have done it, but the main point is that he needed to apologize and take clear responsibility for his actions. He did that.

Anyone listening to his awkward statement knows that he never could have made it through an interview, hostile or friendly.

From a PR standpoint a better question is what more does he need to do to put this behind him? My answer is going to make a lot of PR people unhappy: nothing, just shut up and play golf. There is nothing to be gained by continuing to apologize or answering any questions about who he slept with and when.

He merely has to start every interview with, "We are going to talk about golf." If the reporter doesn't like it, tough. You can't work in golf and not have access to Tiger. If Woods wins, smiles and returns to his family, the general public will forgive him. And those who don't forgive him now are unlikely to do so just because he takes a turn on Oprah's couch.

As his mother said, he made a mistake, but it wasn't illegal. It's time for all of us to recognize that he strayed and he has paid. Let's move on. There is nothing else to see.

Tiger speaks, punishes Accenture in same breathe

2010-02-18T05:34:00.000-08:00

Tiger's decision to make a news statement on Friday, day three of the Accenture match play championship, shows that his PR machine is not without malice.

As you may remember, Accenture was the first brand to drop Woods after his Thanksgiving surprise. Tiger is repaying the favor by making sure the golf world and the general public forget about the tournament and focus on Tiger. Clever.

Not only that, but every story about Tiger's Friday statement, and let me digress here by saying he is not holding a press conference. When the press are invited to listen and record, but not ask questions, it's not a press conference.

Anyway, when Woods does speak and the reporters write, every story will link Woods and Accenture, which in the minds of Accenture sullys the brand, again.

If Tiger is as ruthless on the course as his PR handlers are, I don't think he'll lose this year.

One question, does it matter what Woods says at the press conference?

PR’s model is outdated

2010-02-10T10:09:00.001-08:00

Over the past year, I have seen two major trends in PR. Many, too many, good and experienced people have been laid off. We like to think experience is valued, but agencies and corporations are saying experience is too expensive. Looking at who has been laid off in PR, and not been rehired, makes you realize the industry is undergoing a transformation. Part of the transformation involves the PR industry trying stress its value a digital world.

Like it or not, the PR model that has served us for the past 10 years is broken. Thanks to Al Gore and the Internet three things have smashed the model:

Companies can get the word out on their products via their own Web sites;
There are too few media outlets to pitch;
Social Media makes it easy to engage directly with the consumer.

Let's face it, search and company Web sites have reduced the need for advertising. I am not telling you anything new when I say that if you want to buy a new computer, you don't run down to the magazine shop and pick up three or four magazines on computers. Instead, you'd read them online for free, visit CNET or consumer reports online, fish around Amazon, look for discounts on the computer maker's Web sites, and well, you get the picture. You can do an awful lot of research without leaving home or spending a dime on publications.

Companies need PR less if a buyer can pull information about a product when she wants it, as opposed to having information pushed at the consumer when she's just glancing at the headlines looking to find out how many schools closed early even though the predicted blizzard never materialized.

Conclusion: you don't need PR as much as you once did. I am not sure PR people understand that, or more accurately want to admit there is a problem. It's always been hard to measure PR. Now, companies are finding it hard to justify PR. The industry's recent desire for self-promotion is a way to address this conclusion. I'm not sure it will work.

To be honest, PR's image problem and its apparent need for self promotion requires a post of its own where we can explore the issue at length. Look for it on this same Bat Station.

RIP idealistic journalism

2010-02-10T08:38:00.000-08:00

In a different professional life, my sports journalism years, a publisher said a magazine is like an envelope filled with ads. The content is only there to make people open the envelope.

Journalists believed the content supported the publication. Anyone who follows TheMediaIsDying and sees all of the publications that have shuttered due to lack of ad revenues knows it was always about the money.

Today's journalist better have a firm grasp of the bottom line or a good exit strategy.

Where the money goes in communications

2010-01-27T06:56:00.000-08:00

To profit in a war, you have to be an arms provider. To profit in the communications age, you have to be a carrier.

My family spends over $400 a month on communications: cell phones, high-speed Internet, cable television and a landline. Except for the last item on that list, twenty-five years ago these technologies were not available in the available in the average American home.

So here is my question. Clearly, twenty-five years ago we were able to live without some of these technologies. If you were unemployed, what would you give up first? And what would be the last thing you held onto to secure some semblance to your former life. I watch unemployed friends make these decisions on an all too frequent basis.

It's not like food or rent, which you need. But for most of us, it's the toys that define who we are. In this case, it's the toys the define how we talk to the world. Where do you severe the lines of communication?

Just curious.

In case you are wondering, I am hanging onto the toys. But periodically, I like to take inventory of the clutter and ditch the debris.

Forbes (and me): Privacy dies by 2020

2010-01-09T13:26:00.000-08:00

Forbes reporter Quentin Hardy recently knocked off a post on how technology will change the next decade. As I get older, I tend to disbelieve these crystal ball columns. Most of them are flat out wrong. Pundits think the future will look a lot like today because that's all we have to predict the future. But, technology moves in strange ways.

For example, ten years ago it would have been almost impossible to predict Apple cold deliver a device smartphone would put 32 gigs of computing storage in my pocket--and make international phone calls. Oh yeah, and it can manage my music collection. Search was limited to AOL. Google wasn't the new kid on the block; it was a complete unknown to most tech folks. Now, Google dominates the tech world the way Microsoft once did. But, as computing moves off the desktop and into our palms, even Google is searching for a way to control the mobile market.

The rise in Social Media has made us better connected. Facebook, now with 350 million users, a population greater than the United States, has stretched the meaning of friendship, expanding it to mean people you sort of know now and people junior high school chums you used to know real well. No one could have predicted Facebook 10 years ago or even it's current popularity five years ago.

Which brings us to the prediction Hardy has spot on: privacy is dead. Mark Zuckerberg is on a mission to kill, and he has a lot of help from us. I willing log onto Facebook and Twitter, leaving breadcrumbs about my life for anyone to see. Because the Internet makes us more connected, it also makes use more exposed.

In a way, it's a return to life before mobility was introduced, say a couple of hundred years ago when people didn't leave their towns and everyone knew everything about everyone else.
From capitalist perspective, this connectedness and lack of privacy begs the question: how is business going to capitalize on all this information? From a practical stand point, would you want your mother-in-law to follow you on Facebook?

The analyst relations carousel

2010-01-06T08:19:00.000-08:00

Most PR people do, have done or will do some analyst relations. It's part of the influencer mix. Gartner is on a buying spree. In the past five years, Meta, AMR, Burton and Giga have been swallowed up, to name a few. Clearly, Gartner remains at the top of the must influence list. But how do you tier out firms now? Will consolidation make analyst relations easier, because there is only one firm to brief? Will consolidation weaken the influence of the analyst community?

How can you trust the independence of Gartner when the biggest clients influence the research agenda?

On thing is true, Gartner has certainly made it easier to purchase analyst research. Of course, moving all of that information under one roof means that companies really do need a Gartner analyst seat.

Let's call it influencer relations

2010-01-06T07:30:00.000-08:00

I was looking at a marketing resume the other day and there, nestled among the traditional marketing duties, I saw "influencer relations." Apparently, those duties included working with industry analyst, traditional media and independent consultants, the latter I assume to be bloggers or other social media influencers.

Influencer relations -- I think that hits the nail squarely on the head. In the minds of many, public relations is media relations, but PR has changed so much in the past year. Even looking at traditional PR offerings, most PR shops provide analyst relations, either as an additional module or in some cases built into the PR plan.

All PR shops now include blogger relations as part of their core media relations strategy, especially as many publications run their own blogs. Much of the rest of the social media bucket seems to fall to public relations pros, although that varies depending on a company's goal.

Public relations is evolving because technology has changed the job responsibilities. Most successful working PR professionals realize it's no longer about the old PR -- media relations -- it's now about reaching the influencer. If that's the case, let's just call it influencer relations.

Time to outlaw the NFL?

2009-12-28T11:04:00.000-08:00

I need to start this blog by saying that I grew up loving professional football, but in the last few years that I have begun to sour on the hypocrisy of college football and the brutality of the NFL, both of which receive a semi-free pass from a mostly compliant press corp.

The average NFL career lasts 3.5 years. Of the 100,000 high school kids who strap on pads every year, only 0.2 percent will have the pleasure of experiencing such a short career. These statistics are courtesy of the NFL Players Association. It’s hard to imagine another profession that so callously discards men after they have outlived their usefulness.

For the players, part of the allure is the money, the million dollar contracts. Only, most athletes struggle to hold onto those riches. A March 2009 Sports Illustrated article reported that:

- By the time they have been retired for two years, 78% of former NFL players have gone bankrupt or are under financial stress because of joblessness or divorce.

To do the math, the average player logs three and half year in the NFL and two years later, he’s a financial wreck. At least the guy has his college education, right? No, absolutely not.

The graduation rate for kids in big time football and hoops programs is lower than the national average, which tells you those boys are hitting something other than the books. Everyone in the system knows these kids don’t attend four year degree school with the notion of coming out of it holding onto a diploma. You only need to listen to one press conference to realize most of these kids would have trouble with English Lit 101. I could go on, but the Root’s Deron Snyder has a really good take on the hypocrisy behind pretending these young men are student athletes.

The NCAA would have you believe that graduation rates are going up. Instead of spouting these numbers as gospel, can we point out that the NCAA only looks at kids have scholarships for four years? If the coaches think a freshman will not be good enough to make the team in his sophomore year, he isn't offered a scholarship for the sophomore year. I think you have to count those numbers in the dropout rate. They don’t help.

Well, so we’ve seen that the NFL doesn’t prepare its players for life out of the game financially and the colleges don’t give them the educational background they need to survive without football. But that’s not the biggest crime.

Depending on position, the average NFL retiree has a life expectancy 20 years less than the average man in America. In case you missed it the first time, yes that number is 20 years less.

And the quality of life is dramatically less. Those who live long lives will face knee and hip replacement surgery, an inconvenient truth the media has ignored.

Then there are the concussions. In light of aggressive reporting by the New York Times, the league has acknowledged concussions leave lasting damage. You can file that under things that are obvious unless you are trying to ignore them, like snow is cold and rain is wet.

When we attend movies, another entertainment venue, we employ a trick called suspension of disbelief to help us imagine that a car chase could happen on Fifth Avenue during rush hour in New York City or that aliens would want to phone home. During one particularly bad Christian Slater movie, my father once remarked, “There isn’t that much disbelief in the world to accept this plot.”

I feel that way about the NFL. I can’t look at it without thinking we are willingly sacrificing young men’s lives for our entertainment, and not just the guys who are who make it to the big time, but also the guys who work hard but aren’t good enough to play in the league.

Here’s is what I wonder: a thousand years from now, will archeologists look at football the same way will look at Roman gladiators and be appalled by how we let this happen?

What's next for Tiger?

2009-12-09T11:23:00.001-08:00

One thing is clear: the firestorm created by Woods inability to drive straight -- ironically, his problem on the golf course for most of this year -- will not go away any time soon. Any woman who wants to make a name for herself can say she slept with Tiger Woods. Although, as we and Elin have learned, it's not such an exclusive club and the rewards of claiming membership have diminished.

What's left for Tiger? I think he goes the Marv Albert route: admit blame and focus on the job, in his case golf. The endorsements are gone, for now. But, let's face it, golf needs Woods. Before he came along, the game was fading from the media spotlight. Like today's pro tennis tour, fans would tune in for the major championships but ignore the standard weekly events.

Tiger changed that. When he played, ratings went up. When he was in contention on Sunday, ratings soared. That won't change. My guess is that the ratings for golf will remain steady because people will want to see how he goes about his business on the golf course.

From a public relations standpoint, all of this will be behind him in two years tops. Well it will be if the Marv Albert precedent holds. From a marketing perspective, you have to think that he gets back most deals that are targeted directly to men, think G or golf clubs, albeit at smaller dollars.

On question: how much differently would this have played out 20 years ago? How about 40 years ago when race would have been a bigger factor?

Image control - Michael Jackson style

2009-12-07T11:53:00.000-08:00

If it's propaganda, that doesn't mean it's not true.

I said these words to a couple of family members after seeing This Is It, a fantastic documentary about Michael Jackson's last tour that will make people appreciate the King of Pop again.

Let's face it, the images most people had of Jackson, both the visual one he crafted for himself and the events of his life the media reported, were freakish. He has been accused of being a child molester, twice. He hung his baby off a balcony. The pale vampire face and off-putting cosmetic surgery, reinforced the freakishness of the man.

By giving us a behind the scenes look at Jackson preparing for his concert, the filmmakers showed us an entertainer in complete control of his craft. Jackson told musicians how to play HIS music and told stage managers when to cue the lights. Image Beyonce or Britney trying to play similar roles. I can't. I also can’t image how much it costs to produce a show like his tour, but I know the pressure to make it successful must have been enormous. I can understand way he had trouble sleeping.

As a piece of propaganda, the movie is a successful attempt to regain his legacy as the King of Pop. Simply by showing us Michael Jackson as a performer and performance manager, the movie reclaimed the King of Pop's role as one of the most important songwriters and entertainers of our time.

There is a reason Thriller is the best selling album of all time. Hint: it's the music stupid. Even a couple of decades later the riffs are infectious. Because MTV has stopped playing videos, most folks don't remember that releasing a killer video on MTV was a national event. The video for Thriller's title song remains one of the most parodied videos of all-time because it is so ubiquitous, and that's not even getting into Beat It or Billie Jean. Oh yeah, and he reintroduced the moonwalk.

Jackson helped shape music videos and he in turn was shaped by it. I tend think he got the dirtier end of the bargain. Few entertainers who find wealth and fame at an early age are enriched by the experience, or maybe we only hear about their abhorrent behavior precisely because it is newsworthy.

Thankfully and hopefully, the movie will push our memories of Jackson the Freak to the backburner. What will remain is the image of him gliding across a stage singing a song that has a killer hook. Propaganda is using media to shape emotions and that’s not always bad. For me, This Is It recreated an emotion bond to the performer I knew from childhood.

I’m okay with that.

Lessons learned from the Woods affair

2009-12-04T10:13:00.000-08:00

So, now the story is out: Woods cheated on his wife. Raise you hand if you thought that he had remained faithful. Now, raise your hand if you thought his admitting it before the tape surfaced would have quelled the media firestorm. If you are honest, you wouldn’t have raised your hand either time.

If you are a PR person and thought Woods should have gotten out ahead of the story, here’s a question: which affair would you have had Tiger admit to? The nightclub hostess in Australia? The woman after the Masters? And you know there had to be more than one or two, so how many?

If you do an interview, how do you deal with the domestic violence question? What if you say it didn’t happen, but someone gets a hold of his medical records from the hospital? What if that wasn’t the first time? How do you answer the question, “Excuse me but when did your wife stop beating you?

It’s hard to know what was in the minds of the Woods camp. Did they think that no one would step forward with proof of his infidelities? Did he consider his personal life to be a personal matter? I can’t answer the first, but given how quickly the Woods camp issued a statement after the tape surfaced -- three hours – you have to assume they were ready for damage control if it did happen.

People will argue that it’s PR 101 to get ahead of the story, but that’s only part of the course. The other part of the course is to understand your objectives.

Proponents of the get ahead of the story argument insist Woods should have talked to the media and the police. I think most people understand now that he should not have spoken to the police because if they had suspected domestic violence, they would have been forced to arrest his wife. It's the law. Look it up.

I think PR pros who treat people like brands forget that their clients are first and foremost people. If you are not worried about the money, and Tiger has already ready made around a billion dollars for himself, you can afford to worry about your family. If I am Tiger Woods, I don’t publicly admit to an affair unless evidence forces me to do so. My wife knows that I cheated on her, but she doesn’t need the world to know it too. I think that was Tiger’s main objective. It would have been mine.

But, once the woman produced the tape, she let the cat out of the bag. You release a statement that you have had ready for this moment and you move on. That’s PR 101.

Again, I can’t believe the wall-to-wall coverage would have died down had he admitted to having an affair or two. And it certainly would have resumed once the tape and sex tests were made public.

Now, for an off-topic thought. You know who benefits most from all of this: Mike Huckabee. At any other time, the Seattle shooting would have been headlines across the nation, but a pure violence story was topped by a transnational story about sex, fame, money, a crash and violence. I wonder why.

And my last question, how much differently does this story play if it had been Elin who crashed the car and Tiger came to her “rescue” with a long iron? Would race have been an issue? Just asking.

Tiger's image problem

2009-11-30T14:26:00.001-08:00

Not for the first time in my life, I am going to go out on a limb here. I disagree with the conventional wisdom about how Tiger should react to the storm surrounding his car accident.

Received public relations wisdom is you get on top of the story. But in this case, I think it only makes a private matter public. The current speculation is that he had an affair. What is he going to say in a statement that is going to change that opinion? What if he had an affair, denies it and later we find out the truth?

There is nothing to be gained by coming out with a statement other than he ran into a fire hydrant, which amounts to minor traffic accident.

It's the silence everyone resents. The media abhors a vacuum and in the absence of real news, everyone writes about the absence of real news.

Golf tours look forward to next season

2009-11-30T09:46:00.001-08:00

I wrote this a while back but never posted it because it was off topic. Given Tiger's recent off-course driving experiences, I think it's relevant as I'll explain in a later post.

Let me start from an odd place, the LPGA. Michelle Wie finally won. Grabbed by an on course reporter moments after she tapped in for victory, Wie proceed to give a rambling, incoherent interview about how grateful she was to breakthrough, but the content of conversation didn't matter. The star the LPGA had been waiting and praying for emerged from the darkness, leaving everyone associated with the business end of the tour hoping that she can kick it into super nova and rescue the brand the way her 30 yard bunk shot by the 18 green rolled into gimme range to seal the tournament. The women's tour needs a bonifide star, and it doesn't matter if she, like Wie, is yellow. They need a woman who can win, wear tight clothes and represent the game. The Koreans clearly don't think media accessibility is on the checklist of things required to play on the tour. They maybe right that being out front media wise will not bring them the endorsements Wie and the other American-born stars have snagged without reaching the winner's circle, but that short-sighted view doesn't take into account the tour's long-term health.

At this point, the Koreans look like visiting strip miners, here to plunder American gold without helping to refill the coffers. It should be noted that when Wie won, not a single Asian woman stepped out of the late afternoon shadows that blanketed the 18th green to congratulate the 20-year-old star. Americans Paula Crammer and Morgan Pressel stepped out to spritz her with soda pop, while the Asians stood aside. You wonder what were they thinking.

Tiger Woods's assent to the most liked face in golf proves the golf world is willing to move past the color barrier if the star is telegenic and charismatic. The American women, including the gay ones, have always understand that wearing short skirts and tight tops drives television ratings on the golf channel just like it does for prime time shows on the major networks. Heck, the women's tour employs a make-up consultant to prep the women before they head to the practice tee. The Koreans act as if these attempts to gussy up their image demeans the sports, an admittedly possibly true assertion. Then again, no one complained in the 80's when NBA players wore tight and short shorts, certainly not the women watching the sport.

Anyway, I have digressed about the fairer sex longer than I had meant to. On the men's side of the house, the last three tournament have ended in playoffs. Exciting television even if the names on the leaderboard can only be recognized by hardcore golf devotees. Across the globe, Phil proved that he is not only back but ready to challenge Tiger's dominance. Tiger broke through with his first win on the Australian continent, but all is not perfect in Tigerland. Phil presents a serious challenge to the boy who could not be stopped. Already the Tiger mystique of winning every major when he has held the 54-hole lead was shattered after some Brian May clone didn't back down at the PGA. Now everybody will think the Colossus of the fairways can be knocked aside, banished like an ancient relic. Or maybe just when you have grabbed a tamed tiger by the tail is when you should worry most.

Is PR a commodity?

2009-11-06T09:34:00.000-08:00

The other day I saw an electronic marketplace that matched common folks beset by legal problems with lawyers willing to auction off their services. A person who wanted a divorce could use the marketplace to find the cheapest lawyer. Thanks to the marketplace lawyer's services became a commodity, assuming, of course, that all of the lawyers were more or less equally competent.

I confess, if I were on trial for murder, I'd seek out the best lawyer I could afford, not the cheapest, but for wills and uncontested divorces why not go with the cheapest competent provider?

Could there be an electronic PR maketplace? Do we all provide the same basic skills? Is it all about measurement? How can you tell one firm from the next using only a generic RFP and an hour interview? Picking PR firms this way seems like an awful combination of Match.com and speed dating, a system that has some successes but mostly ends in failure.

Am I wrong in this? Is PR like murder trials or more like basic wills?

Will commercializing social media drive users away?

2009-10-20T05:43:00.000-07:00

Looking at how little MySpace is used now, I worry that Twitter and Facebook will suffer from the same fate. As marketers and public relations people try to take advantage of the crowds that have flocked to Twitter and Facebook (300 million user on the latter, at least according to some estimates), are we in danger of turning people away. Is there a reason it's called social media and not commercial media?

How do we keep these sites entertaining and appealing, which will drive traffic, yet communicate key messages? And please, don't tell me it's about creating interesting content. We all understand that's the baseline and table stakes for this discussion.

How do we keep these sites vibrant, yet commercial? What are the lessons we can learn from television's business model? Does the print industry have anything to teach us?

I don't have the answers and only know a few of the questions. Does anyone have some of the answers? What should I read and where should I go (conferences that is)?

Baby boomers and social media, or not

2009-10-14T16:00:00.000-07:00

Last week's Wall Street Journal served us an article on why email is dying. For my money, although email has ceded ground to other communications channels, it still has plenty of legs.

Outside of the tech elite, email is still the second best way to reach someone (the phone ranks as the clear first choice). If you are dealing with people outside of your social network, sending an email is the second best way to communicate non-urgent information.

Also, the shiny new social media toys we use today may not be in vogue ten years from now (hello and goodbye MySpace), but it's hard to believe email will ever go away. For example, snail mail, email's close cousin, has held its ground despite being faced with cheaper and faster competition. Fewer people letter, but bills still fill my mailbox.

Other means

That being said, even email can't reach all audiences. Some people aren't online, especially the old and poor.

My mother bought her first computer last week. My father owns an iPhone but has no interest in using the Web or email (don't ask me what he was thinking when he bought the iPhone). My grandmother uses email, but never checks her Facebook page. But, they all send cards and letters. They are not alone. There is large demographic who don't live on the Web and don't miss it. And yes, I know the demographic of people who don't use the Web shrinks every year. I read the survey from the Pew Internet and American Life Project:

Senior citizens: Broadband usage among adults ages 65 or older grew from 19% in May 2008 to 30% in April 2009.
Low-income Americans: Two groups of low-income Americans saw strong broadband growth from 2008 to 2009: First, respondents living in households whose annual household income is $20,000 or less saw broadband adoption grow from 25% in 2008 to 35% in 2009. Second, respondents living in households whose annual incomes are between $20,000 and $30,000 annually experienced a growth in broadband penetration from 42% to 53%.Overall, respondents reporting that they live in homes with annual household incomes below $30,000 experienced a 34% growth in home broadband adoption from 2008 to 2009.
High-school graduates: Among adults whose highest level of educational attainment is a high school degree, broadband adoption grew from 40% in 2008 to 52% in 2009.
Older baby boomers: Among adults ages 50-64, broadband usage increased from 50% in 2008 to 61% in 2009.
Rural Americans: Adults living in rural America had home high-speed usage grow from 38% in 2008 to 46% in 2009.

While those numbers point to an overall rise in Internet usage, they also point to the limitations of social media. If you want to reach baby boomers, you will need to find a channel that speaks to the 40 percent of boomers who do not have broadband access. And if you are looking for the folks who did not attend college, nearly half of them can only be reached through traditional marketing channels.

The takeaway

Those of us in the tech bubble need to remember not everyone lives on the Web and some of the non-Webbies have money to spend. To reach those people, traditional media and marketing technique are required. In other words, just because you have a shiny new stick, you should not throw away the old bat that can still hit the occasional homerun.

How Obama plays the media game

2009-10-14T15:00:00.000-07:00

When Obama appeared on Letterman as the show's only guest, he took a page from the George Bush playbook and bypassed the media to deliver his messages unfiltered and without pesky criticism, sort of like when Dick Chenney appears on Fox.

You could argue that he is diluting his premium brand by appearing on so many talks shows after he also blanketed the Sunday morning talking head panels, but he rightly thinks passing healthcare will define the next three years of his presidency. (Well, healthcare and the economy stupid.)

He also decided to take on Fox News. Figuring he has little to gain by playing nice, Obama declared war on the network, arguing the network's opinion makers rarely side with him on the issues of the day. In the Obama calculation, it was safer to call Fox News the opposition party megaphone rather a vendor of fair and balanced news. Shooting the messenger never gets old in Washington and the administration decided Fox's audience wasn't going to vote democratic in the next election anyway.

The next election cycle will tell us if Obama should have used a bigger carrot instead of the stick when dealing with Fox News.

Why newspapers matter and a pop quiz

2009-10-14T09:52:00.000-07:00

If you have a chance, please read this excerpt on why we need newspapers. At a time when more people than ever turn to newspapers for information, the industry's economic model is crumbling, and its overall health is declining. In a speech before the Joint Economic Committee, the Director for the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism, Tom Rosenstiel, noted:

Last year, the traffic to the top 50 news websites grew by 27%. But the price of an online ad fell by 48%.
The consequence is that the amount of our civic life that occurs in the sunlight of observation by journalists is shrinking. The number of city councils and zoning commissions, utility boards and state houses, governor's mansions and world capitals being covered on a regular basis, even by a lone journalist, is diminishing. One out of every five people working in newspaper newsrooms in 2000 was gone at the beginning of 2009, and the number is doubtless higher now. My old newspaper, the Los Angeles Times, has half the reporters it did a decade ago.

In a nutshell, while more people are reading the news, fewer people are reporting it. In a democracy, someone needs to ferret out the truth, if only for the populace to have an informed opinion.

If you think we have an informed populace, take this quiz and compare your answers with the nation at large and let me know how you feel about the depth of our collective knowledge.

The new PR: it's more than media relations

2009-10-02T08:41:00.000-07:00

At the Web Innovators Group event in Cambridge last Tuesday, I listened to a blue ribbon media panel talk about how entrepreneurs could do PR on the cheap. Because consummate PR pro Bobbie Carton wrote a wonderful review of the panel, I won't bore you with the details except to say the big take away was that entrepreneurs don't need to pay for public relations.

Here, I am reminded of the phrase: you get what you pay for. The panel was free and the reporters did provide an hour's worth of excellent advice for the general public. But good PR counsel means crafting a specific strategy and story for a specific client and being able to take that story to the appropriate channels. And that strategy session takes more than an hour.

Besides, starting with media relations is putting the cart before the horse. At one point during the evening, an entrepreneur asked when was a good to time to engage in PR. I can't remember what the panel's response was, but I know it should have been, "What are you trying to do?"

As Cherisse Fonseca Rivera wrote in her blog:

When I am helping out an organization, I always start with the basics. You know that whole research, action, communication and evaluation thing. But if public relations is about relationships, how about starting with this?
1) How can I make things easier or less difficult for the organization?
2) How can I serve this organization to help them move forward?
3) What is “our” action plan?
4) How do we get the process going?
Sometimes these questions involve media relations, but most of the time it does not.

Cherisse's comments came in response to Chuck Tanowitz's thoughts about the Web Innovator's event. The main takeaway for Chuck was:

First, the panel didn't have a good idea of how PR actually helps media relations; but second is the misunderstanding that PR means only media relations. Today's PR is much more than that.

Having a PR person on the panel would have helped the audience understand there is more to PR than reaching out to traditional media outlets. For example, there are bloggers, who were unforgivably not represented on the panel.

Not having a PR person on the panel is like having a panel on offensive football hosted by defensive players. They can tell you how they react to an offensive game play, but they can't tell you how to build a game plan that takes advantage of an offensive team's strengths and hides the team's weaknesses.

I know this analogy makes it sound like PR and the press have an adversarial role. I don't think this was always the case, but after listening to the panel and reading other sources, the veneer that the media used to employ when dealing with PR people has been scratched thin, and ugliness has shown through the exposed surfaces.

I sincerely hope that we have not entered a new era in PR and media relations, but change is upon our industry. As I've mentioned before, change makes people uncomfortable. And if you start messing with someone's livelihood, well, discomfort turns to anger.

Traditional media players understand the Web is putting them out of a job, and they also know that PR people are trying to disintermediate them by using the Web and social media tools. If I were them, I'd be pissed off too.

WSJ: social media has "consultants"

2009-10-01T11:24:00.001-07:00

Yesterday's WSJ brought a fresh look at PR, although in linguistic feat akin to writing about surgery but not using the word "doctor, " the paper avoids using the words "public relations." In short, while the story details how SMBs are turning to "consultants" for help developing and executing social media strategies, these consultants are not called PR people.

Yet, if you polled most consultants who offer these services, they would undoubtedly say they work for PR companies or, at least, marketing agencies. Indeed, Everywhere, one of the firms cited in the article, is a self described "Social Media Marketing and Content Development" company. I would think the agencies named in the article would not mind being labeled marketing or PR shops, but perhaps that's just me.

To be fair, the article includes the following:

Other agencies simply tack on social-media support as part of a package of advertising and public-relations services. Red Square Agency Inc., in Mobile, Ala., charges clients around $200 an hour, and ThinkInk LLC charges $10,000 to $20,000 a month for the integrated services.

But, one quibble here, most agencies would look at social media as part of an overall PR program, not an add on or after thought. Social media is part of an overall PR campaign, not a separate entity. For my money, the WSJ missed the point.

Journalists need to examine their own fears

2009-09-15T11:30:00.000-07:00

Am I alone in thinking journalists have taken more shots at PR people lately? This NY Times article on PR in the age of social media set off an explosion in the PR, journalist and blogger echo chamber. Looking back at that firestorm and the comments left on various blog posts, you get the distinct feeling that most people hate PR professionals, certainly the media and bloggers do.

One reporter arrogantly applied for a PR job while confessing that he was overqualified for the job, proving he lacked one of the chief traits a PR person must have: a sense of tact.

Then there is the Huffington Post blogger Schuyler Brown's post that this is the golden age of public relations. Most PR people I know think this an exciting time to be in PR but golden age implies riches, and anyone who has looked at PR budgets lately knows we are far from the heady days of the dot.com era.

What the dot.com era and today's social media era have in common is that they both ushered in a way for businesses to bypass the media and communicate directly with potential customers. Ten years ago, businesses did this by creating Web sites, which reduced the need to advertise in traditional media outlets. We know now that the reduced ad revenues gutted the print industry, shutting some papers and shrinking the readership at the rest, leaving them standing but bloody, waiting for the referee to count them out on a TKO, sort of like how mixed martial arts sucker punched the boxing industry.

Today's social media has taken a deeper bite out of the print media as peer reviews have replaced professional reviews. Many people still rely on CNET for advice on electronics and Consumer Reports for reviews on cars and household goods, but if you want to buy a book, Amazon's peer reviews are a better judge of whether or not you will like a book than a NY Times review. Peer sourcing is the way to go.

Journalists are scared. They should be. They are on the Titanic, a once proud and unsinkable ship that's hit an unseen iceberg. All hands may not be lost at sea, but the causalities are high.

Unfortunately for journalists, blogs have given PR people an organ to fight back. And PR people have done so, which is why what once was a lecture has become a dialogue. Just at the wrong time, journalists have found that PR blogs have given the PR industry claws to fight back, leaving both sides bloody, a car wreck both fascinating and horrible to watch.

The politics of ignorance or why newspapers matter

2009-09-10T17:38:00.000-07:00

Last week, I worked an event for the pro golf Tour’s Boston stop where most of my co-workers were gentlemen who were at least 50 years-old, what used to be a huge demographic of newspaper readers. Four guys told me they cancelled their subscriptions in the past year. And, almost unanimously, each of the guys said they don't read the paper online because they say it’s not the same.

Television has taken the place of reading, and we all know that’s not a positive input for intelligent discourse. Where I am going with this? Two places.

1) On the political scene, we are becoming more like Russia. The Russia political machine owns the television stations and only kill the print reporters when they create too much of a negative following. Here in the U.S., we haven't physically killed the print reporters but they are becoming irrelevant.

2) We are moving to a political scene that cares only for short, digestible slogans that don't have to be true. They only have to be repeated often enough to be believed. Hence the large number of Americans who believe that Al-Qaeda was in Iraq BEFORE we invaded, a charge that has been proven false many times, but a belief maintained by those who still want to justify invading Iraq.

This isn’t a surprise. In Daniel Gilbert’s excellent book Stumbling on Happiness, Gilbert notes that humans are exceptionally and subtly clever at disregarding information that doesn’t jibe with their belief system. Sort of like how Fox News ignored Obama’s health care speech this morning.

Just saying.

Journalists think they are overqualified for PR

2009-08-28T10:03:00.000-07:00

It is a known conceit that journalists think they can do our jobs better than we can. But it's rare that a journalist will say that while applying for a PR job, which Kansas City Star columnist Mike Hendricks did in an email exchange that ended up in on the Bad Pitch Blog.

I have met more than a few journalists who have crossed over to the dark side and been successful, but I have also met a few journalists who have flamed out because they underestimated how difficult it is to serve multiple masters or how much work goes into getting positive coverage.

Just saying.

10 ways PR has changed in the last five years

2009-08-19T14:30:00.000-07:00

1) PR used to be a face-to-face business. You took clients on tour, set up meetings at trade shows and competed in softball against various publications. Today, none of those face-to-face relationship building exercises are as big as they used to be. Budgets have restricted travel plans and most magazines don't have enough staff to field a softball team.

2) With a few exceptions, no individual media player has as much power as they did five years ago. As a result, today PR people have to cast a wider net to reach more media people to achieve the same market penetration they hit five years ago.

3) Bloggers don't take press releases. They want the inside scoop on the story. Most stories don't have enough angles to satisfy more than the most important bloggers.

4) Print is dead. Young people proudly boast that they don't read hard copy magazines. Worse, most PR people don't read hard copy magazines or newspapers, thereby burning down the house they live in.

5) Digital = viral. And that's not always good. Ask Domino's.

6) Blogs and Twitter mean every company has a lot more spokespeople and unhappy customers have a bigger microphone.

7) In the words of the Bill Clinton campaign, "It's the economy stupid." Social media is cheaper.

8) Embargoes are dead, which makes it harder to judge how much coverage will hit, and for that we can thank the bloggers.

9) Because social media is measurable, metrics really matter and we are only just beginning to learn how to count. Then again, not every PR practitioner is happy that her clients know exactly who is reading what.

10) We are only on the front edge of change. Just as email killed the fax business, social media is gutting traditional media and the collateral damage is killing traditional PR.

If you have more thoughts, I would be happy to hear them.

Bylines, another reason people don't trust PR folks

2009-08-19T08:09:00.000-07:00

Reading this NY Times article about doctors who put their names on bylines penned by drug companies reminded me of how few people outside of PR are aware that bylines are a tool of the trade. Outside of the public relations and marketing circles, most people assume the name on the byline is the article's author, which is exactly what everyone on the dark side wants them to think. And, we are comfortable perpetuating that deception

Is it any wonder that PR people aren't honored as pillars of integrity?

Killing embargoes cuts both ways

2009-08-18T09:48:00.001-07:00

Bloggers killed embargoes; there is no doubt about that.

Last week, Bobbie Carlton posted a great blog explaining what embargoes were and why PR people used them.

When done well, an embargo made sure that every outlet had the chance to print the story at the same time. More importantly perhaps, embargoes gave reporters a chance to report on a story, not merely rewrite a press release or announcement.

Back in the day, a good PR pitch had a customer and an independent analyst who could competently talk about pain points and product benefits. If you didn't have those pieces of independent corroboration, it was hard to sell a story to the media because a smart reporter does not trust a vendor's word. An enterprising reporter might even want to reach out to her own sources. It takes time for a reporter to interview all those people and talk to the vendor, let alone synthesize all of that information into a coherent story.

Embargoes gave the reporter time to research the story without the fear of getting scooped. It also meant every reporter got a chance to write the story because the vendor did not have to play favorites and everyone who wanted to cover a particular product launch could.

As much as reporters like to complain about embargoes, like so many other things in PR, the reporters' interests were served by the arrangement.

Many people give TechCrunch the credit for killing embargoes, but they only delivered the final blow. Long before TechCrunch formerly said no thanks to embargoes, PR types rarely briefed bloggers ahead of an announcement. Everyone knew bloggers weren't in the embargoed circle of trust, and as everyone knew the lay of the land, everyone played nicely in the sandbox.

Once TechCrunch got large enough to influence buying decisions, it had enough power to dictate the terms of the PR relationship. Money talks. In TechCrunch's case money loudly shouts that it will do whatever it damn well pleases. TechCrunch said they would no longer honor embargoes and almost every other blogger fell into line.

Bloggers play a different game than traditional media and their rules of engagement are different. That's fine as long as their rules don't change without warning.

Rules of engagement in PR are like an umpire's strike zone in baseball. Every umpire has a different one, but regardless of whether the umpire's strike zone favors the hitter or the pitcher, the player just wants the umpire to be consistent in his approach. Players go batty, so to speak, when the strike zone changes throughout the game.

In this case PR pros are baseball players, without the million dollar salaries. With consistent rules of engagement, we can decide when we want to give a reporter or blogger the news and they can decide whether or not to run the story.

Back in the days of embargoes, a good PR pro knew if an outlet was going to run a story. If a reporter conducted an interview, she usually wrote a story. If you gave a reporter embargoed information and she did not think it was worth covering, a good reporter would let you know that up front.

Once bloggers decided not to honor embargoes and thus tip their hand about whether or not they would cover a story, a PR pro's ability to predict coverage became more difficult. If there is one thing PR people want, it's the ability to set expectations and to tell a client how much coverage he will garner from a big launch.

Without the crystal ball, it's a crap shoot that, like so many things with social media, leaves PR people a little uneasy.

What I saw at the Podcamp Boston or the #pcb4 revolution

2009-08-10T13:05:00.000-07:00

First, let me confess that I was only able to attend the Saturday session so my thoughts are constrained to that day, but it was a full and fruitful day.

Everybody was talking measurement. The sessions that promised to explain how to measure the results from Social Media programs were filled beyond capacity. As with most marketing programs, the proof is in the numbers. To repeat a worn cliche, in these times building brand awareness isn't enough to move skeptics to open wallets. But most of the attendees left those measurement sessions underwhelmed. While the presenters had some good information, the general feeling was that the attendees showed up at a restaurant expecting a three course meal only to find bland appetizers on the menu. That said, Radiant 6 was a conference sponsor and they should have been happy to hear the news that to marketers measurement is still a four letter word.

I can do it, but how much do I charge? As the new economy has forced many mid-level managers to become freelancers, these reluctant entrepreneurs have had to learn how to bill for their services. If the measurement meetings filled the seats, attendance at the billing conversation flowed out of the door. By all accounts, Partner Dynamics's Melinda Moses, who presented "How do I Package and Price My solutions for SMBs," didn't disappoint the standing-room-only crowd.

Open Spaces create great conversations. At least as often as not, I learned more by chatting with random people in hallways as I did in the conference sessions. Pure serendipity, bumping into friends and learning about sessions they attended or sessions they planned to attend later. This is by design. Podcamp Boston organizers made sure there was plenty of open space and emphasized the Law of Two Feet, which meant that people got up and walked out if the presentation wasn't to their liking.

Conversations about social media lean toward the descriptive not the proscriptive. The more I talked to successful social media practitioners, the more I realize that most of them are making it up as they go along. That's not a bad thing. Actually, it's empowering. It's like being on the front edge of a land grab in fertile territory. Not everything you plant will bear fruit, but a lot will. If you can catch the first wave, you will be selling into an unsaturated market. Even the "What's Next" conference theme played into the spirit of exploration and experimentation.

There is a disconnect between what draws marketers to social media and what draws normal human beings to participate. No where is this more evident than around privacy settings. Most users want their friends to know which restaurants they frequent or which vacation spots they plan to visit in the next five years. Not surprisingly, the information is extremely valuable to marketers. In the middle of one presentation on job searches, a few attendees said they only share the barest information on the public profiles, but that defeats the point of participating on these sites. In the rush to monetize social media, they have forgotten the social in social media.

This post isn't the place to explore privacy settings in social media. For more on my thoughts on that, you can go here or trust that I'll return to the topic soon enough.

There are 250 million people on Facebook. If marketers cannot figure out how to make money from that captive, but walled-in audience, without scaring them with privacy concerns, we most definitely will find out what's next.

Advertisers get personal or Big Brother knows how you spend your money

2009-08-06T12:17:00.000-07:00

It's all about the metrics. One of the chief difficulties marketers have in selling their wares to the C-level office types is being able to prove that it works. Being able to link a marketing program directly to revenue, well for a marketer, that's like a Popsicle on a hot and humid day.

Now, thanks to Geomentum, advertisers are inching closer to capturing their Holy Grail, knowing exactly what ads move customers to spend money. On a large scale this is nothing new. For a while now, marketers have used technology to track consumers browsing habits, watching those clicks turn into cash, but Geomentum's technology makes it possible to understand how individual households will respond to a particular advertising vehicle, television, billboards or newspaper insert.

Cablevision in New Jersey, yes that Cablevision of Jeff Jarvis fame, has a program that targets individual households by demographics for television commercials. While that system does not let the advertisers learn names of the individuals customers, you have to believe that's not too far off because as a society we have traded privacy for convenience and savings.

Anyone who has bought a house or tried to rent an apartment lately knows that if you want a roof over your head, you have to let someone look deeply into your financial life. The paper trail says more about you than any resume or biography.

Less conspicuously, but perhaps more ominously, we've also made a bargain with supermarkets and other purveyors, accepting loyalty cards that bring savings but take away anonymity.

While the loyalty cards do provide savings, they also track the purchases of the supermarket's best customers. According to various sources, supermarkets receive the bulk of their profits from just under 25 percent of their customers. Loyalty cards let the supermarkets know just what those customers buy and make sure the shelves are stock with that particular shampoo or pitted olive.

Worried that we have too easily given up too much information about ourselves, conspiracy theorists and privacy purists have sounded alarms that have mostly fallen on deaf ears. Although privacy advocates have won a few battles, some of their battles with Facebook come to mind, the long-term edge in this war decidedly favors the information gathers.

After 9/11, conservatives who once worried about the government having too much information about us, pushed through the PATRIOT Act, trading privacy for security. Perhaps they realized that the cost of living in the modern world is privacy.

But the very people who used to worry about the government having too much control over our lives invited Big Brother to listen to our calls and search our emails.

For most of us, the convenience of giving up personal information is worth the perceived benefits, but for those who don't want to give up their personal information--for what ever reason--they are swimming against an overwhelming tide. When the government and corporate America's interests align, they create an undertow that sucks us all down.

The flexible English langauge

2009-08-03T21:13:00.000-07:00

Going back to basics, I picked up Grammar for Dummies the other day. It's one of a bunch of books that I have on the subject, though I confess that in this I am an inexpert student, as my friends never tire of reminding me.

Not through my hand alone, American English is under attack because of the informality of the digital age. To the our grandparents tell it, the introduce of email and texting, have assaulted the language of Shakespeare and Chaucer. According to those traditionalists, we are fueling the flames of hell with style manuals of all kinds.

I am, however, a person who believes in the flexibility of grammar and words, which drives the strict grammarians batty. But when our forefathers and mothers reached these shores, the English they spoke and wrote combined with the native tongues of other settlers from other nations, resulting in the polyglot we have today.

As a country, Americans hold the belief that world history (and the English language) starts with their birth, and change should only occur on thier terms. Unfortunately, that believe smacks up against the other core American values of exploration and self-determination. The country was founded by a group of explorers who made up a new form of government and a Constitution flexible enough to be a living document 220 years later.

Is it any wonder that we also look at language as malleable, at least as it's interpreted within a given set of rules?

That said, have fun finding all the typos in this post.

Beth's Blog is the place to learn about social media

2009-07-22T09:05:00.000-07:00

Too often social media experts portray themselves as wizards of the highest order, either talking down to lay people or pretending to have found the Holy Grail. Rarely do these experts lay out social media practices in a way that lay people can understand and execute.

Beth's Blog is the exception to that rule.

Take today's guest post by Gaurav Mishra, for example: the blog clearly lays out the 4Cs in the social media framework. For those keeping score at home, they are Content, Collaboration, Community and Collective Intelligence.

I won't rehash the blog here, because you should read it for yourself, but I will post the summary to prod you to wander over there:

So, the 4Cs form a hierarchy of what is possible with social media. As we move from Content to Collaboration to Community to Collective Intelligence, it becomes increasingly difficult to both observe these layers and activate them. Also each layer is often, but not always, a pre-requisite for the next layer. Compelling content is a pre-requisite for meaningful collaboration, which is a pre-requisite for a vibrant community, which, in turn, is a pre-requisite for collective intelligence.

Although I designed the 4Cs framework to explain how I see social
media, I have also found it to be a useful tools to evaluate specific social media initiatives. The best social media initiatives leverage all these four layers, but I have seen that most initiatives get stuck between the Collaboration and Community layers. Examples of social media initiatives that leverage the Community or Collective Intelligence layers are few and far between. It’s important to note, however, that each layer is valuable in itself, and it’s OK to design an initiative to only exploit the Content or Collaboration layers.

While you are there, I urge you to sign up to have the blog delivered to your mailbox. Today's post is typical of the solid advice she gives practioners in this field.

Cronkite, the fairness doctrine, truth unspun

2009-07-21T21:28:00.000-07:00

Walter Cronkite died. I didn't know him well, and I suspect most of my generation and those born after us didn't get to see him at work and know him only by association.

We think of him as the man who always told the truth, but anyone who has pulled together witness statements after a crime or accident knows that the truth depends on perspective. Cronkite lived in a time when people didn't question the perspective of anchorman. (They were all men back then, and mostly still are. I'll give you a dime if you can name a national anchorman today and another dime if you can also name the cable news jockeys.)

As Jack Shafer writes on Slate, Cronkite had the luxury of reporting in a time when Americans began to turn to the tube for their news, the first great abandonment of the print media industry. Shafer argues, persuasively, that people trusted what they watched because it was they watched it, and no one wants to knowingly watch liars.

Cronkite lived when media bias was either accepted, ignored or, and I think this is more likely, when people thought a reporter's personal viewpoint would not bias a story. Sort of the journalist equivalent of physics before the uncertainty principle: you could report on a story as a passive prism.

That cozy relationship didn't work for politicians because sometimes they had to twist facts to start a war or avoid charges of adultery. In these cases, it was and still is easier to stab the messenger than dispute the facts.

Cronkite also operated under the laughably quaint federal Fairness Doctrine, which as Shafer describes it:

The doctrine required broadcast station licensees to address controversial issues of public importance but also to allow contrasting points of view to be included in the discussion. One way around the Fairness Doctrine was to tamp down controversy, which all three networks often did.

Honest news programs, and the Sunday morning spinning talking heads shows, still operate under this principle, which has one great flaw: sometimes one side is flat out wrong. I'll leave it to you to supply your own examples.

Today, we watch news looking for a media bias. But for the most part, we only watch shows that already agree with our world view, confirming what we think we know about the world but not illuminating it.

The lens we use to view the world reveals more about us than it does about the world. In this age of social media, where everyone with a computer is not only a consumer of news but a potential creator, let us hope that we are not looking at the world through the narrow end of a telescope, but are using social media as a powerful version of the Hubble Telescope to look at an expanding universe, not a smaller one.

How the media grapples with telling the truth

2009-07-15T09:42:00.000-07:00

On Monday, July 13, the New York Times once again showed some interesting insights into the shift in reporting in a Web 2.0 world. In four separate articles, the paper deftly examined:

The role of bloggers as reviewers who never write negative criticism
How long it takes bloggers to pick up on news reported by traditional media
How social media wasn't a good enough source for the MSM to quickly report Michael Jackson's death, but the MSM relied on social media to report about the protests in Iran
How a lack of Web traffic brought down a Washington Post columnist

Read in succession, these articles show how much social media has changed reporting and how end users receive information. To state the obvious, social media has taken over a means of disseminating and receiving information. But we already knew that. The proof? I read all of these articles on line and provided you with links to do the same.

What we haven't come to gripes with is who should we trust. When bloggers don't write negative reviews, they are not reviewers but pitchman.

When TMZ breaks an entertainment story, should we trust them as much as the NY Times or the Wall Street Journal? New media and bloggers have created a surfeit of information, but not all of it has equal weight or veracity.

The Times also covered this trust issue in June, which resulted in fireworks. I discussed that here. (A quick aside: this time around, the opposition remained quiet. Do you want to know why? None of the articles quoted anybody with a big microphone.)

Even when a magazine or newspaper has an axe to grind, it tries to get the facts straight, if only align them with a predetermined premise. Get the facts wrong and the axe grinder point becomes dull.

As fewer people read newspapers and magazines, instead of relying on Twitter and blogs to feed their information additions, who is going to resolve the trust issue? And more importantly, who benefits if we don't resolve it?

Fear and loathing in public relations

2009-07-09T09:32:00.000-07:00

For days after this NY Times article came out on PR in the world of Web 2.0 , many in the PR world were still buzzing about it. It was an frontal assault on the way that business is done. I won't rehash everything that's been said about the article. There's no point in that, and too many others have trampled that ground. I want to look at what PR people aren't saying about the article. (If you want to read other commentaries about the NY Times piece, skip to end of this blog for a suggested reading list.)

Why did that article touch a raw nerve in the PR community?

PR practitioners have always felt that people outside of the marketing communications tent don't understand what we do. And they don't. It's almost impossible to explain to a civilian how PR works to shape and place stories.

For the most part, most everyone carries the common misconception that PR is about spin control, but those in the club know that unless you represent a market mover, it's not about spin, it's about getting attention. As my friend Tony Mackey put it in his blog, not every company is a winner, but that doesn't mean they don't think they deserve press coverage. They are certainly paying for it.

And therein lies the tension, or the dirty little secret PR folks want to hide. You can't lie, that ruins relationships and relationships are hard currency this trade. The Times got that one right. But sometimes you have to push a reporter to write about the slowest horse in the race and make the reporter believe that horse has a chance of winning the race. In the real world, people might call this lying. In PR it's called shading, spinning or positioning.

Reporters get this, and that's why they distrust PR folks. It's a healthy cynicism they have and, to be fair, one they should have and one we deserve.

Like any industry, there are people who don't do PR well, and that gives PR its well-earned black mark. And, well, in addition to the incompetents, there are the liars. Whether we want to admit or not that they exist in this industry, to not acknowledge that is to invite further distrust.

Now, enter the rise of influential blogs and other social media tools, which have slowly but steadily risen to prominence in the past two years, neatly coinciding with the print media's steady march to bankruptcy.

A scant two years ago when print was king, reporters and PR people were reading the same rulebook. They weren't exactly adversaries, because as much as reporters like to decry the work of PR people, we provide a source of information they cannot get elsewhere. True, that information comes with a price, the price of coverage, but show me a free lunch and I'll show you an overly long line at the buffet.

PR people are scared. The rules of the game are changing. Change may be good, but it's not always welcome. A lack of understanding the rules leads to anxiety, and that turns into sleepless nights.

When the Times points out that PR is at a crossroads, it makes our clients question how we do our jobs. There is a conceit among bloggers, reporters and corporate executives that anyone can do PR. It's true, anyone can do it, but not everyone does it well.

In her book about her experience as a speechwriter for the Great Communicator Ronald Reagan, Peggy Noonan noted that while everyone can write, not everyone can write well. PR is a lot like that, and the rise of social media has made it easier for unskilled PR people to do a bad job.

True, the rise of social media has changed the tools and the rules. In some cases, it has made reporters irrelevant and in other instances, it has made PR people into Web copy editors. It's also made everyone confused. When the rulebook gets rewritten in the middle of the game, it puts everyone on edge. It also leads to land grabs, and the articles below are the influencers staking out their territory.

As promised, if you want to read some solid commentary on the flap, see below.

Brian Solis's makes a spirited defense of PR in the new world order, which is very much a continuation of his thoughts from this post on the new state of PR, marketing and communications.

Michael Arrington's posted a vicious smack down of PR. (If you still believe in the power of traditional PR, this isn't reading not for the faint of heart.)

Robert Scoble contributes a good commentary on the basics of how to do PR in the new age. It's a must read for anyone in the Tech industry, whether you are on the communications side of the house or not.

I have only included some of the pieces that received the most commentary, but I welcome other contributions and suggestions for articles to read.

Say goodbye to online privacy

2009-07-06T13:35:00.000-07:00

Rupert Murdoch once said, "Human beings can be led anywhere, as long you take them there step by step."

Little by little, a vast Alliance of marketing and Internet interests have eaten away our online privacy and anonymity. But recently, these companies have started to hunger for bigger slices of the pie.

A recent Wall Street Journal (WSJ) article (subscription required) noted that Quantcast, a small company that tracks Web browsing behavior on 10 million Web sites, plans to sell that data, which contains detailed user profiles, to marketers who want to create highly targeted ads.

New York Times (NYT) reporter Saul Hansell noted that BT (British Telecom) abandoned a similar plan when privacy advocates objected. In the U.S., Congress stepped in to rebuff AT&T's bid to sell information about its user's Web habits.

Last year, several midsized Internet providers in the United States began testing a similar system with NebuAd, a rival of Phorm. They backed down when a series of congressional hearings highlighted public objections to the concept. AT&T has indicated that it too would like to earn some of the money from targeted advertising now mainly flowing to Google, but it promised to find a way to ask its customers for permission before it does.

But if you really want to visit the frontlines in battle to use personal data for advertising purposes, you have to look at Facebook, as Wired does in this article. Within its Walled Garden of 200 million users, or 20% of the people who surf the Web, lies a treasure trove of personal photos, thoughts, friends and reviews.

Everyone asks how Facebook plans to make money. The answer is the company wants to sell all of the data they have on all its users.

In November 2007, Facebook launched Beacon, a ham-fisted attempt to inject advertising into News Feeds. Users felt violated; after a month of protest, Zuckerberg publicly apologized and effectively shut Beacon down. Then, in February 2009, Facebook quietly changed its terms of service, appearing to give itself perpetual ownership of anything posted on the site, even after members closed their accounts.

The question of who owns the data about us isn't trivial and, like presidential power, it's a spigot that only opens in one direction. Despite all of their beautiful words, presidents don't give back power. Truman didn't, George W. Bush didn't and Obama won't. And once the rights to our personal information no longer belong to us, we are not getting it back, regardless of the recent victories against AT&T, BT and Facebook.

Privacy activists have to win every battle to kept our information from being available to whatever marketer wants to pay the going price. The Alliance of marketers only needs to get the toothpaste out of the tube.

As an interesting aside, both the NY Times and Wired discussed the privacy implications on selling data about our browsing habits. The WSJ, on the other hand, looked at the difficulty inherent in a business plan that gave away the data and would only collect when ads were sold.

Why should we care? For a few dollars, you can get a credit report on almost anyone as long as you have their Social Security Number. And, these days you don't need skills to get almost anyone's Social Security Number.

I am not a conspiracy theorist, but if my credit history is plain for anyone to see, why should I believe that the marketers will do a better job guarding my browsing history? Does a prospective employer or client need to know my political affiliation, religion or fantasy baseball skills?

There was a time when only your family, friends or enemies knew everything about you. That was 20 years ago. What's going to happen in the next 20 years?

Is Social Media shrinking the digital divide?

2009-07-01T13:06:00.000-07:00

In the age of the super information highway, the "Haves" whirl around the Internet faster than the "Have Nots" and that's called the digital divide. But a recent study by the Pew Internet and American Life Project shows that the gap is closing.

Respondents living in households whose annual household income is $20,000 or
less, saw broadband adoption grow from 25% in 2008 to 35% in 2009.

Respondents living in households whose annual incomes are between $20,000
and $30,000 annually experienced a growth in broadband penetration from 42% to
53%.

By comparision, the nation average for broadband access currently stands at 63% and there was relatively little growth in broadband access among the nation's wealthiest households. Between 2008 and 2009, broadband adoption for households with income of greater than $75,000 grew from 84% to 85%.

Clearly, we may be shrinking the digital divide, but we have acres of room to go and this is where social media comes in. Beyond the hype, the applications and visual media on Facebook, MySpace and Twitter provides a reason for non-information workers and their kids to have/need high-speed Internet. Accessing most of this information via dial up is a flat out pain in the neck.

A little background on why we became a fast speed nation.

Many have argued that Napster had more to do with increasing broadband subscription rates than any application before or since. With the emergence of Napster and its huge multi-mega-bit files, people abandoned dial up in droves, not wanting to wait hours to download an album when broadband access could reduce wait times to minutes.

Once the critical mass of broadband users flocked to the Internet, companies and their marketers could move away from text heavy Web sites to graphically pleasing multi-media sites. For a fun example of then and now, compare NASA's home page circa 2000 with today's fun site.

For the end user, faster browsing speeds meant exactly that, and jumping from site to site was a breeze, not a huge time suck. If you landed on a bad page, you could instantly jump off to a new direction. Cruising the Web went from a rush hour traffic jam experience to a rocket-propelled tour of the World Wide Web.

You can't put toothpaste back in the tube, and according to the Pew Project, you can't go back to dial up. Their research shows that when times are hard, people will cut their MTV and cable packages before they sacrifice the speed of a broadband connection.

So what has changed in the past year to warrant a better than 25% increase in broadband access among the nations poorest households? Well, the economy to be sure, but as it has gone south, broadband access has climbed, seeming in definance of the recession.

So again, what is different? You guessed it, millions of people signed onto Facebook and Twitter, which saw year-over-year gains of 253% and 1043%, respectively.

Like Napster ten years ago, social media is changing how people use the Internet. To date, marketers have focused on how to make money using social media. The real question is how do you make money on all of these people who are new to broadband.

Or is that what Fan Pages are all about?

Why Social Media is like 1973 again, minus the bellbottoms

2009-06-22T14:22:00.000-07:00

Most people in marketing and PR can think back to a time when the family living room was a place families gathered as a group to watch television and listen to music.

Back then, just about anyone in America regardless of age could sing the lyrics to any number of Jackson 5 tunes. In the same way, just about anyone could sing the theme song to Gilligan's Island. These were touch stones, the foundations of the American experience like baseball, apple pie and Chevrolet. Since the 1970s, none of those institutions is the same.

Beginning in 1973, baseball's apple was tarnished with free agency, strikes and steroids; the apples we eat are either organic, genetically modified or driven here from South America; and despite a brief though unsustainable respite fueled by the sale of SUVs, the U.S. auto industry has never recovered from the 1970s oil crisis.

Following a general loosening of restrictions on cable television, HBO (then known as Home Box Office) launched in 1972, delivering uncut movies into homes across America and television has never been the same.

In 1972, All in the Family delivered a 34.0 rating, meaning one third of all the people in America watched the show and 54 percent of the television sets that were on tuned into that show. If you didn't watch it, you couldn't TiVo it and watch the show later, but you heard about it in school, by the water cooler or on the bus to work.

By comparison, the most highly rated show in 2009, American Idol, captured only ten percent of the U.S. population.

Simply put, network television doesn't deliver audiences like it used to. And now that more people DVR or TiVo their favorite shows, watching those shows without commercial interruption, the audiences are falling faster.

It's been mentioned before, but it bears repeating here, while newspapers have grimly reported their own demise, television taken a more "if we don't talk about the pink elephant in the room, maybe nobody will notice" approach.

But all is not lost for advertisers. Even though audiences have shrunk, niche cable programming has delivered more targeted audience. Advertisers can feel comfortable knowing the eyeballs they are buying on Lifetime's movie channel will certainly be interested in perfume or hair products. Every cable channel delivers its own audience. Social media is a lot like that.

Each medium brings its own audience, but more importantly, it is a self-selecting audience that wants to be there. People join fan pages on Facebook and MySpace because they want to be part of something and find out more about the company. They follow companies on Twitter because they want to be in touch at all times.

It's important to remember that social media is new, just like the Internet was before the Netscape browser that made it easy for the masses to navigate through the wild World Wide Web. It seems some companies were with us from the outset, Amazon and eBay come to mind. Others came on strong later, knocking off more established competitors--hello Google, where have you gone AltaVista?

When I hear people talk about effective social media it's always in terms of case studies, things that have worked in the past. That's because the landscape is changing and we are still writing the rules for social media.

A year ago, it would have been impossible to predict the rise of Twitter. Two months ago, everyone had to have a presence in the Twittersphere. Today, its growth has stopped. Tomorrow remains a mystery. Will everyone ride the Google Wave?

The point is that for communications professionals, we have hit a bend in the river. What is will happen in three or four years is largely an unknown. As we try to negotiate what is a fast moving river, where everything changes at Internet speed, some of the stuff that worked when we through it against a wall yesterday will not work today. An example of this can be seen in how the rules of email marketing evolved due to the rise in spam. How will Twitter react to its own spam slam?

A better question for communications folks is, what is the new Twitter and how will we use it?

If you like to learn on the run and rewrite all the rules, it's never been more fun to be in this game.

Smartphones help life work balance

2009-06-18T10:59:00.001-07:00

In a previous post, I noted that smartphones sales have defied current market forces and sales have climbed, despite the ongoing recession. There are some obvious reasons for this, not the least of which is that cell phone contracts expire after two years, and conveniently for the carriers and and cell phone makers, is about the life expectancy of the average phone. Throw in a little bit of smartphone envy created by good marketing and you have the solid recipe for upgrading cell phones every two years.

You also have to look at how human beings are hard wired genetically. We have an inbred need to communicate, to be linked to our friends and family almost all the time.

A recent article in the Times noted that smartphone marketers have taken advantage of this impulse and smartphones have moved from a "nice to have" to "must have" for everyone from corporate corner office types to pre-teens wanting to be cool.

One of the byproducts of having a smartphone is anywhere, everywhere accessibility, and that's 24/7. In the same way that email, WiFi and the laptop made it possible to take your office almost anywhere, smartphones bring an even greater level of accesibility because you don't have to lug around a big laptop case or wait for the machine to power up. While some complain that accessiblity comes at a price because workers are expected to respond to email in more places and more often, I argue the opposite.

Smartphones give their users unlimited mobility. You don't have to lug around a laptop to review a critical email that means you can go to a kid's recital or soccer game without guilt. And downtime in doctors' offices or on commuter trains can be used productively.

If you watch current entertainment, there's a fallacy that Americans aren't supposed to be hard workers, the most successful people almost always are the hardest workers. That's one manifestation of the American dream that does hold. We live in a meritocrary, and smartphones aid workaholics in their quest to achieve some sembalance of a work life balance.

Now, if you want to talk about smartphones and their contribution to the digital divide, well that's the subject of another post.

Smartphones giveth and taketh away revenue from carriers

2009-06-17T10:06:00.001-07:00

Apple's killler iPhone sales have forced other smartphone makers to step up their game. But if you read any review of a competing product in the consumer cell phone market, that is the non-enterprise user, the iPhone is the gold standard by which all others can't compare. No question.

The trouble is that most people agree it's a horrible phone on a lousy network, so it's not really a cell phone. The inappropriately named iPhone is really a mini-computer and gaming device. If you get two iPhone users in the same room, inevitably their talk turns to the cool apps they have on their phones. And then they talk about the dropped calls and how quickly they will leave AT&T once it loses its exclusive carrier privilege.

If the AT&T's iPhone customers do as predicted, leave for better networks once AT&T's exclusive partnership with Apple runs out, the carrier's revenues, already suffering through decreased landline use, will fall off the cliff. To prevent this dramatic lose of income, AT&T must demonstrate physically that its network has improved service because marketing alone won't get the job done. AT&T may claim more bars in more places, but no one who has AT&T for carrier believes that tag line.

Of course, AT&T may have another surprise up its sleeve, like their first exclusive arrangement with Apple, but I doubt it.

In a perverse way, while the introduction of smartphones like the iPhone has given the carriers more high paying data using customers, it has limited their opportunity to drive greater revenue from the customers.

Once upon a time, Verizon pushed its own music service, overcharging for music with bad sound quality--music that you probably owned already and did not want to pay for again. The iPhone effectively put an end to that potential revenue stream and the Apple app store killed any notion that carriers might have had about delivering games across their networks.

What is interesting in all of this is that consumer technology's true giant, Microsoft, hasn't found a toe hold in this market. By any objective standard, both versions of the Zune player have been a a bust, if not an outright diaster. Besides, Microsoft attempts to corner and closed the market on PDA operating devices are in the trash bin next to the Apple Newton.

This is important because as smartphones become more and more sophsiticated, more and more people will stop buying laptops, especially people who can only afford one or the other. You don't think that's going to happen? Tell that to the desktop computer makers.

I have heard the argument that people can't write a term paper or a press release on a smartphone, but I'll bet LG 2009 texting champion Katie Moore can. The hardest thing for anyone more 30 years old to accept is that the technology kids use will be standard technology 30 years from now. Experience isn't always the best teacher, sometimes it's a stumbling block.

The question for the day: if the world moves to a smartphone platform for computing, where does that leave Microsoft?

Increased smartphones sales makes us better writers

2009-06-17T09:16:00.000-07:00

While the rest of the economy stumbles along, smartphone sales are humming right along. Best Buy and AT&T have sold out of their pre-order allotment of the iPhone 3G S and in some stores the Palm Pre was sold out within hours. Though some claim the tight supply was little more than a marketing gimmick, the point remains: smartphone sales are defining the dark force in the global economy.

The effects of the increase in smartphone sales have big implications for public relations and society. For PR, because smartphones have smaller screen real estate, writers must deliver tight subject lines, attention getting headlines and strong lead sentences. If you think readers skim through email quickly, the small font sizes on most smartphones make reading a chore and writers have to make the reader feel like the extra work is worth it.

The payoff for a good writer is that you can get your message read in more places and at more times. Smartphone users instintively reach for their devices whenever they are bored, have downtime or are stuck watching a dance recital featuring the pre-schoolers of others.

While marketers have more opportunity to reach more eyeballs, turning readers into buyers is still a challenging task. Good writers and strong writing have never been more in demand and fortunately for PR firms with all of the cuts in media, there are more good writers looking for work than ever. Yet, good writers don't always make good PR people.

Many media still think that working for PR is like taking a walk over to the dark side and they don't understand that in PR you not only have to inform, but you must convince someone to take action. And of course, some media people hate pitching or begging their former colleagues to take a meeting.

In England, crossing from working media to PR and back again is much more common and accepted. Of course, British writers also expect the agencies to pick up the tab at dinner or the bar, something their American counterparts think lessens objectivity. Across the pond, pay for play is A-okay.

So my question is: when will the changing media landscape usher in a new wave of pay per play? Perhaps a better question is, given how few technology companies buy ads in key publications, do their ad dollars already influence the tenor of coverage?

Truth, accuracy and the new media way

2009-06-12T06:27:00.000-07:00

Like almost everyone who follows the media, I have been fascinated by the recent dust up from the NY Times attack on bloggers and their propensity to report on rumor as fact. And like most others, I find the proposition of reporters disparaging their competition a little dicey. It smacks of self interest. Even people with the best of intentions have trouble remaining impartial when their livelihood is on the line.

But the NY Times wouldn't print it if it were not true, right?

Not according to TechCrunch's Michael Arrington, who uses his microphone to slam the NY Times for shoddy reporting on this story. Arrington makes some great points, especially when he points out where the NY Times was flat out wrong.

Here's the problem for the NY Times, if they hope to make it in whatever the future holds for major American newspapers, all they have to stand on is their credibility. In light of the Jayson Blair scandal and a relentless conservative movement to paint the publication as a dishonest messenger, the paper's image has been badly tarnished.

And yet according to Editor and Publisher Magazine, the publication's online readership has grown. As of March 2009, the paper saw a seven percent year-over-year increase to about 20.1 million unique visitors. If newspapers are the first draft of history, over 20 million people think the Times does pretty good on the first take.

Despite Arrington's accurate objections to the NY Times piece about him, where there is smoke there is fire and bloggers have been taking liberties with the truth. Truth and accuracy, it seems, are the causalities of the rise of new media.

So what's next? I think Marc Hausman has it right in his blog post on the changing of the journalistic guard, new media and old line journalism will come closer together. The Arrington vs. NY Times dust up proves how much influence both outlets have.

But I also think if bloggers don't try to get it right most of the time, they will turn into unread side shows. I think Jeff Jarvis's commentary about this tiff is spot on:

To quote Gawker founder Nick Denton, when we put up “half-baked posts” we are saying to our public: Here’s what we know, here’s what we don’t know, what do you know. I believe it is critical to clearly label that, giving caveats and context. The same is true of 24-hour cable news, where the viewer must become the editor, understanding the difference between what is known now and what what can be confirmed later (see: the West Virgina mining disaster). In short: We who publish must learn how to say what we don’t know at least as well as we say what we know.

Look, even the National Enquirer tells the truth now, but with their history they have trouble conquering the sniff test. So when they get a big story right, like the John Edwards affair, no one believes them or really cares.

Bloggers don't want to end up in that camp.

Tools of the trade

2009-06-10T08:51:00.000-07:00

When I started in tech PR 10 years ago, you did most of your real pitching to reporters on the phone. There were magazines that mattered like the Industry Standard, Red Herring, Business 2.0 and Fast Company and it was all about getting in the print edition because the online world didn't matter.

Today, when PR people talk about bloggers or social media they say, "It's about creating relationships."

That's tripe. It's always been about creating relationships. What's different is that the tools of the trade have changed and technology has changed how the people receiving the message get the message.

The first part of how delivering the message has changed is obvious. Ten years ago, if you had a good story, you called a reporter on the phone and delivered a pitch tailored to their ears. But they published once a week. It would take an enterprising PR flack an hour to two to skim the reporter's last 10 stories and have an good idea about what that reporter covered over the last three months. Today, bloggers can knock out that many stories in a couple of weeks.
Becasue publishing is easier, we have more people with smaller microphones. As a result, today's media is delivering a smaller and more fragmented audience, like the transition from network television to 800 niche cable channels.

With more people writing more stories, developing relationships is statiscally more difficult and professionally more important. Because reporters and bloggers are under tighter deadlines, they rely on PR folks they trust to provide a comment right away.

The second change and the one that has changed how PR works is the rise of the consumer Internet. Corporate Web sites and search engines have greatly changed how end users gather information. Many businesses no longer need a middle man to deliver the message, they can do it themselves, forcing a fundamental shift in PR and marketing.

While newspapers and magazines deliver a targeted and known audience, really interested buyers will have searched the Web for info on purchases. They come into the buying mode with some idea of the products on the market, but look to media, new and old, to help in the reviews processes. It's a paradigm change from waiting for media to push stories to end users and having that drive sales.

What does this mean for PR people? Answer: we are all going to become marketers. Phone skills will fade, writing will rise and SEO will be ever more important. The kids coming out of school today will become multi-talented. They will be able to write, take still pictures and edit video. There will be, and there are specialists for all of these tasks, but those who use to specialize in PR will find ourselves more tightly aligned with the marketing department.

Bet on it.

Consolidation, bad customer service, disaster

2009-06-08T17:42:00.000-07:00

As consolidation sweeps across an industry, customers suffer. Oligarchies stifle competition, setting prices and releasing products that meet their needs, not the consumers. For a classic example of this, see OPEC during the 1970's, Ma Bell before the 1980's break up, the music industry or, for a more recent example, the U.S. auto industry. The other lesson here is that oligarchies hurt themselves. The lack of competition leads to complacency, a failure to innovation and focus on the bottom line not the end user.

No where is this clearer than in the customer service department of large corporations. Every call to a customer service department starts with a machine and menu of options that generally starts off letting the customer know how to pay the bill. From the outset, the company sets the image that its chief role is to collect payments, not provide service.

Customer service departments in large corporations are similar to human resources. They work for the people providing the service, not the people receiving it. As a result, they stick to corporate policies rather than resolving customer issues.

A case in point: I recently cancelled my FiOS service with Verizon because I moved out of their coverage area. While I liked the FiOS service and the channels, especially now that I am living with a more limited and more expense lineup from Comcast because I am no longer in a competitive market, for the first six months of my relationship with Verizon, I was over billed. Problems that I thought were resolved, snuck back into subsequent bills.

Cable bills are paid in advance. That means, you pay for June service before you actually receive it. They also don't prorate your last bill, but ask you to send in the full amount and promise to send you a refund check 6-8 weeks later, if they remember. During all that time, they collect interest on your money. During a call to Verizon I point out that there was no need for me to pay the full amount of the June bill, they had cut off service and I returned the equipment so I could not siphon off services. Verizon said they hadn't determined the final bill. But why not, I asked I had been without service for a little over a week, why couldn't they simply prorate the bill on the spot? Because that's not the way it's done came the answer.

Verizon is by no means alone in this, when I switched over to ATT to buy the iPhone, each of my first four bills contained $40 of extra services that I never ordered. It took four separate 30 minute phone calls to finally resolve the problem.

I mention this not because I think everyone should check their bills carefully--you should--but these companies can get away with this lack of customer service and over billing for two reasons:

1) They think people will not notice that they are being over billed and they are right.

2) There is no penalty for over billing. In fact, because most of us sign one or two year contracts to get favorable rates, there is a penalty on us if we fight back by taking our business away.

Bad customer service is one symptom of a larger malaise, a lack of focus on the customer. This disregard for the end user is fine as long as the consumer cannot find other choices, but it kills the corporation when sea changes occur. Most often this sea change comes with a shift in technology, such as the oil crisis and the resulting demand for cars with better gas mileage or Napster and music industry reluctance to embrace the Internet.

In both cases, the reigning colossus lost because it tried to dictate end user behavior and failed as outside forces proved to be too strong. To be fair, both the auto and music industry had products that inspired loyalty, but as giants who focused on their bottom lines rather that what was good for the customer, they didn't innovate and are on life support.

Who is next?

Why there are too many people on Twitter

2009-06-08T17:15:00.000-07:00

Starting in mid-May, I stepped out of the Twitter stream. Instead of tweeting four times a day, I stopped cold turkey, no nicotine patch, no nothing. And you know what, even this convicted gadget guy, didn't miss it. Not one bit.

While I was gone, Twitter lived on, much the same way that it always has and like a good conversation or a good book, I was able to pick where I left off. Of course, Twitter hadn't changed much because despite the relentless media hype, its growth flattened.

Let's face it. Twitter is a limited application. If you follow the right techniques, you can amass a million followers, though it helps if you are a celebrity or Aston Kutcher. But how many conversations do you really want to join. In this universe, time is finite and while you can have many followers, we are limited to a few hundred friends.

Twitter works best for those who are connected all the time and can follow the stream as part of their daily course of business. For all of us techies out there, and I hate to say this, but that's a small percentage of the population.

From what I understand about psychology, once more than seven people join a face-to-face conversation, it fragments. I haven't seen psychology studies on how many people you can follow on Twitter and I'll bet you haven't either, but in your heart of hearts you know how many that number is and it doesn't run into the thousands.

What I am saying is that Twitter is not Facebook. It will appeal to limited number of people and that's okay. I peg that number at number at 11 million, when all is said and done. A gut feeling, nothing more. Look, about 60 percent of all users abandon their accounts within a month, finding that the hype doesn't match the experience. People will come and go. Hopefully, a core group remains.

Twitter rose because it took the best of Facebook--the status report--and gave you a way to broadcast to your friends without the apps and causes that cluttered Facebook's status report. (No thank you, I don't want good Karma nor do I want to sponsor a pet, and also I am not a bad person because I have repeatedly ignored your requests to do so.) Facebook realized this and changed it's user interface to head off the challenge from Twitter.

Before the Twitter hype hit its zenith, many of my PR friends said that Twitter would not make a difference in how their companies marketed products. I agreed, but I also pointed out that people were on on Twitter so business had to pay attention.

In the end, PR and marketers agreed did notice. The notorious and no longer infamous bank robber Willie Sutton once said you rob banks because that's where the money is. Marketers flocked to the Internet because that's were the cool kids hang, especially the coveted demographic of affluent people who make big decisions with big money.

If anything has ruined Twitter, it's the rush to monetize it. Left alone, Twitter could have grown organically, free from the media's diminishing but destructive gaze. That's not possible now. Once the shiny new toy that beckoned, Twitter will do a quiet fade away. The cool kids will find another playground. The only question remains, does Google buy Twitter or does Facebook dance on the remains?

p.s. by the way, I stand by this post even in light of the importance of Twitter in keeping people informed about the stunted revolution in Iran. Once the old regime is back in power, all those Twitter accounts will die like the aborted attempt at democracy.

Cable is good business ... for now

2009-06-05T08:57:00.000-07:00

According to Saul Hansell's recent blog in the NY Times, the cable companies are doing better than ever.

Revenue at both Time Warner and Comcast rose 5 percent, a growth rate that many companies would kill for in these lean times. Their various measures of operating income and cash flow rose a bit faster than revenue because they’ve been able to keep a handle on costs.

But there's trouble on the horizon. ESPN demands $3 per subscriber and Comcast has to pay NFL Networks 40-45 cents per subscriber--all year long. As more niche cable sports networks come online, expect sports packages to cut into those cables profits.

Comcast has fought back by offering sports tiers, for an additional fee, of course, but in general cable companies are loath to offer a la carte services. Most consumers only watch a handful of the channels available in their bundled packages, and to let consumers pick and choose their favorites would cut into revenues.

The other thing that is going to cut into cable company revenue, amusingly enough, is one of their products, the Internet. Already, tech savvy people are letting go of their expensive cable packages in favor of services like Hulu or just watching series episodes on network Web sites.

The trouble is that right now, getting the technology to work seemlessly requires networking skils that are far beyond the powers of ordinary man or woman, as this NPR All Tech blogger found out.

What will drive people to learn how to harness the technology is costs. The average cable bill has doubled in the past 10 years and we haven't gotten a whole lot more for our money beyond HDTV, though I will admit many living rooms are brighter with HDTV.

What may make cable companies increase their offerings is increased competition. As TechCrunch's Michael Arrington notes, search engine competition has forced better products out of Google.

Having moved twice in the past 10 months, I've dealt with three separate companies. Two of the towns I have lived in had competing cable companies and, not surprisingly, in those towns each of the competitors offered more channels for less money than the town without competition. In short, the residents of those towns were better served by competition.

For everyone else, especially in densely populated areas, help may be on the way.

The journalist class of 2015

2009-06-04T06:12:00.000-07:00

I have a friend who teaches journalism at a local university. Over dinner one night, she complained about how little her students read the newspaper. She rightly pointed out that it would be hard for them to understand how to write for a newspaper without reading one. I agreed with her on that point, but flipped the tables and asked her, if they they were taking a journalism course but not planning to write for a newspaper, where were they planning to look for jobs.

There are two points in play here.

One is kids just are not reading the newspaper. Nobody is. The decline in readership has been well documented by the Pew Research Center and others, so there is no need to belabor the point here, except to note that young people read newspapers less than old people.

If you are older, you have a habit of reading the newspaper, but kids today grew up in the 24/7 world of the Internet and MTV. They have shorter attentions spans and it's not all about ADHD. The world comes at them faster and it's edited faster. If you need empirical proof of this, take a look at how a movie from the 1960's is cut and edited. The scenes play out much longer than today's movie, and it's not just the thrillers.

Here's the problem, the people who labor for newspapers, those who own them and the paper's reader have a mistaken belief that the world needs their services. Tell that to the telegraph industry. Not too long ago, reporters filed stories by telegraph and I remember learning Morse Code as a kid when I had a two-way walkie-talkie.

The other day, while driving my 11 year-old daughter we started talking about the Air France disaster and how the pilots might have put out an SOS. As I started to talk about how the international distress signal came about (the three long, three short bursts are for even non-experts to understand in the telegraph language of Morse Code) she asked me, "What's a telegraph?"

In her 11 years on this planet, she has not read a book or seen a movie that featured a telegraph, and let me tell you she has read plenty of books and seen lots of movies.

In 30 years time, her kids will ask her, "Mommy, what's a newspaper?"

So back to my original question and my second point, if the kids today don't plan to write for newspapers, who will write them a paycheck? I could be wrong, but I don't think there is an answer for that, which has huge implications how we get our information about the world around us and how we hold politicians accountable for the actions.

My question to you: in the new media, what are the new reporters going to do?

Letting go of the Globe

2009-06-03T07:40:00.000-07:00

Hello.

I cut the cord on Friday and like millions of others I cancelled my subscription to the Boston Globe. It hurt. In part because I knew that I was a another dagger to the heart to a publication that is in critical care after being poorly managed by the Old Grey Lady.

But also, I've read the daily newspaper since I was in high school. That's a long time back, long enough ago to remember when a newspaper influenced our daily lives. Long enough ago to remember that investigative reports ferretted out coruption rather than the best bar for a Cosmo.

In college, I read three newspapers a day, the Globe, the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal because I wanted to know learn about the local scene and read opposing view points in national media.

Letting go was hard.

But towards the end of my life long addiction to reading the daily newspaper, I found that I read less and less of the print edition of the paper everyday. In the end, all I had left was the habit of picking up the newspaper off the stoop. But one phone call took care of that, no 12 steps needed.

I am in communications because I like it. I like the news and I like being able to shape it and to be able to talk about it. This blog will be about my love for the news and what I think is going to happen to the communications industry in the next five years.

As I try to re-imagine a world without the daily paper, I am going to use this blog to look at how technology is reshaping the communications industry and how that ripple effect is changing society. I will not focus solely on the print media and its successor the Internet, Social Media, Web 2.0, New Media or what every you want to call it because with all of the print media's navel gazing the shift that television has undergone has been largely underreported.

According to blogger Simon Day review of a University of Pennsylvania Study:

The study analysed reports from 26 major newspapers, the evening news from ABC, CBS, NBC and PBS, and the prime-time slots of CNN, CNBC, Fox News and MSNBC, dating from 2000 until 2009. Statistically the two media disciplines saw very similarly significant reductions in audience base. Evening television news has an audience of 23 million people every night, this is down from 32 million in 2000. Newspaper sales have fallen from 56 million per day in 2000 to 47 million, The Times reported.

However, the media coverage of the decline was particularly partisan. The study found 900 articles on the decline in newspaper circulation in the 26 newspapers, compared with 95 about the drop in broadcast news audience. Television news shows reported on the newspaper readership decline 38 times, but only covered the audience decline of their own audience six times, according to The Times.

Reporting on the media industry's woes was dominated by major figures of the industry. The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post were sources of about half the articles on newspaper and television usage, while cable networks CNBC and Fox were responsible for almost half the reports on usage declines for both mediums.

To say nothing of our reading habits in general. One of the most literate nations in the world has embraced a world without books.

I want to look at our sources of information, how they are presented to us and how we choose them.

It's a tall order and we are just getting started, but we have all the time in the world. Let the adventure begin.