Archive for media
I’ve noticed a huge increase in friend requests on Facebook and invitations to connect on LinkedIn that come from logos, not faces. I don’t accept any of them, and here’s why: the word “social” precedes the word “media” for a reason. Social media is social. My Oxford American dictionary defines social thus:
1. of or relating to society or its organization; 2. concerned with the mutual concerns of human beings or of classes of human beings; 3. living in organized communities.
Nowhere in that definition do the words corporation, brand, or enterprise appear. It’s all about human beings: their activities, their concerns.
So why should I be “friends” with a logo? I’ve ignored friend requests from restaurants, insurance companies, car dealers, and a host of other branded personal profiles. I’m looking for a human connection, and only then will I consider adding a connection to a brand represented by that human connection.
On LinkedIn, this seems even more egregious. I understand that many small business owners are solopreneurs, and their company brand and their personal identity can seem to be inextricably intertwined. However, I want to see and connect with the person. And then, based on my assessment of their talents/value/contributions, I might choose to follow their company.
But they have to convince me that they’re human first.
Major brands make the same mistake on a larger scale, and have since the enterprise emerged after the Industrial Revolution. That’s been the subject of both humor – “what’s good for General Bullmoose is good for the USA!” from Al Capp’s L’il Abner was inspired by Eisenhower SecDef and former GM CEO Charles Wilson’s Congressional testimony that included “what’s good for GM is good for the country” – and rage. The rage includes everything from the Motrin Moms mess, to the #epicfail that was the BP Deepwater Horizon spill aftermath, to the continued cluelessness of Wall Street and Washington about the ultimate betrayal that is “too big to fail”.
Corporations are made out of … people. Building are full of … people. People do business with … people. Brand loyalty is really driven by the actions of humans on behalf of their human customers. It doesn’t matter if you’re B2C, slinging sandwiches from a food cart, or B2B, slinging enterprise-level cloud services to Fortune 5s. You’re a human being, doing business with other human beings.
Lose sight of your humanity, and that of your customers, and you no matter how big you are, you’re destined to fail.
And please stop wasting my time with “friend” requests from logos. Be human, then be a brand.
That’s my story, and I’m stickin’ to it …
I don’t care what being in love means regarding saying you’re sorry. Personally, I think Erich Segal’s book sucks, but I digress.
If you’re in business – running one, managing one, working for one – you’re in the apology business. In fact, being human puts you in the apology business 24/7/365. And business always needs a good dose of human, particularly in the age of the 24-hour news cycle and the Facebook Fan Page wall post.
Not being human, and being willing to admit you made a mistake? #fail.
In a great post on INC.com, Tim Donnelly gives very solid tips on how to approach the brand apology when your business screws the pooch. His #1 tip: just say it. “I’m sorry.” Simple … so why is it so hard for a brand to do that?
I think the root cause of brand cluelessness is that businesses forget that they are, after all, human. They may own skyscrapers in cities around the world, but guess what? Those buildings are full of … people. Doing business with … people.
When your spouse, or your buddy, or your kid do something to hurt you or your feelings, they apologize. You do the same thing when you screw up. (If you don’t, let me know. I know some terrific divorce attorneys.) Same rules apply if you’re J.C. Penney, the example that Donnelly uses in his piece.
Be human, don’t be a brand-droid.
You don’t have to literally fall on your sword, or drape yourself in sackcloth and ashes (I still have random PTSD episodes from 12 years of Catholic education) to apologize. You don’t have to take responsibility for every goof since the beginning of your brand’s recorded history, either. Just say you’re sorry, and then you can move on.
If your factory releases a cloud of toxic gas that kills a few thousand people, you’ll have to do a little more than say “sorry” – just ask Union Carbide. Oh, right, you can’t ask them, because they never actually said they were sorry about poisoning Bhopal. Which explains why they WENT OUT OF BUSINESS.
See how powerful an apology could be? And how not issuing one might literally kill your business?
Use words that convey regret without taking responsibility for every hurt the offended party has ever suffered. Just saying “I’m sorry” can completely defuse a brand revolt. Couple that apology with a clear outline of how you plan to remedy the hurt: priceless. Really. Try it.
We all make mistakes. We’re human, that’s part of the journey. A business that recognizes its own humanity, and that of its customers, by making a sincere apology when they screw up will ultimately drive more loyalty for their brand than a business that’s 24/7 shiny-happy-people. ‘Cause shiny-happy will eventually fog up, or blow up. Trust me on that one.
Be human.
That’s my story, and I’m stickin’ to it …
On August 27, a very angry Hurricane Irene came calling all up and down the east coast, including Virginia – which is where I live. I have plenty of hurricane experience, including a sojourn 500 miles offshore in a schooner during a Category 1 hurricane. I don’t recommend that experience unless you really want to know what your laundry feels like on max-agitate in your washing machine.
Landmasses with human habitation that are visited by hurricanes always have plenty of wind and flooding damage, and our experience with Irene was pretty typical. Lots of trees were knocked down, which took a lot of power lines with ‘em, meaning that lots of local utility customers were in the steamy dark once Irene blew town.
#1 cause of a PR crisis: lots of unhappy people.
No one – at least, no one with a mature level of life experience – could have expected Dominion Virginia Power to restore everyone to lighted bliss immediately. Those of us who were here during Hurricane Isabel (hurricanes with “I” names must hate the Commonwealth of Virginia) knew we were in for a sweaty, dark few days, at least.
Crews from utilities in surrounding states came in to help Dominion crews get us all lit up again. They are still working their butts off, and they are most certainly not the target of this post’s ire.
Because Dominion has truly screwed the PR/crisis-comms pooch on Irene’s aftermath.
All the interactive outage maps in the world – and Dominion has some great ones – mean squat to customers who have to huddle in a local Panera or library to view them. Announcing where crews are working via local media is of some help.
What Dominion failed to do, however, was put a face on the problem. One of their top leadership team needed to become the face and voice of Dominion as they worked to restore their customers to the grid. As I write this – Sunday, Sept. 3 – 20% of Richmond-area customers are still without power.
That means that 1 out of 5 Dominion customers in this region are still in a Bronte novel, at least at night, wandering from room to room clutching candles. The contents of their refrigerators and freezers are long gone, and if they have an all-electric kitchen, they ain’t cooking dinner, either.
No one from Dominion’s senior leadership has been very visible during this event. The company’s Facebook page has been the wall where the unhappy sweaty scrum have been posting their displeasure, which has only compounded the problem, since the person or persons who manage the page seem to be as clueless as the rest of us. One response they posted in reply to a customer’s inquiry about the fact that the middle of a street was still dark, while the houses at each end had been restored:
I am sorry, we aren’t quoting specific restoration times. I don’t have the level of operations information you are looking for.
Why on earth is the person who is representing a utility on a major social network NOT given access to operations information at a meaningful level? This tells me that Dominion views social media as a one-more-thing activity, rather than a key communication tool.
#fail.
For next time, here are my recommendations. Dominion may or may not ever see these, but I already feel better for posting them.
- Make a top leader the face and voice of the company during the crisis.
- Have that face-and-voice respond to media inquiries at least daily, if not more frequently. What that leader says must be mirrored in/on every online outlet for customer-facing company information … which includes Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, et al.
- If you don’t know, say “I don’t know.” Shiny-happy-people, pie-in-the-sky, promise-the-world will only lead to the gnashing of teeth and rending of garments. Possibly yours.
- Tell the truth. This goes hand in hand with #3.
Simple. Works for a utility, a consumer-products company, a hospital, a factory. Have a leader lead, tell the truth.
That’s my story, and I’m stickin’ to it …
The 24-hour news cycle guarantees that the old truism “Don’t [expletive deleted] up on a slow news day” remains evergreen. Just ask Gilbert Gottfried – or, on second thought, don’t ask him, so we don’t have to hear that nails-on-blackboard voice.
Aflac got an “F” in history by not studying Mr. Gottfried’s history – particularly in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, when he gave a live demo of what “too soon” means – to learn that they were hiring a loose beak as their spokes-duck. They weren’t wrong to fire him, my question is why they hired him in the first place. Surely he isn’t the only barely-employed voice talent that can make the word “Aflac” sound like a duck on steroids.
Now, in addition to having to find a new voice for their duck, Aflac needs to smooth the feathers of Japanese customers – 25% of all households, according to Aflac CEO Daniel Amos – who are left to question why the corporate voice thought making jokes at their expense after the worst natural disaster in recorded history was a good idea.
Another “F” in history goes to supporters of Wisconsin governor Scott Walker, who’s proud of breaking the back of public employee collective bargaining. Oh, except for police and fire unions - they’re heroes, they should still be able to negotiate salary and working conditions issues, right?
The history lesson is this: if you’re on a payroll, and work 40 hours a week, you owe a debt to the labor movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. This Friday (March 25, 2011) marks the centennial of what was, until Sept. 11, 2001, the worst workplace disaster in US history: the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, in which 129 women and 17 men either burned to death, died of smoke inhalation, or leaped out of 9th floor windows to their deaths.
That disaster led to significant workplace reforms, led by the International Ladies Garment Workers Union (ILGWU), the NYC Fire Department, and the New York State Legislature.
In the ensuing century, unions have mismanaged themselves into anachronism. Human systems will always include greed if they include money – just ask Jimmy Hoffa. No, not THAT Jimmy Hoffa – his son, James P. Hoffa, who’s the current Teamsters Union president. However, not allowing workers to band together to ask for better wages, or better working conditions, flies in the face of a central tenet of American life: self-determination.
Scott Walker’s efforts would be less visibly political if he had NOT exempted police and fire unions from his anti-collective-bargaining approach. He may have saved a few budget dollars, but I wonder how many of those dollars will remain after the next round of negotiations on a cop or firefighter contract.
My point? Never assume you’re operating in a vacuum, whether you’re in a corporate marketing meeting or a state legislature. Study the past, if for no other reason than to avoid repeating it. The scrap-heap of historical cautionary tales is already piled pretty high.
That’s my story, and I’m stickin’ to it.
I’ve been fascinated by the Wikileaks/Afghan Papers story since it started to gain traction in June 2010. One of my gurus, the endlessly entertaining and thought-provoking Clay Shirky, posted a New Year’s Eve gift on his blog looking at the differences between the Pentagon Papers case and its 21st century doppelganger, Wikileaks.
Clay’s most cogent point – and he has many – is this one: there’s a big difference between “international” and “global” when it comes to actors in this little drama. The example he uses to illustrate this point: the difference between making LSD and cocaine. LSD can be made in a lab anywhere, therefore it’s global. As global as the distribution of cocaine is, it’s still tied to a place: the South American mountains where coca leaves are grown.
Bradley Manning, whose violation of the UCMJ means he’s screwed for at least a couple of decades, make him very much a “local” boy. Julian Assange, since he holds a passport – and all of us, in order to move around the globe, gotta have one of those – might be able to maneuver more easily than Manning, but he’s still under the flag of Australia. If they choose to either arrest him or revoke his citizenship…well, he’s screwed, too, since he’s just “international.”
Wikileaks, however, is the essence of “global” – servers all over ever’where, no one’s officially in charge, even if Assange is the creator and face of Wikileaks – so how on earth will anyone, even the US government, be able to prosecute a case against it?
Plenty of entertainment value in this story, still unfolding.
And that’s my story, and I’m stickin’ to it…
We’re deep into the silly season – also known as the race for the White House – and the number of candidates has reduced itself from the two rugby teams of January to the ping-pong match vs. the old soldier of today.
What kind of stories are they telling? First and foremost, they’re all saying "vote for me!", but they’re craftily crafting their messages to speak to the world-view of people who they think are most likely to vote for them.
The heated ping-pong match on the Democratic side of the fence is interesting to watch, because both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have to hit hard, yet also have to ensure that they don’t hit so hard that they alienate a piece of their base.
Obama has an advantage on the stump, in person, since he’s a better, more stirring speaker than Clinton. Clinton has always seemed to be speaking from behind a wall of "good girl" – the studious policy wonk who is now trying to connect with people’s hearts. She has, however, built a bit more credibility after serving a full term in the Senate and then managing to get re-elected.
Obama is positioning himself as the agent of change. That part of his story seems to be connecting most powerfully with younger voters, much of whose lives have been spent under the leadership of the Bush and Clinton families. He’s also using his story effectively to connect with the parts of the Democratic Party that identify themselves as "We’re Not Republicans". That tag will mobilize a small portion of Democrats, but not enough to win a presidential election. (John Kerry told that story in ’04 – that sure worked out well for him, didn’t it?)
The real power of Obama’s story is in his position as the first serious black candidate for President. His story, and his very multi-culti background, help him to connect with a wide array of people, and seem to resonate particularly with the under-30 voter. If he wins, that connection will be the tipping point.
The outsider story that Obama tells is in stark contrast to the "voice of experienced leadership" story that Clinton is telling. She’s got passionate support from the parts of the Democratic Party that feel like they’ve been wandering in the wilderness since the end of Bill Clinton’s second term. Bill Clinton has, at times, been a liability during her campaign, though – South Carolina springs to mind – and he’s carrying a lot of baggage. Who can look at him and not think of either cigars or Monica Lewinsky? At least for a moment?
Hillary also has not been able to mobilize all Democratic women on her behalf. She has a number of women supporters, yet she hasn’t seen the wholesale support that she likely expected when she started her run. This might be the lingering after-effects of her posture during the 1992 campaign, when she seemed to look down on cookie-baking. Her image has softened in the last decade, yet she’s still working to overcome some backlash from the mommy-track.
Obama and Clinton are duking it out, getting close to the gone-too-far line almost daily. Clinton is trying to paint Obama as a word-stealing poser, a man who can’t craft his own story without taking words out of the mouths of others. Obama threads his story with references to 20th century solutions to 21st century problems – a pointed smack at the occupants of the White House at the end of the last century.
On the Democratic side, my money’s on the fresher story – Obama has built considerable momentum, but the race for the nomination isn’t over yet. Next Tuesday’s primaries in Texas and Ohio will put a nail in the coffin of someone’s candidacy – stay tuned for how that story winds up.
On the Republican side, John McCain’s bus – straight talk or not – keeps rolling. McCain’s story connects strongly with moderate Republicans, and he’s morphed his story enough that he’s created buy-in with the conservatives that didn’t support him in 2000. His straight talk line is a bit played because of that story-morphing, but it’s worked well enough to knock off the early front-runner, Mitt Romney, and he now has the field with no real competition.
McCain can count on mobilizing the social conservatives, the Iraq hawks, Glenn Beck fans, and die-hard Republicans. Current poll stats show that McCain vs. Obama, Obama holds the advantage; McCain vs. Clinton, McCain is ahead. At least today. Of course, since the election isn’t until NOVEMBER…there’s still a lot of story to be told.
There are many banana peels littered across the political path (paging Ms. Lewinsky, there’s a party waiting for you in the cigar bar). And enough time left for many of them to be stepped on, by somebody. Stay tuned…
That’s my story, and I’m stickin’ to it.
Wikileaks, Clay Shirky, and the Thinkiness of It All
Posted by: Mighty Casey | Comments (0)I’ve been fascinated by the Wikileaks/Afghan Papers story since it started to gain traction in June 2010. One of my gurus, the endlessly entertaining and thought-provoking Clay Shirky, posted a New Year’s Eve gift on his blog looking at the differences between the Pentagon Papers case and its 21st century doppelganger, Wikileaks.
Clay’s most cogent point – and he has many – is this one: there’s a big difference between “international” and “global” when it comes to actors in this little drama. The example he uses to illustrate this point: the difference between making LSD and cocaine. LSD can be made in a lab anywhere, therefore it’s global. As global as the distribution of cocaine is, it’s still tied to a place: the South American mountains where coca leaves are grown.
Bradley Manning, whose violation of the UCMJ means he’s screwed for at least a couple of decades, make him very much a “local” boy. Julian Assange, since he holds a passport – and all of us, in order to move around the globe, gotta have one of those – might be able to maneuver more easily than Manning, but he’s still under the flag of Australia. If they choose to either arrest him or revoke his citizenship…well, he’s screwed, too, since he’s just “international.”
Wikileaks, however, is the essence of “global” – servers all over ever’where, no one’s officially in charge, even if Assange is the creator and face of Wikileaks – so how on earth will anyone, even the US government, be able to prosecute a case against it?
Plenty of entertainment value in this story, still unfolding.
And that’s my story, and I’m stickin’ to it…