media commentary

OK. So they’re not really managing change on Capitol Hill. They’re resisting change, hard, on both sides of the aisle. Therein lies the lesson. In order for any organization, from the corner grocery to the US Congress, to successfully transform itself to meet a changing environment, there are a few don’ts. Here they are, in no particular order: Don’t enter the process with a list of sacred cows. That might seem like a no-brainer, but think about every negotiation you’ve been privy to. From the NBA’s failure to have a 2011-2012 season to Congress’ failure to have a meaningful budget discussion, sacred cows – also known variously as “deal breakers” or “temper tantrums” – doom the process from the outset. Don’t forget why you’re there. You’re not there to score points, to prove you’re right, or to prove the other side’s wrong. You’re there – all of you, everyone – to move a culture forward. That means that everyone has to be willing to actually move. Which  means you can’t stand in the way just because you’re not running the game. Don’t fail to listen to the outliers. Are there any visionaries at your table? Particularly the kind that are looking so hard down the road that they don’t get caught up in turf fights? Ask them what they’re seeing in the process, and where they see opportunities to break stalemates. Be aware that these are often people who don’t speak up first. Or even second. So ask, and then listen. Don’t make it a fight. If the discussion gets heated, take a break. If it gets heated every single time there’s a meeting, identify the flamethrowers and deny them fuel. Take away their sacred cows, remind them of their stake in making actual progress. Or fire them. If they’re the…

Recent events have led me to believe that the world is populated by blind people. Or at least people who are easily sold on crazy. One of those recent developments is the unfolding drama at Penn State, where icons of college sports – both the college and the coach – have been revealed to have been, if not active perpetrators, at least willing-to-look-the-other-way co-conspirators in child sexual abuse. I use the image on the right because (a) it’s one of my favorite ad posters ever and (b) what happened at Penn State happened in a washroom. If you see something, SAY SOMETHING. Even if you don’t/can’t/won’t DO something, at least speak up. And don’t take “it’s just [insert utterly unacceptable excuse here], don’t worry, I’ll take care of it” as an adequate response. SAY something to someone who can/will DO something. Not the bishop that the pedophile priest works for. Not the coach who’s the supervisor of the guy who’s raping a child in the shower. SAY SOMETHING to the cops. “If you see something, say something” is the tag-line for a current Dept. of Homeland Security awareness campaign, aimed at stopping terrorist activity before it becomes an actual attack. If rape isn’t terrorism, I don’t know what is. All crimes against persons – assault, rape, mugging, et al – is terrorism on a small scale, leaving marks as deep as surviving a bus bombing. In some ways, these very personal attacks leave deeper marks, because an entire community doesn’t share the victim’s experience. The person is left to deal with the aftermath alone. Just as the Penn State victim – he’s been dealing with the aftermath since 2002, essentially alone. And now the whole world is watching. If you see something – someone hitting a child, slapping their spouse,…

The quadrennial silly season known as the US Presidential race has been in full cry on the Republican side for about six months now, with some highly entertaining spectacle already on display. Unfortunately, a popular favorite, Herman Cain, who had built up quite a head of steam as a leading contender, has been somewhat sidelined by accusations that have put his campaign in PR-crisis-management. First, let me make it clear that I have no dog in this fight. I’m still waiting for the Logic Party to form, and meanwhile am a member of the No Labels movement – in other words, I’m apolitical outside the voting booth, when I hold my nose and do the best I can under the circumstances. My purpose here is to point out the three simple, yet critical, steps Cain and his campaign communications team should have taken to, if not 100% avoid this epic mud-fest, at least keep it at small-mud-puddle level. Vet the candidate fully. Pretend you’re on the oppo research team of another candidate and vet the bejabbers out of your guy. Or gal. Go after anything that could possibly lurk as a Nannygate, or sexual harassment, or financial/business ethics challenge. The Cain team is steeping in a big bucket of #epicfail right now, because according to London Daily Telegraph US editor Toby Harnden, oppo research leakage was what led to the Politico piece that started this mud-fest. When you know the worst, plan the response. When you’ve got all the skeletons out of the closet and into the living room, start figuring out how to make them look less threatening. In this instance, simply putting the story out themselves would have taken much of the power of it off the table. Never, ever let a big story about you get out…

It has become accepted wisdom that public schools in the US are failing their students. I confess to believing some of that conventional wisdom: I think we’re losing generation after generation of inner-city and rural kids with sub-par schools and technology. I also think that inner-city schools have become both a dumping ground for teachers who shouldn’t be teaching, and a road to exhaustion and defeat for teachers who arrive fired up and get ground under the wheels of budget shortfalls, bureaucracy, and bullsh*t. But I digress. The Washington Post Answer Sheet blog shared a post by Will Fitzhugh, editor of the Concord Review – the world’s only English-language quarterly review for history academic papers by high school students (smart kids + smart teachers = intellectual advancement for all!) – that puts the blame for poor student performance at the feet of … students. The title of the post: “Teachers Not Enough? Who Knew?” And he’s 110% right there. I’m now going to sound like the geezer I’m becoming, but just roll with me for a minute here. When I was in school, my job was to go to school, do my work, and learn. That was my job. The one that would set the stage for all the jobs coming after, the one without successful completion thereof I would be stamped with the storied “L on my forehead” and consigned to the career-and-success scrap heap. It was up to me to learn as much as I could, and use that knowledge to forge my way in the world. Am I nuts, or does it seem as though students in K-12 now believe it’s the responsibility of the school to pry open their brains and pour in knowledge without much in the way of student effort? And that expectation is…

When I was still doing stand-up, one of my compadres had a regular bit where her punchline was “women: we make milk. We make eggs. We’re a dairy!” I’m a big fan of the dairy. No, not the human variety, the kind you find in grocery & gourmet stores. So imagine my surprise when I saw the latest ad campaign from the US Milk Board. The Milk Peeps have been riding on “got milk?” for almost 20 years. It seems that they saw a niche messaging opportunity, and ran with it. Did they run over a cliff? You be the judge. I’m a big fan of the funny, as you know. However, when you deploy the funny in service of a brand message, you’ve got to make sure that everyone in your intended audience is on board. Women howled in protest from sea to shining sea when the campaign was launched about 4 weeks ago. As someone who knows PMS only too well – totally an insider, trust me – I would have advised the Milk Peeps to make a woman the face of the campaign. She could warn her boyfriend/husband/boss/random strangers that their lives might be at stake unless dairy products were brought forth right-damn-now. And it wouldn’t hurt to add some commentary on the potential risks of drinking milk that has rBGH (a/k/a bovine somatotropin, or bovine growth hormone) in it: like the pus from mastitis – udder infection – that cows who get pumped full of the stuff wind up suffering from. Who needs that, right? The campaign has certainly kicked off some buzz. I don’t think it’s exactly the buzz that the Milk Peeps were looking for, but buzz is, after all, buzz. Just ask Rupert “help-I’m-strapped-to-a-buzz-saw” Murdoch. That’s my story, and I’m stickin’ to it ……

Netflix jumps the gun When you announce a price increase, timing is everything. Netflix learned that the hard way when they broadcast a 62% price hike – from $9.99 to $15.98 – on their basic discs-and-streaming subscription package. The screaming was heard everywhere from backyard barbeques to CNN. Netflix’s earning call was today – Monday, July 25, 2011 – and was almost entirely taken up by discussions about their price hike, not about their great share price increase. If they’d waited until today, or tomorrow, to announce their subscription rate hike, they would have looked like really smart business folks. Instead, they wound up being tagged greed-heads. Over on Mediapost, David Goetzl shares a pretty good breakdown of the why and how of their communication #fail. Old Spice jumps the shark I’m a huge fan of the brilliant “your man could smell like … me!” campaign Old Spice launched in February 2010. Talk about giving an old-school brand a 21st century makeover – it’s a case study in how to create a viral juggernaut. So now, they announce they’re replacing the new Old Spice Guy, Isaiah Mustafa, with … FABIO? Seriously? I don’t know what their intended purpose is there. If they’re trying to build a rivalry to juice up the campaign, they could have picked a waaaay better foil for Mustafa than a faded Italian pinup dude whose voice sounds like he’s been inhaling helium. And whose biggest headline was generated by his getting beaned in the beezer by a goose while riding Apollo’s Chariot at Busch Gardens back in … 1999. So now Old Spice is partying like it’s 1999? What fun. When it comes to successful business storytelling, your message is very important. The timing of that message is critical. Both Old Spice and Netflix offer cautionary…

I started my career in network news around the same time the space shuttle Columbia made its first trip into low-earth orbit. Also around that same time, CNN (acronym for Cable News Network, was referred to as Chicken Noodle News by those of us in “establishment” TV news at the time) brought the 24-hour TV news cycle to life. That was, I think, one of the first strikes on the first nail in the coffin where the body of real news ultimately got buried. As my grandmother used to exclaim, “saints preserve us!” That 24-hour spin cycle has now delivered the most meta of screaming headlines. A media shark frenzy is now chowing down on media itself: Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. and its burgeoning phone hacking scandal has, so far, brought us the heads of Rebekah Brooks, chief of News International and the last editor of The News of the World (I so will not miss that rag) and Sir Paul Stephenson, who was the chief of Scotland Yard until his career got hacked by hiring former NotW editors as Scotland Yard PR flacks. The wind sown on the day that 24-hour spin cycle started – April 1, 1980 – is now reaping the whirlwind, and taking down an entire profession. Both Rupert Murdoch and Ted Turner have a lot to answer for – I’m wondering how wide a net might ultimately be cast as the feeding frenzy keeps bloodying the news-business water. I’m no longer working directly for any news organization, haven’t been for five years. Part of that decision was driven by the writing I saw on the interwebs wall. The web was eating the lunch of mainstream media, and combined with “the internet wants content to be free!”-ocracy that developed in the first decade of the 21st…