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Don’t wind up on the least-wanted list

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unfortunate xmas decisionsYes, kids, it’s that time of year again.

ChristmaHanaKwanzaKah is once again in the hearts and on the minds of everyone from sea to shining sea – and beyond – so it’s time for a remedial lesson on How to Succeed in Business Without Really Lying.

Here are the Mighty Casey Media rules for surviving the holidays with your sanity – and your client list – intact:

  • Don’t be a grinch. If you’re not a big fan of the holidays, don’t trash those who are. You don’t have to go overboard and wear a pair of reindeer antlers all month, yet neither do you have to tell the office Christmas Elf that s/he is crazy for loving the holidays.
  • Be a gracious guest. If you’re invited to a holiday celebration by a client or a colleague, accept with thanks. Attend with intent to find the cheer. Bring a friend along who could be a good prospect for the business. Holiday gifts can come in the form of customers. Take it from one who knows.
  • Be a thoughtful host. If you host a holiday gathering, make sure to keep the conversation and connection flowing. Configure your party so there’s plenty of opportunity to interact, and make the rounds continually to ensure that everyone is enjoying themselves. And have a defined end-time for the party, which saves having to shovel folks out the door.
  • If you can’t deal, deal yourself out. If the holidays drive you nuts, that seems like a great excuse to take off on a vacation, a retreat, or a sabbatical. Deal yourself out of the holiday merry-go-round, and return to the game refreshed after Santa’s blown town.

Merry ChristmaHanaKwanzaKah to all, and to all a way to make the end-of-year insanity work for you!

New Golden Rule: See something? SAY SOMETHING.

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bathroom bolshevik breedingRecent 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, raping a child in a freakin’ locker room – SAY SOMETHING. If you see it in your house. If you see it on your street. If you see it in the office. If you see it at your school.

See bullying? Say something. See domestic violence? Say something. See a theft, or an assault? Say something.

Find someone with a badge and a gun – and not just a university/school cop, either – and report what you saw. Keep talking until they listen.

If you see someone with a badge or a gun perpetrating a crime, call the FBI. Use your cellphone camera, and take it to the media.

See something? SAY SOMETHING.

All that it takes for the triumph of evil is for good men (and women) to do nothing. That’s always true, and never more true than in the situation where both the Catholic church and Penn State find themselves. An institution that’s trusted with the care and education of children has no excuse: if you see something, say something. Otherwise you’re approving the act.

It’s that simple.

That’s my story, and I’m stickin’ to it …

Raising Cain … then lowering him. 3 tips to avoid that mistake.

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Herman Cain image
photo credit: Toby Harnden|Daily Telegraph

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 mode.

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. Inside the voting booth, 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.

  1. 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.
  2. 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. “Allegations were made, this was the result, the candidate denies that there is any truth to them, but the decision was made at the time to settle the suit/issue/whatever” and move on. Never, ever let a big story about you get out there, unless you’re the one putting it out there. If one does, particularly at this stage of the game, you’re in crisis-response mode at the cost of core-message mode. Cain will now have to talk about this every day, or look like he’s dodging talking about this … every day. Not a path that’s likely to wind up at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
  3. When caught out, make a full statement and then move on. Cain is caught in a cycle of no-comment/denial/bimbo-eruption/feeding-frenzy. This is a really bad place to be, because at this point pretty much anything he says will be discounted as reluctant disclosure. If his campaign had rigorously acted on Tip #1, Tip #2 would have been pretty easy, and Tip #3 might have been completely unnecessary. He’s now going to be chewed on daily until the bimbo eruptions subside. He can keep up the no-comment/denial protocol, but that will keep him in the feeding-frenzy box for the foreseeable future.

I feel for the guy. I covered every Presidential race from 1980 to 2004. As I put it in my bio: I covered wars, Presidential campaigns, and Presidential campaigns that turned into wars. Politics is a rough, nasty, no-holds-barred business – the higher the office, the sharper the knives and the bigger the guns you’ll be up against.

Failing to recognize that, and failing to get in front of any negative information in your past by revealing it yourself first, guarantees painful war wounds.

That’s my story, and I’m stickin’ to it …

Healthcare: It’s time for us to #arabspring this b*tch

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I had the opportunity to speak at a digital pharma marketing conference – DTC Perspectives’ Marketing to the Digital Consumer – last week. “DTC” is Direct To Consumer, by the way. I was representing the patient voice, at the invitation of my friends at the health activist community WEGO Health.

It was terrific for several reasons – connecting with other healthcare social media peeps in pharma, meeting and mingling with some powerful voices in pharma leadership, learning more about the regulatory environment that pharma marketers work in – but the biggest “wow!” that day happened between my ears.

I realized that pharma – and healthcare in toto – is desperate for its own #arabspring. A complete re-alignment of the entire system, driven from the bottom up, that will benefit all players: pharma, health systems, clinicians, researchers, patients … people. All of us.

This epiphany arrived courtesy of a combination of factors.

First, I felt a little like a zoo animal, since I was the only one at the conference wearing an Official Patient sign. I found that amusing, since everyone in the room is a patient at some level, even if they’re only seeing a doc once a year for a check-up. I’m not even a pharma consumer who’s on a buffet of drugs, although I do take a fat handful of supplements every morning. Why are patients seen as exotic creatures by pharma, and by most of the healthcare industry?

Patients = people, people. Treat us like … people.

Second, since I also wear a PR/media/content-creator hat, I saw that they were making a real effort to understand how they could take advantage of social media as a direct-marketing tool. They were approaching this as an industry with a huge regulatory oversight burden, from the FDA to the US Patent & Trade Commission to the host of regulatory bodies in other countries where these companies sell pharma products to doctors or direct to consumers.

Some of the regulatory step-on they’re struggling with they brought on themselves with “me-too” drug formulation and disease-mongering (“restless leg syndrome”? Really?). In conversation with a couple of high-level folks from big pharma, I learned that they routinely hear “we’ll have to run this past sales” when they want to try a new approach to communicating with their market. Why does sales drive communication? If pharma wonders why they’re seen as a scrum of hucksters, look no further than “running it past sales” when it comes to new ideas.

That combination of being seen as an exotic because I was a patient, and recognizing that, as an industry, pharma is an inverted pyramid crushing itself under the weight of heavy regulation caused, and continued, by a run-it-by-sales communication model, led me to the idea that people (a/k/a “patients”) need to #arabspring this b*tch.

People – patients – need to examine their relationship(s) with healthcare, and pharma, and ask what value they are getting from those relationships. Tell those that help how they’re doing, and tell those that aren’t to either clean up their act or take a hike.

Don’t fall for disease-mongering.

Don’t settle for less-than-full disclosure from any of your healthcare providers – in other words, ask why your doctor is prescribing a name drug, if a generic is available.

Act as if your health is YOUR responsibility. Get off the couch, call a halt to drive-through nutrition, examine your habits and ditch what doesn’t serve you, and your health.

Engage with pharma companies who provide you or your family with drugs that work, and tell them so.

Rabble-rouse the FDA to stop standing on innovation, and to start freeing up both farm AND pharm to help us eat better, and help researchers bring new drugs that actually help to market.

Take to the the streets by visiting your local farmer’s market and buying/cooking local. Boycott processed cr*p disguised as food.

The presentation deck I used at the conference is linked here.

I welcome comments, arguments, suggestions.

I recommend that you read my buddy Phil Baumann’s take on “we are all patients”. (He’s right, BTW – which is why I say patients = PEOPLE, people.)

That’s my story, and I’m stickin’ to it …

My #1 social media rule: be human first. Then be a brand.

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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 …

 

Being in business means you’ll ALWAYS have to say you’re sorry.

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sorry in the sandI 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 …