I am no big fan of the double-spread ad, simply because they almost cry out to the reader to flip past the page and ignore it.

But this one, I could not miss. A very-expensive 4-page spread today, for Sprint’s “Fair and Flexible” plan.

The details of the plan are pretty neat, but it is the visual communication that’s very impressive.

Opening headline: “What if the rest of the world were like the wireless industry?”
(This reminded me of that famous joke: “what if Microsoft designed automobiles?” so I read on.)

Inside 2 pages: There is no copy, save the “Playground rules” sign on a fence that 4 kids scrutinize. It reads:

Rule 1: You have to guess how many minutes you’re going to use the ball –for the next two years. Don’t guess too high or too low, or you’ll be sorry.

Rule 2: Whoever is new on the playground is more special. It’s just the fact. Therefore, new kids get the new things. Old ones don’t.

Rule 3: There will almost never be anything cool and exciting to play on. If there is, it’ll be really tricky to get it to work.

Rule 4: If you don’t like the rules, try another playground. It’ll be exactly the same.

If I was to reverse engineer the strategy here, I can almost see the client brief requesting the agency to:

a. Stress that the plan adjusts to the user, not the other way around.
b. Reposition other cell phone carriers as being a trap, intent on penalizing the customer.

At which point the agency warns that it would also be admitting that Sprint’s previous plans were user-unfriendly. To which the client then responds, it’s a worthwhile risk! (Agencies love that. They often quote the line about not taking risks being the greatest risk of all..)

What I particularly liked was Rule #2. I am at the end of my plan, and asked Sprint (yes, them!) what they can do for me, and they practically said nothing, ta ta, bye bye. The last time I adjusted my plan to take advantage of lower minute usage during an upcoming vacation, they renewed my contract without telling me! I swore I would ‘try another playground.’

I am surprised I’m even saying nice things about their new campaign!

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Franchise Times magazine has just published my article on Schlotzsky’s, the Austin, TX based sandwich deli that is rolling out Wi-Fi. What was amazing about this chain, is that they were willing to go out on a limb, and offer Wi-Fi access free in the restaurants (and not just in restaurants, as I discovered.)

I interviewed the PR Director for this, and she was very convinced that the restaurant experience is much more than the product you buy over the counter. There is another story in here (my article was from a technology perspective) about bundling an intangible service with a tangible product, and creating brand equity.

Speaking of which, I just experienced the branding that no ad, and no TV commercial can achieve on another Texas product: Southwest Airlines. The flight attendant, after some mandatory landing announcements, asked those who were from a particular company to raise their hands. He then announced that these wonderful folks were being flown in to San Diego, as a reward for achieving a sales goal. The passengers broke into applause, as they often do on SWA.

It struck me that there was probably nothing in the employee handbook to say a flight attendant should or should not give another company a plug in front of some 200 passengers. But because of that little gesture, there is a high probability that a lot of us passengers flying for business reasons, would be booking our flight on that airline again.

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The Wall Street Journal ran an opinion piece on may 7th, by Daniel Henninger (“The only player not in spin game is the U.S.A.”) about using PR to “appease the chorus of moral umbrage.” The basic argument is that the U.S. media are spinning the Abu Ghraib story –a kind of ‘with friends like these who needs Al Jazeera?’ attack on the prison coverage. He then goes on to say that the govt isn’t spinning enough, and isn’t in the game of shaping world opinion –ergo it is taking a hit.

I don’t agree; in fact I wish it took PR more seriously –as opposed to sporadically. Not as a counter-spin to the alleged media spin, but as a way of communicating at all times. Not just in a time of crisis, either.

Does anybody remember that infamous brand-building exercise with a catchy title, the ‘Shared Values Initiative’ spearheaded by Charlotte Beers? It comprised TV commercials, print ads and radio spots, with the tag-line “Freedom. Appreciate it. Cherish it. Protect it.” Where did the ‘initiative’ disappear? Remember ‘Open Dialogue?’ If you look at the site, the ‘what’s new’ section doesn’t appear to have been updated since Ramadan 2002! Beers left the job, but does that mean the communication stops?

Too may times, PR is considered spin or counter-spin. A task, no different from running an ad or injecting a press release. There is another word for that: propaganda. Maybe PR does have a PR problem, after all.

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You know that people are more powerful than all the slick marketing, when a news report begins with the line “Battered by resistance from farmers…”

This is the latest in the story about Monsanto ‘pulling the plug’ on a GM product for wheat.

Before anyone dismisses people-power as typical of the ‘environmental wacko’ lobby, consider how more organized groups also use this tactic to get the press they want. In this case, the report that begins “A group of independent Apple computer retailers protested…” is about how indie Apple retailers are making Cupertino listen up. Check their site at TellOnApple.Org and see pictures of how they took to the streets.

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Remember Honda’s TV commercial, ‘cog,’ that won several awards last year? See it here. It was widely acclaimed for its brilliant ‘big idea’ even while not employing the standard humans, street shots or wacky auto-humor. Sort of a storyline featuring parts of a car. Talk about the product being hero, and all that.

The hilarious spoof of ‘cog’, called ‘car,’ features two scraggy actors, who propel the car part story line, in a Mr. Bean-esque carricature. Definitely worth a visit!. Find it at this link to a site called “The 118-118 Experience.” (Click on the TV screen on the top right to play the video.)

What’s 118-118? It’s a directory service in Britain. This was the viral ad that captured people’s attention last year. In the light of the new batch of viral ads for Ford, Mazda, and Burger King, how successful is this wacky humor and method of distribution?

Email me and tell me what you think.

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Ragan is holding a Tele-seminar on Blogs for PR people who aren’t sure what the excitement is all about –and how to use a blog.

I know most bloggers will say this is a bit late in the day! But hey, it’s never too late to learn. Something to watch out for when ‘pitching bloggers’ –one topic up for discussion: don’t do it unless you have been around blogspace.

PRSA has also jumped in stating, on its site that pitching bloggers is tricky business. They note that “bloggers are extremely idiosyncratic in choice of subject matter and slant,” but that they must be considered “a new medium.”

Says Joel Johnson, in this article in PR Week about pitching to his gadget blog, Gizmodo, “If you want to get your product noticed, take sixty seconds and write a real email. Don’t be pushy…”

I am interested in hearing from category-specific bloggers if they would entertain being pitched to. Email me and let me know.

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Relevance, Differentiation. Esteem. Knowledge. We’ve heard these words strung together before by brand strategists. But this time it’s defining something else entirely, at least for Burger King, the once-big brand in burgerland. Russ Klein, its chief marketing officer wants the marketing to run with all four engines firing. But he observed in an interview that ‘customization’ and ‘empowerment’

It’s against this backdrop that we must judge the very odd Subservient chicken ad, and the latest, a nipple-ring expose, that rides on the controversy surrounding Janet’s infamous ‘wardrobe malfunction.’

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By now you’ve heard all of the abuse of Iraqi POWs in Abu Ghraib prison, and seen the stark images in print and on TV.

These horrific images fly in the face of so much PR that the U.S. undertook post September 11th, 2001. Remember the famous ‘Shared Values Initiative’ crafted by Madison Avenue’s own Charlotte Beers, to combat the bad press in the Arab and Muslim world.

I checked the ‘Open Dialogue’ Web site that supplemented this effort and found that it has not been updated since Ramadan 2002!

Is someone asleep at the switch?

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I have been often asked about whether blogs will change or revolutionize journalism. I have ambivalent feelings about this, because I love the feel of a newspaper or magazine, and don’t want them to go away.

However, it’s hard to ignore the fact that the many-to-one form of communication is taking a hit in all areas. Advertising, PR, political campaigns. Consider this statement, that’s not from some slick e-commerce research unit in the US:

“Every citizen’s a reporter. Journalists aren’t some exotic species, they’re everyone who seeks to take new developments, put them into writing, and share them with others.”

It’s from a new media outfit in South Korea, called Ohmynews, based on the belief that that ‘citizen reporters’ have more information to share than ‘privileged reporters.’
Click on the link that says ‘English’ on the top left.

OhMyNews is not a blog, but is based on that same principle of a medium in which many can participate.

The New York Times reported that the site gets some 14 million hits a day. This translates into about nearly a third of the S. Korean population.

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