Author: Angelo Fernando

Are employees partly-owned brands?

/ Angelo Fernando / 1 Comment

Chris Brogan, whom I regard as a lead evangelist of social media, raises a great question: Are employees quietly becoming a “half-owned brands” of the company they work for?

Indeed, he’s referring to people like Robert (Fast Company) Scoble, and Charlene (Forrester) Li etc, who are known not for the company they work for (or leave) but for the ideas they represent.

His point needs to be looked at in the context of how organizations ought to hire, empower and work. They need not be looking for super novas but for those with star potential. Why? Because ultimately an organization’s ‘about us’ pages will be irrelevant. What matters will be not its ‘core competencies,’ ‘heritage’ or strategic business units, but its DNA made up of strands of these partly-owned brands.

I found some interesting examples.

  • Rahul Sood, is a brand that happens to work for HP. He is the Chief Technology Officer of HP’s gaming business, and his blog is linked from HP but exists outside of the enterprise. He doesn’t write mainly about his employer, but about his passion in the IT world of gaming and business, about Nintendo’s Wii and batteries.
  • Sun Microsystem’s bloggers may write about the products they represent, but three of them have more hits than the CEO Jonathan Schwatz’s well-known, well written blog.
  • Rohit Bhargava may ‘belong’ to WPP, being senior VP of Ogilvy 360 Digital Influence, but as a marketer, speaker and author he is a brand in his own right, a satellite that casts a nice glow on the mothership without needing to hype the WPP or Ogilvy brand.

I don’t know about you, but these partly-owned brands come across as a lot more authentic. I would rather do business with a Raul Sood, than some anonymous corporate voice at the other end of a toll free number.

Apple’s glass shrine beats all billboards

/ Angelo Fernando / 2 Comments

Grand Central Terminal and the Apple store on 5th Avenue in Manhattan have one thing in common. They suck people in!

Grand Central terminalThe former is 95 years old, and the latter is just two! One has utilitarian value the other cult value. Whereas more than 25,000 people pass through Grand Central each day, thousands of people come to the Apple store on 5th Avenue to go nowhere fast. They caress the iPods and gaze at other cool people.

Like the station, the 32-foot glass cube that sits on top of the store is open 365 days of the year. When I visited it seemed that people were treating this like a piazza, or park. Some were engrossed over their Macbooks, some having conversations and others seemed transfixed around the huge ‘genius bar’ waiting for their turn to be delighted.

Apple store - 5th Avenue, ManhattanIt struck me that like the station, there could very well be a ticket counter, and the people would pay to get in. Not that this is even necessary. Apple devotees are actually paying to be there –with their attention. Today. In a time when people are largely ignoring brands and blocking out branded messages, getting people to walk in (opt-in?) to an environment that’s eighty percent logo is pure genius.

A few blocks away, there’s a Best Buy right next to a Circuit City. I didn’t see young people sitting outside their sidewalk with open laptops, or taking pictures of the Best Buy logo. Apple has cracked the code of branding and billboarding by not simply slapping a logo onto a large (expensive) flat surface, but by building a shrine that pretends to be sign that pretends to be a store.

Earth to Live Earth: where are you now?

/ Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

Anyone recall what happened on 07.07.07 or SOS? I don’t blame you!

Today is the anniversary of Live Earth the SOS call to everyone that took the form of a seven continent concert. NBC and satellite radio promoted it. So much has happened since then with regard to climate initiatives that the huge global music concert for planet earth seems like a distant dream.

There were ‘Green Guidelines‘ and an album summing up the event. But the event struck me as too much entertainment and less engagement, and I had hoped they would fix that in the months that followed.

Today there seems to be no news. No statements from folks like Leonardo DiCaprio and Al Gore who helped promote the event. Just a pretty (static) web site.

Great! Students are writing Wikipedia articles

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I’m not being cynical. It’s a good sign that students are being encouraged to write feature articles on Wikipedia, instead of being asked to stay away from the wiki format in schools or in some cases ban it wholesale.

What does that bode for our future employees? Not only will they be ready to work in the read-write web, but they will begin to dismiss as irrelevant our read-only intranets and flash-y webs.

Others have tried to incorporate social media in the classroom, or rather the classroom in social media. Professor Jon Beasley-Murray of the University of British Columbia said it best: “the best way to see how it works is to actually take part.”

Widgets used to attack Obama.

/ Angelo Fernando / 2 Comments

It’s getting a bit testy, and confusing with McCain and Obama both being accused of flip-flopping. One’s a ‘maverick’, the other an agent of ‘change,’ which gives them some leeway to operate within these positions.

But instead of McCain’s campaign attacking Obama on this alone, it is going after Obama on Iraq, and why he has not visited the country in years. So what more horrific way to sharpen the point of the arrow than attach a widget to it. The widget being a clock that keeps track of the days, hours, minutes, seconds. Ouch!

Clock counting days since Barack Obama\'s last visit to Iraq It’s not unlike the typical countdown clock you’ve seen before New Year’s eve. But by putting it on the web site –and encouraging others to copy and paste the code on their blogs etc. — it is raising the noise level of the ‘time’ aspect, forcing it into the debate and forcing Obama to respond. At the time of writing, the time is 909 days.

There is a second widget –counting days since McCain invited Obama to town hall meetings (the one he did not rsvp.)

Using widgets is not new to politics.

  • There are widgets like this one (left) that track contributions to congressional leaders.
  • Another one keeps tab of their fund raising.

Oh, there are pro-Obama widgets like this one, and one created by CBC News, for instance. But the use of an attack widget strikes me as a bold new move in politics. Speeches can be transcribed, but they lose their bite a few days later. A widget with a time component makes it very compelling, even if it highlights a point of difference that’s not quite relevant to the choice we have to make at the election.

Quotes for the week ending 5th July, 2008

/ Angelo Fernando / 1 Comment

“”We are all Hussein.”

New York Times, reporting on how people are adopting Barack Obama’s middle name to counter those who are using it in a negative way.

“Twitter is the public square. Lots of noise, little signal. Blogs are like a speech. Signal, but little noise.”

Fast Company article on the power of Twitter, highlighting Tweets from Robert Scoble’s Tweetstream.

“Google is the perfect example showing reputation does not correlate with ad spending,”

Robert Fronk, senior VP-senior consultant, reputation strategy, at Harris Interactive.

“In this election the internet is for the Democratic Party what talk radio was for the Republican Party in the last 15 years”

Derek LaVallee, VP-U.S. public affairs practice at Waggener Edstrom, on research showing digital media preference of 18-35 year olds.

“I’m not retiring until every American agrees with me.”

Rush Limbaugh, quoted in the New York Times, in a story on his $400 million contract with ClearChannel.

“Twebinar”

A mashup of a name for a webinar (which itself is a mashup) and conversations talking place via Twitter before, during and after a webinar, attributed to Chris Brogan.

“Police wnt u to fight crime w/txt msgs.”

Headline for a story in USA Today, about Louiville, Florida police opening a text messaging tip line for teens to report crime.

“Your Personal Brand may be doing much more harm than good… to others.”

Mitch Joel, on a cautionary note about how people in an organization embracing social media should not expect others to have the same passion for it.

What McDonald’s knows and Milford Plaza doesn’t

/ Angelo Fernando / 1 Comment

Do you survey your customers? How many questions in that survey don’t even need to be asked?

I responded to two surveys this week, and some of the questions were so obvious and redundant, I bet the cleaning crew in the office would have been able to answer them. I was a stone’s throw from New York City’s Times Square last week, but when I needed a wi-fi connection to check in with the office, the Milford Plaza was not throwing that in as a value add. Like many hotels, they still make you pay about eleven bucks for it. It’s called “wireless high-speed Internet access available upon request.” Which strikes me as very odd, because (it’s an utility that’s soon going to be free) they’re giving it away for nada a few hundred yards away in McDonald’s.

So when the online ‘customer satisfaction survey’ from Milford promptly arrived a few days later, I knew there would be a wi-fi question. Someone in the org chart rightly paying attention to what customers think about bathroom fittings and the cleanliness of the lobby, had added it in. That someone probably knew what the rating scale would indicate.

So the next time you write a customer survey question keep this in mind.

  • Gut check: Will it tell me something I already know/ignore?
  • Org check: Could the answers change the organization’s attitude toward the customer?
  • Sanity check: Does it make me look pathetic, needing to even ask?
  • Golden Arches check: How would McDonald’s handle it?

Three Gold Quills for Arizona

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Congratulations to Rachel Pearson, Mary Ehlert, ABC; and BDN Aerospace who brought home Gold. The Gold Quill awards were made at the IABC international conference in New York last week.

  • Rachel won a merit award for the Scottsdale Convention and Visitors Bureau‘s 2007 Annual Meeting in the category of Special Events – Internal or External.
  • Mary won a merit award for the Arizona Department of Health Bureau of Tobacco Education and Prevention. The category was for Economic, Social and Environmental Development.
  • The BDN Aerospace marketing team won a merit award for the MD Helicopters Ad Campaign. The category was for advertising using conventional media.

IABC Gold QuillsGold Quills recognize best practice in areas such as marketing communications, corporate communications, benefits communication, digital communication, branding, special events, podcasts, publications, annual reports, recruitment and writing. Not surprisingly, the Gold Quills attract local and international entries from agencies, photographers, graphic designers, strategic planners, creatives and even students.

Mashup: Newspaper prints online comments

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Newspapers may be a threatened species, but I have seen many signs of a whole new business model emerging.

The Arizona Republic, whose online self is at AZCentral.com is a fine blend of print and online. It has begun to print readers comments, a section called ‘photos by you,’ a thumbnail of a video with the keyword (for searching), and a quote culled from a blogger at AZCentral.com. All this appeared in last Saturday’s paper.

It goes beyond just displaying these. The headline of a section featuring 10 comments about a map for a soon to be implemented Light Rail sums up the comments with the headline “Light-rail map rated mostly a thumbs-up.” (There were actually 43 online comments by Saturday.) The thumbs up reference was about an icon letting online readers approve or disapprove a comment.

A hybrid news system is surely in the making. In Europe several newspapers have embraced the print and online mashup, with where reader contributions are news. The survival of the business model like OhMyNews, which has 3,000 ‘reporters’ in over 100 countries, bodes well for a different kind of news delivery.

As the Newspaper Association of America puts it, “The revolution will be downloaded.” And for those of us who may not want to download the days news and commentary on an iPhone or sip it through an RSS reader, it may be blended with the digital version, printed and delivered to our doorstep too.

Associated Press could learn from Britannica

/ Angelo Fernando / 1 Comment

The attribution war between the Associated Press and bloggers may end somewhat amicably, but the problem is not going away.

Businessweek has called it “an early skirmish in what’s likely to become a protracted war over how and where media content is published online.” Who knows, one day they may involved in one.

The “AP way,” as Jeff Jarvis called it, may go down as trying to establish a top-down business approach in a bottom-up world. Or to put it another way, trying to force ‘monetization’ through the funnel of ‘syndication.’

It’s an odd time to try to lock down content and charge for it. I recently tried out Encyclopedia Britannica (and interviewed Tom Panelas) and came to the conclusion that instead of trying to set up snipers on the ramparts of the walled garden, Britannica has basically decided to create a new type of walled garden –leaving the keys to the entrance under the mat, so to speak. If a 240-year company can recognize the value in collaboration not confrontation, a ‘younger’ content repository like AP could surely follow suit.

If they don’t want to take a leaf from the page of Britannica, how about this experiment by David Balter of BzzAgent? He’s simultaneously selling and giving away (free download) a book called Word of Mouth Manual Volume II.

“Crazy like a fox, that Balter,” says Todd Defren, whose blog PR Squared is one of the venues selected to allow those free downloads.

“Protection is no strategy for the future,” says Jarvis.

“Content wants to lose the handcuffs,” says little old me.