Author: Angelo Fernando

Trademark ‘Violators’ in a Connected Era

/ Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

If someone were to come up with an Encyclopedia of Lessons Learned it would surely run into volumes. I would love to help edit it!

Shel Holtz and Neville Hobson bring up one more case of how companies get it wrong when trying to protect their brand by trying to silence a fan and calling it “infringement.”  (Check out For Immediate Release podcast. Show # 705)

The case involved Nutella, and a fan who started something called World Nutella Day, created by one Sara Rosso. It reminded me of a case involving the line “Eat More Kale,” that was completely different, in terms of not using a brand, but “infringing” on its tagline. (I understand that advertisersconsider taglines as “intellectual property” even when they are really  sharable markers, not some protected species.)

I interviewed Bo Mueller Moore for a section in my book that talks about “speaking out of turn” and why we do it. The reason these cases resonate with me is because I was the recipient of one of these silly, corporate Cease-and-Desist letters myself, way back in 2000. I know first hand, what it means when a fan-boy (or fan girl, in Rosso’s case) is asked to shut up, or face a battery of lawyers.

You could find more about this, in Chat Republic.

But to get back to the podcast, it features an excellent discussion on why, especially (but not exclusively) in an age of social media, companies should strongly think through what they are really trying to lock down: The brand identity, or the conversations arround it? I didn’t know this, but Shel Holtz, who once worked for Mattel, referred to how the company had tried to sue the band Aqua, for a song called “Barbie Girl” –in 1997.

In 2009, Mattel did an about turn. It sanctioned and released a music video with the song.

A sobering thought for anyone considering firing off a cease-and-desist, today.

If nobody’s listening, why are you talking?

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I just wrote a column that comes down hard on a practice many of us succumb to: Continuous Partial Attention.

We shouldn’t be surprised that, even with so many digital channels at our service,  with so many ways to communicate, few appear to be paying attention. It is an odd –but wholly appropriate– topic to take on in the few weeks before I launch a book that talks of the power of conversations.

I’m not in the news business, but I do follow some journalists very closely. So here’s a National Public Radio journo, with some great advice. he speaks of how storytellers could be paying more attention to their craft in relation to their audience’s ability to listen and remember the point of the story.

‘Guru’ – spoiler alert

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I cringe every time I run into the word ‘guru,’  especially when it is used as a generic term foro someone who expounds on any topic. Just like the term ‘master class’ and ‘best of breed’ the word means nothing.

I spotted the word in an article describing my input at one of the upcoming events I am attending, so I want to get this out of my system: I am a part-time writer, full-time teacher, observer of odd trends, trouble-maker, critique, and occasional ‘help desk’ sherpa (at least in my day job) when it comes to the infuriating things we have to do with computers. However, that does not make me a guru. Please!

FOR THE RECORD, I ignore gurus. I avoid them like the swine flu. I carry a hand sanitizer to clean up every time I am introduced to someone who calls him or herself one. Social media experts/gurus/ninjas are a dime a dozen. Advertising Age recently ran a piece about there being some 181, 000 of these types.

The entry for the word guru on Wikipedia (which usually excels in dehydrated language) says it is “used to cover anyone who acquires followers, especially by exploiting their naiveté, due to the inflationary use of the term.”

There’s a deeper discussion of the term here, by author, B.R. Sharma. He says that “the absence of a guru, though, does not preclude learning and wisdom.” The corollary to which, I suppose, is: “the presence of a guru is no guarantee of understanding.”

Ok, I lied about the hand sanitizer part. But you get the point.

Meet the panel –for Chat Republic launch

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It’s going to be an interesting round of conversations for the launch of Chat Republic in Colombo in a few weeks. The event, on June 18th, will focus on the power of social media across many disciplines.

The ‘knights,’ as Bates Chairman puts it, will include:

Shehara De Silva – GM, Marketing, Janashakthi Insurance

Virginia Sharma – VP of Marketing, Communications and Corporate Citizenship, IBM India/South Asia.

Dinesh Perera -Head of Digital Business / Creative Director, Bates

Nalaka Gunawardena – Citizen Journalist / LIRNEasia

Lakshaman Bandaranayake — Multi-Platform Publisher / Chairman, Vanguard Management

Shamindra Kulamanage – Magazine Editor

Ajitha Kadirgamar — Journalist, Social Media Specialist

Nimal Gunewardena – Moderator / Chairman & CEO at Bates Strategic Alliance

Here’s how the media has reported it, calling this an ‘interrogation’:

The interviewers will each straddle a different facet of the topic raging from social media’s use in marketing, adoption by ad agencies, vital value in PR, impact on mainstream editorial media, its mobilisation by citizen journalists and monitoring and analytics.

Not sure about a round table being interrogation technique. I’m there to learn as much as I could from these eminent folk. More details of the event, here.

The ‘Transmedia’ appproach to finding your voice

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Digital storytelling is an area I have been fascinated by, especially since I started writing about the death of attention (and the rise of chatter).

Transmedia has been advocated by some as one solution to the attention-deficit problem that communicators and brand managers face. I’ve interviewed a few people on some ‘secrets’ of digital storytelling in my book, Chat Republic, but this explanation in a just-published article in Communication World magazine clarifies it even further.

Transmedia storytelling, says Alison Norrington, fragments a narrative, defines hotspots within the story(world) and thereby engages different demographics.The fragmented narrative engages the ‘pull’ method to draw people’s voices around a theme or story –as opposed to the old ‘push’ method that didn’t leave space for the audience to talk back.

Want to read the whole article? Its available free here on the spanking new IABC Digital site for CW.

Brand Voices vs Brand Conversations

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It’s easy to confuse the power of voice, when discussing ‘brand voice.’

(Don’t bother Gogling it, as there are some 441 million results, some of it with the predictable talk about signage etc.)

The Voice of the Brand belongs to two groups, depending on whom you speak to:

(a) The people who define the brand, and “know” what it stands for, and articulate it in their channels. This is really what I would call Brand Talk. Sometimes I cynically call it Bland Talk.

(b) The folks to buy it or use it, and talk it up in their own communities, and sometimes on the brand-owned channels. These are, arguably, more authentic Brand Voices. They tell you why people are using the product or paying attention.

But let’s cut through all this and look at brand conversations, to figure out what are the most valuable conversations? These are what social media helps us unearth: those incomplete, poorly phrased sentences, the angst-ridden, or cult-like exchanges in a forum, or comments section. Those self-appointed ambassadors and know-it-alls…

Sadly, brand managers are not always up to snuff on handling the latter; this sort of anarchy; of data-mining conversations; of engaging with those the bosses instinctively want to block or ban those outside voices from the website.

ONE OF THE FEW AD-MEN who bucks the trend and critiques one-way Brand Talk, calls for true brand conversations.

Nimal Gunewardena, CEO of Bates Strategic Alliance, happens to be moderating a round table discussion I will be part of, when I launch my book, Chat Republic, in Sri Lanka in a few weeks.

His screed about Brand Conversations, called for an abandonment of ‘sales talk’ and the 30-second-commercial mindset. It seemed akin to 1st century monks arguing against using calligraphy.

“It’s time to start thinking beyond that 30 second commercial. It’s time to combine the power of TV with the connectivity and engagement power of digital and social media. It’s time to explore new formats. Two-way conversations, rather than one-way broadcasts. It’s time to talk to communities who have common interests.

To which one person commented:

“oh how our vocabularies have changed recently! We are all part of a social media revolution and it’s simply not possible to have our heads deep in the sand any more.”

It’s so easy to provide knee-jerk responses to the role of conversations: To engage, to discuss, to share etc. I try to pry these apart in Chat Republic, and encourage readers to think of conversations as the ‘operating system’ for their community (OK, maybe the brand) they manage.

We cannot bury our brand-saturated heads in the bland.

All this “Chatter” (Valuable If You Mine It)

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I love the examples many people have pointed me to, when researching my book. It’s easy to dismiss any discussion of Conversation apps as YASMAT – Yet Another Social Media Amplification Tool.

Chatter is not about amplification. It’s about deeper conversations that happen when we meet someone who suggests “Let’s grab a coffee and chat about…” It’s about shared ideas on an Intranet, conversation threads, if you will.

I came across this feature known as Chatter at salesForce.com that is what I might call an industrial strength Chat App. (Not to be confused with Chat Apps.). It’s a tool that could be embedded in organizations to help mine the knowledge out of conversations.

Chatter used by GE Aviation

I thought it was awesome how GE Aviation uses it. More than that, it connects “a machine” (the GEnx engine on its DreamLiner) “to a social network.”

Bits and atoms –not just opinions and marketing blather –are powerful when combined in conversation threads.

Use only as directed 🙂

More about my book, Chat Republic, here