Best Practices

Building a list of hits and misses in PR, Marketing, Social Media, Communications

/ Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

I am compiling a list of things that went wrong, and the things that greatly improved PR, communications and marketing this year. Locally, nationally, across the pond.

Got any suggestions?

Some directions:

1. Most embarrassing PR moments.

2. Stupid quotes, and also the most eloquent ones.

3. About face. People or organizations who have done a 360.

4. Most hyped event, product, person.

5. The best damn PR promo you have seen in 2007.

6. Great moments for social media.

Submit it as a comment or email me.

Unlike the ‘npov’ policy at Wikipedia, agencies may submit!

Taking design to a different plane – Part 2

/ Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

Sometimes great design means using a different lens than the ones we walk around with. I’m not talking of camera work, but biases, hang-ups, and things we are so passionate about (in a good way) that prevent us from seeing things from the audiences perspective.

If you’ve always done direct mail campaigns, at least explore what might have changed in the ‘direct’ world with privacy, loyalty, database management etc. If you’re always doing landscape layouts for ads, look at what an split-page media buy might achieve. If you have a reputation for doing soft-focus, try grainy, or even degraded fonts, or sharp contrasty black and white.

If you’re a slave to the Logo guide… don’t even get me started. If you’re doing billboards with the standard clever headline and head shot, try something like this billboard for Gain detergent.

I got thinking about this after yesterday’s post on Ideo, and seeing the work of a photographer Joe McNally who talks about looking for “a different angle.”

He could have very well been talking about marketing campaigns, looking for fresh ways to communicate.

Check out McNally: The moment it clicks

XO: The laptop powered by Wikinomics

/ Angelo Fernando / 1 Comment

Nicholas Negroponte‘s concept of a low cost computer has been pooh poohed by many big corporations that it is a crippled machine, and a $100 machine was unrealistic. But he has proven them wrong.

The little green “XO,” described by as “a flexible, ultra-low-cost, power-efficient, responsive, and durable machine,” developed in collaboration with MIT Media Lab, is a reality. It’s Linux-based, and has programming, a search engibe, chat program, word processing, rudimentary blogging capability, and connect to the Net via a mesh network.

Most interesting is the ‘social sharing’ concept built in to the applications. Children (or their teachers) could “reshape, reinvent, and reapply their software, hardware, and content.” It’s Wikinomics in action! No wonder its critics are scared.

Gifting an XO: I though this idea of getting it into the hands of more children was brilliant. Called the “Give one, get one” program, you could buy a $100 laptop for yourself and they will donate one to a child in a developing country. Hundred bucks for two laptops! No wonder its critics are agitated.

Walmart’s new blog. This time it’s for real

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It’s encouraging to see Walmart return to the social media world, after getting badly burned with a fake blog last year.

Influenced by Robert Scoble, they invite participation:

We know you’ve got plenty to say. On this blog, we encourage dialogue about the products discussed by the writers. We welcome your thoughts and opinions on any and all of those topics.

With some caveats. No personal attacks, bad language of off-topic comments.

It’s a team blog, with eight experts whose photos are on the main page –clearly an attempt to get as far as possible for the fake stigma they earned before.

They started off right with discussion of the organization’s ” past bruises” and recognition that “is not as far along the path as we’d like it to be, but every day it is getting better…” But most of it is essentially about gadgets, movies, lawn & garden etc. The section on ‘sustainability‘ will be getting a lot of attention, for sure.

The site is called Checkout. Check it out!

Do portfolios matter?

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How do you evaluate a Creative person you are about to hire?

I once told someone that the best way to judge a Creative is not from a portfolio, but to ask the candidate what’s on his/her wall space.

At the risk of being simplistic, I like to say that creative people fall into two categories. Those who put up project lists on their wall (so that they stay on top of things,) and those that have all kinds of stimulating material (so as to stay connected to things.)

Unlike a portfolio, that many of us maintain in analog or digital formats (or both,) a work space cannot be faked. At least not for a long time. The former displays a great sense of order: neatly stacked folders, pencils in place, and zero coffee stains on their desks. Also this: bland work. The moment you see “trophies” dominating the workspace you know there’s something else about the person’s work style. I’m not talking of awards on the filing cabinet, but framed artwork (of aforementioned bland work,) that shout “I’ve made this happen. Respect me. Kneel down before me..”

But there’s another kind of creative. The person who rips out an ad or a quote from Wired and pins it on the wall because it sparks something. Someone who brings back odd bits and bobs from a hike, a picture of funny sign, a made-up word from Seth Godin scrawled on a sticky note, a URL that he/she cannot stop talking about…

This is the kind of person I was reminded of when I came across this brilliant post by David Armano of Digitas about an “Information Architect.”

He cites Tim Brown of Ideo who calls this new kind of creative person a “T-shaped” person. Fits perfectly with my “portfolios are dead –giveaways” theory.

“We look for people who are so inquisitive about the world that they’re willing to try to do what you do. We call them “T-shaped people.” They have a principal skill that describes the vertical leg of the T — they’re mechanical engineers or industrial designers. But they are so empathetic that they can branch out into other skills, such as anthropology, and do them as well. They are able to explore insights from many different perspectives and recognize patterns of behavior that point to a universal human need. That’s what you’re after at this point — patterns that yield ideas.”

Empathetic. Universal. Approachable. If only the world had more of these types.

Larry King in Second Life?

/ Angelo Fernando / 2 Comments

Someday Brian Williams and Katie Couric may be the ones we get our news from —in Second Life. That’s not far fetched, considering how SL is attracting all media organizations.

But it’s also possible that Journalism schools could get into the act too, and (Professor) Larry King could be conducting journalism training in SL. I’m not making this up. There was a move last month by CNN where it said it was setting up a virtual bureau in SL, with its eyes on a citizen journalism. The bureau was supposed to begin operatiing last week.

In related news, Dan Gilmore, the authority on the topic of citizen journalism, is joining Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication. Gilmor has not commented much on this move, but I know it’s going to be a big leap for citizen journalism, and add a lot of exciting dimensions to the Cronkite School.

The above picture is from CNN’s iReport via one of its citizen journalists.

Employees not on the same page? This could help.

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There was a Towers Perrin study that flies in the face of what we believe all our fancy digital communications could do for getting everyone up to speed, and on the same page.

It states that there were significantly more disengaged employees in the workplace than those who were engaged. The big problem of course is communications –or the lack thereof of senior Management communicating to employees what was going on in the organization. They call it the “engagement gap” and it’s closely tied to employee performance.

What does that mean for communicators? I could come up with three ways to bridge the gap:

1. Invite employees to the party. Involve them before and during the implementation of a new strategy –not after. This could be done by conducting surveys regularly, not only when “issues’ come up.

2. Be transparent. Be very clear as to the objectives of the marketing or media campaign. Never try to spin the concept, because guess what? Employees are much smarter than corporate marketing gives them credit for.

3. Make them your evangelists. Assign them roles in the communication process. This may seem obvious, but how often have you seen employees described as “target audiences?” Maybe you want to get the message across to them, but they’re not targets. They’re nodes and channels.

For an expanded discussion of this check Melcrum’s InternalCommsHub.

Getting amateurs to collaborate like pros

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Take 140 agency people and corporate communicators, throw them into a pit, and you can make music!

That’s what Simply Communicate did last week at the Barbican in London. With just 90 minutes of practice, they went live.

A lesson in collaboration? In a time when people have become very defensive about their expertise, the metaphor of the orchestra and the potential for an ad hoc ensemble to work as a team and produce music on the fly, is something communicators need to think about.

Airline-speak from Singapore Airlines

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This blog covers the difference between sterile corporate-speak and the language of ordinary people, even in the line of work. I came across this example of Singapore Airlines speaking in, shall we say, code.

“All we ask of customers, wherever they are on our aircraft, is to observe standards that don’t cause offence to other customers and crew.”

What they were talking about was the policy regarding the use of double beds abroad the new aircraft. The A380 has 12 first-class suites that are not completely sound proofed. For an airline that lets flight attendants walk around in a sarong, all it had to say was something along the lines of “no sex please in our cabins.”