Communications

Farmer in the DELL no joke: milk, beef gets labeled, tracked

/ Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

The COOL standard is here. A short press release from the USDA announced that as of September 30th this year, all “covered commodities” involving beef, pork, lamb, goat, chicken, fresh and frozen fruit and vegetable, peanut, pecan, ginseng and macadamia nut) will need to have Country of Origin Labeling.

The idea is to provide us consumers with more information, so we know exactly where the lettuce and the meat on a hamburger came from. Will this be TMI? Apparently 92  percent of consumers wanted this. Might customers adjust their consumption patterns because they would be armed with this information? I think it could lead to new trends in branding, where some smart farms could create the equivalent of an ‘Intel Inside’ signature for making certain menu items more desirable at certain restaurants.

Speaking of smart farms, farming went high tech many years ago, but this story is far out! A cow with an embedded chip, a programmable robotic arm that gets to the udder, and lasers used to test the milk. And you thought a refrigerator that sends you a text message when it senses you have run out of milk, is a crazy concept!

Bloging gains scientific street cred

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It’s been a slow process, but the words ‘expertise’ and ‘research’ are now being used in the same sentence as blogging. A whole new window is opening up with Research Blogging, and Science Blogging.

Research Blogging calls itself a site for those tired of “science by press release” and needing to find peer-reviewed research.

Why is this worth paying attention to? These are the early signs of scientific rigor being lent to social media. They bring credibility to the strategies we evangelize. Here’s how one science writer, Nick Anthis discusses a study:

“The results were astounding. Across the blogosphere, scientists had started new collaborations, enhanced their scientific work, advanced their careers, been able to communicate science as never before, and had been offered a whole array of new and unique experiences and opportunities in part or in full due to their blogs.”

“In what respect, Charlie?” reveals poor grasp of media

/ Angelo Fernando / 2 Comments

Hard not to feel bad for Sarah Palin.

She’s completely rattled by the media, and does not have the instincts or training to push back.

Her response to Charlie Gibson on his question about whether she understands the Bush Doctrine, with the question, “in what respect, Charlie?” revealed two things:

  1. She was clueless and probably had never heard the term before.
  2. She was dumb enough to take the bait and succumb to the question whose sub-text was “prove to me you’ve done your homework.”

With Katie Couric she appeared to simply be following instructions & talking points by repeating her answer when unable to clarify a follow-up question. That was before she swung into operation-Putin, about him flying into U.S. airspace. She was also not ready with specific examples. “I will try to find you some…” is NOT an answer!

It’s easy to see the urgent need for media training. But more than that, she need media understanding. Anticipating what the interview might be looking for and coming prepared with it.

Let’s hope that in the next few days someone will give her some proper media training. Memo to governor Palin: There’s plenty of free advice out there, if the McCain campaign has no time for this. Here are just two.

Dell’s green road trip bristling with social media

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Dell is no newbie to new media. I have been tracking them for more than two years, especially Lionel Menchaca’s parlay into social media with the hugely popular DirectToDell, its attention to the blogosphere, its presence in Second Life, the new Digital Nomads effort, and even the use of Twitter for marketing Dell Outlet,

So when I heard Dell’s latest social media effort, a 15-day, 15-city sustainability road trip with non-profit group Grist was headed to ASU and stopping right here at the Decision Theater, it sounded like a program worth writing about myself. On Friday, Todd Dwyer, Dell’s Environmental blogger, came by with Sarah van Schagen, an editor for Grist.

The reason for the visit was to look at ASU’s role in sustainability, with the School of Sustainability, and our work with the Global Institute of Sustainability.

The ReGeneration blog has some interesting features, steeped in social media. There is the grafitti wall, exploiting web 2.0 to get visitors to contribute to contribute ideas to the site. Videos are posted to Quik, and there’s a graffiti art contest with entries like the one on the left.

They have two posts, and two videos worth checking out.

The rest of the road trip is worth following, too!

Happy Birthday, DipNote

/ Angelo Fernando / 1 Comment

The blog of the US State Department, DipNote, turned one this week, on Thursday.

It’s one of those blogs in my RSS reader precisely because it is not “the media” and because it captures the voices of ordinary people –the hoi polloi — in far flung places.

Sure it’s the official voice of the State Department, but not in the legally-scrubbed sort of way. It’s diplomacy in action via social media. I have had issues with the scope and speed of its coverage, but like any toddler in the social media sense, DipNote will soon get out of its diapers.

The editors point out that readers have shaped the blog, too:

“While we provide the posts, the back and forth debate gives each post a far more interesting and informative context. I firmly believe a blog’s greatest service is in getting disparate voices from varied geographical regions together in a way that would have been impossible prior to the advent of blogs.”

Congratulations, Luke and the team!

Op-ed video proves Sarah Palin a wild card

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Stanford aw professor, Lawrence Lessig, has a great analysis of why Sarah Palin doesn’t stack up against other VPs in history (a claim she made to ABC’s Charlie Gibson recently).

He compares the experience factor to a long line of vice presidents, and concludes that yes she may be courageous and smart, but not enough to meet the challenges today.

Why is this interesting? Not just because this is an erudite response to a prepared (read: spun) answer for the media. But because this is a YouTube response that moves the news story (linked to and viewed more than 235,000 times on YouTube) forward.

Much of the media coverage of the candidates doesn’t get to this kind of detail. It’s amazing what those outside the realm of journalism can do with a story. Sure Lessig weighs in at the end, making it an Op-ed video. But it’s a lot more valid (and dare I say entertaining) than seeing governor Palin completely blanking out over the question about the “Bush doctrine.”

Quotes for the week ending 20 Sept, 2008

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“The red phone is ringing at 3 a.m.”

Senator Charles E. Schumer, on the U.S. financial crisis unfolding that has become the deciding factor between Obama and McCain. He was alluding to the phone in the Clinton ad attacking Obama about responding to a  crisis.

“Make an impact. Engage your passion. Realize your potential”

Copy on the careers page of Lehman Brothers we site.

“As communic8ters ar we boun 2 stik by thee rools?”

Rob Briggs, with a post at the Melcrum blog, on the disappearance of grammar and writing skills, thanks to texting and Twitter.

“When you have loss of life, spinning is unacceptable.”

Denise Tyrell, spokesperson for Metrolink, the company at the cross-hairs of the train crash in Chatsworth California, who resigned after she was accused of criticized for her candor at a press conference.

“Public Relations used to be about Publicity … PR pros are now much more focused on the ‘Relations’ side of ‘Public Relations.”

Todd Defren with one of his takes (he has three) on the elevator pitch for Public Relations.

“Where once there was but an ocean filled with a certain type of fish, today there are channels leading to different bodies of water, where the fish exhibit unusual behaviors and don’t respond to the old bait. It’s PR’s job to find out what these new fish in these unusual waters like to eat – before ever casting the first line.”

Parry Headrick’s response to the above.

“That would buy about 50,000 cans of Red Bull …”

News in Wired Campus, that a professor of informatics at UC Irvine has won a National Science Foundation award for $100,000 to study World of Warcraft.

“Multiply my arrogance by 1000x and you get Carly Fiorina. Wow is she clueless.”

Robert Scoble, on Twitter, commenting on Fiorina’s comments about Fiorina, once described as McCain’s economic brain.

The SEC badly needs media monitoring

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Just from a media monitoring perspective, I wonder who in the Feds, if at all, is monitoring statements and warning signs in the way marketers do.

Take this quote from Alan Greenspan, made in August this year:

“There may be numbers of banks and other financial institutions that, at the edge of defaulting, will end up being bailed out by governments.”

And this, in March, Yoshimi Watanabe, Japan’s financial services minister said this:

“It is essential [for the US] to understand that given Japan’s lesson, public fund injection is unavoidable.” Watanabe called on the US to “fix the hole in the bathtub.”

That same month, Greenspan said this:

“The current financial crisis in the US is likely to be judged as the most wrenching since the end of the second world war.”

And last September, NYU economics professor Nouriel Roubini made a dire warning of a ‘hard landing‘ of the US economy

Was the SEC walking around with noise-canceling headphones?

Just wondering.