Disruptive

Media value of a presidential duck

/ Angelo Fernando / 2 Comments

No amount of media training can prepare a president for a media assault like this.

Bush’s shoe attack in Iraq this week reminded me of another attack on a head of state visiting a country he was not exactly welcome.

bushiniraq

In July 1987, a soldier in the ceremonial guard hit then Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi on the shoulder with a rifle. The soldier was protesting India’s involvement in Sri Lanka. The context of this state visit was controversial, too. The buzz this created –before camera phones and viral videos– was damaging to Gandhi’s stature.

When the history of the Iraq was and the failed strategy is written, the journalist’s shoe will surely become a metaphor of protest –fit for the Newseum.

Bubble comment lets reader talk back. Scary! Fun!

/ Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

Have you heard of Bubble Comment? It sounded pretty cheesy at first until I clicked on a link someone had left on this article in Advertising Age.

Some background: Ken Wheaton, who writes a fabulous Adverting Age column, AdAges, wrote a piece poking fun of the whole Web 2.0 thing. Granted Wheaton was merely being funny, (“Web 2.0 Cured My Cancer and Made Me Taller — and Rich!”) but some didn’t get the joke. He also raised a lot of hackles by ending with some hard facts woven into the parody:

“You naysayers can laugh all you want. You’re just troglodytes caught up in old-word illusions like “ROI” and “profit” and “sales.” You probably scoffed at pioneering technologies such as Betamax, CueCat and Friendster, too, didn’t you? You talk trash about Web 2.0 and we’ll use the power of social media to bankrupt you just like we did Pepsi and Motrin”

So the responses have been a mix of furious and this-guy- is-surely-nuts. But the whole point of this is to highlight what one commenter did, rather than said.

Turn up your speaker volume, click on this link, wait a few seconds and you’ll see. I won’t give it away, except say that it takes speech bubbles to a dare-I-say 2.0 dimension.

Social media’s role in crisis, a learning curve

/ Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

Given that social media are always on, how should you exploit it for a breaking event?

If you’re in an incident command center, then you have powerful channel –more ears to the ground, more lenses, more raw “intelligence.”

If you’re a news organization, you have a potentially dangerous weapon. Meaning, you could easily abuse it and have hell to pay. CNN’s iReporters are citizen journalists, rated by visitors and viewers to the iReport site. How? “It’s all in the math,” they say. The rating system assigns  Superstar status to those with more reports.

I’ve heard a lot recently about how social media played a important part in Mumbai attacks, in communicating and updating ongoing messages of distress, mainstream reporting and even some forms of citizen journalism. Often, we could not believe what we were seeing and reading about.

But we cheerleaders of new media tools need to be careful and also admit to the potential downsides of such raw, real-time communication.

On that note, it is heartening to see that the BBC is also admitting to some of the risks it should not have taken, such as being careless about fact checking: “simply monitoring, selecting and passing on the information we are getting as quickly as we can.” In other words, just because we do have access to more eyes and years and thumb typers, doesn’t mean we should compromise on what the media does best –act as a filter, and put things in context.

Takeaways:

1. Adaptation: The use of the microblogging format as a news medium is still a work in progress. As someone commenting on this story said, the Beeb should adapt its journalism to the new tools “instead of dropping Twitter with burnt fingers.”

If we look back at how television blundered and blundered when covering major events in its early days, (look how they still do even now!) social media channels like Twitter have a long ways to go.

2. Naivete. Just because technology is used ro do bad things doesn’t mean it should be off limits. There’s anxiety that Google Earth is dangerous because one of the Mumbai terrorists used it in the plot. As one person commented, “Did they use any sort of shoes or boots? What about rope? Let’s ban everything….” !

3. Collaboration. Twitter and Flickr played a big part in providing rich information. But it did not prove that new media was better than old media. As Gaurav Mishra notes, “Twitter, and new media and mainstream media complemented each other in covering this story.”

Quotes for the week ending 6 December, 2008

/ Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

“It is no use waiting for a 21st century Gandhi to do it! You and I must do it, if we are to change the world.”

Deepa, a Mumbai blogger at Mumbai Magic, who like many other Mumbaikars, are urging the government and the people to take action, now.

“for every “oh god my sister is in that hotel”, there’s one “Twitter is beating CNN! Yay us!”

Twitter user going by the name ‘naomieve‘ – last week’s tweet.

“Another “Twitterstorm” erupted this week when…”

The stormy clouds rolling in on a discussion at Media Bullseye about the Twitter storm.

“The mouse will no longer be mainstream in three to five years.”

Steve Prentice, analyst artGartner, on the news that Logitech has shipped one billion mice. He predicts the multi-touch device will kill the computer mouse.

“This one was significant, this one got our attention.”

Unnamed spokesperson for the Pentagon, commenting on news that Russian hackers had penetrated Pentagon computers.

“Innovation overhaul”

Peter Daboll, CEO of Bunchball in Advertising Age on the need for advertising innovation.

“dissenters’ voices may add volume to the discussion on international Internet governance and lend it legitimacy.”

From article on the centralization of Internet Governance under the UN

“Now if they can improve their iPhone service and turn it into an application, this will get even more interesting.”

Steve Rubel, on the improvement of Zinio, a digital magazine service for those who don’t want to let trees die to sustain a magazine habit.

Activists rap global warmers

/ Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

A great way to gain attention is to stage a guerrilla event, and have a great pitch. But yellow crime scene tape never fails to get attention, as in this case of activists who “took over” the Washington DC office of Environmental Defense.

They taped off the entrance with yellow tape that read “global warming crime scene” for added effect. The tape has been used before, against BofA and ExxonMobil. The latter’s headquarters were declared a ‘crime scene’ by protesters who also used a truck. More commonly, activits have appropriated advertising tactics such as billboards and posters. This one by an animal rights group took that even further.

Oh, my!

They want their Bombay back!

/ Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

People in Mumbai (or ‘Mumbaikars’) have begun to more than rally round after the terror attacks. They are angry and determined to send the terrorists –even the political and religious leaders — a strong message. It reminds me of the Londoners’ “We are not afraid” campaign. Networks are being forged, calling for:

UNITY: One group, organizing under the banner “We will not be divided” is asking people to sign a petition, and effectively get the leaders to take action. Today there are 26,676 members. Their message:

“We’re launching a message to extremists on all sides, and our fellow citizens, one that will be published in newspapers across India and Pakistan and delivered to our political leaders within one week. The message is that these tactics have failed and we are more united than ever.”

ACTION: A Facebook group, “One Million Strong for Bombai,” is pointing out who is to blame, and calling for change. They blame the politicians, the intelligence forces, and … themselves.

“By simply joining and saying ENOUGH, we’re taking a step, awakening us from our stupor of indifference.“

CHANGE FROM WITHIN: And most poignantly, from someone I know comes a long piece, saying she wants her Bombay back. She taunts those who have remained silent until now, knowing the change will involve a bottom-up movement.

“I am extremely angry now because my city has bled enough. I want to do something… anything .. to save my city, my home. I wonder why no prominent personality…actor, politician, sportsman, celebrity, poet, theatre artist, doctor… has come forward to fight for their city.”


YouTube mashups as attack weapon

/ Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

Johnson & Johnson learned the painful way how a social media could be used against you. See previous post and the YouTube video by angry Motrin mom.

This is not exactly a new approach. It was only last November that someone called out Unilever on it’s Axe positioning,  mashing up the brilliant Dove commercial about ‘real beauty’ and the same company’s sex-ridden ads for Axe —below.

These videos tell a different kind of story. The Motrin video is vary basic, the anti-Axe quite slick. Yet they achieve a few important things:

  • They assemble and summarize supporting evidence against the offending brand
  • They make the problem seem big enough to recruit new supporters of the cause
  • They provoke the marketer to react

To think, not too long ago, the only tool at one’s disposal when offended, was a letter to the editor of your local paper!

“Martin Eisenstadt doesn’t exist” and what passes for news

/ Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

News is under attack from many sides. There are digital missiles, financial grenades, dwindling readership and viewership, and the there’s the credibility factor.

So a story like this of a fabricated, unverified “source” brings up serious issues. Says The New York Times, peeling back the curtain:

“Trouble is, Martin Eisenstadt doesn’t exist. His blog does, but it’s a put-on. The think tank where he is a senior fellow — the Harding Institute for Freedom and Democracy — is just a Web site. The TV clips of him on YouTube are fakes.”

Which is to say, not just old media but new media and hybrid media tend to get taken for a ride very easily.

OK, so this was just a prank –a film maker trying to make a name, no different from say, Lonely Girl trying to make a career. But we have seen this script before haven’t we, and they have had serious consequences. Remember SwiftBoat, and Dan Rather’s “gate“, and Jason Blair, and … the list could go on.

Let’s face it. Trust, has been shifting from authority figures and truth verifiers to (drum roll…) “people like me.” But even we are easily influenced (duped?) by some digital presence from people like us. When we do our due diligence as communicators we tend to assume that:

  • Anyone with a web site is probably above board
  • An organization with a blog is actually quite real, if not transparent. Until it the blog is outed.
  • And anyone who uses Twitter, is transparency personified -until people like “Janet‘ show up

In a recent Harvard study, people trusted Cable news twice as much as Broadcast news. For print, credibility was nearly a quarter of Cable news. None of this is comforting. The Martin Eisenstadt story broke on Cable news first. But the scary part? Even bloggers were linking to the fake Mr. Eisenstadt!

fakenytFun Sidebar: If you think most of the news is made up, take a look at at this edition of the New York Times. From the cover story, you might gues it is a fake New York Times.

Hot, Flat and … intolerant (and why it’s going to change)

/ Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

Yesterday we had a book discussion on Thomas Friedman‘s Hot, Flat and Crowded.  There was a good cross section of people, and I truly enjoyed the student perspective on the key things Friedman diagnoses as the problems in the US (isolationism, infrastructure and nation building) we need to fix.

What timing! This was first of 4 sessions here at the Decision Theater, a place where we look at alternative  scenarios and sustainable futures.

The dominant metaphor in the book is the US consulate in Istanbul that was built so secure, it’s a place where “birds don’t fly.”

Having covered the technology space for awhile, this isolationist metaphor seems at odds with what’s going on in the US with regard to collaboration and connectivity. We build open source platforms for business, gaming, virtual worlds and education. We invented wikis and blogs and send the opposite message outside our borders. Obviously we are not singing from the same song sheet, –as this T-shirt at a rally reflects. (Guess who’s rally that might be?)

As we saw last night, hot, flat and intolerant is a losing proposition.