Media

What to do about Lodon’s ‘ugly’ 2012 Olympic logo

/ Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

Orangelondon2012
If you’ve been following the controversy over the 2012 Olympics logo, you’ll see a familiar pattern.

Many new logos, and brand names even, seem odd and –as Londoners complain– say nothing about them.

I have a strong opinion about this one. I think it’s not very inspiring. Vibrant, yes. But hey, I don’t live in London, and it’s easy to be critical when you’re not privy to the brief or the marketing context.

But beyond branding issues, it’s turning out to be a PR nightmare –with the organizers seeming to not want to listen to the protests.

I like the fact that they are now at least asking people to create and submit a logo design.

They welcome user generated content, with ‘downloadable ‘templates’ backed up by a huge section on the use of and removal of content. Yes, they will moderate comments, they say!

In defense of the edgy (or odd) logo, it appears to be in sync with their objectives:

  • "London 2012 will be a Games that make the most of exciting new technology to get people closer to the action.."
  • "The new emblem is dynamic, modern and flexible. It will work with new technology and across traditional and new media networks."

Ugc_1
As for what will happen when a logo isn’t working in isolation and has more context, this is how ordinary people are adapting it, and sending it off, not to the IOC site, but to Flickr.

And for a hilarious look at what might be taking place at Wolff Olins, the brand consultancy  that came up with the logo, click here.

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John McCain’s ‘Pacemaker’ — it’s not what you think!

/ Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

At the ValleyPRBlog, we’ve gained some valuable insights about keywords, tags and headlines for tracking, newsreaders, and search.

This story, in Fast Company caught
my attention because the headline unwittingly combined two words that
always signify one thing: age. But the Fast Talk story on "John McCain’s Pacemaker"
was actually about advertising –by Russ Scriefer, McCain’s media
director. He makes an interesting observation about using traditional
and new media to tell an unfolding story:

Thirty-second ads are still going to be the way
you’re going to communicate your message with the most voters, faster
and more efficiently. But other methods of communication are beginning
to supplement television. Now you need to do television plus the Web,
television plus bloggers, television plus social networking, so it all
becomes part of a bigger piece.

This guy’s deep into social media. He’s talking of using unedited
bloggers, and an integrated media to ‘pace’ the campaign. Now it gets
me thinking. Did he, in fact, craft that headline?

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What could Photosynth do for you?

/ Angelo Fernando / 3 Comments

Don’t miss checking out Photosynth, an idea in Microsoft’s Live Labs. You need to download a small app first to work with IE or Firefox.

It’s hard to describe how the technology works. I enjoyed being able to fly through Trafalgar Square,
in way that’s actually smoother, and easier than Second Life. 

But it makes me wonder: If you could zoom in to a Coca-Cola logo on a T-shirt, in a vendor’s display rack, in the vast pigeon-filled piazza of St. Mark’s in Venice (you must sign into Photosynth for this), imagine what this could do elsewhere. Not just for brands (though brand managers would sure like that!) but for organizations trying to create experiences out of the collage of images that could be filed with details.

1. Obvious one: Tourism marketing for travel agents, countries,
states and cities. Get people to submit holiday photos, and turn them
into citizen photo-journalists.

2. Art galleries: Deploy street teams with digital cameras to cover
a topic or art form and mash-up their work into composite experience.

3. Colleges: Stitch together thousands of images out there of
campuses, schools, dorms, pubs and places of interest now in the hands
of alumni. Create a multi-perspective virtual tour that belongs to
them, literally.

4. Mega-events: Political conventions, the Olympics, Street marches
and other crowd-magnets. Wouldn’t it be a great way preserve a
historical record right down to the wording on the buttons, street
signs and posters? Boggles the mind to think what Woodstock would have looked like with this kind of coverage.

This is the outer edge of social media.

There’s a similar use of 3D modeling and digital images in Google’s StreetView,
but it doesn’t involve citizens’ input. We don’t know how Microsoft
will do with Photosynth. But the concept is definitely exciting.

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“Everything is Miscellaneous”

/ Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

Weinberger
I just picked up "Everything is Miscellaneous" (David Weinberger) and an odd image popped into my mind: Jimmy Wales hanging out at the Library of Congress.

I had mentally dismissed this double spread ad for Conde Nast
–or so I thought. Excuse my wanting to deconstruct the ad to make a
point. The context and scale of the photograph adds to the incongruity
of the founder of Wikipedia
perched on a railing in one corner of the Library. Its magnificient
cathedral-like arches, and everything else in balance create a great
metaphor. You just know that this guy is here to quietly turn things on
his head –in a good way, mind you.

I know why that image came to mind. The jacket cover of Miscellaneous has a blurb from Mr. Wales lovingly complaining:


"Just when I thought I understood the world, David Wenberger turns it upside down – and rightside up again."

Sure, it’s one of those sweeping ‘advance praise for’ comments you’ve
seen on many other jacket blurbs heaping praise on a new book about the
digital economy.

But it’s hard to exaggerate this book’s analysis. Weinberger, who co-authored The Cluetrain Manifesto,
notes that the card catalog system gives us a ‘narrow slit’ to look
through the world of books, but ‘imperfect classification’ in the
digital world, is paradoxically richer. He’s referring of course to
tags and links that create this thing called ‘social knowing’ (the term
‘social media’ isn’t in the index) by showing us connections, and
putting bits of knowledge into context.

Which is exactly what the book does, drawing on centuries of historical
precedents, to make that point of miscellany over and over again.

 

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Communicators prefer MySpace over other social networks.

/ Angelo Fernando / 1 Comment

Curious about the results of the survey on Social Networks ?

Of the nine social networks, MySpace has the most users. 32.1% consider themselves ‘Active Users.’
An equally high number, 25% are ‘Occasional Users.’

MyRagan and FaceBook nearly tie for second place –12% and 12.5%, respectively.

But…

More respondents claim to be ‘Occasional Users’ of LinkedIn (25%) than any other by a large margin.
In the open ended question, two respondents named Plaxo, and Zaadz as networks they use. (Plaxo, incidentally, is not a social network, per se, but a way to manage an online contact database.)

What does this tell us? My interpretation of these results:

1. For sure, we are experiencing social network overload, and people
are trying out many services, but eventually settle for one.
2. People seem comfortable being occasional users.
3. All these networks expecting us to make them our home page, or the first thing we check when we are online, are dreaming!
4. Communicators will abandon you if you don’t add value, and offer the same old, same old.

Note: This was a survey posted on the Friday before the
Labor Day weekend. Poor timing, I admit. But instead of wrapping it up
in one week, as I did in previous surveys, I kept it open for two. We
had much more respondents this time. Thanks for participating.

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Ghost blogging & dictated blogs: Give Blogging CEOs a break!

/ Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

Not sure if you’ve been following the debate on Ghost blogging. It’s a topic (not as simmering as ‘Blogola,’ for instance) that’s been popping up now and then that’s worth discussing if you’re in PR, marketing or media relations. Why? Because of our vested interests in transparency (or the lack thereof), and the power of authenticity.

I spotted an interesting comment from the CEO of Reuters, who’s been blogging, but not been a celebrated blogger like Sun Microsystem’s Jonathan Schwartz, for instance.

Responding to a question if he was actually the person behind the blog, he was pretty candid: Yes, it was him, but on occasion, he phoned in his post and dictated it to his assistant, who transcribed it and posted it.

Sallie Goetsch has a long, well thought-out post on the topic. In a situation where many CEOs speak “bland corporate drivel,” a ghost writer is able to channel those ideas.

Someone who shoots  from the hip and doesn’t know what corporate drivel is, is Bob Lutz. GM’s CEO. He talks all things automotive, and they don’t seem to moderate (read: delete) negative posts. Last week he addressed the sticking point about not posting often enough. To which he apologized, and shot back at his critics who thought he had got bored with blogging. Interestingly, in his defense, visitors to the blog came out in support. There were 95 comments as of today.

People need to give CEO bloggers a break. They do have real jobs, but the fact that they are inviting a conversation, whether they are dictating their posts, or taking some breaks between them, is still admirable. No one seems to get too upset with people who send out press releases with predictable verbiage, made-up quotes, and sentences often pulled off their spec sheets and web site.

At least these guys like Schwartz, Lutz, and Glocer are trying.   

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Ghost blogging & dictated blogs: Give Blogging CEOs a break!

/ Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

Not sure if you’ve been following the debate on Ghost blogging. It’s a topic (not as simmering as ‘Blogola,’ for instance) that’s been popping up now and then that’s worth discussing if you’re in PR, marketing or media relations. Why? Because of our vested interests in transparency (or the lack thereof), and the power of authenticity.

I spotted an interesting comment from the CEO of Reuters, who’s been blogging, but not been a celebrated blogger like Sun Microsystem’s Jonathan Schwartz, for instance.

Responding to a question if he was actually the person behind the blog, he was pretty candid: Yes, it was him, but on occasion, he phoned in his post and dictated it to his assistant, who transcribed it and posted it.

Sallie Goetsch has a long, well thought-out post on the topic. In a situation where many CEOs speak “bland corporate drivel,” a ghost writer is able to channel those ideas.

Someone who shoots  from the hip and doesn’t know what corporate drivel is, is Bob Lutz. GM’s CEO. He talks all things automotive, and they don’t seem to moderate (read: delete) negative posts. Last week he addressed the sticking point about not posting often enough. To which he apologized, and shot back at his critics who thought he had got bored with blogging. Interestingly, in his defense, visitors to the blog came out in support. There were 95 comments as of today.

People need to give CEO bloggers a break. They do have real jobs, but the fact that they are inviting a conversation, whether they are dictating their posts, or taking some breaks between them, is still admirable. No one seems to get too upset with people who send out press releases with predictable verbiage, made-up quotes, and sentences often pulled off their spec sheets and web site.

At least these guys like Schwartz, Lutz, and Glocer are trying.   

Continue reading →

Friday Survey – Search Engine Usage

/ Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

Pssst! Could you spare another 1.8 minutes?

This week, I would love to hear about your preferences when using Search.

We always wonder how we ever lived without Search. There are lots of
stats on browser usage, and debate about the 80/20 rule of Natural and
Paid search. But this week I like to get a snapshot of usage among PR,
Marketing, Journalism and Advertising people.

Click here to take survey.

Results will be posted here on Wednesday, May 16th.

(Cross posting from ValleyPRBlog.com)

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Planet Blacksburg, and the world tells NBC what they think

/ Angelo Fernando / 1 Comment

You can see the tide turning against the media that knowingly or unwittingly exploits the tragedy.
I’ve been following Planet Blacksburg –their blog. Today’s post sticks it up to NBC.

The writer question’s the decision to air the video mailed to the station, who wanted this kind of infamy, and got it. Of course, TV stations do it all the time, and only recently pulled back on airing the greatest hits of Bin Laden, whenever they were sent a ‘package.’

The Blacksburg student newspaper had this to say:

"When the package airs on television during the six-o’clock news it
becomes apparent that the motive for showing it is not to inform, but
to garner ratings."

"we are not going to devote any more bandwidth to the shooter. NBC did
exactly what the killer wanted by airing his message. We refuse to give
him that satisfaction."

It’s about time someone said that, that in order to cover the story, you have a responsibility not to the person who pitches the story to you, but to your audience, and the larger society that it impacts.

NBC, has had a flood of complaints, prompting Brian Williams to make a statement. His justification, is odd. He says he doesn’t know of any news organization that would have received something of this nature and not shared it with their audience. So that makes it OK?

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Social media’s role in crisis

/ Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

With the news that social media, including Facebook is playing a big part in the Virginia Tech tragedy, I’ve been expecting the case for SMS and Twitter to come up.

As much as we are grabbing RSS feeds and other Google alerts from CNN  etc, there’s nothing more poignant and immediate than the blog, for instance from Planet Blacksburg,  Their student writers are on the scene, and before they go to print they can report a different nuance of the story via the blog.

"We can only publish what we know for sure, but in the blog I can tell you a little bit more of what we’ve heard,"   said one post.

PB has also begun a Twitter feed that tells you when they’re posting a video to the newspaper site, or about an interview. The RSS feed for VTNews is updated at 10.10 am, 2.10 pm and 5.10 pm every day.

As for SMS, there are many cases being made for how text messaging might help in tragedies and disasters:

  • A Boca Raton, FL company is launching Student Text Connect.
  • VTech had apparently looked into SMS technology last year.
  • One provider I know in Phoenix, AZ, Blumo, says they could deliver SMS, email, and RSS feeds simultaneously on a campus. This would be valuable for communicating to faculty, students and staff for time-sensitive communications.

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