The Newsweek story is another black eye, obviously for journalism. But beyond Michael Isikoff’s dubious ‘source’ is a larger issue of how dangerous –and tragic– information can be in the Internet-everywhere world. The ‘crime’ here is how in the heightened competitive environment, the media decides to run stories that cannot be verified –until after the fact.

There’s a blog angle here. I wrote some months back (in an article titled ‘Big Blogger is watching you”) that scrutiny is a good by-product of this everyone’s-a-journalist era. The mainstream media have got away with many things, because of its once-passive audience. Now the audience is more attentive, but paradoxically less credulous when it comes to news. As for credibility, Isikoff, almost a year ago asked the same question of Michael Moore. That was about film, albeit documentary.

Jay Rosen notes that journalists need to recognize how ‘facts’ can have dire consequences. The consequences, apart from the rioting as a reaction to the news of a holy book being flushed down a toilet, is the death of credibility. Rosen calls it:

Big Journalism’s loss of monopoly position in news and commentary

Anyone involved in brand management can see the writing on the wall, since all forms of communication become as powerful and incendiary as ‘news.’ No one wants to be the next Dan Rather or Jayson Blair to tarnish the corporate brand, even as the ‘monopoly position’ shifts from the center to the periphery.

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The more you read Dan Gillmor, journalist-blogger-author who has forced the mainstream media to take a hard look at their business model, the more you realize he is way ahead of his time.

Gillmor, interviewed by my friend and PR Blogger Jeremy Pepper says here that his Grassroots Journalism project may cause some soul searching:

"The chief way I hope it changes mass media is to move the whole of media to more of a conversation, and less of a lecture. That would be an incredible and wonderful outcome."

I must have been out of my mind –probably infected with this idea– when I told my company today that a newsletter I have been editing, is practically doomed unless we start thinking of it as a convesation, not a lecture. Having worked on several newsletters, for different organizations, I have seen people shudder at the thought that ‘news’ can be actually provided from their readers!

To get back to Gillmor, he thinks the mix of citizen journalism and mainstream media would be a healthy eco system bubbling with more choices. His book, by the way, is titled Grassroots Journalism By the People, For the People."

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While completing my next column for IABC‘s CW magazine, I discovered that media ad monitoring (the business once known as ‘clipping services’) is an incredibly sophisticated area of measurement. Not surprised, now that so much money is being siphoned out of TV advertising. Measurement is the mantra.

So when a company talks of ‘hybrid detection technology’ for the broadcast media, I thought this was another salvo from the jargon meisters who survived the dot-com fallout. Turns out, a company called Fast Channel uses a combo of ‘watermark encoding’ and ‘fingerprint analysis’ to report on which commercial ran on which cable station or network. Very impressive stuff.

Next week I hope to interview a few people from the monitoring agencies. They all use web-based tracking tools for real-time reporting. Stay tuned.

If you have any contacts in this area, please give me a holler here.

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Hard to beat Southwest Airlines for examples of how employees build the brand. Scene: A busy flight from Phoenix to Las Vegas on Sunday morning (11/07/04)  The usual snafus: passengers late to the gate because of long lines at security chokepoints, etc.

As the plane doors were closed, a flight steward came on the PA system delivering her chirpy welcome, and reminder about seatbelts and cell phones etc. However she prefaced it with: “I can’t believe we’re on-time!” Passengers laughed. Then, as the plane began to nudge out of the gate, the captain, in an equally cheery voice said “She better believe it! We are always on time! I know because I keep the log book in here!”

In most companies, a lesser mortal saying something not so complimentary about the brand would probably be fired! Not Southwest, where employees –and not just marketing people—manage the brand!

Such exhortations of the airline’s ‘brand voice’ are what differentiate products and services. For frequent fliers for whom short, no-frills, crampy flights are as uneventful as a bus ride, it’s these little things that make a difference. So many marketers forget this and are carried away with cool, predictable (excuse me for using this awful word) ‘touchpoints.’ So yes, I print my boarding pass at home before I leave for my flight, and yes, I subscribe to a customer-retention plan known as Rapid Rewards, but the thing that keeps me flying Southwest is how human and normal the brand is, free of hype, and overblown promises that most marketers adopt.

Imagine an alternative scenario. The flight steward makes an announcement that “It’s 8.30, and, as usual, Southwest is always on time! At Southwest Airlines, we are (extra chirpy voice here)dedicated to the highest quality of customer service and have been consistently known for on-time departures and arrivals. Please sit back, and relax and enjoy the flight…” That, by the way, is a part of the airline’s mission statement, but it rings so hollow, when compared to the real brand voice –those unscripted moments, from the mouth of its employees. Often this is the best PR of all –reaching 200 (captive) customers at a time.

See a similar example of ‘customer loyalty software’ here.

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I thought October was a great month for stories on a variety of topics.

Speed Fiends.
Media Culpa’s Hans Kullin on the danger of moving too fast in online publishing –the Arafat obituary.

Conversationalists.
Michael O’ Connor on the role of PR bloggers.

Party Types.
A call to UK Bloggers for a 2004 end of year blog party.

Intimidators.
Jay Rosen on the politicizing of journalism.

Truth Tellers.
AdRants, always has an edge on Advertising’s talking points. Check their story on Ad Agency humility. Or see this billbooard.

Scare Mongers.
Finally, this Halloween post by Media Guerilla, Mike Manuel on the 10 scary PR questions, are really amusing, and have relevance long after October.

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You’ve got to think of him as a communicator, with an interesting medium whether or not you agree with his message. Kinberg’s tactic, using a bicycle equipped with a laptop and a wireless connection, just got him arrested. His techno-artistic project involves spraying the sidewalk with messages –protest messages at that– uploaded by visitors to his Web site.

His arrest on Sunday, opens up an interesting debate on what constiitutes a legitimate guerilla campaign. Recall when Micsosoft plastered sidewalks with plastic decals of the MSN butterfly in 2002? New York city fined then $50, but no one at the ad agency (McCann-Erickson) got arrested for that. Also, Kinberg was arrested while talking to MSBC’s Ron Reagan (see Chris Mathew’s blog) and not while riding his bike!

This trend bears watching, because PR and MarCom is poised to start appropriating creative tactics that tap into technology like this.

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“A channel that consumers control”

Last Friday, I quoted Buzzmetrics CEO saying that PR people were better suited to manage Word of mouth campaigns. WOM, being a channel consumers control, he said, was something PR people were comfortable with.

Scott Donaton, writing for Advertising Age (Aug 23 issue) makes an alarming observation, about how the audiences are poised to control the content of the media. He cites stats from a Communications Industry Forecast (Veronis Suhler Stevenson) that shows how people in the U.S. spent more on Communications in 2003, than marketers spent on ads. $178.4 billion Vs $175.8 billion. What did they spend it on? Movies, recorded music, cable TV, Web sites, video games etc.

“This is the latest, and most quantifiable, evidence of the transfer of control from content creators and distributors to consumers.”

His key point: Communicators are losing control of the message. Or, to put it another way, intrusion is out. Integration is the only solution for now. Or to put it in Donaton’s words from a recent Forbes’ interview:

“Advertising and marketing have been about intrusion to a passive consumer. They will now and in the future have to be about invitation.”

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The American Marketing Association has a report on PR in China, conducted by China International Public Relations Association (CIPRA). There are some 1,500 PR firms in China, and the industry grew in 2003.

IT, communications, durable consumer goods and fast moving consumer goods accounted for 80 per cent of the PR market.

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Measurement, the new mantra of all things PR and advertising, now has some allies. Researching that illusive notion, Buzz, I found that buzzmarketing is moving forward –beyond the quirky ‘subservient’ sites.

Buzzmetrics has some interesting ongoing work, and Jonathan Carson, President & CEO made some important observations about how those leading the charge –the PR agencies and the Advertising agencies—are adapting to it. In my recent interview for an article, Carson said that:

“PR firms are very good at building relationships, and that is a major part of word of mouth marketing. Because this is a channel that consumers control and is relationship driven, a lot of the core competencies of PR play right into what is necessary for successful word of mouth marketing.”

On the other hand –maybe he was being polite about this—Ad agencies, he said are good at: “processing consumer insight, and then developing strategic plans to reach consumers in the right place with the right message. This extremely important to WOM marketing, and it’s a skill that I think most PR firms would admit they are not very good at.”

He did suggest that PR people have it in their DNA to work on Buzz, because of their one-to-one relationships.

I alos noticed that ImpactWatch, a division of the Bivings Group, is doing similar tracking. Their media management tool can analyze and measure print, broadcast and online buzz in real time. It can even monitor the movements what competitors, spokespersons, analysts etc are saying. In this age of RSS, we’re going to see many businesses crop up that help us manage/monitor/measure all this content cascading around us!

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Gary Hall Jr. struck gold at the Olympics in the 50 meter swimming sprint event. A few days later he was fined $5,000 by the swimming federation. Why? Blame it on branding –the wrong branding. Hall wore a robe made with an American flag to the starting blocks of his event. And who’s complaining?

“The real issue is Speedo pays millions and millions and millions of dollars for the U.S. Swim Team to wear Speedo out at the starting blocks,” said Hall. “If they don’t get that exposure, they’re going to raise a stink about it.”

I can understand the paranoia about ambush marketing –the ‘cloak’ was made by boxing sponsor Everlast, Hall’s sponsorand a one-time swimwear manufacturer (really!)—but do you really want the guy wearing your brand to be punished? Can someone please give Speedo a gold medal for stunning PR?

Want to see how Everlast is taunting Speedo? Check out this image of Gary Hall, poolside, wearing Everlast!

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