Public Relations

Taser hits wrong nerve. Gets wrong kind of Google juice

/ Angelo Fernando / 4 Comments

Taser is not unfamiliar with controversy, even when it comes to students. But yesterday a Taser hit the wrong kind of target –a student being videoed -and the company has started getting the kind of media coverage and social media backlash it never bargained for.

It’s an incident that shows what could happen when you combine rudimentary citizen journalism and the ability to quickly form an online community around an event.

The Facebook group formed in protest is just one way this incident is getting played out, apart from in the media, with online comments, and headlines not very flattering to a company. But it’s not only how it’s played out. It’s how the story gets enshrined. The phrase “Don’t Tase Me Bro…AHHHHH!!!” uttered by the student Andrew Meyer before he went down is used by the Facebook group. It could live on — right next to say, “Die, Press release, Die! Die! Die!” and “Dell lies. Dell sucks” in a Google search.

There are many interpretations of the several videos taken at the incident, eye wittiness accounts, and some calling this an overreaction. The eyewitness who had also been waiting to ask John Kerry a question makes a good point, wondering why Meyer could not have also waited without rushing the microphone. Some called Meyer a jerk, and another said it was justified.

But if you watch the video, you’ll see there were many cameras on the scene. One report suggests Meyer knew his was being videoed.

All this of course doesn’t help Taser. The company recently announced a ‘subtle shift’ in its positioning, from one of protection to “saving lives.” It’s an impressive technology from an impressive company here in Arizona. But it goes to show what a tenuous task public relations is today.


Facebook president with analog touch

/ Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

As I have been observing before, McCain’s campaign, after early signs of engine trouble, is now picking up speed. He’s adjusted his slogan from “Straight Talk Express” to “No Surrender” in classic repositioning tactic –no different from the way packaged goods tweak their slogan when sales start to tank. He’s got Facebook profile and a MySpace presence –as do Obama, Clinton and everyone else.

But will next year’s election be decided on the basis of a slogan, the contender’s social media presence or something else?

A recent poll by the Associated Press says that John McCain has a “solid shares of suburban, college-educated and Midwestern Republican voters.” The Washington Post last Sunday was somewhat optimistic too. “No surrender” is well timed, and probably resonates well with the Petraeus decision. But slogans aside, McCain seems to be doing something right. He may be more analog than digital, but in my opinion that could be what’s makes him more like the real thing.

Having watched the genesis of the YouTube debates, and now the Yahoo election debate, this going to be the first social media election where public opinion is sampled, targeted and better understood before the actual polls.

Markos Moulitsas –he of The Daily Kos – had this to say of supporters’ ability to assemble and the candidate’s capacity take charge of their own narrative:

“Because there are now so many more millions of people who are being engaged by politics online than in the last presidential election, our ability to control or fight back against media narratives is much stronger. We can create our own stories and push back against the ones that are BS. To me, the beauty of this medium is that there are so many centers of power in Netroots that no one can ever really dominate.”

In other words, if every candidate is plugged into the social media, a ‘Facebook President’ may need something extra.

To me that could require one thing: Good old-fashioned momentum generated by good old-fashioned face-to-face communication.

Southwest Airlines retakes the story

/ Angelo Fernando / 3 Comments

“The publicity caught us with our pants down, quite frankly. The story has such great legs, but we have an even better sense of humor, so we’re going to jump out there and lower our fares to match the mini skirts we’ve all been hearing so much about.”

What other company could write a more innovative (and credible) ‘manufactured quote’ for a press release than this? This was Southwest Airlines that took back the story when it was widely criticized for poorly handling a situation on board.

Dan Wool at ValleyPRBlog last week wrote about the incident (involving a Hooters girl, and inappropriate clothing on a flight) and the need to apologize. That’s what the airline did.

But it leveraged the incident to issue not one but two press releases, and to lower its fares it promptly called Mini Skirt Fares. Even if someone hadn’t hear of the Hooters girl incident, this is guaranteed to make them talk about and around it.

The first press release was about the apology from President Colleen Barrett. If you’ve ever read her column in SPIRIT magazine, the in-flight pub, you’ll know that Barrett is quite the champion of new PR, and highly aware of the value of social media.

Nor was this a standard apology. Here’s her quote in that release:

From a Company who really loves PR, touche to you Kyla! … As we both know, this story has great legs, but the true issue here is that you are a valued Customer, and you did not get an adequate apology.

There are some valuable firsts here:

1. Communicating with a single customer directly through a press release.

2. Humor from the top of the totem pole in an organization, via a communication tool better known for bland communications

3. Using its positioning – FUN – to address, rather than cover up the incident

4. Damage control, fast –check the Google Juice it’s received

5. The President blogged about the incident right away, as did Brian Lusk whose post had comments critical of the airline.

It’s a classic example of taking charge of the conversation, before it takes off without you on board.

Finally, a code of ethics for pitching Bloggers

/ Angelo Fernando / 1 Comment

Will someone please turn off the spigot gushing out naive, formulaic emails fin the name of ‘Blogger Outreach?” They come from junior PR folk eager to generate some buzz from anyone who leaves some Technorati tracks. I get these from time to time, especially when it’s close to a conference I have attended or plan to cover, and very often it’s not even in my realm of interest. Imagine what a full-time writer or journalist has to put up with!

OK, so it’s not gonna happen anytime soon.

The backlash against poorly targeted Blogger Outreach has been brewing for some time. Some, like Weber Shandwick, have been posting guidelines. Others have been incensed, to say the least.

That’s why it is refreshing to see Ogilvy PRs 360 Digital Influence blog, come up with a Blogger Outreach Code of Ethics. It’s appropriately called Take 1. Remember Ogilvy PR comprises both sides of the equation –PR people who pitch stories to bloggers, and prolific, influential bloggers like Rohit Bhargava. Which is what makes this list more attractive to me. I urge you to read the whole list. Among them are:

  • Before we email you, we will check out your blog’s About, Contact and Advertising page in an effort to see if you have blatantly said you would not like to be contacted by PR/Marketing companies. If so, we’ll leave you alone.
  • If you are initially interested in the campaign, but don’t respond to one of our emails, we will follow up with you no more than once. If you don’t respond to us at all, we’ll leave you alone.
  • You are entitled to blog on information or products we give you in any way you see fit. (Yes, you can even say you hate it.)

They invite comments from readers, plan to take the best and in two weeks post an ‘evolved’ version. Probably Take 2.

A very good start to a problem that could otherwise pollute perfectly good, well meaning PR.

There’s another issue that came up based on comments to the post –the eroding wall between promotion and advertising. I will take this up in my next post. Stay tuned.

John McCain’s block-and-bridge manoeuvre

/ Angelo Fernando / 5 Comments

Good old “block and bridge,” a standard PR manoeuvre, doesn’t get better than this.

Senator John McCain handled a question from a New Hampshire high schooler last week by combining it with another risky, yet well-placed tactic – the insult. At a New Hampshire high school, asked about the possibility that he might die in office if elected (yes High Schoolers ask the sharpest questions), McCain took the “are you too old to run the country?” subtext, and talked about how he can barely identify with young people’s music tastes. Then he went out to talk about the pace of his campaigning and his vigor. Before anyone noticed that he had blocked the real question, he ended with “thanks for the question, you little jerk!” It got the requisite laughs, and the YouTube video upload -viewed 323,934 times to date.

Compare this to the “Maccaca” response that unraveled Senator George Allen’s campaign this time last year (that YouTube video has been viewed over 359,000 times) and it’s interesting to see how a mature (read: media trained) public figure could take a hardball question, say something risky even, and get a point across.

All this, too, after McCain’s crack media team quit his campaign.

Light Rail’s getting dinged. Why no response?

/ Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

Central Avenue stationDon’t know if you’ve noticed but there’s very little communication coming out of Metro Light Rail. Even the Arizona Passenger Rail Association, that has been a big backer, has not posted anything about it since July. It’s a political football in Mesa, as we saw last week.
I am looking forward to the service big time, and occasionally check the press releases on their web site, but don’t see a lot of positive media coverage.

Instead, I see a lot of Light Rail talk from the nay sayers. Take the letters to the Arizona Republic. It’s usually this variety:

“I think the light rail system will be the next on your list of flops….We are off on the right foot in ruining beautiful Central Avenue, and putting many small businesses out of business.”

The writer covers three issues in one sentence. (a) The Flops, in reference to the story on 08.21.07 about Arizona’s blunders that cost the taxpayer. (b) The holy mess down Central Ave, and (c) the business angle.

Very shrewd, or just very upset?

It begs a response not just from the folks at Light Rail, but from GPEC, and the promoters of small business. We’re just about a year away from the Light Rail launch, and I would like to see more education aimed at the different publics.

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Wikipedians at work

/ Angelo Fernando / 1 Comment

wikipedia.jpgA chap called Virgil Griffith, a student, started something that will put the brakes on a lot of hype that sometimes creeps into Wikipedia entries.Unlike many who work late into the night contributing to this dynamic knowledge repository, Griffith has come up with a rudimentary but powerful tool to help us peer through the curtain and check out who’s been goosing the system.

The tool is called Wiki scanner looks like a search engine. There you could type in a company name –say Walmart, or Starbucks– and see details of the edits that took place over the years. Among those who’ve fixed things and been exposed (here, here, and here) are Diebold, Dell, the CIA, BBC… the list is too long. WIRED even has a challenge out there for readers to scan through Wiki scanner, and submit names of companies with their fingers in the wiki jar.

This is transparency at its best.

Is it live, or is it on ShootLive?

/ Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

Liveearth
What technology would PR companies, the police, and the paparazzi want to get their hands on?

It’s delivery that basically sends raw images from a video camera direct to the consumer. It is a service from ShootLive,  news agency for the digital age based in Nottingham, UK. The ShootLive service was used in the coverage of David Beckham’s game in July.

Why does this change the game? Because of the need for speed. In journalism and in PR, or even in law enforcement, seconds make a difference. The scoop, the intervention of a criminal, the ability to relay instantaneous pictures of a tragedy such as an earthquake can impact lives.

Images from camera are streamed (as an XML feed) to a mobile phone in less than 60 seconds, the company says. What I like about all this is it doesn’t make the end-user jump through hoops to receive it. Images could arrive as a multi-media text alert.

What could this do for marketing? Apart from the obvious ones that ESPNs of this world will jump onto, and be able to monetize, marketers could get users to opt-in to premium content. Think: Olympics, stage acts such a Live Earth, and even regional ones. The McDonald’s and IBM’s could sponsor XML feeds . Down the line when the genie is out of the bottle, cell phone carriers will use the technology too. Already, AT&T has a similar service called VideoShare where subscribers could stream video with a camera phone to another phone –while talking! These are both low-end ($29.99 and $79.99) Samsung phones not some souped-up smart varieties.

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Stories in PR and social media

/ Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

Summing up a few interesting stories last week.

1. The walled garden of Times Select may soon open up to the rest of us who don’t want to part with $7.95 a month.

2. AT&T ‘censors’ Pearl Jam’s words. they didn’t want to to get Dixie Chicked, for supporting an anti-Bush band.

3. A company called Fatdoor has come up with an interesting way to use social networking to get to know the neighbors. It’s a mashup of public information, a wiki, maps etc. Good explanation here. 

4. A very cool idea from Edinburg, England. Using a camera phone and text messaging to detect art.

5. Taking story #3 to its logical conclusion, how about using a social network to get to know your dog’s owners? Technology Review magazine had a story about how your dog’s FaceBook-like page (called a PetWork, I kid you not!) could enhance your social life.

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And when I die would you Twitter my buddies?

/ Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

A story in the Arizona Republic
yesterday about a Tucson company creating graveside memory capsule may
seem a bit awkward, but the technology got me thinking. If you could
make a digital tribute downloadable at the grave, it opens up many
other possibilities.

Indeed John Stevenson’s product is more low tech than the
competition, which the article says, is a digital headstone that plays
a video. A sort of a flat screen atop one’s final resting place.

Ten years ago, we would have never thought the media or digital
content would visit this fine and private place but let’s get real. If
we use digi-formats to preserve everything we do while we are around
(Flickr family albums, Facebook profiles, digital photo frames, and
people who Twitter about everything they do in life) someone might as
well put these profiles to use after we have hit the final escape
button. It seems to me these are opportunities waiting to be tapped.
Some free advice:

1. MySpace, FaceBook, LinkedIn and Plaxo memorials

2. Turning expired (no pun intended, honest!) domains into permanent
markers that redirect to online memorials. Perhaps an idea for GoDaddy.

3. Archiving of Google search results for a person’s name as a legacy (OK, vanity) item to stuff into the graveside memorial.

4. Preserving tweets from a heavy Twitter user.

5. WiFi for cemeteries. I bet this exists.

6. Bluetooth connectivity on headstones –to download those digital
memories. Right now one needs to bring a laptop and cable to the grave.

7. The ability for people to text message condolences to the family from anywhere and turn these into a card or book.

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