YouTube to McCain campaign: play by our rules

/ Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

With so much happening this week, we almost missed the letter from the McCain campaign to YouTube asking for some special consideration when taking down its ads.

The gist of it was this: You do a great job, buddies, but you are also chilling free speech when you comply with take down notices.

Which was an odd thing, considering the DCMA (the copyright act) is not what someone with a pro-business political platform would knock.

So when YouTube responded to the campaign saying:

“We try to be careful not to favor one category of content on our site over others, and to treat all of our users fairly, regardless of whether they are an individual, a large corporation, or a candidate for public office.”

it was basically telling him “you’re not above the law, bro.”

How could his campaign not know this might ensue? We all know that online video is the new battlefield for both the Obama and McCain campaign. Having engaged social media this far into the campaign, it’s way too late in the game to be trying to tweak the rules.

To me it gives us yet another glimpse of how badly managed this campaign is.

Call to Citizen Journalists: video your vote for PBS

/ Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

One more great use of social media. A citizen Journalism effort by PBS and YouTube to keep things transparent.

It’s called VideoYourVote. There are some ground rules to follow. With most cameras making it dead easy to capture video, it could be the most recorded election in history. The age of the Digital Election Monitor is here. It’s not going to completely remove fraud, but more lenses, more eyes and more exposure could be a new way –minus the Big Brother feeling– to make it a cleaner process. Also a more representative event not percolated through the big filter of the traditional news networks.

Here’s David Broncacio explain why you should Video Your Vote.

Newspapers’ survival and what it means for us

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John Ridding, CFO of the Financial Times notes that, counter to most reports of newspapers dying, the FT is growing. Especially now.

As Reuter’s reports: “Newsstand sales rose 30 percent in the United States in September, and about 20 percent in Europe and Asia. “We basically couldn’t print enough copies and retailers were running out.”

His story is echoed in another market – the Middle East. “Don’t panic! says the editor of National says, “don’t head for the hills yet.” The Abu Dhabi newspaper was launched earlier this year.

But over here, it’s all doom and gloom. My hometown newspaper is cutting back, too. I don’t believe the struggle is between print vs online. That’s too simplistic, and from a marketing point of view, we communicators need to look deeper into these ‘death of’ stories.

The real struggle is not for this platform or that, between dead trees and PDF. The challenge we are up against is fighting for a finite amount of attention.  You got this far reading this? I am flattered! Here’s a quick quiz:

  • When was the last time you read more than three articles in a magazine?
  • When was the last time you read an entire article in the newspaper. Be honest!
  • Do you spend more time on email than with any one medium?

I’d love to hear. It only takes a minute to respond!

Attention-deficit communication strategies will soon be front and center of everything we do, whether it is a press release, a podcast, a white paper (who reads those, you ask!) or a 20-page report. The printed word will survive, but like the way newspapers have been forced to adapt, so will we.

Link outside the box: Killing ‘stickiness’ one more time

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People used to terrified about outbound links. I once worked for a company, that shall remain unnamed, whose marketing manager insisted that we should not link stories from a newsletter to destinations outside the company. She loved the ‘sticky’ concept so bad, I could’ve cried!

So I was happy to hear that there are bigger names who have written (even this week) the obituary for stickiness. Brian Steller, writing for the New York Times, describes a trend in newsrooms that are suddenly engaging in ‘link journalism‘ –a newly minted term for something we have been practicing for years, to substantiate, acknowledge and cross-reference a story. It’s a big editorial and mental shift for some –like my sticky manager — because it displays a sense of confidence to let readers come and go as they please.

Scary metaphors and the financial crisis

/ Angelo Fernando / 1 Comment

Phillip Massey, an information-technology worker in Dublin put it well, saying that “when America sneezes, the whole world catches a cold.” The not-so veiled reference to the pandemic flu waiting to wipe us out, makes the H5N1 virus look wimpy, by comparison.

It made me wonder how soon we will run out of metaphors. The following images have been evoked, ad nauseam, to describe what the financial system had become or is going through:

  • Weapon of mass destruction
  • Serial killer
  • Tsunami
  • Shockwaves
  • Earthquake
  • Meltdown
  • Dominoes
  • Bust
  • Implosion
  • Orgy
  • Casino

Radio beats video in explaining financial crisis

/ Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

Want to see the financial crisis deconstructed by a different breed of pundits than those we are subject to on TV?

A Harvard University panel discussion is available as a video feed at the Harvard site. It’s all about this “slow motion train wreck.”

But if you really want feel the heartbeat of the crisis (and not have someone fling around terms like “leverage” and “swaps” without some explanation) then I highly recommend listening to Ira Glass on This American Life, esp his second big take on the financial meltdown.

Part One, “The Giant Pool of Money,” was scary enough. This was before the Feds decided to invest in bank stocks, and the G8 finance ministers meeting last week.

Part Two, “Another frightening show about the economy,” was true to its title.

This is radio at its best. Glass does much more than capture and edit together the sound bytes of experts. He gives you a sense of the fear and contradictory thoughts running through people in the eye of the storm.

At one point, he asks one John Zuker whom we consumers should be upset with. There’s dead air and Glass says “that’s a long pause, John?” Zuker, apologizes but Glass lets him take his time; you know he’s left the pause in there to give us listeners an idea of how complicated the problem is, how scary it is when so-called experts don’t have pat answers to what ails our financial system. The layman’s explanation of credit default swaps, and something called ‘netting‘ make you wonder where our leaders were when these modern weapons of mass destruction were created.

Compared to similar analytical takes on CNN or Fox, the urgent pace and mesmerizing whirl of distracting graphics, split-screens, fast cuts, crawlers and props, radio beats TV to a punch in getting to the granular level of a crisis.

Even this well-done time-line by the New York Times, fails to get the bigger sweep of history. It begins in 2001, but misses a big one: the Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999.

In times like this, TV has become the Circus Maximus providing entertainment for the lazy. Radio delivers the story, the backstory and the analysis. Great work, Ira!

Quotes for the week ending 11 October, 2008

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“We have not had this much FUD – fear, uncertainty and doubt – since 9/11.”

Dean Freeman, analyst at Gartner, on why technology stocks are being hit so hard.

“Humour and juxtaposition.”

Vancouver agency, Offsetters, commenting on the two tactics they use to get people to rethink the concept of global warming. They hung two inflatable lifeboats from a skyscraper, and placed a ‘lifeguard’ on the streets as part of the campaign.

“I don’t write for FOX viewers.”

Heather Mallick, on being criticized for likening Sarah Palin to a porn actress, in her column for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

“Every time so-called citizen journalism muffs one, I get such calls, as if to say, look what your bratty kid is up to now. Funny, I don’t get them – as a journalist – every time a reporter messes up.”

Jeff Jarvis, on being called upon by journalists, on the rumor that spread about Steve Jobs having a heart attack.

“I was just trying to keep Tina Fey in business.”

Sarah Palin, responding with a great sense of humor to the Saturday Night Live parody of her gaffe-ridden media interviews.

“Our intention here is not to repeat the metaphors about the glass being half full or half empty. It can’t be…”

Ad copy for Groupo Artplan, a Brazilian communication company, in a full page ‘open letter to Wall Street ad’ in the New York Times, saying “our democracy is consolidated, our economy is strong.” Sao Paulo suspended trading in its stock market twice that same day.

“Multitasking causes a kind of brownout in the brain. … all the lights go dim because there just isn’t enough power to go around.”

David Meyer, at the University of Michigan, quoted in a story on NPR, about how multitasking is ultimately unproductive.

“It links everybody together in this unholy chain.”

Interviewee on This American Life, a radio show by Ira Glass, explaining why the ‘credit default swap‘, a dubious financial instrument, made the financial crisis global and scary.

Video diaries to be used in Afghanistan

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With so much ‘video’ coming from terrorists who know only too well the media would give them airtime, it always made me wonder if there was not third way to counter this.

The first way would be to ignore them or prohibit their rebroadcast, which would be impossible considering the ability to self-broadcast, anyway.

The second way was the pathetic approach taken by the government, post 9-11, which was essentially a PR and advertising approach, creating happy-people video vignettes. Called Shared Values, and headed by much-respected ad veteran Charlotte Beers, the $11 million campaign was a failure, and an embarrassment. The videos were not inherently bad, but they came from the wrong source: The State Department! (Under the banner of an organization called the “”Council of American Muslims for Understanding.”)

Trying to solve “they hate us” with a Madison Avenue push tactic, that pretended to be a grassroots organization? Anyone could have seen why this was so wrong.

Enter the user-generated concept, from the government. Make that the British government. It’s a plan that has not yet been approved, but it involves getting NGO’s to hand out mobile phones to ordinary people in Afghanistan to create video diaries. The idea is to “deny the Taliban of a monopoly on this space” –meaning to counter hate-ridden, user-generated propaganda videos with other stories from the country. Given that this borders on citizen journalism, it has a better chance in the credibility department. Let’s just hope they don’t put an ad agency head in charge of this social media program!

Sidebar: This approach is not new. It borrows from similar experiments such as The Border film project, using disposable cameras given to people –migrants and Minutemen– on both sides of the fence in the US and Mexico.

I will be keeping tabs on this project, for sure.

Bracing for hard times. How could Communicators help?

/ Angelo Fernando / 3 Comments

Communicators, marketers, media folks and anyone in related industries reading this blog: I may an incurable optimist, and focus on a lot of positive strategies. But it’s time to return our seats to an upright position and prepare fora bumpy ride.

But it’s going to be a long, hard slog –to borrow a phrase from the good folks who brought us to this precipice. And it’s time for us communicators to start banding together, to find ways to use networks and tools like these to help each other out. Why do I say this?

  • Just this week I heard of two experienced colleagues still looking for work; I don’t envy being in that spot at this time.
  • The US treasury secretary is still warning of dire times, more bank failures etc.
  • Advertising budgets are evaporating. Have been, even before the crash.
  • One newspaper here in Arizona, the East Valley Tribune is cutting back circulation (and jobs). In some local areas it will be down to four days a week next year.
  • “”We’re in this together and we’ll come through this together” says President Bush. Translated: Please help us!
  • The cut back on business trips will mean trade events will lose attendees, airlines will get hit, etc

How could communicators be of help?

I get a lot of requests and helpful suggestions via social networks. For now it has been those needing insights on vendors, job openings and recommendations, pricing and marketing tactics.

I wish IABC, PRSA, the AMA and other associations will use this time as a way to deliver more value to members. Heck, even to non-members who would be potential members down the road. PRSA ran a very good piece on the role of the Communicator in an unfolding crisis. It’s still about communicating.

My short list of what we could do:

  1. Make an even bigger case for putting an end to spin. It may not seem like a huge thing at the time to call a modest improvement  “a revolution in…” but when companies fail, or fail to deliver, people’s jobs and lives are affected. We communicators are therefore culpable.
  2. Educate people on the value of social media in letting the sunlight in. Not every CEO could blog, but when we make our intranets and wikis and podcasts more blog-like, that transparency virus creeps into everything.
  3. Empower the bottom-up movement. I am a big fan of media training, but not for the typical reasons (of staying on message etc). I want to see those who are not confident with speaking to the media have the ability to convey the rich nuances of the organizations. I had a very bad experience with a bank recently that illustrates why it is dangerous and counter-productive to throw employees under the bus.

Jeremiah Owyang had some great tips on the questions we need to be asking at this time of doom and gloom.