Now the auto company that could once do no wrong has shut down production lines and instructed dealers not to sell some of its most popular models. The New York Times reported that Toyota knew about the acceleration problems two years before it issued the recall. Rep. Henry Waxman, one of Congress’ most persistent consumer watchdogs, announced he will hold hearings to investigate the sudden acceleration problem next month.

To borrow a line from Scrooge, “I’m as giddy as a drunken man.” With today’s Apple iPad intro, it feels like Christmas.

 

I was glued to Engadget’s live blogfeed of the announcement. Apple is leveraging its iPhone technology in a new tablet format, adding bells and whistles like unlocked, no contract, and cheap 3G data plans, a keyboard dock and the iBookstore.

 

But once again, as we’ve seen in the past with Apple, the whole may be larger than the sum of the parts.

 

In the tech industry we pay homage to “innovation” as the ultimate springboard for leadership positioning and killer differentiation.

 

Lots of companies make products, but only a few reinvent how we learn, communicate and experience. Remember trying to use a pre-iPod Mp3 player? Mine was a Diamond Rio; frustrated and ticked off are two reactions that come to mind.

 

Remember how you felt the first time you used an iPod? For me, it was the same feeling I get when I step foot in a new country. Wow, this is someplace different, and it’s cool, and a little scary but I’m happy to be here and I want to discover this new place.

 

The iPod wasn’t just innovative because of its simple design and intuitive ease of use. The kicker was the iTunes store – it gave us a whole new way to stay on top of music, broaden our horizons, consume and share at far less cost. The entire experience of finding and listening to music was transformed.

 

I used to think it was de rigueur to be able to stay in touch via e-mail on my mobile phone. But now as an iPhone user, I can’t fathom how I was satisfied with a device that made surfing the web painful and offered little else.

The iPhone gives me a broader, more fulfilling experience. While typing is a little less speedy, I now have - in one device – painless Internet, much better viewing, a decent camera, games, nifty video, all the music I love, instant social networking connections, an e-book reader and access to over 140,000 apps. Nice trade-up.

The iPad isn't perfect (bad name; doesn't multi-task; no webcam; no widescreen; no GPS) but it may hold similar long-term promise.

If I was a newspaper or magazine publisher, I’d be more hopeful. This device has the potential to help reinvent the publishing industry like iTunes reinvented the music industry. As I watched today’s New York Times demo, it reminded me of the Harry Potter movies where animated video moves across “The Daily Prophet” student newspaper. The iPad features drop down context menus; re-sizing of pages with a pinch; and embedded video inside articles. If the content providers and app developers get onboard with this vision, it could be a reinvention of how we read and learn.

It remains to be seen whether the iPad will make it or die a Newtonian death. The lesson I walk away with is that consumer and B2B brands can endear themselves to their customers - and potentially win - if they focus on innovating customer experiences vs. merely announcing feature-rich products. The former is a benefit-laden differentiation that’s damn hard to disrupt.

Thanks to social media, the word got out of ravaged Haiti immediately, people mobilized and money was raised instantly.

 

While this isn’t the first time it’s been a vital link in a crisis, it’s invigorating how social media has woven itself into the fabric of traditional media.

 

There was a time, not long ago, when major news organizations relied primarily on its own news gatherers to shape the story. Now an increasing number of media is open to – and relying on – citizen journalists to tell their tales.

 

With buildings crumbled, roads blocked, power out and land-lines dead, mainstream U.S. media relied heavily – especially on Tuesday and early Wednesday - on testimony accumulated from social media from Haitians and Americans. Cell phones, satellite broadband systems and Skype worked. Twitterfeeds provided a real time view of what was unfolding. Blogs like Troy Livesay’s and Carel Pedre got the word out. Images were sent on Twitpic, Facebook and Flickr. YouTube had hundreds of videos posted by Wednesday.

 

CNN is the poster child of this blending of social media and traditional news gathering. While they reportedly have at least seven reporters on the ground in Haiti, they’ve filed highly compelling stories constructed from social media sources. Check out “What we’re hearing via social media.” 80% of this story is shaped by attributed quotes from Twitter users and bloggers in Haiti. CNN’s citizen-filmed iReports spread the word in a personal way.  

Meanwhile, organizations like Red Cross leveraged their presence on Facebook, Twitter, and their own blog to communicate. Their 90999 mobile “insta campaign” is urging cell phone users to text the message “Haiti” to that number to make an instant $10 donation. Twitter users retweeted #HelpHaiti.

Many other organizations got involved and sent out their own fund raising tweets. Daily Finance reported  that $5 million has been raised so far via text messages.

Citizen journalists are re-shaping the news business. Social media is no longer an adolescent finding its way; it’s become deeply embedded, viable and in instances like Haiti, a fresh, objective, needed voice shaping the story. It’s a reinvention of media – an improvement of media - that’s deeper, wider, more personal and much more real time.

Did you read CareerCast’s top 200 jobs for 2010?

 

They analyzed and ranked careers that provide “a positive experience for a majority of employees,” (italics from CareerCast). Five measurement standards were applied – stress, working environment, physical demands, income and hiring outlook. They did this across a number of industries, skill and salary levels.

 

Communications made the cut, with “public relations executive” at #79 and “advertising account executive” at #105. We ranked higher than piano tuners, barbers, teachers, photographers, janitors, podiatrists, commercial airline pilots, senior corporate executives, surgeons, bartenders, fashion designers, nurses, corrections officers, actors, police officers and photojournalists.

 

Ditto for undertakers and sewage plant operators: we beat them too.

 

I would have never figured actors, photographers and fashion designers have more stressful jobs than us communications professionals. I envision them spending most of their time emoting, creating, visualizing… and doing lunch. We do this stuff too, but we also have to explain how to measure social media.  

 

I feel bad for newspaper reporters. They had a nasty year in 2009, barely making the list at #184. But they beat out stevedores, butchers, garbage collectors and lumberjacks. Ever heard of a stevedore? Me either. Turns out they load and unload cargo from vessels. This sounds harder than leading a discussion to create a new positioning statement.

 

Actuaries ranked #1 in the CareerCast survey. They calculate the probability and financial impact of illness and property loss. I don’t care if this job ranks low in physical demands and stress; it’s gotta be less fun than tweeting.

 

Anthropologists landed 32 jobs ahead of PR. They study the social customs, language and physical attributes of people throughout the world. We do this too, whenever we meet with CEOs and CMOs. But we don’t get to do it in a lush, biodiverse forest in Borneo.

 

Historians are ranked #5. This sounds like a cushy job. You sit around, ponder and interpret the past. Sign me up. This must be easier than trying to predict future outcomes, which clients and corporate execs ask us to do all the time.

 

The roustabout came in at #200; these unfortunates perform routine labor and maintenance on offshore oil rigs and pipelines. This is definitely more demanding than conducting a statistically valid survey.

 

Sociologists nabbed the #21 slot. They study human behavior by examining the interaction of social groups and institutions. We do that too in public relations, but after we study, we have to interact and try to get along. That’s harder.

 

I was surprised about parole officers at #29. They monitor, counsel and report on the progress of people who have been released from correctional institutions. How did this job crack the top 30? Scoring a Wikipedia entry is a lot less hassle than worrying about being harassed, stabbed or shot.

 

Dental hygienists came in at #10. I’d much rather attempt to decipher the mysteries of SEO than loosening plaque and probing gum depths all day. But that’s just me.

 

Happy new decade PR pros; there’s a lot to be thankful for.

10. New levels of ravenous mass media spotlighting. Arguably, 2009 featured an insane level of “we will not let this story go.” Already saturated news stories were repeated - endlessly - way past the point of saturation. From balloon boy to Octomom to Gosselin vs. Gosselin to Amanda Knox, the same B-level stories were relentlessly beaten to death. While this isn’t a new trend, it is an increasingly annoying one.

 

9. Under-reported storytelling. One of the by-products of over-reporting is under-reporting. Too many newsworthy stories either didn’t get covered or were given marginal, brief treatment. These stories included (as TIME magazine summarized in its year-end issue) Nigerian blood for oil, experimenting with children and the Maoist insurgency in India.

 

8. Twitter & Facebook went legit for business. In 2009, Twitter broadened from a consumer-level experience to a pragmatic corporate communications tool. An increasing number of businesses are using it for real-time updates, blatant marketing and thought leadership. Ditto for Facebook. LinkedIn, the social networking tool most associated with business, opened up its API and became more Facebook-like.

 

7. Online media became credible. In a year when print media collapsed, most people finally “got” that online visibility/conversations have gone legit. Meanwhile, the enlightened understand how online and social media is a new paradigm much more impactful than traditional media because of its transparency, authenticity and conversational two-way belief building.

 

6. Blogs ruled but got reeled in. Blogs became the real-time voice of corporations, the best way to communicate and build a human corporate persona. But while they were more widespread, the Federal government cracked down on bloggers in the pocket of vendors, forcing full disclosure for paid-for-booty.

5. Green became greener. While greenwashing didn’t go away in 2009, most corporations understood the mantra of needing to walk the walk, not just talk the talk. They also saw a direct line drawn between sustainability and profitability.

3. Video became an accepted standard in corporate America. The days of writing extensive “case studies” and producing elaborate (and expensive) corporate videos waned in 2009. Thanks to guerilla-style, grassroots video acceptance, corporations increasingly added video to their arsenal of communications thanks to a triumvirate of benefits: believability, immediacy and low-cost. Why write a news release when you can post a three minute video of someone saying it? Would you rather read or watch?  

2. PR was re-invigorated. The words “public relations” may still conjure negative imagery, but in 2009, the PR industry began making progress towards a renewed, positive and relevant position. Driven by social media which fosters conversations vs. pitches, the PR industry made significant strides in shifting from a media-centric one-way communications model to a two-way listening model.

 

1. Social responsibility became embedded. In 2009, “making the world a better place” moved from ‘philanthropy’ to an appreciation for and understanding of how authentic, integrated giving-back strategy and action positively impacts business objectives and the bottom line. There’s no turning back and that’s a very good thing.                            

My daughter Sophie participated in a great program sponsored by SkiNH called “Earn Your Turns.” It’s for 4^th-graders in NH who want to earn free tickets and discounts to NH ski resorts with a slight catch - they have to work for it. There are several homework assignments they can choose to earn the ski rewards – make a poster, write an essay, draw a picture. Sophie chose to conduct a survey of friends and family. Her question: Which ski resort in NH is your favorite?

 

While her survey wasn’t scientific, it did result in a high response rate (64 votes from 100+ possible respondents: approx. 65%) and offers some insight you might find useful as you plan your next survey.

 

1.      Consider your target list. Before you hit send on your online survey, consider how the results might be skewed based on the people you are surveying. In our case, Sophie surveyed friends and family, who all gather each winter at Cranmore Mountain in North Conway, so naturally the winning resort was Cranmore (although it should be voted #1 anyway!). Consider widening your target list to include those who have no familiarity with the questions you are asking so the results are more horizontal and less biased.

2.      Offer an incentive. I think we had such a high hit rate because Sophie offered a prize to a random winner picked from all the survey respondents. In this case, Lindt chocolates were up for grabs, but your incentive could be something meaningful to your target list: free product, free support or an all-expenses paid trip to the next user conference. If all else fails, chocolate does work!

3.      Personalize your “ask.” Sophie explained why she was doing the survey and included a picture of herself snowboarding. Many people commented on the project being such a great idea and the graphic offered a peek at how happy she is on the slopes. Consider adding a picture of your CEO, a graph from your last survey, or a video that’s meaningful to the spirit of the survey to give it more “life.”

4.      Say thank you. For each person that responded Sophie sent a personal thank you response along with a reminder about the incentive. “Thank you! If you are lucky, you will get chocolate.” This was appreciated by the respondents, but also opened further one-on-one dialogue. While this can’t be done with thousands of survey participants, consider responding personally to the top 10-15, particularly if they are key customers. Thank them for participating and perhaps get a dialogue going on different issues, or to get some specific anecdotes or data.

5.      Conclude your survey. People who participate in surveys typically do not hear about the results. If they take the time to help you, they should be informed of the outcome. When Sophie’s survey was officially “closed” (we had an end date and time), she sent everyone on the list – even those that didn’t participate – another thank you announcing the winning resort as well as the winner of the chocolate. For privacy reasons, you may not be able to reveal that much information, but closing the loop will let people know you brought the survey to a conclusion and give them another opportunity to engage in further communication with you.

 

In the end, have fun with it. Sophie was so proud of her results she couldn’t wait to share them with her teacher and is anticipating the arrival of her Earn Your Turns rewards.

 

What real-life survey lessons have you learned?

I don’t know if Tiger Woods cheated on Elin with Rachel Uchitel, is a reckless operator, was having an argument, was in a hurry to get out of his house around 2 a.m. or just wanted a new SUV.

 

And I really don’t care.

 

What bugs me in what I thought was an era of growing transparency for all brands (companies, organizations, governments, people) is a still remarkably frequent hesitancy to come clean publicly.

 

At the time of this writing, Tiger still hasn’t spoken with law enforcement authorities, choosing instead to post a statement on his Web site saying, “This is a private matter and I want to keep it that way.”

 

When you’re a billion dollar brand, this course gets a little dicey.

 

Tiger isn’t the first case of failing to come clean fast in 2009; we’ve seen this many times this year.

 

South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford has denied doing anything wrong for months. He disappeared for days this summer, reappearing to finally admit to an extramarital affair with his Argentinian “soul mate.” Facing 37 ethics charges related to campaign money and airline travel, Sanford still isn’t coming clean.

 

Balloon boy’s Dad, Richard Heene cried crocodile tears, set up a box for reporter questions and told the world his son’s disappearance was “absolutely no hoax.” There were lots of statements and press interviews before the kid climbed down from his attic perch above his garage in Fort Collins, CO and spilled the beans by saying “you had said that we did this for a show.”

 

Apple got pressure when it continued to not disclose what was going on with Steve Jobs’ “hormonal imbalance” weight loss issue, the prevalent angle before his liver transplant disclosure in June. People were upset because boards of public companies need to comply with disclosure laws protecting shareholders when CEO illnesses keep them away from work.

 

It happened again last month when Lazard Ltd.’s CEO Bruce Wasserstein was hospitalized for heart problems. A lot of people were upset because they felt there wasn’t enough transparency around the prominent investment banker’s eight week absence and health disclosure in 2006.

 

I agree with social media guru Chris Brogan. In his new book, Trust Agents, he said, “Those who are active on the Web now realize that they need to embrace this new transparency, that all things will now eventually be known. Companies can no longer hide behind a veneer of a shiny branding campaign, because customers are one Google search away from the truth. Further, they join activist groups to stay informed about new practices, so they are often one step ahead of the people trying to profit from them. Companies must acknowledge that they are as naked on the Web as individuals are."

Let’s transparently toast to a more transparent 2010. 

Back in 1939, Theodore Bodenwein, owner of The Day in New London, Conn.,gave the newspaper to the community by forming a non-profit trust to operate it. The Day isn’t insulated from free market forces, but its ownership model gives it a stronger hand for adapting to Internet Age media dynamics than media outlets chained to the company stock price.

The Texas Tribune, launched last week, is the 21^st century successor to The Day. It’s a wholly online, independent publication that covers the freak show of Texas state government in serious detail. Nothing too cutting edge there until you look at the Tribune’s business model. It’s funded by donations, sponsorships, and other non-advertising sources. Its mission is to provide a check on government power the mainstream media used to, but can’t anymore, as ad revenues evaporate. The Day and The Texas Tribune show what can happen when publishers (apologies to Apple) “think different.” Consumer Reports for high tech, or airlines, or the auto industry, or clean technology, anyone?  

 

Goldman Sachs received over $1billion from taxpayer bailouts and was the biggest recipient of taxpayer moolah in AIG’s bailout. Yes, they repaid their $10 billion loan with interest, but people in the know are predicting they might pay out as much as $16 billion in bonuses this year.

 

Next in line is Citigroup. They got $45 billion in TARP money plus another $300 billion in FDIC guarantees. All this on top of three previous government bailouts according to Slate.

Now comes the H1N1 debacle.

 

Goldman Sachs received 200 doses and Citgroup got 1,200. The New York City Department of Health figured this distribution strategy somehow made sense despite the fact the vaccine continues to be in very short supply. Many high-risk groups – little kids, young people, health care workers, pregnant women, etc. – haven’t been vaccinated. Lots of clinics and hospitals still don’t have their hands on it. People around the country wait in long lines to get it.

 

But Goldman Sachs took it. They received as much vaccine as was allotted to Lenox Hill Hospital in New York. Citigroup took it too, receiving five times more than Goldman Sachs.

 

True public relations practice is supposed to be focused on doing the right thing for society, right, not just one company’s employees? This week’s H1N1 action (and inaction) not only raises reputational management issues, but ethical ones as well.

On the heels of a still-lasting nasty taste in the public’s mouth, it seems these two firms may have been better served – reputationally and ethically – by being bigger picture ponderers, transparent and giving it back.

These vaccine distribution blunders may also create a negative ripple effect for the Obama administration. Arguably, a large segment of the American public may instinctively leap to a “who’s ultimately in charge here?” connection.

Morgan Stanley presumably learned a lesson from its financial brethren and did the right thing when it turned over its entire supply of 1,000 doses to local hospitals. Good for them, but especially for all the people who need it most.

It’s a textbook Bad PR, Good PR lesson for our time.

Four thousand years ago, somewhere in Mesopotamia, a prescient soul texted a lover. The sender memorized some verse, stirred up some clay, unsheathed his reed stylus, etched in the cuneiform script, baked the tablet in the sun, and lugged it to his heart-struck recipient. Today, in high tech and beyond, our messages are instantaneous and electronic, but that’s not necessarily progress.

 

“I think the speed with which we communicate changes things,” author John Freeman told customers last week at RiverRun, Portsmouth’s bookstore. “We’ve reached terminal velocity with communication and we can’t keep up with the machines we’re communicating with….[E-mail] deprives us of deep thinking, either in the culture or with yourself.”

 

Freeman explores this development in his new book “The Tyranny of E-Mail.” A few years ago, Freeman, now editor of the esteemed Granta literary journal, had been receiving 300 e-mails a day, more than he could process. Sound familiar? The deluge extended his work day, robbed him of sleep and snuffed out relationships. “It’s about time for an intervention,” he thought. So he wrote the book.

 

The title says “e-mail,” but it stands for the larger family of easy instant communication. Among the victims of e-mail, according to Freeman:

 

Community: The more “virtual” that e-mail makes institutions like banks, post offices and bookstores, the more they fade away from the neighborhood. And the fewer reasons to walk down the street and see your neighbor.

 

Culture: It’s too easy to have misunderstandings on e-mail, exacerbate the problems with further e-mail, and watch relationships devolve into icy stalemates. Even when e-mail sustains friendships, it leaves us with nothing to say when we do meet face to face.

 

Well-being: We check our e-mail before our first cup of coffee, at stop lights (ahem), all day at work (bathroom visits, included), after we’ve climbed into bed – and, of course, on vacation. Says Freeman, “There’s no downtime anymore.”

 

Mental health: When the server goes down, workers tend to click manically or assault their computing devices. “We used to work to live; now we work to e-mail.”

 

Brain chemistry: Scientists compare e-mail with slot machines. The reward – whether a good news message or a jackpot– comes intermittently and randomly. The technical term is variable interval reinforcement schedule. The only way to get a reward is to keep pulling the lever.

 

Eyes: What is the effect on our optic nerves of processing all the artificial light from our constant stream of electronic messages? In the olden days, reading involved natural light reflecting off an organic surface.

 

Literature. Though Freeman liked the publishing sensation “Eat, Pray, Love,” which has spent 141 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list, it’s probably no coincidence that it’s written in 108 bite-size chapters. Is that what we want? In recent fiction, Freeman has detected a “casualness and antsy type of speed… an insinuating quality.” Going with the flow, he readily admits he included plenty of subheads in “The Tyranny of E-Mail” on purpose: “Because I want to change the way people think, I wrote it in a way that is most digestible.”

So what's the answer? You may have heard of Slow Food, the antidote to fast food that focuses on fresh, local, organic, traditional cooking and eating. Freeman is calling for something like that in human conversation.