FEMA Falsehoods

Posted At : October 30, 2007 9:47 AM | Posted By : Andy Beaupre
Related Categories: Commentary

“Misguided” won’t do, and “moronic” doesn’t fit either.

Let’s file this one under asinine, witless and/or preposterous. Scarily myopic works too.

FEMA, the same federal agency justifiably slammed by media, Congress and the government for its handling of the Hurricane Katrina disaster somehow reached the implausible conclusion that it was time to organize a fake event with FEMA employees posing as phony reporters.

After giving real reporters only 15 minutes to show up, they decided to address the issue of FEMA’s response to the Southern California wildfires. The press room was filled with the agency’s own public affairs personnel who proceeded to ask their own questions and rate their own behavior.

The verdict? “I’m very happy with FEMA’s response so far,” says Deputy Administrator Harvey Johnson who MC’d the event.

News blogs broke the news that everything was staged and FEMA scrambled for cover once again. Michael Chertoff was plenty irritated over the weekend. I liked the part about him making it clear in “Anglo-Saxon prose” that this kind of behavior better not be seen again.

Am I getting hopelessly old or do you actually have to warn people not to do this kind of thing these days?

As communications professionals, lots of us have organized press conferences. Can you imagine orchestrating a press event designed specifically to keep reporters away?

Let’s imagine how the thought process might have played out:

FEMA head PA honcho: Good morning, we’re here to talk about creative public affairs. Remember the time our agency was publicly slammed because it didn’t respond the correct way to that big hurricane disaster?

FEMA PA staff: What was the name of that one again?

FEMA head PA honcho: Katrina. It was Katrina.

FEMA PA staff: Gotcha.

FEMA head PA honcho: Okay, this time we’re going to get our hands around the Southern California wildfires and manage things the way they’re supposed to be managed. What I have in mind is a creative news conference.

FEMA PA staff: What do you mean by “creative?”

FEMA head PA honcho: Glad you asked that question. It’s a press conference where WE get to ask ALL the hard questions.

FEMA PA staff: A very cool idea. But how do we do that if reporters are in the room?

FEMA head PA honcho: Here’s the brilliant part. We give the real reporters only 15 minutes to show up. They can’t possibly make it that quick; everyone’s so busy these days. Knowing this, we fill the room with you guys and then YOU get to ask all the tough questions about how we’re doing with these wildfires.

FEMA PA staff: Wow! This will enable us to actually use our advance Q&A document for once!

After blogs and newspapers strafed FEMA, they finally released an apology of sorts. Laura Keehner of the agency said “We have made it clear stunts such as this will not be tolerated or repeated.”

Okay communications professionals, let’s recap the big lesson learned here so everything is crystal clear going forward for all of us. Please remember that it will always be unethical to stage a press conference where your own staff poses as reporters and the event is passed off as legitimate news. Don’t do this, ever.

I feel much better.

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Radiohead's revolution reminds us all

Posted At : October 24, 2007 9:53 AM | Posted By : Andy Beaupre
Related Categories: Social Media

After Radiohead’s contract with EMI/Capital expired, singer Thom Yorke and the band decided they were sick and tired of the corporate music scene and would do their own thing. I figured they’d release their new music – In Rainbows - on their own label and rely on iTunes or Amazon to handle the distribution.

But they didn’t go this route. Instead, Radiohead told people they could get their new music online and – here’s the radical part - pay whatever they wanted for it. No set $9.99 like iTunes. No minimum. You want to pay $1? Then pay one buck. Whatever you feel like paying, whatever you think the music is worth.

Can you imagine this happening a few years ago? Not only did Radiohead have the server capacity to make it happen, it also had the guts to say “screw you guys” and turn music into a loss leader. Like Madonna, they figured out the real money is made touring, cutting sponsorship deals, selling merchandise and the like. Fixing new music pricing? Fugettaboutit.

The In Rainbows release was a massive smack-in-the-face, wake-up call to the music industry. It’s also a reminder, to each of us, that the massive transformation of online people power is real, ready and now.

A rock and roll band has tremendous confidence because they understand the loyal community they’ve built over the years can be tapped, engaged and mobilized. They can leverage this themselves; they don’t need some third party behemoth controlling their destiny. Letting Radiohead fans pay what they want for new music is confidence personified. Treat people the way they ought to be treated and fans become even more loyal. It’s such an obvious radical shift, isn’t it?

The mainstream music industry doesn’t “get it” because they don’t want to get it. They appear to make moves in the right direction, but they’re largely frozen in their tracks. Yorke told Time magazine that mainstream music is “a decaying business model.”

We see this “power to the people” dynamic every day in the communications business and tech industry. Ordinary people are growing in power and clout. Citizen-driven online communities are increasingly determining what’s hot, not product marketers. More and more, online communities are setting agendas; not corporate boardrooms. Grassroots citizens are shaping what’s news. People have the power to keep companies honest and call out those who don’t behave ethically.

This is just the beginning. Not just for the music industry, but for every business, every industry, everywhere. John Lennon would have loved this revolution.

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What do you do for work?

Posted At : October 17, 2007 9:39 AM | Posted By : Andy Beaupre
Related Categories: Commentary

Over the weekend, I attended my college’s “Seventies Reunion.” There were all kinds of fun events for hundreds and hundreds of people who fundamentally couldn’t remember what went on during those deranged days of streaking and Led Zeppelin.

We all did our best to feign remembrance.

The most often-asked question during the skits, football games, radio station reunions and dinners was “What do you do for work?” Thirty-plus years into this business and I still chuckle when I hear this.

Most of the banter went like this:

Them: “So, what do you do for work?”

Me: “I’m in public relations.”

Them: Glazed look on face. No words come out.

Me: “We help build brands for B2B and technology companies.”

Them: Eyes shift from side to side. Exit signs loom large. No words are emitted.

Me: “It’s very gratifying work because we ultimately make a big difference for our client companies. What we do really puts them on the map.”

Them: Sweat breaks out on brow, but a reply is forthcoming. “Advertising is such a cool business. Have you seen that TV ad with the tiny lizard that sells insurance and drives that little sports car? That one cracks me up.”

Me: “Uh, that’s not exactly what I do. Advertising and PR are related, but they’re different. No matter how entertaining an ad is, people instinctively realize the advertiser paid for the message. An ad is intrinsically perceived as biased because it’s trying to sell something. It has its place, but it’s different. PR has more credibility because it’s focused on building great reputations. Objective third parties like customers and reporters spread the word with positive impact because they are perceived as unbiased third parties.”

Them: Eyes squint. Panic sets in momentarily but is rapidly followed by relief as the grand-awakening is uttered: “So, do you think the Patriots are going to go 19-0?”

Me: No words are emitted. However I think to myself, “Next time, I’m just going to say I work for TBWA/Chiat Day on the Apple iPod account. Everyone’s heard of Apple and Bono, right?”

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The undying love affair for 'leader' and 'first'

Posted At : October 10, 2007 2:34 PM | Posted By : Andy Beaupre
Related Categories: Writing

Scan the headlines on Business Wire and PR Newswire for a few weeks and you’ll see hundreds of news releases that feature the words “the leading,” “first,” and “leader.”

This alignment with leadership and first occurs every day of every week of every month of every year in our industry. This isn’t a surprise to technology communicators. Many executives still love the sound of these words:

· Breakthrough

· World class

· State-of-the-art

· Pioneering

· Best-of-breed

· Killer app

· Special sauce

· Bleeding edge & cutting edge

· Next generation

· Major advance

· Unparalleled

“First” seems to have been trivialized. While I can understand why companies desperately need to make it absolutely clear how they – and no one else!! – came up with the idea, does being first really matter to customers? Doesn’t the right idea gain traction only when the time and product are right?

The Apple Newton was one of the first PDAs, yet the Palm Pilot won that battle. Apollo was first with workstations, but Sun became the leader. The Diamond Rio was years and years ahead of the iPod. The first mobile phone was invented in 1947 but didn’t start selling commercially until 1983. Digital Equipment Corporation was decades ahead with its 64-bit computing chip.

In an article entitled “The Perils of Being First,” Jeremy black of Sambazon Inc. told The Wall Street Journal “the first guy on the beach usually becomes shot.”

The notion of “leadership” has become, arguably, somewhat trivialized too.

Leadership claims are particularly ill-advised when self-anointed. Saying a company is “the leader” doesn’t make it the leader. The claim is frivolous. No wonder tech companies clamor for inclusion in brilliant marketing concepts like the Gartner “Magic Quadrant.”

Leadership claims are challenging because they’re so transitory. Today’s gorilla can become tomorrow’s scurrying monkey. Industry examples abound. AOL was on top but big portals like Yahoo and MSN took over. Dell lost market share to HP. Corel went the way of Adobe. Lots of Sun business went to IBM. Siebel lost its edge to Salesforce.com.

It’s doubtful the tech industry will ever lose its hunger for first and leader because it’s so fundamentally rooted in innovation. This always invites “breakthroughs” and “dramatic advancements.”

The best we can do as professional communicators is to urge senior management to emphasize how a product/service can help customers do what they want to do. As HBS’ Ted Leavitt said years ago in Marketing Myopia, “People don’t buy a quarter-inch drill. They buy a quarter-inch hole. You’ve got to study the hole, not the drill. The drill is just a solution for it.”

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Predictifying market research

Posted At : October 8, 2007 3:47 PM | Posted By : Steve Hodgdon
Related Categories: Social Media

Mashable is reporting that group prediction site, Predictify, officially launched its public beta today. Predictify is a so-called “prediction platform that taps into the collective wisdom of Internet users” to make predictions on various questions, events or outcomes, such as who will be the Republican presidential nominee, the Red Sox’s chances of winning the World Series, or what might be the next Apple iPod incarnation.

Members can make predictions or post their own questions freely. And those who make accurate predictions on “premium” (i.e. paid for) questions can earn money for their foresight, depending on how much value the poster put on his/her question. The higher your accuracy is over time, the higher you move up the expert ranking scale.

Predictify maybe just be another interesting twist on using social networks to reap collective knowledge. But what’s more interesting to me is its potential as a low-cost market research tool. Using the premium question service could enable companies to conduct private surveys and garner statistical feedback that could prove to be valuable validation. They can get potentially a very large sampling (up to 10,000 responses) at a relatively low cost ($1 per response) … cheap compared to e-mail or phone surveys. And the data is richer, including predictor profile information such as age and gender.

Sure, there are other online survey alternatives, many of which are free. But have you ever tried to recruit a large enough sampling of willing participants to take the survey, without offering some kind of giveaway or other bribery? Predictify could be a valuable resource purely because it has a critical mass of eager predictors who want to foresee your future.

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A perfect moment for social responsibility

Posted At : October 4, 2007 1:15 PM | Posted By : Andy Beaupre
Related Categories: Commentary

The Kenexa Research Institute (KRI) reported interesting findings today.

They surveyed workers from Brazil, China, Germany, India, the UK and the U.S. and found out that an organization’s involvement in corporate social responsibility (CSR) positively influences employee engagement levels and how senior management is perceived.

The Cone Corporate Citizenship study adds more fuel. It revealed that eight of 10 Americans have more trust in companies that support causes. Taken from a pocketbook perspective, 86 percent of Americans will switch from one brand to another (providing it is about the same in price and quality) if the other brand is positively associated with a good cause.

In other words, if you help make the world a better place, people notice, trust grows, perceptions are more favorable, sales may increase and brand loyalty deepens. Sounds like a good thing, doesn’t it?

There was a time when helping society was the exclusive domain of consumer companies. Brands like Ben & Jerry’s, Timberland, The Body Shop, Patagonia and Whole Foods come to mind.

But times have changed for the better. Now the world of technology is leading the way.

Bill and Melinda Gates’ personal charity has created an extremely positive ripple effect on the corporate entity itself. Microsoft achieved the number one ranking in the eighth annual Harris Interactive/Wall Street Journal ranking of the world’s best and worst corporate reputations. In 2007, Microsoft upstaged Johnson & Johnson which had been in first place for seven consecutive years.

Sun Microsystems has a CSR initiative and publishes a corporate social responsibility annual report. IBM issued its “corporate policy on environmental affairs” way back in 1971. They haven’t missed a beat; the EPA recently recognized IBM as a “top green power purchaser.”

Validating the phenomenal strides the tech industry has made over the past several years, nine of the top 12 “One Hundred Best Corporate citizens” – published by Business Ethics magazine – were technology companies. HP; AMD; Motorola; Agilent; Salesforce.com; Cisco; Dell; TI and Intel led the way. While the number one company was Green Mountain Roasters, HP ended up in the runner-up slot, cited for its Digital Village program which establishes village computer centers in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

This movement of helping make the world a better place is an enduring trend that will continue to blossom as mid-sized and small tech and B2B companies decide to do their part.

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