Apple's sour grapes bruises a stellar brand

Posted At : July 19, 2010 3:23 PM | Posted By : Mike McGrail
Related Categories: Crisis Management,PR,Social Media,Media Relations,Public Relations,Commentary,News

Even the ultra-cool sometimes just don’t get it.

After a few haughty responses earlier in the week to complaints about its iPhone 4 dropping calls, Apple made a smart move and offered free cases iPhone 4 consumers. The cases will prevent the “death grip” problem that cause the phone’s reception to fade and sometimes drop calls if held a certain way.

But Apple CEO Steve Jobs apparently just couldn’t just hand out the cases and live to fight another day. Standing on a dais in front of an image that said “Antennagate,” he had to show a video illustrating problems with competing phones like the Blackberry. Then he insisted there’s nothing really wrong with the iPhone 4 – that the situation is a media creation.

“We're not feeling right now that we have a giant problem we need to fix,” Jobs said during a press conference at Apple’s Cupertino, Calif. headquarters. “This has been blown so out of proportion that it’s incredible. I know it’s fun to have a story, but it’s less fun when you're on the other end of it.”

Has Jobs grown too accustomed to the rainbows and unicorns he usually gets from the media? I have to wonder if his PR people warned him he’d look like a whiner if he complained about the press because that’s how he came off – defensive. The media did not, as Jobs intimated, create this problem. Apple’s arrogant response to customer complaints did. When customers got the high hat from Apple, they started complaining publicly through social media and the news media picked up on the story.

When are executives going to learn a little humility and contrition go a long way in situations like this? You’d think that coming so soon on the heels of Toyota’s and BP’s PR Armageddons that Apple, normally a PR-savvy company, would have had a response as slick as its products. Considering the vast reservoirs of customer good will it has to draw on, Apple could have snuffed this out before it became a problem. It might have had to eat a little crow by admitting its hot-shot phone had a flaw, but at least it wouldn’t be getting bludgeoned in the press at the same time.

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Dirty little secret revealed: Sean Penn was right; the media did drop the ball on Haiti

Posted At : July 13, 2010 3:08 PM | Posted By : Andy Beaupre
Related Categories: Commentary

It’s been six months since the 7.0 earthquake struck Haiti, killing more than 230,000 people and leaving 1.5 million homeless. There are still few jobs to be had and no permanent shelter. Only two percent of promised reconstruction aid has been released. And according to a report issued this week by the US Center for Strategic and International Studies, only nine percent of pledges by governments (about $50 million) has actually been delivered.

Sean Penn has been a vocal activist for Haiti since the quake, remaining in the country with his daughter to help over the past six months. He brought up an interesting point yesterday in speaking with Harry Smith of CBS News’ Early Show: "I think that the media has played an enormous part in the failures that are still going on today and the recovery here and the relief operations."

Smith then said: "People would be curious why you went in the first place. And then, why you stayed. What's the best answer for that?" Penn answered: "...if they're wondering that, then that would be an indictment of the American and the international press that came here in the immediate aftermath of this devastating earthquake."

Penn elaborated: "The United States sent its military, that did an extraordinary job in immediate relief....And then when they went on with other deployments, when the amputations en masse stopped, the media left."

I ran a Factiva search to prove or disprove Penn’s theory. If you’re not familiar with Factiva, it’s an advanced search tool from Dow Jones that enables you to analyze media coverage. Factiva’s database includes more than 28,000+ leading media sources from 157 countries in 23 languages, including regional and industry publications, Web and blog content.

Using Google, I found the two most popular (and relevant) search topics:

1. Haiti earthquake

2. Haiti news

Using these key words, Factiva revealed the following levels of media coverage over the six-month period:

While Factiva isn’t a be-all-end-all and doesn’t include every publication or blog in the world, it’s comprehensive.

This data suggests Sean Penn may be onto something.

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7 reasons why "pitch" & "pitching" need to go bye-bye

Posted At : July 13, 2010 9:19 AM | Posted By : Andy Beaupre
Related Categories: PR,Media Relations,Commentary

“Pitch” and “pitching” aren’t going away … but they should. They’re so frequently used in agencies, corporations, not-for-profits and organizations they appear current, reasonable and viable. But they’re not. They should be retired immediately.

Historic usage, prevalence and pithiness shouldn’t supersede relevance or appropriateness. If it did, words like: colored, going steady, secretary, sissy, stewardess and mental would still be in wide circulation today.

Here are seven reasons why we should drop the pitch:

1. It's a dated form of PR – media relations used to be one-way. We’d craft our “pitches” and try to sell them to busy reporters. Please Walt Mossberg, notice me, listen to what I have to say, and I hope (and pray) you write something. Those days are increasingly over. The world of top-down media dominance has been replaced with a never ending grassroots conversation that’s lively, engaging, empowering and direct to consumer/customer.

2. It de-positions the PR industry – most of us have worked hard adapting to - and adopting – many historic communications transformations. We’re not there yet… (may never be), but we’re in a better place. We’re taking the PR industry to a new position where authenticity and transparency shape our practice – not hype and selling. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to go back.

3. It damages our reputation – pitch and pitching sound old-school – pre-social media, pre-community – and they are. When we say these words, they immediately date us, forcing astute listeners to categorize us as “hit and clip,” “press kit” era PR dinosaurs.

4. It’s one-way – pitching epitomizes the old-world model of one way communications. Shut up and listen, I've got something to say. I'm the pitcher, here's the pitch … I'll wait and see if you catch what I've got to say … or not. Yes, the great “pitchers” of the past weren’t this crass … they’d initiate a conversation. But lots of people continue to push out their packaged ideas via Twitter, e-mail, Facebook, etc., never inviting or urging a conversation.

5. It’s arrogant – I don’t like it when a car salesman makes assumptions about me when we’ve never met. I don’t like it when a telemarketer reaches me at home to sell me something I’m not interested in. I don’t like it when people try to convince me to support an idea I’m not familiar with or don’t believe in. Pitching has all these attributes, and more.

6. It’s a turn-off – this approach helped give PR a negative reputation, a perception often shaped by aggressive, fake, single-minded people trying to get their way vs. earning respect and building rapport.

7. It doesn’t work – instead of pitching, let’s enter a two-way conversation, tell a story, listen, learn, invest time and treat people the way we like to be treated. We may not always get where we want to go, but we’ll build genuine relationships that have more lasting value.

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BP triggers dark side for augmented reality

Posted At : July 6, 2010 3:46 PM | Posted By : Steve Hodgdon
Related Categories: Social Media,Commentary,Media Relations,Crisis Management,PR,Cleantech,Public Relations,Marketing,News

No sooner did brand managers and marketers discover augmented reality (AR) as the next big marketing frontier then did consumers find a way to use AR to voice their own opinions.

AR developers Mark Skwarek and Joseph Hocking are keeping BP’s feet to the fire with a new AR iPhone app that lets users visualize the Deepwater Horizon oil spill at their local BP gas station or wherever they happen to see a BP logo.

Called “the leak in your hometown,” the app transforms the logo into the source of the deep sea gusher. Just point your phone at the logo and your outrage and sense of futility over the unceasing disaster is rekindled.

If you’re new to augmented reality, it’s technology that overlay’s digital information and imagery onto your view of real-world things, typically using a webcam or smartphone camera as the visual conduit.

The BP gusher app is pretty simplistic as far as AR apps go. Yet it’s a brand manager’s nightmare. As the app’s creators describe on their blog …

An important component of the project is that it uses BP’s corporate logo as a marker, to orient the computer-generated 3D graphics. Basically turning their own logo against them. This repurposing of corporate icons will offer future artists and activists a powerful means of expression which will be easily accessible to the masses and at the same time will be safe and nondestructive.

Remember back when brand managers first swooned over the potential of social media as a new direct-to-consumer marketing channel, not yet realizing how the technology gives consumers their own, sometimes critical, voice? With AR, it’s déjà vu all over again. Google ‘augmented reality’ and ‘marketing’ and you'll see what I mean. But the effusive praise by marketers will soon be tempered as they discover that AR can be a double-edged sword, as much a threat to their companies’ corporate reputation as it is a powerful marketing tool.

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Next BP victim: 'brand journalism'

Posted At : July 6, 2010 11:15 AM | Posted By : Steve McGrath
Related Categories: Branding,Crisis Management,PR,Cleantech,Media Relations,Public Relations,Commentary,News

The brand journalist is the one of the most compelling marketing concepts I've encountered in a while. Leave it to BP to spoil a good thing.

Read more from our CleanSpeak blog here.

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