Do we trust journalists?

I spoke to someone whom I thought might be interested in a Media Training session today. His reaction was “I don’t talk to the media. Nothing good ever comes out of it!”

Wow!

I was slightly taken aback, even though I have heard something like this before. (No, it was not Sarah Palin.) In fact, I have a mailer on my wall that announces “Don’t talk to the media…” On the reverse, is the line “until you talk to Gerard Braud.” Gerard is an IABC member I met earlier this year, who conducts this kind of thing, and his point is that you could tell an honest story, stripped of spin, and still have a great media experience.

Which brings me to the whole point of this. A survey of journalists just out (Bulldog Reporter/Techgroup International) on media relations practices. It’s an excellent insight into how journos think, what they do to connect (or avoid) PR spin, and how they stay on top of stories using social media. Among the findings:

• Only 29% of journalists read 5 blogs or more to keep up with their beat. The positive side of this is that 75% read one blog or more. One year ago, about 26% read 5 or more blogs.
• RSS usage us low (58.4% don’t use it), journalists abhor phone calls from PR people, and those not familiar with their media outlet.
• Interestingly, newspapers are still a key source of news for them (so will all those newspapers-are-dead promoters stop making it seem worse than it is?), and a large number of them are big on Electronic News Kits.

So if you don’t want to share the same oxygen as journalists, at least try to make it easy to let them suck in your RSS feed from a distance. And that’s not just your from press releases, and your ‘about us’ page, but from your white papers, interviews, podcasts, blogs & thought pieces (same thing, huh?). We may not trust them, but we could trust them to do their ground work if we give them less puff pieces.

Hey, I can afford to say this because I wear two hats. I communicate with the media on behalf of whom I represent, but I also interview companies for my freelance writing.

McCain’s campaign, a lesson in why consistency matters

I get that the ‘maverick’ label allows you to stand on any side you please.

Except that when you craft a campaign, standing for different things at different times has the makings of a communications disaster. Especially now, when it’s possible to juxtapose them.

Take these two positions. These are statements to the press, not something the press distorts.

• “I agree with Bush far more than he disagree …
• “There’s a long list of areas that we were in disagreement on …”

It’s like a brand manager placing ads for product X in different newspapers positioning it as a luxury item in one market and a discount product in another, hoping that no one sees both.

Unfortunately we do.

Copyright, catchphrases and change

It’s not a Budweiser ad, but it riffs on that ‘Whassup‘ phrase in a twisted way.

But humor apart, it is a great example of resurrecting an expired concept, skirting copyright, and making a statement.

Hollywood Alley’s advertising: no agency required

Advertising is much more than a clever slogan tacked to the back of your truck. Branding is certainly more than a logo. I’ve regularly discussed this here and in my other writing –about experiential branding, and grass-roots marketing.

So I was glad to hear back from a company I had written about here on the blog. It’s a long comment, but fully worth a read. It’s about a form of “advertising” – a simple $12 dollar sign printed at Staples — people normally might dismiss as pre-Web 2.0.

Hollywood Alley is a family-owned restaurant in Mesa, (NE corner of Baseline Road and 101)  For weeks I had noticed the signs were getting really creative –or at least intriguing. Yesterday I heard from John Wincek, who gave me the scoop about how a restaurant with “a kitschy style, and an off-kilter outlook on life-but other than that, we’re actually totally and completely normal!” created its own brand personality. He doesn’t use ad jargon like that, but that’s just what it is: DIY branding. No agency required.

The restaurant’s sign connects with customers, flagging them down, getting them to even come up with ideas for the outdoor signature. “We were suggesting food, but without screaming it at them. better yet, we were connecting through a common interest,” said John. It was not just a sign, but a game, something that made people think about the  movie, the pun, and keep the restaurant in their minds.

But the sign can only get people in. The people and the product had better deliver. It is working. Check his story. It’s a great example of how to be creative to keep business humming in spite of the recession.

In tough times job seekers need to expand job description

One more follow up to my post about what communicators could do during these tough economic times.

Annie Waite at Melcrum has an excellent post on how to look for interim positions during the downturn. The key seems to be flexibility.

I used to put it another way: that old line “It’s not on my job description” is an attitude  that we need to expel. You can’t blame people who started checking all the boxes on their job description, just to get a great performance review. But in doing this, we box ourselves into our jobs, not realizing that over a few months that job has changed.

While doing a good job of communicating how good we are in what we do, we should not unwittingly communicate how unwilling we are to do something different, daring, unexpected. It’s easy to communicate you are an out-of-the-box type of person without using that tired expression.  Here are a few simple ways:

• Read something new. Completely outside your sphere of interest. Ask someone with that expertise to clarify what it says. It will stretch your mind, and make you more accessible should the need arise.
• Try something different every month. It could be a tactic, a piece of software, or sit in a meeting you might normally avoid. If you’re not sure what’s possible, check Managing The Gray, an excellent way to stimulate your marketing ideas. CC Chapman’s podcast is like a Red Bull for your mind.
• Get feedback. It’s tough for someone who  thinks he/she is an expert to ask others to give some honest feedback, but asking for feedback communicates that you are willing to learn.
• Hang out with some really ‘weird’ people. I say this in a good way. Don’t just socialize with people like yourself. Try attending a Podcamp (there’s one this weekend in Phoenix). Have lunch with a journalist or a geek. It’s amazing what you will learn in 15 minutes! I met some retirees over coffee this morning at Einsteins, and was introduced to The Black Swan, and epistemology!

Forget MP3, here comes MP6

The lowly MP3 music format was quietly replaced by MP4. But this week, there’s news that a Chinese company has introduced the world’s first MP6.

The company is AIGO. We haven’t heard much of it here in the US. but we soon will. The device that plays the new format is the eMusicPlayer, using a wireless “reading-point pen.”

What’s interesting is how it blends the technology with a publishing concept. Aigo will publish a ‘music magazine’ periodically,  with about 200 to 300 songs. The pen is then used like a mouse, to point and select the music from the magazine.

I could see audio book publishers, and podcast aggregators putting this to great use. Of course any music player that can download a file wirelessly has a big advantage.

Would you let an intern run an event?

For all the talk of the bottom-up communications and letting go of the command-and-control buttons, not many organizations would want to let a newbie run the show. It’s too risky, they’ll tell you.

I could afford to talk. We let students take controls –literally — at the Decision Theater. Student workers and interns aren’t here to handle the low-end stuff. They take control of the visualizations in the control booth, they also do presentations, and even work on back-end, in coding and creative.

So this post by an intern, on the Southwest Airlines blog, Nuts About Southwest, illustrated it better I’ve ever seen. Ray Buffington is a PR intern.  He created a PR event without a manager second guessing him, even though she “was available to tap into.”

Would you let an intern loose on your PR? or is your PR department such a fiefdom that no one without a communication degree is allowed near? Let alone let an intern take charge of the message.

I have been tracking Nuts for a while now, and they never cease to surprise. Great work!

Josh and Charlene named “Visionaries” for Groundswell

Congratulations to Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff on being named ‘visionaries of the year‘ by SNCR, the Society for New Communications Research (whose founders are the who’s who of social media.)

By many standards, Groundswell is the most imortant book of the year that answers the Why and How of social media. It’s hard for me to stop talking about it –my upcoming article in IABC’s Communication World is about it.

The authors have demystified the social media hype and given every practitioner something substantial to turn to: case studies, ROI calculations the online Social Technographics tool etc.

Interactive look at 2008 stock market crash

In time there will be some big-picture interactive tools that let people look back at the great stock market crash we are witnessing. The roller-coaster indexes, the side-effects of deregulation, and the people behind the collapse.

The New York Times mapped how the crisis unfolded.

Here is one more, from the Guardian newspapers in the UK.

Quotes for the week ending 25 October, 2008

“YouTube is a clip culture … But we saw that there was a demand for longer form.”

YouTube’s director of content partnerships, Jordan Hoffner, on its move to allow videos longer than  10-minutes.

“Start iterating– fast.”

Robert Scoble on what newspapers can learn from the technology industry.

“he displayed … intellectual vigor”

Colin Powell, on endorsing Barack Obama.

“What reality are you in?”

Alec Baldwin, responding to those who thought it was a mistake to put Sarah Palin on Saturday Night Live, because it might sway voters.

“It is an acceptance mark.”

Antonio Lucio, the new CMO of Visa, on what the brand stands for, and his plans for moving a piece of plastic into the digital age. Quoted in Advertising Age.

“… we see that technology allows for new kinds of connectedness built around cell phones and the internet.”

Tracy Kennedy of the University of Toronto, commenting on the Pew Internet and American Life study on Networked Families, just out.

Wal-Mart is not afraid of negative reviews from customers.”

Josh Bernoff, on how Walmart has turned the supertanker around and is embracing social media.

“Be flexible, consider part-time work, take a paycut, work hard”

Annie Waite, at Internal Comms Hub, the Melcrum blog, quoting Lynn Hazan, about strategies for communicators to survive the down turn.