Over the River

Over the past couple of days I’ve been talking with people at the Society for New Communications Research and the Social Media Club here in Boston about the intersection of communication and culture. I support the idea of looking at the stuff of life as legitimate channels for communication - but this has to be done with an extremely high level of sensitivity - especially when the content is commercial.

This past week the Campaign For A Commercial-Free Childhood sent out an email exposing an exploitation of a cultural communication channel by McDonald’s. The program was built around commercial messages being included on report card envelopes of kids in kindergarten through fifth grade in Seminole County, Florida. It offered free Happy Meals to kids that did well in Academics, Citizenship or Attendance.

Here’s the piece that went out:

Some complained that the promotion forced them to be the bad guys if they said “no” to the free Happy Meal; that kids might feel that they were entitled to a reward for their accomplishments; that it was simply inappropriate for commercial characters and messages to be included via this channel.

This isn’t the first time - and nor is McDonald’s the first company - to do this type of “sponsorship;” and some might argue that if communities don’t want this type of thing they should find alternative ways to fund local schools. The fact is though that even with full funding - if someone offers a school system with cash few are going to say “no.”

So using the idea of cultural communications, how might McDonald’s accomplished its marketing goal without raising the hackles of parents and advocacy groups?

First, they could have taken their commercial message off of the envelope all together - but still have paid the school for the mailing. Since this was a local program, they could have promoted their sponsorships in-store and perhaps generated positive word-of-mouth.

Second, they could have included parents in conversation. This was one of the things they were criticized for - and rightly so - they were marketing directly to kids and setting up potential conflict between kids and parents. Again, a program that was aimed at parents in the stores, letting them know that McDonald’s would let them - the parents - bring their kids into a store for a free Happy Meal would have make the reward the parents could bestow if they say fit. This would have made mom and dad - as well as McDonald’s into the hero.

Third, they could have made the program broader and more interesting. For example, rather then just giving kids a free meal for a report card, why not create a redeemable currency that kids could collect and save for meals or merchandise online? This would be something that would include the parents and the kids - and, for those that opted to participate - create and even stronger tie between the customers and the brand.

Instead, McDonald’s took the easiest path and is getting hammered (coverage has appeared in the New York Times, the AP and in local papers in Orlando). Cultural communications can work; it just has to be handled with more intelligence and sensitivity than was demonstrated in this case.

What do you think? Would you feel comfortable with a program like this in your community?

Technorati Tags: McDonald’s, education, marketing, cultural communications, report cards, Campaign For A Commercial-Free Childhood

Some times I just don’t know where the years slip away to.  It’s already December - how did that happen?  And it’s not like December is a quiet month - despite what people may say - not for me at least.

I’ve been looking forward to this week for a while.  Why?  Because the Society for New Communications Research Symposium is happening here in Boston.  If you’re in town and interested in attending, let me know and I can hook you up with a sweet deal.  You can also register here.

Now I go to all kinds of events but I’ve been looking forward to this one in particular because I’ll be presenting - along with John Cass, Paul Gillin and Richard Nacht - initial results from our New Influencer study.  So far what we’ve found is interesting.  It mostly boils down, at least in the area that I am working on, to the fact that people are totally into social media but aren’t really thinking about the right things when they’re trying to judge and understand influence.  I’d say more but then people might not come to the event . . .

I’m also super thrilled to be presenting as award on Wednesday night.  Being an award presenter has been one of my long time dreams and I can’t believe it is going to come true.  (Now if I can only loose 40 lbs. between now and tomorrow I should be able to fit into my tux . . .).  I’m also going to be moderating a panel on Thursday afternoon so if the doctor prescribed more GregPC you’ll get your fill over the next couple of days.

And if this wasn’t enough . . . There’s also a Social Media Club/Boston event on Thursday night.  It’s going to take place after the SNCR Symposium and will be focused on the future of social media.  You can register and get all the details on the SMC/B wiki.

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Tags: GregPC, Society for New Communications Research, SNCR, Social Media Club, Boston, Social Media, events

I’m working on a paper for the Society for New Communications Research on “New Media, New Influencers and Implications for Public Relations Professionals” to be presented at the Society for New Communications Research Symposium here in Boston in December. I’d appreciate it if people would be willing to complete (and share) a survey on the topic.

There are actually two surveys - one aimed at communication professionals and another for general consumers.

In addition, we’re looking to include case studies on how companies are adopting and applying new media/social media programs. Please let me know if you know of companies that might be interested. You can reach me at gpc AT pevco DOT net.

Technorati Tags: SNCR, social media, public relations, PR, communications, survey

Shel started by asking how to make sense of everything that had been discussed over the preceding days.
How do we manage all of the new channels that are available? People have limited time and budget; and the expectations is that they will continue doing traditional communications while they begin working with social media.

Shel opened the floor for questions regarding channels. Inexplicably, RSS continues to be a huge source of confusion. I don’t get where all the trouble comes from.
The issue of internal communications came up and Shel pointed out that there is a blending and blurring between internal and external communications and that every employee can be viewed as a spokesperson for their company.

Someone raised the question of how the openness of social media can be reconciled with protecting IP. Shel suggested that engaging in conversations with appropriate audiences makes sense. You can get information that you’d never get anywhere if you don’t begin to talk with people.

He made a few points on channels (which was supported by a very handy chart) - until the 1940s there were a limited number of channels - then came TV and that was almost all we had for some time until the introduction of cable. The Internet has meant a huge fragmentation of channels. It isn’t about reaching a lot of people anymore, it is about reach the key influencers that are able spread the word. Fragment right along with everyone else.

Despite this fragmentation and the emergence of social media, traditional media still matters. Shel pointed out that only 767M people around the world are online - this is only 16% of the world’s population. For these people traditional media is the only media that’s available.

Do company Web sites still matter? Of course. Page views may not matter any more, now what matters is the experience that users have. Making that experience portable is key.

What are the biggest issues people are going to face when trying to bring social media into an organization? Time to manage it is one issue. But the more people do it the easier it will become and the less time it will take.

Presenting social media as a solution to real business problems rather than simply as new and interesting channels.

Gabriele from Dow asks about the fact that in the past we told people that they couldn’t talk to the media without training and supervision; and the fact that this is a huge cultural change. Shel response that it is a cultural change and that it is going to take training and consideration.

People aren’t doing social media because it is cool or new; they are adopting it because it works and allows them to do the things that they need to do. You can’t implement these social media tools unless you are living and using the tools yourself.

People worry about control but we all need to get used to the fact that NOBODY is in control. What we need to learn is how to get into and direct the conversation.

We’re living in a “do it yourself” world when it comes to content and there is no reason why we can’t all create content and use it to engage in a conversation.

What about engaging in the conversation? It’s best to be a part of the conversation and to allow the conversation happen on your site because it is going to happen - let it happen where you can be engaged.

The conversation is what is important.

Where is all this going to lead in the next five years? Most people believe that businesses are adopting this technology now and that in five years all of this will be totally accepted.

It’s interesting to hear this enthusiastic - yet in some ways more balanced - conversation on the topic. It really rounded out an excellent series of panels and discussions.

Technorati Tags: Shel Holtz, newcommforum

Ted started the Personal Bee 18 months ago to understand how the media is fragmenting and how people are putting it back together again.

There was an old way of communicating, where communicators talked and the media (hopefully) listened. Because these channel were limited, there was more control on the part of the gatekeepers and less in the hands of the communicators.

Things have changed. The known influencers may not be as influential anymore; and the new influencers may not be known or difficult to reach.  This is the challenge communicators face today.

So what are the effective tools for reaching the new influencers?  (After a short break to fix the noise his jacket is making things got rolling again.)

Search is one tool that is everywhere but that needs to be rethought.  It’s not just a tool but a media outlet.  It’s more powerful than pretty much anything else.  If you can get a client ranked well on Google, it is more valuable that appearing in traditional media.  People don’t go the the mainstream media for information, they go to search.  People don’t do the the second page of results - often they don’t even scroll - so getting into the top five results in critical.  Obviously, the approach to take to deal with this is search engine optimization.

Search isn’t just Google though.  For blogs, Technorati is the key.  It isn’t about indexing archived content (as is the case with search); the goal is to index the live Web.  They have it down to 60 seconds between the time a blog is published and it is indexed by Technorati.  There are 70M blogs indexed by Technorati but only 7M of them have been updated in any given month.

One tool that Technorati has recently introduced is WFT (where’s the fire) which is designed to let readers contribute blurbs to the site which function as mini blog posts.  It’s the fastest growing part of the site.

Digg is one of the key social media sites.  The value of Digg comes in a variety of ways.  First, it is indexed by Google.  But it provides a faster means to get information in front of people.  There are problems - Digg can be gamed to improve rankings.  There are tools that let you look to see who’s dugg a specific story.  The idea is for the community to rank, value and comment on content.

There are an increasing number of similar community sites that target different groups and interests.  (Digg tends to be younger, male and technical.)

There are thousands of companies that are out there trying to help you communicate.  They may be wonderful, helpful, special, etc.  The reality though is that there are three things to be focused on:

• Search (Google)
• Blogs (Technorati)
• Social Media (Digg)

Some points to bear in mind:

• People search in short bursts
• Crafted messages that function as short, searchable bursts
• Use Technorati to find the people who are writing about the topic you care about
• READ the blogs before you post or contact them
• Use WTF
• Tag the content you create

Ted did a nice job providing a clear and practical overview of some of the key social media tools.  It was, in some ways, a good cap for many of the themes at the conference.

Technorati Tags: Ted Shelton, The Personal Bee, newcommforum, SNCR, Technorati, Digg

Nova Newcomer - What’s happening with the water cooler?

Maybe I missed something (and I will confess that I ran to get a coke at the beginning of this session), but I didn’t find this one to be as on target as the other sessions I’ve attended. Much of it seemed focused on their product, ChatterMill.

There was lots of talk on how to answer employee questions posted through the system; and this seemed more like good general advice than anything to do with social media.

Technorati Tags: Newcommforum, Nova Newcomer, ChatterMill, social media, SNCR

This session comes out of work done as part of the Society’s best practices committee on corporate blogging.

The conversation is focused on how Conference Calls Unlimited as used blogging and social media successfully.

John started by asking about the corporate culture and its abandonment of advertising. Zane said they didn’t abandon advertising but that advertising abandoned them. They don’t advertise because it doesn’t work for them. It’s a largely commoditized industry and not a very sexy one.

Because advertising doesn’t work they stopped doing it four years ago. They redirected their spending away from advertising, direct mail, viral, etc. At his previous company, Telegroup, they managed - without advertising and marketing - they managed to grow to more than $250M. Two years later the company was bankrupt. Why? The company stopped communicating.

Zane started blogging because he had no choice. He was looking for a way to communicate in an effective and unique way. Pay-per-clicks were going up. He wanted a way to give customers a direct and personal experience.

Church of the Customer was an inspiration for him. Making the customers happier was his goal - encouraging communication between the company and its customers, prospects and community was the brand. The only way to have a real conversation with the customer, he believes is to have it yourself. Not through an agency, an assistant or a consultant.

While Zane didn’t really understand all of the ins and outs of blogging, he understood the value. He made mistakes but got help from bloggers all over. When you look at all the crap and clutter in the market it makes sense that blogs are an effective tool to cut through. He also sees blogging as being a CEOs responsibility.

Everyone in the company has a passion for communicating with the customer. This passion is driven by regular encouragement from Zane, who makes it clear that this is critical for the company and the brand.

Zane takes a very hands on approach to his employees communications and blogging - to the point that he rewrites their copy. This seems antithetical to his earlier statement that one has to write in their own voice.

When he first exposed the fact that he was blogging and encouraged them to blog, he met with resistance. The issue, it turned out, was the idea of having to write every day. The company set up each employee with a TypePad account and asked that they all try it for a while with the understanding that they could stop or continue as they wished.

Zane has no blogging policy. He sees a blog as a conversation and trusts that people wouldn’t blog about things they wouldn’t want to discuss in person. The only issues that are off limits are pay, partners and cost.

While some people stopped, a few continued and that has led to the adoption of wikis by the company. Blogs are used for internal communications in some cases; but for more involved topics a wiki is used. This approach keeps the conversations open and transparent. It took some time, but everyone has now adopted the idea of open communications.

Without the wiki - and the insistence be out in the open - CCU couldn’t operate as quickly. Zane believes that the open communication has raised the level of trust among employees and gives them a voice and opportunity to participate.

Zane was asked how he would convince a reluctant CEO. He’d start by letting them know that he had concerns when he started too and then ask them why they were worried and where they wanted the company to be. He’s also point to how it impacted the company’s marketing model and its performance.

The company uses social media to build customer relationships. They started using some of advertising budget to send customers to events and seminars to help them to be successful. The thinking behind this is to increase loyalty, help them grow and to get them connecting more effectively.

Zane knows that the adoption of social media has worked in his company because he hears employees checking themselves - and each other - to use these new tools.
The story of CCU’s use of social media - while small in numbers (there are only eight employees) - is deep and thorough in practice. Zane isn’t committed to any specific social media tool or application - he’s committed to the idea that they represent and the impact they are having on his employees, customers and the company.

Technorati Tags: John Cass, Zane Safrit, corporate culture, social media, newcommforum, SNCR

Strom started by asking if we aren’t blogging to close the lids. I get to keep the lid open.

Why RSS? We’re really talking about push technology cleaned up for the new millennium.

When and why does RSS help?

• Are you constantly hitting refresh?
• Sending out blanket emails
• Looking for early news?

RSS lets you:

• Parse info fast
• preserves the serendipity of reading traditional news
• Enjoy a guilty pleasure AND a professional tool!
• Be the first in your office to send to send info out to your colleagues

But . . .

• There are downsides:
• Just another thing to deal with
• Some content isn’t RSS enabled
• Feeds can break
• We’re still living in an email centric world
• It isn’t a two-way medium like IMs or conversational blogs

The fact that it isn’t two way makes it a bit ironic given the nature of the event.

That said, how can PR people use this:

• Get releases out over RSS
• Use it to monitor your client
• Subscribe to journalist and PR blogs

There were some people that felt that RSS does provide interactivity by linking to sites where one can interact. Dave agreed but pointed out that the interactivity wasn;t provided by RSS itself.

Now back to the program . . .

Dave’s saying that Wikis are going to die - not because they aren’t useful but because the tools just suck. There are a growing number of managed Wiki services - WetPaint, confluence, etc. that are a good starting point.

So how do you use this thing?

• First, there’s a URL for the feed - pretty straight forward.
• Then, you need to be able to read the stuff.
• Finally you need to be able to create it

He made it look as simple as it actually is.

Another way to work with feeds in Bloglines - the best, he thinks, for managing your feeds.

There were a surprising number of questions on how RSS works. It was pretty interesting that people had the number and type of questions that they did and it pointed out the need for basic training on the elements of social media.

Strom was also the most animated and entertaining presenter of the day which was great given that he had the last session of the day.

Technorati Tags: newcomms, newcommforum, SNCR, David Strom, RSS

I’ve gone to lots of conferences, events and trade shows over the years. They’re OK I guess, but I’m always there with a client, I’m always there as a PR person, keeping my eyes peeled for reporters and analysts, working the floor. Even if I’m having a good time, I always feel like an outsider.

One of the things I’m really enjoying about the New Comms Forum is that I’m not an outsider here. This is something that I care about, am interested in and involved with. Yesterday was the first day of the event and it was great. I bumped into old colleague and found connections with everyone I was meeting for the first time.

The things that the Society is doing - and plans to do - are exciting and I’m happy to be a part of it. There was a really good discussion of how the Society could help in the education of the next generation of communicators.

Technorati Tags: newcomms, SNCR, PR, newcommforum

JD Lasica on grassroots video. (All of the links that he’s talking about are at del.icio.us.)

In the past, all we could do to control TV was to turn it off. Now there are options, now we are all creators of media and content instead of just being passive consumers.

In the past, big media controlled everything - the creation, distribution, the content, everything. That’s changed and now we all have the tools and ability to create video content. Today 60% of Internet traffic is video - and it isn’t just reused TV content; it’s content all of us are creating.

We also have a ton of ways to host and share our content - ourmedia, blip, youtube, revver, yahoo and hundreds more. Here’s his thing about YouTube - things don’t need to start and end there - it isn’t ours, it’s partly ours: you can’t download the video, they don’t want you to watch the video in the original format and you can’t use creative commons on the site. There are also only limited ways to create communities on the site. All of this said, he likes the site.

There is so much happening - vcast and vblogs, real narratives, citizen journalism, mashups, etc. You may need to poke around to find the kinds of things you want - and some sites are going to be more tuned into one type of video or another.

Thanks to portability and improved compression technology, video online is finally watchable - which is why the revolution if finally happening.

JD showed the JetBlue CEO mea culpa, which led to a good debate as to how effective the video was. Some people felt that even though the clip seemed under produced it had been managed and edited and was contrived. Some felt that it was a fast and effective response to the situation. Most people thought that it was a positive approach.

What worked is that it was authentic - and that’s the key to using video effectively in situations like the one faced by JetBlue.

There were lots of great examples of how mashups are being done for a wide range of uses - personal, corporate, entertainment, etc. People and organizations are going to become aggregations and trusted sources for video content.

Ourmedia has created a learning center to help people get started and to give them content and advice. All in all, an exciting and inspiring presentation and discussion.

Technorati Tags: SNCR, newcomms, newcommforum, JD Lasica, grassroots video