Newspapers have been own worst enemies

Posted on October 22, 2007 by Paul

James Lee, senior VP and chief public affairs officer at ChoicePoint, spoke at the PRSA International Conference today about ChoicePoint’s experience with the theft of 145,000 customer records in 2005.

It was an interesting study in crisis management, but what stuck me the most was comments by him and the audience about their lousy experiences with reporters. Examples:

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution ran a story four days after news of the theft broke that claimed that ChoicePoint’s CEO was hiding from the media. In fact, Lee said, the CEO had been unusually open to the media, compared to executives at other companies in that situation. He had given several media interviews, but was unavailable when the Journal-Constitution reporter called. The paper’s story was the only one to accuse the CEO of evasiveness.
ChoicePoint wanted to make a careful distinction between theft of data and a hack, because the latter term implies a computer security vulnerability. This is an important distinction to investors and regulators. However, one west coast newspaper had a policy of referring to all information thefts as “hacks,” regardless of the nature of the breach. This made ChoicePoint’s problem look worse than it really was.
Pressure to file on deadline forces reporters to seek opinion instead of facts because opinion is easier to get. “In the real world, it takes time to find facts,” Lee said. “If you don’t have facts immediately, they’ll find some [pundit] with an opinion.” Early impressions tend to stick, which means that subsequent facts are buried or ignored.
Media outlets throw business stories to inexperience reporters, who don’t understand the fine points of an often complex story and need to be educated under deadline, leading to errors and misunderstanding.
News outlets nearly always stick by their story, even when the evidence is overwhelming that they’re wrong.
These problems are only getting worse as newsrooms cut staff and competition compresses deadlines.

PR people have to deal with the media constantly and so are more likely to have gripes with the media, but the level of frustration surprised me, nevertheless. This is one reason mainstream media gets so little sympathy for its current woes. Years of arrogance have left it with very few friends at a time when it could use a few.

Your questions answered: AMA webinar follow-up

Posted on October 18, 2007 by Paul

I had the pleasure of being the guest speaker on and American Marketing Association webinar sponsored by Aquent early this week. We had a great audience — more than 750 people attended — and there were more than 20 questions that I was unable to answer because of time limitations. I’ll answer each of them in a series of blog posts over the next few days. Each of these permalinks will be tagged “AMA” so you can easily group them together. Thanks to everyone for coming and for asking such great questions.

Q: [At one point, I referred to a story told by blogger Robert Scoble about a technology vendor who told him that a single link on his blog drew far more response than an article in a prominent technology magazine.] Jennifer asks, “How did the software company evaluate the influence of Scoble’s blog?”

A: Simply by traffic to the page linked to by Scoble. This is one of the great benefits of social media marketing: you can easily track referring links from other sites and quickly figure out who is sending you traffic. This is standard information that all Web analytics software provides. Obviously, the people who are sending you the most traffic are the people who should get more of your attention and outreach.

Q: Lidia asks, “I would like to know your opinion related to the large influence this phenomena is having on small kids that are exposed to these new media sites like clubpenguin, etc. How will these affect their personality, their habits, etc?

A: I’m not a psychologist, and it’s impossible to predict the indirect impact of the behaviors that social media sites are creating. I believe that a few changes are inevitable:

Kids will define their relationships very differently, with geography being much less important than in the past. They are already learning to form rich and meaningful relationships with people they have never met, solely through the use of digital technology. They care little about where their friends live as long as they can communicate about topics of mutual interest. If you take this to its logical conclusion, you can see that national boundaries will become less important to relationships in the future. It seems to me that that’s a good thing.
Kids will grow up expecting to be constantly connected and to always have information at their fingertips. Call it the Wikipedia generation. This is completely different from the world of previous generations. Today’s kids will expect to be able to access whatever information they want within a few seconds, and will be frustrated and angry when it’s unavailable. This will put pressure on institutions to open up and give people access to whatever information they need to make a decision. Again, this sounds pretty good to me.
There’s a possibility the kids will grow up being less worldly and less well-rounded than generations that preceded them because of their ability to filter information they consume. I’m hoping that natural curiosity counteracts this trend, but the declining influence of mainstream media may create a generation that is more insular and less aware of world issues than previous generations.
There’s a risk of negative health consequences caused by a more sedentary lifestyle. There’s no question in my mind that the current epidemic of childhood obesity is due, at least in part, to the pervasive use of video games and online entertainment instead of physical recreation. It will be up to parents, schools and government to encourage physical activity by kids who don’t have as much incentive to get out and play anymore. I don’t think we’re seeing as much progress in this area as we need to, and it concerns me.

I’m sure there will be many other long-term effects of this new digital lifestyle, some good and some bad. I think the breaking down of cultural and geographic barriers, though, will be a very positive development.

Q: Charlayne asks, “How does a company build “blog” integrity without sounding as if they are their own advertisement? How does a company build positive brand awareness via a blog?”

A: I’ll answer the first part of that question by simply saying don’t use your blog to sell. The purpose of a business blog should be to engage with customers and prospects around information that is of mutual interest. Use it to expose smart people in your company, discuss issues in the market, identify customer needs and seek feedback on your products and priorities. Don’t use it to deliver advertisements; if you do, no one will read it and you will quickly lose interest yourself.

The second question is very large and could be the subject of a book. In fact, it is the subject of several books. I’d recommend Naked Conversations by Scoble and Israel; Marketing to the Social Web by Weber; What No One Ever Tells You About Blogging and Podcasting by Demopoulos, The Corporate Blogging Book by Weil; and The New Rules of Marketing and PR by Scott. It’s impossible to summarize the advice contained in all of these volumes, so I will simply recommend that you pick any one of them and dive in.

Daily reading 10/17/2007

Posted on October 17, 2007 by Paul

MediaPost Publications – Big Weeklies Sputter, Smaller Pubs Soar – 09/04/2007

Daily reading 10/16/2007

Posted on October 16, 2007 by Paul

MediaPost Publications – Unisfair: Virtual Events Generate Leads – 09/12/2007 Annotated

a majority of attendees were more likely to interact with an exhibitor, speaker, or other attendee while online than in person–as the social pressures that can accompany live events are absent. It’s these factors that are bringing both event hosts and sponsors from outside the media industry–what Best calls “enterprise companies” to the virtual event space.

Daily reading 10/12/2007

Posted on October 12, 2007 by Paul

Nielsen: Word-of-Mouth Most Valuable Ad Platform – MediaPost Publications, 10/03/2007 Annotated

Seventy-eight percent of consumers say they trust other consumers’ recommendations over all advertising/marketing avenues. Next in the trust line: Ads in newspapers, at a 63% score. Consumers’ opinions from online blogs came in third at 61%. Brand Web sites were at 60%.

Of the 13 different ad platforms Nielsen surveyed, new digital platforms–including some of that group’s biggest categories–took the last three spots. Search engine ads only generated a 34% trusting score; online banner ads were at 26%; and–dead last–was text ads on mobile phones.

Traditional media, on the whole, did much better than new digital platforms. Television and magazine were in the middle of the pack, each with a 56% score; Radio was at 54%; and brand sponsorships, at 49%.

TechCrunch And Huffington: Who Will Buy The Big Blogs?

Daily reading 10/11/2007

Posted on October 11, 2007 by Paul

MySpace Platform To Launch Next Week

Daily reading 10/10/2007

Posted on October 10, 2007 by Paul

Google Buys Phone Software Firm – New York Times

Blue Ridge Business Journal Annotated

“Honestly,” says Holloway, “in marketing and public relations education, we need to teach our students to send a great promotional text message.

“We are moving quickly to a world in which we all are media content creators and information providers.”

MediaPost Publications – Welcome to the Neighborhood – 10/09/2007 Annotated

Fatdoor uses Microsoft Virtual Earth to map neighborhoods, letting residents position icons over photos of their houses and streets. They can create profiles, rate restaurants, post images, leave messages for other neighbors – and the more they participate, the more points they earn, building their credibility. Even before residents join, the local sites are prepopulated with information already available on the Web.

Google’s Orkut: A World of Ambition Annotated

Orkut recently pushed past the News Corp. (NWS) subsidiary in the Asia Pacific region. Orkut’s following in that market, which includes China and Japan, has nearly tripled, to roughly 11 million visitors a month, over the past year, according to the consultancy comScore (SCOR). MySpace, by contrast, has been drawing between 9 million and 10 million visitors in recent months.

Meanwhile, Orkut’s usage in Latin America has continued to climb: In August, it received 12.4 million unique visitors from that region, double the Latin American traffic of MySpace and Facebook combined.

MySpace is crowded; Amanda Beard is a ‘GoDaddy Girl’ – USATODAY.com Annotated

f you looked at the press 18 months ago, you couldn’t pick up an article or watch a TV show without hearing about MySpace founders Tom Anderson and Chris DeWolfe as the media darlings.

Now, Facebook is the next media darling, and in between there was YouTube. They are highly differentiated products. We are seeing growth in both.

Miller's Brew Blog covers the competition

Posted on October 10, 2007 by Paul

I came across the Miller Brew Blog for the first time today, although it’s been up since early this year. While my first reaction was that it’s a lot of dry press releases and reprints from Miller’s corporate magazine (and a lot of it reads that way), the about page revealed that it’s written by a veteran advertising reporter and is intended to be a roundup of news and commentary about the brewing industry.

On that point, the Brew Blog succeeds. A lot of the content is about Miller’s competition and the changes going on in the overall industry. There’s a lot about arch-rival Annheuser-Busch, for example. What’s missing is commentary. While the blog succeeds in talking openly about issues that aren’t usually discussed in corporate communications, it fails to deliver much spirit, attitude or even a distinctive personality.

I'm on the radio in Atlanta this Thursday

Posted on October 7, 2007 by Paul

If you’re in the Atlanta area (or have access to a Web browser!), listen in on Business Radio 1160 this Thursday at 11 for my interview with Brent Leary and Michael Thomas, who are two fun guys. Or you can download the podcast version right now. Here’s the synopsis:

How You and Your Small Business Can Become a New Influencer – Paul talks with hosts Brent Leary and Michael Thomas about how he utilized his blog to enlist hundreds of collaborators to help him write his book, what it takes to be a new influencer and a few examples of how small businesses are using social media to positively influence their bottom lines.

paulgillin.com

Social Media and the Open Enterprise