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- In the face of a man’s death, a Christian never rejoices, but reflects on the serious responsibilities of each person before God and before men, and hopes and works so that every event may be the occasion for the further growth of peace and not hatred. – Father Federico Lombardi, Vatican spokesperson
- I mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy. Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that. – Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
- I’ve never wished a man dead, but I have read some obituaries with great pleasure. – Mark Twain
- “The Future of Public Relations: Seizing the Opportunity” with Matt Harrington, President & CEO of Edelman U.S., Aedhmar Hynes, CEO for Text 100, Peter Land, SVP, Communications for PepsiCo and Martin Murtland, VP, Solutions for Corporate Communications for Dow Jones & Company.
- “The Future of Media: Digital Changes Everything” – Keynote address by Tina Brown.
- “The Future of Journalism: Transforming the Fourth Estate” with Ellen Levine, Editorial Director for Hearts Publications, Rand Morrison, Executive Director of “CBS News Sunday Morning,” Alan Murray, Executive Editor of Wall Street Journal Online, and Jai Singh, Managing Editor of Huffington Post.
- “The Future of Social Media Marketing: PR’s New Paradigm” with Maggie Fox, CEO of Social Media Group, Jenny Dervin, Director of Corporate Communications with JetBlue Airways, Gerard Meuchner, Director of Communications & Public Affairs, and Vice President with Eastman Kodak and Paul Gillin, President, Paul Gillin Communications.
The Bar Has Been Set
January 30th, 2012Dear companies advertising at the Super Bowl,
I’m sorry to inform you that your ad will not be the most talked about this year – unless you’re Honda.
What is it about car commercials that can incite so much hatred during the holiday season, and yet a mere month later can cause elation and joy?
2011 saw the mini-Darth Vader for Volkswagen, an ad released in the days before the Super Bowl which caused the spot to go viral before even airing in during the Packers victory.
Everyone waited with baited breath, telling others at their Super Bowl parties, “This is it! This is the one I was telling you about!”
This year, the lightening struck again. This time for the Honda CRV.
Who Doesn’t Love Ferris?
(aside from Ed Rooney and his sister, Jeannie)
Playing on the nostalgia of the 1980s is a great choice. For some reason, Gen Y, or at least those who are in their mid-20s and older, are OBSESSED with the 80s. We regularly rock out to songs from 1982 and 1987, Bon Jovi is almost a cult figure, and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off – a movie released a year before I was even born – is the perfect way to waste a Saturday afternoon whenever you find it on television.
After a nine second clip was released last Friday, the masses were practically in hysteria. Many were thinking that Matthew Broderick was announcing that Ferris Bueller was going to take another day off, that a sequel would be made or at least a reunion special on some talk show. The sheer venom in the comments left on YouTube after people realized the nine seconds were just a teaser to a Super Bowl ad was impressive.
It’s true. People still love Ferris – people still wish that they could have a carefree day like him and not get caught. After all, how can we possibly be expected to handle school/work/responsibilities on a day like today?
So hats off to Honda. It’s going to take the most brilliant ad agency or fan-created video in the world to top Ferris’ New Day Out. I love it.
But seriously, Ferris is probably actually sick. My best friend’s sister’s boyfriend’s brother’s girlfriend heard from this guy who knows this kid who’s going with the girl who saw Ferris pass out at 31 Flavors last night. I guess it’s pretty serious.
And just because I still love the mini-Darth Vader I have to give it some link love.
My Irresistible Playlist
January 19th, 2012
Last week, Barbara McAfee was one of the guests on the Expert Access Radio Hour, my company’s AM radio show. I’m what you could consider a “co-producer” of the show in that I edit the recording of the hour each week to strip out the commercials and news breaks to allow us to re-purpose the recordings on a website and through podcasts. That’s a fancy way of saying that I listen to each and every show that runs – something around 60 shows or so at this point.
This past Sunday, one of the guests was Barbara McAfee, and like quite a few of the guests EA Radio features, I hadn’t heard of her prior to my edits. Once exposed, however, I’m hooked. Barbara is the author of the book Full Voice: The Art and Practice of Vocal Presence. She suffered stage fright and had vocal issues when she began performing but has since overcome these obstacles and become a vocal coach who encourages people to “‘find their voice,’ whatever that means to them,” according to her website.
While I recommend listening to her entire interview (which begins at about -20:16), I was intrigued most by her idea of an “Irresistible Playlist.” It has to do with the five distinct vocal colors.
Earth – A darker, richer sound. It’s a great sound for projecting authority. If you say NO! it’s different than saying No? It sounds like a yawn.
Fire – The fire voice is the voice of passion and conviction and generally you wave your hands around a lot. It’s a great voice for public speaking. It’s not so great if you’re trying to console someone who had a lousy day or had to lay someone off.
Water - The voice of the heart. It comes from the heat and throat and is a full, empathetic voice. If you do have bad news to deliver, or someone says “I’ve had a terrible day.” and you respond with, “Oh … I’m really sorry.”
Metal – A bit nasally. It is bright, piercing and irritable. Think of Fran Dreischer on The Nanny as an example.
Air - This voice is very breathy. It’s about inspiration, imagination and possibility.
Find songs from very different people and voices to play in your car. It’s “like yoga” to drive around and sing your heart out
This is actually a much more difficult exercise than I expected it to be. It’s difficult to determine whether some songs are would fit best for one voice or another, and many of them, like Goldie Hawn’s rendition of “A Hard Day’s Night,” straddle two voices as that song does with an Air Voice and Fire Voice.
So here it is, my irresistible playlist I’ll be using to practice my vocal colors as I attempt to break out of what I believe is my natural Earth Voice and incorporate some others into my daily mix:
1. Goldie Hawn – “A Hard Day’s Night” – Air/Earth
2. Adele – “Someone Like You” – Earth/Fire
3. Josh Groban – “You’re Still You” – Fire/Water
4. Alanis Morisette – “You Oughta Know” – Metal/Fire
5. Robyn – “Call Your Girlfriend” – Water/Earth/Air
(This is actually a fascinating case study of being forceful and speaking with an Earthy authority to a man, then switching to a Water voice and expressing empathy and compassion for the soon-to-be ex-girlfriend, and then a Air voice when trying to tell the man what he could possibly say that might make things easier. It’s also my current favorite song that hasn’t been exposed to the masses but should be.)
Worst TV Spot Ever?
January 11th, 2012Do you even know what this ad is for by the time it ends?
I’ve become somewhat of a connoisseur of television ads these days. We’ve had a few lively discussions around the office about this year’s holiday spots and came to the conclusion that Lexus was this year’s worst offender – their obnoxious December to Remember campaign assumed three things about those watching:
1. They knew that the December to Remember was a yearly Lexus promotion
2. They knew that the December to Remember had it’s own theme song that is “easily” recognizable to the point that if someone begins playing it in conjunction with your holiday present you should give the giver a look of incredulous and knowing excitement before running outside to find a large bow-topped vehicle
3. People who are buying these cars for their wives/kids/friends/parents/significant others know where to find said large bows.
And they didn’t just play the series of commercials once. No, they were on at least twice an hour during every college football bowl game.
I thought that nothing could beat the annoyingness of Lexus until this weekend which I spent watching NFL wild card playoff games. And then, we saw this offender:
That’s an ad for DirecTV. I don’t blame you for not knowing that. It took me two days and three football games where this spot was played every 10 minutes for me to remember I had to pay attention to the television to find out who created this absolutely horrible ad.
It’s boring. I zone out after the guy gets hit in the face with the racquetball. There’s no way I’m going to remember that I was mad at my cable company for keeping me on hold by the end of this spot. There’s no way I’m going to associate “waking up in a roadside ditch” to my cable company through this strange, sort of Rube Goldberg-ian rambling. Cable = blowing off steam = failing at sports = injuring yourself = looking like a pirate = people beating you up? And the answer to this equation is DirecTV = sitting at home happy and not having people beat you up for looking like a pirate?
Are other people getting this commercial? Do they have any idea it’s for DirecTV at the end? Or are they just laughing because a dude got hit in the face and then got beat up?
Did it hold your attention?
2011 Quixote Award Winner
December 20th, 2011I was recently named one of the 2011 Quixote Club honorees at Cincom. The Quixote Club honors the top 10 percent of Cincom employees. They have demonstrated one or more of the values evolving from the image of Cervantes’ Don Quixote, the famed seeker of the impossible dream, who personified courage, character, confidence, commitment, and conviction.
The honorees receive a gold Quixote Club ring for their initial nomination and a specially engraved Quixote medallion that depicts the qualities exemplified by the inductees. On both sides of the bronze medallion, these key qualities surround the symbols that have become synonymous with the image of Cervantes’ Don Quixote, the famed seeker of the impossible dream. Courage. Confidence. Commitment. Conviction. Thereafter, for each additional nomination, honorees receive a Quixote medallion along with a diamond added to their ring, personally presented to them by their managers.
Traffic with a side of smiles
November 14th, 2011
What I learned from an 8-car pile up
Today I dealt with the longest commute since starting my grown-up job. What normally takes me 20 to 30 minutes turned into just under 2 hours after an early morning 8-car accident closed the expressway at my normal exit.
The overflow traffic took out my second navigation option and I’m too stubborn to have taken the third which would have required me to drive all the way downtown to head north on a different interstate.
So, there I was. Stuck, and coming up with metaphors while lamenting the spring-like weather and highlighting transcripts I had with me. At least it wasn’t raining.
While inching along I saw a number of interesting sites and also the great side of human nature.
While the first ten minutes of the traffic was spent trying to figure out which lane is moving the fastest, merging into that lane and then realizing the lane you had moved from was moving quicker, the next 100 were spent observing other drivers.
There were the impatient drivers – the ones constantly jumping into different lanes exasperated that all of these other cars decided they would get in their way. The complacent, including myself, who realized we weren’t going anywhere fast and pulled out other work or made calls. The bored drivers who ended up talking to each other through opened windows. And the compassionate – they were my favorite.
Above and beyond
About 65 minutes into the drive I came upon four or five cars sitting on the shoulder. While parked near them I noticed a hooded figure running towards them from the entrance ramp. I realized he was carrying three five-gallon cans of gasoline as he got closer and all of the cars popped their gas tanks. After filling everyone up he hopped in his own car – without filling his own tank.
About two miles down the road he pulled off to the shoulder again to rescue another two cars.
It was just past the second stranded motorists that the McDonald’s man started our conversation. I was in the slow lane, highlighting away, when I heard “Hey! Hey, you!” and began trying to figure out where it was from. It took me a minute to look up where the man in the passenger seat waved. “What are you reading?”
After exchanging niceties and assuring him I was enjoying my opportunity to multi-task while inching along he motioned to his driver and his radio. “We just got word that we’re all getting off at Winton. We gotta get in your lane. Would you mind if we got in front of you?” And with a wink (his) and a salute (from me), I let them.
I spent another half hour in the car watching the impatient drivers breeze by in the fast lane only to screech to a halt when that lane was closed ahead of us; watching people try to creep up the shoulder to get to the nearest exit only to be stopped by broken down vehicles; watching people attempt to weave in and out of traffic, harried and uncooperative.
Business jams
I couldn’t help but think that traffic jam was just like a business.
When times are great people speed along by themselves. For the most part, they’re autonomous only paying attention to other cars to make sure they aren’t going to hit each other. Occasionally, they’ll have to work together to successfully change lanes. But really, everyone is hurtling towards a common goal.
Suddenly, something crashes and things are thrown completely into disarray. People immediately snap into the me-mode trying to figure out the best personal track they could be on. Which lane is going to continue to lead each individual to success? Which is going to be the least impeded by the problem?
After a beat or two, everyone realizes that they’ll all be affected by the problem and starts to pay attention to what everyone else is doing. They begin to work together to safely merge into other lanes. Some take it upon themselves to jump into the problem head first even if it’d be easier for them to stay out of it and continue on their path to success – they’re the ones who run to get gas for everyone else.
People begin to realize that it’s beneficial to create and strengthen relationships. They strike up conversations to form bonds and work together to get everyone onto the successful path without rocking the boat too much or making too many people mad. Just asking makes cutting in line easier.
And then there are the impatient ones. They think they have all the answers and want to zoom ahead, certain that they’re correct and if we all just get out of their way or move faster everything will be perfect. And then, there’s the inevitable roadblock. The lane closing, the broken down car, traffic patterns changing – they’re normally ahead.
It’s pretty annoying when everyone else is working together to get on the successful path and someone blows by in an empty lane only to see them further down the road repeating the initial autonomous freak out once they’re stopped again.
All in all it was an enlightening and entertaining traffic jam. What i learned, though, is that everyone gets there eventually, wherever the there is.
It’s all a matter of mindset.
Are you only thinking of yourself? Are you convinced that your ideas are the best speeding ahead of everyone else, frustrated that no one else is moving quite as fast as you want?
Or are you settled into a track, working with each other to make sure everyone is going to make it?
Each have their merits, success involves a little of both. But those on the more patient path can have a bit more fun and survive a traffic jam with some smiles.
Video Editing Autodidact
November 4th, 2011I throw the word Autodidact around a lot – it was one of the SAT Hit List words back in senior year of high school that really stuck with me but not a lot of people know what it means.
Basically, an autodidact is someone that learns on their own. They are a self-educator.
While I haven’t been learning Video Production and Editing all by myself, a large portion of it has been trial and error with our editing platform with reviews from our very patient video consultant, Russ Jenisch, and his many friends that he pulls in to help us learn.
Last year, my company made the decision to bring as much video production in house as possible. They committed to our newly formed video department by purchasing two very nice HD cameras, professional lighting set ups and hiring Russ. While Russ claims we’re “still learning to crawl” in terms of producing and editing professional videos, our knowledge and the videos we’ve created have improved by leaps and bounds.
This past year, I’ve helped the team tackle our largest assignment to-date, four HR recruitment videos and added a little humor into our corporate video mix with a special Halloween greeting capturing what happens when Psycho Salespeople snap and go after a sales engineer. We also offered our video services to the MBA Business Plan competitors at our annual Spirit of Enterprise competition.
I was the lead videographer on all of these projects and the primary editor on two of the recruitment videos, the Halloween short and the Spirit of Enterprise videos. Check them out below:
Which Social Networks Are Right For You?
November 4th, 2011
I’m going to give you two numbers and you tell me which you like better – 59,250 or 82?
Unless 82 is your lucky number, I’m going to assume you picked the 59,000+.
Now what if I told you that the 59,250 was the number of people that liked a company called Flirty Aprons on Facebook. 82 was the number of their followers on Twitter.
Flirty Aprons sold more than 5,000 Groupons this week – one of them was to me.
I’m a little skeptical when it comes to Groupons from companies that I’ve never heard of before, but I’ve been in the market for an apron for a while, so I decided to check out their wares.
The company was founded in 2008 by two couples, Joseph and Heather Hansen, and Spencer and Jaime Taylor. Their mission is to “act as a force of good in the community, in the nation, and in the world. … The Vision of Flirty Aprons emerges in the company’s efforts to create products that truly help women feel important and noticed-products that give new life to mundane activities, and bring color and style to the home.”
Digging a little more, I found their Facebook page which allayed my fears that I was going to buy this Groupon and the apron would arrive mis-measured and sewn on to itself in a big ball.
A flirty Facebook success
The company is averaging 2-5 wall posts from satisfied customers per day. Many of them are talking about how much they love the product, or asking questions about when the company will replenish it’s stock. Better yet, there was engagement from the company.
A sampling of conversations from the page:
-I would like to get my daughter and myself matching aprons, but all the cute ones for the children are out of stock. When do you expect to be replenishing them?
–We’re going to be getting several within the next two weeks, but most of them will be out of stock until the beginning of next year. I’m sorry!-Just love the styles!
–Thanks! Glad you like them
-This time next week I will be strutting my stuff in my new Original Aqua Damask apron. Can’t wait!
–Awesome! I hope you have as much fun in yours as I do in mine!-Sale soon?
–We don’t know when right now, but keep checking back!
Flirty Aprons is doing everything right on Facebook. They’re engaging their customers, they’ve created a brand where people can’t wait to tell them they received the product and they’re thanking them for their purchase. They’re using Facebook to troubleshoot customer questions and they’re using it to keep people coming back to the site to see if they’re missing any deals.
All of this is also part of their mission statement:
“On a broader level, the Vision emerges in the positive day-to-day interactions that customers have with Flirty Aprons employees. We want the community to feel like businesses are on their side and not at odds with individuals. We hope that their interactions with Flirty Aprons will inspire them and help them gain a more optimistic, hopeful view of the modern role of businesses in society.”
They definitely get an A+ for living up to that lofty goal.
A Twitter Tragedy
It doesn’t take much digging, though, to find their other social media site: @Flirty_Aprons.
Their twitter tells a whole different side of social. On Sept. 22 they posted:
“Flirty Aprons has just launched our Twitter page!” and “We are planning the Launch of Flirty Jewelry. We want your input!
That’s it.
Those are the only two posts on the Twitter account that has 82 followers and follows no one.
It makes you wonder what happened. Did they launch the Twitter site just because someone told them they needed to? Was there any regard to a social media plan when they decided to expand to a new site? Did they forget the log in information?
What’s worse, when I ordered my apron they sent me a follow-up email with links to their Facebook page to become a fan AND their Twitter account – you know, that one where they don’t engage customers or tweet anything.
I hate to see corporate Twitter pages lapse. It’s really not that hard to delete an account and sometimes Twitter just isn’t the best social media platform to use for a certain business. Maybe no one on Twitter was interested in discussing how much they love the Sugar n’ Spice Marilyn Apron for $29.50.
With only 2 posts on the same day, though, I find that hard to believe. Doing a quick Twitter search to see who’s trying to engage them in conversation reveals that three people have tried to contact them there – one woman even wanted to include them in a holiday gift guide she’s writing.
The one thing Flirty Aprons has going for them, though, is that they’ve recognized the power of the interactions they’re having on Facebook – they have MORE THAN 59,000 eyes seeing that! There are 51,846 people discussing them on Facebook! They even added 7 fans in the time it’s taken me to write this blog post – and have chosen to focus their social strategy there.
You don’t have to be on every social network
Even though everyone is telling you you have to be on Twitter, or Facebook, or Google + or LinkedIn – you can’t just be there to have a presence without having a social media strategy. You have to be dedicated to posting new content, responding to your customers and acting like a real person. If you can’t commit to that then don’t sign up. Being there just to be there doesn’t work anymore because people judge your public accounts – Flirty Aprons looks like a stellar company on Facebook, but they look inept on Twitter.
Twitter isn’t for everyone. Maybe Flirty Aprons didn’t see a value, maybe they’ll try again in the future. But, if you aren’t going to use the social media don’t promote it in your “thanks for purchasing” emails. Delete your account, don’t let it lapse into the abyss.
Have you seen other companies that rock at one form of social media but forgot they had an account on another?
The Magic of Marketing Harry Potter
October 27th, 2011
Hype-marketing and the laws of supply and demand
Imagine that you couldn’t find your favorite book or movie on shelves anymore – you know, that one that you love so much that you just have to own it even though you have a subscription to Netflix (or Blockbuster, if Netflix’s stock is any indication), and you hardly ever crack out the paper and ink books preferring to read on your iPad or Kindle.
Or maybe, you’ve followed a series for what amounts to basically your entire life and now it’s finally come to an end. Do you own all of the books? All of the movies? If you don’t, you want to complete your collection, right?
That’s what Warner Brothers is banking on heading into the 2011 holiday season. They announced yesterday that no more Harry Potter DVDs or Blu-Rays will be shipped to stores starting on December 29. The films will be heading into retirement for an as yet-undisclosed amount of time.
Warner Brothers is not the first company to attempt to increase demand by taking movies off shelves. Disney has been doing so with the Disney vault for years now. Every few years they’ll pull a Disney classic “out of the vault” for a limited amount of time. They bank on the fact that parents will want to buy the movies they loved as children for their own children or grandchildren and rush out to buy them before they head “back to the Disney vault.”
The situation with Potter is only made more drastic by the fact that the 8th and final Harry Potter movie, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2, will have only been available in stores for a month and a half as it isn’t slated for home video release until Nov. 11.
Hype-Marketing
It’s a classic case of supply and demand – or what I like to call hype-marketing.
While I’ve seen an outcry from Potter fans across the twitterverse, everyone knows they’re going to go out and buy the final movie before the Dec. 29 deadline. It completes the collection and makes the perfect holiday gift.
In fact, it would have made more sense for Warner Brothers to pull the movie a month and a half after the final film’s home release had it happened in July when there isn’t a built-in gift giving season.
While a lot of people are decrying the fact that “new” Potter fans will be left in a lurch should they happen upon the series post Dec. 29, the movies will still be available on-demand and digitally.
Plus, we all know how this works – Random House waited until the first three books were published, then packaged those three for Christmas.
When books four and five hit shelves? That’s right, another opportunity to purchase them packaged together.
Books six and seven? Why, then we got the special edition, entire series pack.
They’ll head to the vault for a year, and then, right in time for the 2012 Holiday season I bet Warner Bros. packages all eight movies into one special and limited edition option with special features not found anywhere else.
But movies aren’t the only place we see distributors playing with hype-marketing.
For a Limited Time Only
McDonald’s announced on Monday that the McRib sandwich is back at restaurants for a limited time in stores. I felt like an insider when this was announced because I saw a billboard for the McRib on I-74 W on the road to Indianapolis last week. It was strange, I hadn’t heard that the McRib was back, but knew the announcement had to come soon.
Now, I’ve never eaten a McRib, something about a boneless barbecue pork sandwich seems unnatural to me, but I have to admit that every year when I start hearing the commercials or seeing the billboards or reading the tweets I get curious. One day, I’ll breakdown and try one, but that day always comes after McDonald’s puts the McRib “back into the vault.” While the McRib’s disappearing act doesn’t do anything for me, I know a lot of people who rushed out to buy one on the first day because they couldn’t wait to taste the savory goodness again.
Coming This Fall…
A similar hype-marketing strategy is happening with Yuengling beer in southwestern Ohio. The company recently expanded sales to the region and hyped the release with simple billboards with a picture of a bottle of Yuengling and the words “This Fall” cropping up all over Cincinnati.
While the beer won’t be taken off shelves and “put into a vault” the supply and demand concepts are the same as when these Disney or Harry Potter movies or McRib’s reappear in stores. People are flocking to stores to buy the beer. It’s new. It’s different. It’s exciting. They’re taking pictures at tailgates showing off the drink. They’re hoarding it in separate coolers at parties to make sure that the “lesser” beers are gone before pulling them out to share.
It’s hard to tell, right now, if Yuengling is being released in small quantities to stores. I haven’t seen much and when my friends see it, they’re buying about as much as they can afford, so the novelty of the purchase might be increasing sales.
But eventually the hype will die down. Everyone will have had tasted the new beer and they’ll realize it’s still on shelves. And that’s when the vicious cycle of supply and demand hype-marketing starts over.
I don’t believe Yuengling will pull their beer off shelves as movie distributors or McDonald’s might be apt to do, but complacency in the consumer market can cause corporations to do strange things.
Have you seen any other examples of hype-marketing recently?
Does Single-Sex Education Lead Women to Stereotypical Jobs?
October 6th, 2011I’ve seen a lot of talk about a recent study published in the journal of Science that claims that single-sex education may do more harm than good teaching children to embrace gender stereotypes. The study – conducted by a group of individuals including psychologists, child development specialists and neuroscientists who specialize in gender – claims that there is no empirical evidence to suggest that fantastic single-sex institutions derive their success from the fact that they are single-sex. Instead, the authors of the paper hypothesize that other factors such as the quality of students, curriculum, or even “short-lived motivation that comes from ‘novelty or belief in innovation’” are the real reasons for success.
Now, admittedly I’ve probably been seeing a lot more about this study than most because I’m more interested in the subject having attended both a single-sex high school and following that up by attending Saint Mary’s College in Notre Dame, IN. I loved my college experience, I attended class with one man in 8 years and I wouldn’t have had it any other way.
However, I saw a source request from HARO last week asking for thoughts from women who were educated at single-sex institutions wondering whether or not that education reinforced gender stereotypes about the careers women could have.
My first thought was a knee-jerk, “OMG NO! Of course it didn’t.”
But then, I started thinking about it. What led me to be passionate about women’s education?
Obviously, the empowerment of women played a huge role – being surrounded by strong female leaders in every student position on campus; having guest lectures from amazing authors like Faith Adiele and actresses like Camryn Manheim, Glenn Close and Sigourney Weaver; and knowing that SMC alumnae can and do do anything they want, from serving in Iraq to serving on the Supreme Court of Virginia, from social work to writing, to nursing, to teaching, to being housewives, to studying the affects of soy intake on lab rats. The women who join me in calling Saint Mary’s their alma mater are quite honestly inspiring.
They are the reason that I knew I could do anything and they are the reason that women educated at Saint Mary’s
Based on my college experience alone, I would say that there is no way that a single-sex education promotes women to fall into gender stereotypes when it comes to careers.
But, I am an interesting case because I also attended an all-girl’s high school and that is where my dilemma comes in – the faculty and staff there told me that I could anything I could dream of, but there wasn’t any exposure to women in varied careers.
We had a yearly “career day” type event where we could sign up for meetings with former alumnae or mothers of students but I remember a lot of them were nurses or teachers – one year we had a flight attendant – but we were also able to sign up for movie watches – I saw Bowling for Columbine on that day in junior year – or silk screening and other artsy activities. Now that I look back on it, I’m really not sure what the purpose of the entire day was and I’m pretty sure they’ve since cancelled it since it had little point and it took time out of course activities.
In terms of classes, we took courses like “Lifestyles” where we learned how to sew, how to write checks, how to set a table and how to write incredibly outdated resumes. We also were able to take cooking classes and many of our after school activities with clubs (language clubs in particular) were cooking related. They tried to empower us in our classes, but we didn’t really have access to powerful women in the working world that could alter our viewpoints on what women could do.
I already knew what I wanted to do in a very general sense in high school. I knew where I wanted to go to college and what I wanted to major in. But, I have a lot of friends who were typical high schoolers and didn’t have any idea where to go to school, but a lot wanted to be teachers or nurses. While there is obviously nothing wrong with being a teacher or a nurse, they may have pursued those careers because those were the only careers they were exposed as young women. Those that didn’t go to college right after high school still did very feminine activities of becoming hair dressers or florists – again, nothing wrong with the careers, but they’re still stereotypically female roles.
We didn’t see women around us who were doing things that weren’t traditionally feminine. For example, even though our biology teacher spent her summers studying the effects of the demise of a miniature fish in lake waters of South America we didn’t see her as a scientist … she was still just our teacher.
That’s not to say that there aren’t girls from my high school doing great things with their lives. And it’s also not to say that there wasn’t a disproportionate number of people who left my high school and went on to become teachers or nurses as compared to a coeducational facility. It’s just me saying that if I hadn’t been exposed to the passion and inspiration of strong, successful women in college I probably would have floundered so much more upon graduation when I tried to figure out what to do in the “real world.”
This study has forced me to re-imagine the way single-sex education works on different levels. Sure there are a lot of positives that aren’t quantifiable, such as whether or not the subtraction of the distraction of men helps women do better, but at a high school level it may be detrimental when there isn’t enough time to nurture a young woman’s career path. It makes sense that in college, when it’s expected that students will be figuring out and focusing on their careers, they should be exposed to powerful people in the working world – a women’s college just allows you to further winnow the field to find powerful, inspiring women in a broad range of different careers.
Cashing in on pop culture
August 18th, 2011
Is it worth it?
Abercrombie & Fitch has been all over the news the past two days after they issued a press release saying that they’ve offered to pay Mike “The Situation” Sorrentino, the producers and the rest of the cast of MTV’s hit television show Jersey Shore to stop wearing their merchandise on the show. A & F said in the release that having viewers see The Situation wearing their brand could cause “significant damage” to the company’s image and that the connection goes against the “aspirational nature” of the brand and may be “distressing” to some customers.
This development stems from the fact that an Abercrombie & Fitch corporate employee happened to see The Situation wearing pants with the A&F logo on them on the Aug. 11 episode of the show which was filmed in May. Whether or not taking the payment would mean that any other clothing the cast wore on film during seasons 3 and 4 (which are already in the can) would have to have the logo blurred out remains to be seen.
So, was this a case of a retailer realizing they didn’t want their product associated with the particular personal brand of a reality star? Or did they just realize that the Jersey Shore crew happened to own their product and were inadvertently advertising the store brand to 7.4 million potential customers and try to cash in on that by telling people about the free advertising they were getting?
Based on how this played out, I think it’s safe to say that this was more publicity stunt than brand concerned about tarnishing their image. First, was it necessary to drop a press release about this? If a brand was truly worried about the consequences of being associated with Jersey Shore, they wouldn’t publicize the fact that they were being associated with Jersey Shore.
If that isn’t enough to prove that this is probably more publicity stunt that concern, one needs only to look at the Abercrombie & Fitch quarterly earnings call where the non-issue press release wasn’t being talked about so Mike Jeffries, A&F’s chief executive, made sure to bring it up asking, “Is no one going to ask about the Situation?” He even added, “we’re having a lot of fun with it,” after explaining the situation (no pun intended).
It’s only news because he made it news. And I realize I’m playing into his hands by even typing this because that was his goal, but does anyone even care that The Situation is wearing Abercrombie & Fitch clothing? Or that Abercrombie doesn’t want him to?
This is a retailer who more often than not is in the news for their catalogs feature scantily clad teenagers trying to sell the clothing they aren’t wearing or for selling tween thongs. The Wall Street Journal categorized it as a “teen apparel retailer.” I haven’t heard people talk about it since I was 15 – until now. (However, is it really “teen apparel” when a 29 year old reality star is wearing it?)
But we’re talking about it and it’s getting national attention. It’s also getting backlash as most people are either flaming the retailer for their discriminatory practices or praising the brand’s distaste of the Jersey Shore pop phenomenon but also asking why this needed to be said in the first place in the same breath. A&F stock even fell 8% after the announcement.
It’s interesting to note that this isn’t the first time a brand has attempted to distance themselves from the show’s stars.
Nicole “Snooki” Polizzi was often seen carrying Coach brand purses after the show debuted in late 2009. Last August, according to the New York Observer, Coach decided they didn’t want to appear as though they condoned her behavior or personal brand. But instead of issuing a press release and trying to drum up publicity for themselves they quietly shipped Snooki a handbag from one of their competitors. Once she began being spotted with the competitors bag, that competitor sent her a handbag from ANOTHER competitor … it could have turned out to be a vicious cycle, and one in which Snooki came out on top because she kept receiving free merchandise as each brand tried to out do the other.
While this incredibly duplicitous practice shouldn’t necessarily be condoned, it is kind of hilarious. Plus, it didn’t leave me with the feeling that Coach was really just trying to cash in on the fame and publicity that follows the Jersey Shore crew.
Abercrombie & Fitch’s press release, on the other hand, seems like a half-brained attempt to cash in on both sides of the Jersey Shore fame – they want to appear to hate it, while attempting to wink in joking understanding at those who love it.
So, was it worth it for Abercrombie & Fitch to put associate themselves with Jersey Shore in the minds of consumers? That depends on their corporate goals – if they wanted a flurry of free publicity that wasn’t necessarily all positive, then yes it was. But most people I’ve heard from (and this might have to do with our mid-to-late-20s age range) think it was a useless publicity stunt that makes A&F seem desperate – and that’s probably not the image they were going for.
Photo credit: Mario&Luigi/WENN.com
Doing My Part for Migraine Awareness
June 22nd, 2011June is National Headache Awareness month and as a chronic migraine sufferer I’ve been trying to figure out how to contribute to the month for years.
Flickr photo courtesy of Deborah Leigh (Migraine Chick)
- Over 36 million Americans suffer from migraines
- Of those 36 million sufferers, 27 million are women
- Migraine episodes can last from 2 to 72 hours
- One in 20 migraine sufferers experience daily or near daily migraine pain
- NIH funding for migraine research is $9 million – less than 0.03 percent of the annual NIH research budget
In the past, I’ve wanted to write articles for newspapers about the plight of migraineurs but was never able to get anything together in time to do so. Since that’s once again the case this year, I thought I’d tell my own story to raise awareness of a disease that the World Health Organization ranks on their Top 20 Most Disabling Lifetime Conditions.
The first migraine I can remember experiencing is also one of my most vivid early memories. I was probably 6 and my sister was babysitting me. I don’t remember how the migraine developed or how long it took to dissipate, but I do remember some of the most intense pain I have ever felt before in my life – and I’ve broken my wrists and arm three times. I remember crying. I remember my neighbor coming to help my sister as I was in agony. And I remember them trying to lessen the pain by holding a steaming hot compress against my forehead. We’ve learned since that they probably only exacerbated the problem with the washcloth as my blood vessels expand in the middle of an episode and respond to cold packs not heat.
I had headaches off and on through my early teen years, but never any that registered on my usual scale. But then, on April 10, 2001 I woke up with another stunner and this one didn’t go away. I missed five weeks of school as we went through every possible test and diagnosis to figure out what was happening. My primary care physicians had quickly ruled out migraine because a migraine generally only lasts 2-72 hours and I was already clocking in at 840.
I finally went to a neurologist who specialized in migraines and found out that I was a lucky part of 5 percent of the population that experiences chronic daily migraines.
With the help of a fantastic neurologist and the wonder of pharmaceuticals my migraines are thankfully under control for the most part. They never go away, but it is often a 1-3 on a scale of 1-10. It occasionally will bump itself up to a 5-6 on a daily basis. And then, I’ll get the 7s, 8s and 9s that keep me in bed and away from lights for days.
But, I function — I had to — these things started when I was 14 and I determined very early on that I was going to lead as normal a life as possible.
I’ve heard of so many chronic migraine sufferers having to quit their jobs, or not attending college and I’m so grateful that I’ve been able to push through my disease to appear to normal. Part of my ability to do that, though, is my amazing family and friends who realize that these things are not just in my head, so to speak, they’re a real problem, and they’ve given up a portion of themselves for me — they don’t wear perfumes around me (or at least they always check with me before the spray); they don’t push me if I tell them I can’t eat at a specific restaurant or a specific food because of my sensitivities; they leave gatherings with me if something is triggering my headache; and they’re very protective when I’m at a concert or bar and make me close my eyes because of strobe lights. I love them, and I recognize they’re so important in my quest to be “normal.”
My friends and family understand migraines, even if they’ve never experienced one themselves; they’ve seen the pain in my face; they’ve driven me to the ER when they get too bad; and they stock Mt. Dew in their homes and apartments in case I need a caffeine fix.
But the greater population doesn’t.
A migraine isn’t just a tension headache. Just because you may have experienced a headache and been able to go on with your daily life, please don’t assume that a migraine sufferer is just weak in comparison or should be able to “get over it” or “deal with it.” Just because you can’t see it, please don’t think a migraine sufferer is imagining their symptoms or triggers or aren’t in as much pain as they say they are.
And please, also realize, that the great majority of migraine sufferers are striving for normalcy. Migraines are disruptive, the less we have to disrupt when we have one, though, the more normal and accepted we feel in society.
Awareness is half the battle.
For more information on migraines, please visit the Migraine Research Foundation or the National Headache Foundation.
Read Forever – Great advertising? Or the start of PR?
June 8th, 2011
Last week, I wrote about my love of Barnes & Noble’s Read Forever campaign. The commercials they’re running are inspiring, lazy and reminiscent of the drizzly Saturday afternoons you spend curled up with a book.
But then I read The Fall of Advertising & The Rise of PR by Al and Laura Ries to prep for interviewing her on the Expert Access Radio Hour and my entire perception of advertising changed.
While the content of advertisements have always intrigued me, I began to realize that the content intrigued me in the same way it intrigues ad executives. As Al and Laura said, advertising has become an art. Ad execs want people to talk about their ads, and if people are talking, they’re considered successful regardless of whether or not they sell more of the product.
I even said it myself in my last blog post – I’m not in the market for an Ereader right now and won’t be rushing out to buy a Nook any time soon so even though I like the ad, it didn’t increase sales when it comes to me.
And I agree with the statement that the Read Forever commercial is a piece of art, but only because it’s a poem:
Till all the books are read
And all the pens are put down
And everything there is to learn is learned
Till tears are no longer shed
And the zingers have all zinged
And the irony is all ironed out
Till the heroes retire
And the monsters return to their dens
And all the plots are wrapped up
Till there are no more twists or turns
No more guns in drawers
No more shaggy dogs
Till rhymes stop rhyming
And pots stop boiling
And everyone is happy and there’s nothing more to say
Till that day
By hook or by crook
By book or by Nook
I will read
Al and Laura relate PR and advertising to the Aesop fable of the sune and the wind. The more wind blows, the more closely people will hold their coat, but if the sun shines it can get a person to take off their coat. Advertising is the wind, too much of it and a person will find your message unwlecome. PR is the sun, it just shines and sometimes the media picks up on it and takes off their coat.
The Read Forever campaign is more like the sun than the wind. It’s still an advertisement, but it doesn’t employ any of the flashy, “look at me! look at me!” aspects that normal ads use. It doesn’t even claim “we’re the best” or “the Nook is an better Ereader than its competitors.”
I don’t know what sort of PR Barnes and Noble is doing around the Read Forever campaign, but they did a great job giving their ad a PR feel. It’s trustworthy and I’m now convinced that B&N is dedicated to the concept of reading. They aren’t just trying to sell Nooks, they aren’t trying to get rid of print pages. They want people to read regardless of what media they’re using.
So is the By Hook or By Crook commercial it an effective advertisement? Or a nod to PR? Or a work of art? I think it’s a the latter two. But what about you?
By Hook or By Crook
May 26th, 2011What are the best ads you’ve seen lately?
Advertising fascinates me.
I’m a television purist and love watching TV shows in real-time so I don’t often have the option to fast forward through anything DVR’d. And even when I am watching a DVR’d show, I usually forget that I can fast forward through the advertisements so I see a lot of them.
There are the annoying ones (I refuse to believe Arby’s tested “It’s Good Mood Food” with anyone with a brain before running that obnoxiousness), and the copycats (Edge is trying so hard to be the new Old Spice).
And then, there are the great ads.
I’m not in the market for an e-reader right now, but I’ve been keeping my eyes and ears open for information about Kindles, Nooks and iPads.
If the Kindle has television spots running, they haven’t hit my radar, but the iPad and the Nook have made an impression.
The Future
The iPad, while not a dedicated ereader, has my attention because, let’s face it, it’s an iPad. They’re sleek, sexy and can do just about anything save for anything requiring a USB port.
Their ads reflect the number of ways different professions are using the device. They play on the imaginative and innovative ways in which the iPad will change how people do business, create music, learn and read.
As far as using the iPad as an e-reader, the vibrant picture color of the screen and the implication that this is all that children’s books will look like in the near future and kids will want to read more than they do now is effective. And they manage to convey all of that in less than 5 seconds.
By Hook or By Crook
The Nook’s commercial on the other hand is powerful. It isn’t sexy, it doesn’t create music, children won’t be doing book reports on it.
But they will be reading.
As a woman with an English degree, I believe reading is an essential part of a person’s life at any stage. I also believe that it will be a sad day if we ever lose print completely.
There is something special about picking up my tattered copy of Gone With the Wind that my mother bought when she was a teenager that I think will be lost if my children are just touching a screen to find my “copy” of Pride and Prejudice. I don’t believe a computer will ever have the same ambiance because you can’t feel the softness of well-worn, well-read pages or smell the musky scent eminating as you flip a page, nor do you have to handle the machine with care because the book jacket is faded, torn and yet still an integral part of the reading experience.
That being said, I understand that ebooks are out-selling print on Amazon these days and I know that I’ll eventually give in and buy an ereader.
That’s why I love Barnes & Noble’s “Read Forever” campaign which this commercial is a part of.
The pace of the commercial is slow and lazy, but in a good way. It’s reminiscent of a rainy Saturday spent lounging on a couch getting lost in another world. It shows that these evil machines that are taking away my beloved print pages aren’t so dangerous – in fact, they’re interchangeable right now.
It’s inspiring.
Plus, it has the best tag line of any spot on television right now.
By hook or by crook, By book or by Nook … I will read
The Nook may not have the market share, but it has the best creative firm.
It’s familiar. It’s comforting. It’s memorable.
I’ll be interested to see if it moves Nook’s or gets more bodies in the store.
What’s your favorite ad right now?
What can you do with an English Degree?
May 20th, 2011
Imagine the scene: You’re sitting in a room full of your friends who have degrees in things like computer science, electrical engineering, chemistry and pre-med. Everyone is singing songs from the Lonely Island, Toto, Miley Cyrus and Meatloaf (because your friends are awesome, but you’re all also sort of weird).
Suddenly, one of the future docs shouts out a new song request and the computer science guys second the motion. The Avenue Q soundtrack (some lyrics NSFW) is YouTubed and the doc starts in on a pitch perfect rendition of these lyrics:
What do you do with a BA in English
What is my life going to be
Four years of college and plenty of knowledge
Have earned me this useless degree
Slowly the computer science guys join in:
I can’t pay the bills yet
‘Cause I have no skills yet
The world is a big scary place
But somehow I can’t shake
The feeling I might make
A difference
To the human race
And there you sit – the only person in the room with a BA in English.
I laughed. How can’t you? The song is great and it’s not a stereotype I haven’t heard before.
But it also got me thinking – What do you do with a BA in English?
Excuse me for being crass, but I think the answer to that (and the normal tone of voice it’s asked in) is “Whatever you damn well please.”
Do you know what I have done since I received my degree?
I’ve been a journalist; public relations specialist; marketer; programmer; web designer; content editor; video editor; director; script writer; lighting specialist; photographer; producer; and blogger.
And that’s just what I’ve done.
My classmates are doing pretty great things as well: they’re saleswomen at Groupon, working for Congressmen, accepting people into college as admissions counselors, getting law degrees, fund raising for breast cancer research, and, yes, some of them are even teachers.
A BA in English doesn’t mean that you won’t get a job. It doesn’t mean you aren’t ever going to repay your student loans. And it definitely doesn’t mean that you don’t have any skills.
People with a BA in English have analytical skills and — most importantly — we can write.
We can tell you that the last line of the song “What Do You Do With a BA in English?” is written in iambic tetrameter.
We know how to tell a story, which benefits any sort of marketing, public relations or sales position.
We know the importance of real sentences in correspondence – aka we dont tlk lk were on fb all the time.
We understand the importance of communication among ourselves, our customers and our clients.
We have the ability to parse something down to its simplest form, but we can also write something as grandiose as possible and it will still make sense.
We can adequately put our thoughts down on paper and explain things in detail.
In short, we can do whatever we want.
So the next time I’m sitting in a room full of future doctors and computer science guys and they start to sing songs from Avenue Q, I’ll sing along and then let them know that I’m doing a hell of a lot with my BA in English
Just Because It’s On Facebook Doesn’t Make It True
May 3rd, 2011
Photo from: FreedomofResearch.org
Where did you learn the news of Osama bin Laden’s death? If you’re like me, it was on social media.
I heard the news that the president would be speaking on a matter of national security around 10:30 est on Facebook. As 10:30 came and went, I got antsy. What was this going to be about?
Then, at 10:46, I saw the first status update: WE GOT HIM!
My news feed blew up.
I learned that the “him” was bin Laden seconds later. But really, who were these two friends to say those words that we’ve been waiting 10 years to hear? I hopped onto Twitter and learned that CNN had confirmed the news.
OK. Is there a primary and reliable source in this mix? Yes.
I turned on the television and a news station was reporting that bin Laden had been dead for a week. A drone had dropped a bomb on the compound where he had been staying, but his body had just been recovered. Sounds good, right? Everyone began to celebrate. But none of the news stations were saying where or whom they had gotten their info from.
Let’s jump back to the primary and reliable sources test. Here, it’s failed.
The president later announced that bin Laden had been killed in a ground raid by a special ops force earlier in the day. He is a primary source. He is a reliable source.
But why is this important? We got our man. Does it matter that some people may have gotten it wrong?
Simply put: Yes.
Reports from Twitter have said that the service hit an all-time high of 3000 sustained tweets per second with jumps over 5000 during President Obama’s speech. That’s a lot of tweets that can contain a lot of misinformation if we aren’t careful.
Case in point: Since the news broke late Sunday night there has been an outpouring of support for our troops, a plethora of quotes from the movie Team America: World Police (OK, it’s really just one quote from a certain NSFW theme song) and a deluge of Lee Greenwood lyrics. There have also been three quotes from prominent figures bringing out the reflective and retrospective side of the news all over social media.
Let’s play two lies and a truth:
Photo courtesy of Disney
The all sound reasonable, they sound like something each attributed speaker might say, they’ve even popped up on major news stations like MSNBC. Only one of them is entirely correct. One is half correct. And the third is entirely incorrect.
Father Lombardi did in fact speak out on behalf of the Vatican on May 2 to help bring clarity and reflection to the lives of Catholics struggling with the rejoicing of a man’s death. His quote is attributable and verifiable. It came from a reliable, primary source.
Martin Luther King, Jr’s quote is a corruption of a piece of his text from Strength to Love, a collection of sermons written in 1963. The first sentence is a complete fabrication. It is also the only sentence flying around on short form blog sites like Twitter.
Twain’s quote is the worst of the three. While Mark Twain was a cynically brilliant man whose demeanor makes this quote entirely believable, he did not write it. The full and true quote – “All men have an emotion to kill; when they strongly dislike someone they involuntarily wish he was dead. I have never killed anyone, but I have read some obituary notices with great satisfaction” – was written by Clarence Darrow in chapter 10 of his autobiography, The Story of My Life.
But what does it matter?
These quotes perfectly embody the spirit that people are feeling! Who cares if they were actually said or not?
Call me crazy and blame my journalism background, but I think we should strive for accuracy whenever possible. A quotation may seem the most trivial of things to fact check when it’s so easy to hit that retweet button, and it’s even easier to tweet or repost breaking information to try to let everyone you know know the information. But retractions and truthful information that appears counter to what you’ve already learned is where mistrust and sometimes panic fester.
Is it really that hard to do a quick search to verify what you’re saying? Probably not. It’s more of the recommendation to pause for a second between writing what you’re going to post and actually doing so.
Just because you see it on Facebook or Twitter, doesn’t mean it’s true. And it doesn’t mean you have to add to the misinformation by sending unverified quotes or facts into your own social network.
There’s No Anonymity in Blogging
April 29th, 2011Why I’m Afraid of Writing on this Site
Flickr Photo Courtesy of Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com
They always say that good writer’s write what they know. They let a piece of themselves, or their experience fall out along with the ink of a pen (or a laser-jet printer).
I’ve considered myself a writer for most of my life – whether it was poorly illustrated descriptions in grade school, short stories I wrote to entertain my friends in middle school, term papers for school or movie reviews for a blog I’ve let sit dormant for far too long, I feel the most myself when I’m writing. I used to write about myself, or the person I wanted to be.
So, why then, does it seem almost impossible for me to update the blog on this website consistently?
All I have to do is sit down and let my thoughts come through my fingers, and believe me, I have a lot of thoughts, but I haven’t been able to do it.
I constantly read what other people are writing, I keep up with the gurus in my industry, hell, I’m a managing editor of a business e-zine – so I know what I could write, how I could fit in to the mix. I even read a lot of blogging help sites, like Blogging Without a Blog (which, ironically, has a recent post about a lack of motivation to blog) to try to force myself to put my thoughts on a page, but it hasn’t worked.
Is it a lack of motivation? A fear that no one will read what I write? A fear that too many people will read something that might not be my best work?
Honestly, I can’t figure it out, for sure, but I do have an inkling of an idea. I’m not afraid of a lack of audience, or too many people reading. I’m afraid of showing too much of myself on the blogosphere.
It makes no sense because I put a lot of myself in my tweets as any of my followers can attest as I live blogged the Royal Wedding this morning, but in my mind, my love of Catherine Middleton’s dress and Notre Dame football is very different from my thoughts on a subject like video blogging. I don’t know why that is.
I became so used to writing about what is happening around me, or what other people said to me as a journalist that I forgot how to write about what is happening TO me or what I think about things. I was the anonymous pen behind the words, people knew my name, but that’s about all they knew aside from the few Inside Columns I wrote.
Columns always intimidated me – unless I planned them weeks in advance, or wrote them furiously fast when we realized the paper was going to print in 4 hours and we didn’t have one lined up. And really, what more is a blog than a dedicated column?
So, I need to approach this the same way, and I’m going to actually try to stick to a plan to update this thing this time! Liz on Biz is my column. I’ll implement a story budget just like I used to every week as an editor. I’ll sit down and write 400-900 words a week.
And if I don’t, you can use this post to hold it against me.
Did you hear me on the radio?
March 28th, 2011
I spent my Sunday afternoon repping young people with brains, Saint Mary’s College and social media on the Expert Access Radio hour hosted by Steve Kayser and Jay McKeever.
The main guest of the day was Beth Harte from the Harte of Marketing who spoke to us about integrated marketing and social media. Her blog is fantastic and I might have to steal her idea of Saturday Morning Reads for this blog because I’m constantly reading.
I, on the other hand, spoke briefly about my own forays into social media and how I’ve jumped head first into the social sphere as a PR specialist since graduation. I was already on Facebook – one of the first generation users prior to different networks being able to interact and well before it was open to high schoolers and the world at large – but I’ve been mastering other social interactions on Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, SlideRocket, Animoto, and through blogging here and on a couple other sites.
The forty minutes flew by in the studio, so I’m sure they will for you too. Listen to us here: Beth Harte on Expert Access Radio.
Water and Social Media
March 11th, 2011
The power of water has always fascinated and scared me.
I was always the kid playing with the water tub at the science museum and I’ve always loved seeing water wheels at factories. But at the same time, I almost always hate being IN water – or rather moving water.
I don’t like the beach (though that has more to do with a disgust of sand), and you’d be hard pressed to ever get me white water rafting, or in a river, or even near the filter in a pool where you can feel a slight sucking.
The ebb and flow is completely out of your control, just like the ebb and flow of conversation on social media.
Some days it seems like no one is talking, no matter how many questions you ask or @ replies you send, and some days the entire world is letting everyone know what’s on their mind every where you look.
Today is one of those days where everyone is talking – thanks in large part to social media.
I’m sure there’s a “flow” on social media every time a natural disaster of a large magnitude strikes, but today it’s affecting me first hand.
I highly doubt we’re ever going to see a tsunami from the Ohio River hit Cincinnati, but one of my best friend’s is from Hawaii and he’s explained numerous times how they didn’t have tornado drills at their school – they had tsunami drills. Sirens would sound and they would all go outside and head to higher ground.
I was glad I had heard his stories when I woke up this morning. The threat of tsunami waves caused by the 8.9-magnitude earthquake that devastated Japan heading towards Hawaii was terrifying because he and his wife are visiting his home to lay his late grandfather to rest.
Thankfully, I was able to check in with them around 4 a.m. their time. They were high enough on the island to be out of the evacuation zone, but were still awake, presumably from the alerts.
I talked to them well before any of the waves would have hit the island they were on, but they’ve managed to check in a few times after the largest threat passed them.
With cell networks jammed in aftermath of the earthquake in Japan many people are finding people and news on social media. It’s a lifeline that is keeping people, including Jimmy Kimmel, connected and informed.
I’ve tried to go about my day, but normalcy has been punctuated with my boss’ son checking in from Japan –on Facebook – and talking about the aftershocks he’s been feeling, and Twitter has been alerting me that the tsunami waves have begun to hit the west coast.
I’ve been checking in with friends and former classmates on the west coast on Twitter, Facebook and gchat trying to make sure everyone is safe.
So far, everyone I know is safe, but now that I’ve heard from them, I’ll wait, watch and continue to discuss the events online. I don’t think we’re going to see the ebb from this happen anytime soon.
New Logo, Old News?
January 6th, 2011Everyone seems to be redesigning their logo these days. But will the new Starbucks logo go the same way of Tropicana and GAP?
Yesterday, Starbucks unveiled a new logo which they says marks the brand’s milestone 40th anniversary and is aimed at embracing their heritage, but also remaining relevant in today’s world.
Gone are the brand name and title of their most recognizable item for purchase. Instead, we’re treated to a larger view of the siren that used to be in the center of the “Starbucks Coffee” circle.
It’s streamlined and sophisticated, as was the former logo, but recent history has shown that the public doesn’t like streamlined and sophisticated changes.
Last year, GAP tried to do the same thing with their logo, causing an immediate negative reaction across social media outlets. Having heard the logo called free Microsoft Clip Art, the company swiftly made the decision to return to the former iconic logo while “engaging” the dialogue they were hearing and asking for fans to share their own designs.
In early 2009, Tropicana updated their orange juice packaging to include a glass of OJ against a stark white background instead of the familiar orange with a straw sticking out of it. That logo was seen as “generic” and many claimed it made the product indistinguishable from the store brand sold right next to it. Once again, the company bowed to the pressure, and returned to their former packaging.
So, why would Starbucks jump into the fray with so many logo duds littering the way?
It’s simple – they’re doing it right.
The new Tropicana logo stripped the visual representation of it’s claim that it’s “squeezed from fresh oranges.” The original logo implied that the juice was so fresh that it’s as though you’re drinking directly from an orange you’ve just picked from a tree. The new one includes a glass of orange juice that could have come from anywhere. Which would you rather drink?
The new GAP logo was meant to be contemporary and current, according to Marka Hansen, president of GAP North America. “It honors our heritage through the blue box while still taking it forward,” she said. But that’s not how it was perceived by the public. Rather than appearing to move forward, it looked as though GAP was operating on an idea of what “the future’ (i.e. life today) was going to look like circa 1995. I would have loved the gradient blue box with the Helvetica font when I was typing book reports or putting together power points of whales in the third grade (actually, I was partial to Bookman Old Style for no reason, and the power point was of lions…oh, and we were supposed to have flying cars by now too).
Starbucks, on the other hand, didn’t make a drastic change to their logo. They didn’t change fonts or color, and they didn’t incorporate a new image. They did, however, simplify.
In fact, they followed the pattern of their logo updates since the company began in 1971. The logo has always been circular, but the image of the siren has been getting progressively larger since 1987, when the brand debuted a new green logo to replace an original brown logo. In 1992, a logo redesign zoomed in on her face, and now she is the brand.
I’ve seen others arguing that Starbucks is ludicrous for cutting their brand name out of the logo, and while the siren is not nearly as recognizable as, say, a swoosh, or a golden M, the shape and color of the logo – not to mention the fact that people will most likely encounter it on a coffee cup… – should be enough.
Plus, it’s a natural progression of the brand, especially after they announced last year that they would begin selling beer and wine to try to drum up an evening clientele.
Would you want to go to Happy Hour or to listen to a local singer at Starbucks Coffee? Or would you rather just head out to Starbucks?
Their new logo banks on the latter.
Cherished hand-me-down
December 21st, 2010
Baptismal gown passed through four generations
Article published July 23, 2008
By Liz Harter
When Valerie Bolyard carries her niece, 8-month-old Sadie Taylor Aldin, into the sunlit kitchen of the Bolyard family home in Granger, Jessica (Bolyard) Aldin’s face lights up with love and joy.
After cuddling Sadie close, Jessica turns to a Tribune photographer and asks her if she should now dress Sadie in her baptismal dress — a 95-year-old gown that has been handed down through four generations of the Aldin family.
Sadie is the 10th family member to be baptized in the gown. She was baptized at St. Matthew Cathedral in South Bend on Father’s Day, a fitting day, as her dad, Ryan, was the last person to wear the gown before his daughter.
A family tradition
The gown, a hand-sewn, flowing, white linen sheath is embroidered with delicate flowers around the neck and the hem.
Though it was sewn in 1913, it has gone through minimal repairs, says Jessica, who was in Granger last week to visit her parents, Kathy and Kevin Bolyard, and other family members. She and Ryan, who works in the development and information technology department at Ohio State University, live in Hilliard, Ohio.
“I think we’ve tried to get little stains out, but that’s it,” she says. “There are some stains still on it, but we didn’t try to do much because it is so old.”
Even though Sadie was baptized when she was 7 months old, she was able to fit into the gown for two reasons. She is small for her age and the gown’s size is larger than average.
The gown is larger than those traditionally made in the early 1900s because one of the members of the family first baptized in it weighed 13 pounds at birth.
Jessica hopes any other children she and Ryan have will be able to wear the gown even if they, like Sadie, are older when they are baptized.
“Normally, babies were baptized right when they were born, but I don’t think it’s as important in the (Roman) Catholic Church now as it used to be to be baptized right away,” Jessica says.
“When Ryan and I have other kids, they’ll wear the gown, as long as it fits them. They’ll be baptized when they’re babies but not right away, because you’re just trying to get over having a baby then.”
Weaving family and faith
Sadie’s paternal great-grandmother, Ernestine (Tangeman) Baumgartner, was the first to be baptized in the gown in 1913.
Three of Ernestine’s cousins — J. William Lester, Jeanette Lester and Mary Moynihan — also wore the gown in the early 1900s.
Jeanette, who wore the gown in about 1918, grew up to become a member of the Sisters of the Holy Cross. She is currently living in Bertrand Hall at Saint Mary’s Convent.
Her younger brother, William, became a priest and served in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend.
Aside from being one of the first four members of the family to wear the gown, Monsignor Lester participated in the baptism of every subsequent generation as the officiant who performed the sacrament.
Sadie’s paternal grandmother, Mary Ann (Baumgartner) Aldin, and paternal great-aunt Marcie (Baumgartner) Hunter were the second generation to be baptized in the gown.
Their children, the third generation to wear the gown, include Sadie’s paternal aunt and uncle Erica and David Aldin, as well as her father, Ryan.
The baptisms, along with the gown, are not the only sacrament connecting the monsignor to his family’s faith. Monsignor Lester, who raised Ryan’s father after bringing him to the States from Cuba, officiated not only at the wedding of Ryan’s parents, but at Ryan and Jessica’s as well.
A new thread
When Sadie was born on Nov. 24, 2007, Ryan and Jessica knew they wanted, if possible, to dress her in the family heirloom for her baptism.
The gown is a way to connect Sadie with her ancestors and her faith.
“It is very special to know that we all share a connection to the church through the gown,” Ryan says in a recent e-mail.
“The age of the gown shows the kind of impact baptism has had on our family over the years, and it is exciting to know that it will be continued for many more years to come through Sadie.”
Ryan and Jessica came to South Bend to have their daughter baptized in order to reduce the number of people who would have to travel to attend the event, since Jessica’s family lives in town.
“If we did this in Ohio, everybody would have had to come from out of town. … It was just easier to come here because most of the people live here,” Jessica says.
They chose St. Matthew because of another connection to the Aldin family: the Rev. Michael Heintz.
Heintz taught Ryan in Fort Wayne when he was in high school.
“It was easy to choose (St. Matthew) because of that connection with him,” Jessica says.
“The baptism was a special moment,” Ryan says. “It was a great feeling to know that we were going to be able to help someone so special to us learn about God and all that He has done for us.
“It’s an exciting responsibility that will bring my wife and I closer to God.”
He and Jessica hope that as Sadie grows she will become a contributing and active member of the Catholic faith. “The support of our family and the Catholic community will hopefully provide a basis that can help her become the best individual she can be,” Ryan says.
“I will be proud and supportive of her no matter what she does.”
Jessica agrees that she will support her daughter in anything Sadie chooses to pursue. She hopes Sadie will grow up to be close to her family, her friends and her faith.
“I hope she will live and love as Jesus did,” Jessica says.
Remembering Declan
November 1st, 2010
Last Wednesday, Declan Sullivan, a junior at Notre Dame, tragically passed away when a scissor lift on which he was filming football practice toppled over in strong winds.
There’s not much left to be said on the subject, as many who knew him well have already memorialized him in the blogosphere. However, I need to be selfish right now and add my thoughts to the mix as I’m still trying to sort out my feelings after an emotional response to his memorial during the Tulsa pre-game, the alma mater at halftime, and the anger I felt as Tulsa’s band played over our own as we sang the alma mater one last time in honor of him during post-game this weekend.
I knew Declan briefly in my senior year at Saint Mary’s. He was a freshman at the time, and he was feeling out The Observer as a possible outlet for his creativity. Our editor-in-chief lived in his dorm and was trying to recruit him to the scene section, where he eventually lent us his unique and entertaining voice.
My first interaction with him actually had to do with Melissa Buddie’s “The hook-up culture” viewpoint letter, which has become infamous on campus. I was in a strange position with that situation as I knew Melissa and her older sister well and was trying to protect her and warn her about the response letters which were pouring in to the office. Declan’s was one of those.
I remember logging on to the Observer’s website one night in my dorm room ready to hit send on a call to Melissa when I found his response – “Hooking Up Normal.” I remember laughing as I read about the “Sassy z-snap” he would have given her had she told him the contents of her letter in person. And I was excited that for once someone was responding with humor and jest while most of the other responses vilified the hook-up culture and the fact that Melissa had to guts to call people out for how they were acting.
I was even more excited when I finally met Declan and saw that the humor in his letter captured his shining and bright personality.
Our paths crossed only briefly, but over the past few days I have been looking back on those few scene meetings and office encounters we had fondly. I always enjoyed opening the paper each day to the Scene section and finding his byline because I knew he’d be completely honest in his reviews, but he always tempered the opinion with his enthusiasm and wit.
My heart aches deeply for the entire Notre Dame community. For those who will never have the opportunity to be touched by Declan’s infectious smile, personality and writings. And especially for those who knew him better than I did.
I was blessed to have known him for the short time that I did.
Photo credit: AP photo/Michael Conroy
To Those Who Fell, and Those Who Carry On
September 11th, 2010Nine years ago today our country was attacked.
Everyone remembers where they were when they heard the news that the World Trade Center had been hit by an airplane. Everyone remembers the moment they realized this wasn’t something out of the blue, but rather a premeditated terrorist attack on our soil.
Personally, I was sitting in home room in my freshman year of high school. We had an hour delay that day because it was Meet the Teacher’s night the day before, and our principle, Sr. Nancy, broke into the morning announcements to inform us that the North Tower was hit. As we moved to first bell, the South Tower was hit, and less than an hour later we heard from her again.
Within two hours our entire world changed.
I can still remember the panic that set in as I tried to finish that day at school. I had just moved to Cincinnati from Michigan, but had previously lived in New Jersey, just outside of New York, and Baltimore, Maryland. I had friends living on Long Island. I had seen the WTC and Washington, D.C. countless times as family traipsed to the East coast to visit the Big Apple and Capitol while we lived there.
9/11 touched me in a profound way.
When I finally made it home after that exhaustive day all I could do was sit down and watch the horror unfold in front of me. I needed to see it, to hear it, to feel it.
I have never been able to fully leave that moment in time. I have found that I have connections to those who lost their lives in the WTC and Pentagon that day. I have every single newspaper article that ran in the Cincinnati Enquirer in a garbage bag in my closet. I feel compelled to watch every single special that I come across on television about that day and everything about it still touches me physically and emotionally.
I was able to see the Pentagon shortly after 9/11 as my sister moved to the D.C. area. The most profound part of that experience was visiting the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington National Cemetery. As we watched the changing of the guard, it became apparent that the soldier on duty that day, as well as any early morning visitors, would have seen the plane crash into the Pentagon.
Image courtesy of Reuters/Larry Downing
I wasn’t able able to visit Ground Zero, though, until this summer.
It was the first time I had been back to New York in 20 years (and if you know my age then you know that was a lifetime ago), and it was the only place that was on my ‘Must Visit’ list.
We spoke with the concierge at our hotel prior to starting our journey to Lower Manhattan and she told us that her grandmother has never been there since 2001, and she tries to avoid it as much as possible.
I had no idea what to expect. How would I react to my first glimpse of the site of that violence?
The subway ride down to the site was eventful only because the Pride Parade was happening the same day. My fellow passengers imbued the trip with a light-hearted fervor that I hoped would last through my visit of the site and keep me from the tears I thought I would shed.
Emerging from the stale air of the subway station, my coworker, with whom I was traveling, and I came out on Fulton Street between Nassau and Broadway. I don’t know if I had ever stood there as a small child or if all of my memories were from movies set in New York or cameras capturing 9/11, but I knew that I had (at least mentally) been there before, and that’s when things started to hit me.
Then, we turned the corner and saw the construction …
… and I felt nothing.
It’s construction. Aside from signs on the fence surrounding the area telling me to visit them at WTCProgress.com, I’d be hard pressed to tell you that I was actually looking at Ground Zero.
A man hawking guide books to the disaster helped us put it in perspective. He pointed out landmark buildings around us, and as he spoke things started to come together.
After respectfully declining to spend $10 for a map on which he highlighted where the buildings used to be and thanking him for taking time to sell talk to us, we walked past the FDNY Ten House and turned the corner to find a full-blown bronze mural.
Photo courtesy of http://www.fdnytenhouse.com/fdnywall/wall.htm
The FDNY Memorial Wall bas-relief sculpture was shocking to find. I’d never heard that there was any sort of mural near the site, but it’s there and it has become a memorial where visitors paid their respects and left tokens of their appreciation, including those of the most heart-wrenching kind.
That site, at 124 Liberty Street, I’ve come to realize, is what 9/11 truly is and what it truly means. I still feel the panic grip me as I watch footage of the planes flying into the buildings that day, but the site of those buildings, while a symbol of what we lost, is not what I should have been visiting.
I couldn’t get closer to the tragedy than I already had. 9/11 may have physically happened in New York City, Washington, D.C. and Pennsylvania, but it honestly affected everyone everywhere.
I’m not special because I had lived near New York or D.C. I don’t feel the enormity of the terrorism differently because I know some of those who perished on that day.
It affects us all, and it affects us all in different ways.
So while I have been watching 9/11 remembrance shows all week and will take a few moments to myself to reflect today, I will also sit down to watch college football. Because life goes on, but we must always remember.
So please, remember in your own way today. And join me in saying “Thank You” to those who lost their lives as they tried to help others and those who continue to fight for our freedom.
And if you want to read some of the most gripping and compelling pieces ever written from a survivor that day, please read Penelope Trunk‘s accounts of that day and her life beyond it. While many have recounted their own experiences, Penelope’s touches me more than most. I think it is because I found her blog well after 9/11 and only found out that she was there after I had already grown to respect her as a writer. Still, it is powerful to read.
How the rule of 10% – 90% applies to content creation, and you
August 27th, 2010
Image courtesy of eelend
I recently participated in a week-long sales training program designed to help employees at my company dig deeper and examine sales cycles more deeply. At the risk of exposing myself here – though most of my co-attendees won’t be shocked to hear it – I have to say that I had a very hard time figuring out why I was in the class.
I’m in public relations, I don’t come in contact with prospects. My job is to get the company name out there in a positive light so that when our sales teams call on someone they can actually say they’ve heard of what we do and that we do it well, but I never see that prospect. And then, once a sales cycle is completed, I’ll write a press release, maybe a case study, and possibly interact with people at the other company, but the sale has already been made. Basically, I’m as much of a physical non-entity in the sales cycle as anyone can be.
In fact, I have my own customers. They’re journalists and I have to figure out where they’re hanging out and how to interact with them, which doesn’t generally include the same type of interactions that a software sales person would face in a sales cycle.
So why was I in sales training?
It took three days of slogging through material, metaphors, group discussions, presentations and maybe even a little Casablanca thrown in for me to finally have a breakthrough.
One phrase was said, after an intense discussion of the PGA tour, Arnold Palmer and whether or not Tiger Woods’ exposed lack of values was causing him to play bad golf, that immediately clicked with me -
“Golf is 10% technical, and 90% mental.”
While this quote, in relation to golf, is talking about muscle memory and being as concentrated on a goal as possible, the same can be said of the sales cycles, and most importantly to those in marketing and PR, content as well.
I’m going to jump on the viral bandwagon here and link to someone who linked to two someones in a recent article. In his article, “In These Tough Times Here’s A Way To Print Your Own Currency Legally … With Content,” Steve Kayser referenced Brian Solis’ two-part article called “The Future of Marketing Starts with Publishing” and Kathy Klotz’s “EC=SC: Every Company Must be a Storytelling Company.”
Content has been king for a while, but social media has given content producers the keys to the castle. The ability to own content is crucial and that is exactly what you can do with Facebook, Twitter, blogs, etc.
Solis talks about a new CEO – the Chief Editorial Officer. The person in charge of “the timely creation and distribution for relevant and material content delivered as attractive and engaging social objects.” Klotz takes it a step further to say that great marketing only comes out of great story telling.
If it is generally understood – which I’m not convinced it is, yet – that content is entirely necessary to connect with those people who will buy your product, then it should be generally understood that this content should be compelling.
But how can you be sure that what you are writing falls under that umbrella?
This is an especially hard question to ask for a technology company when our products must integrate with infrastructure systems while transforming and revolutionizing a customer’s business model. How much is too much when it comes to technical aspects?
That’s where 10%-90% comes in.
People will ignore you if you only say that Product XYZ version 7.7.1 comes with WSDL and GAAP and IASC compliance. And people will have a better chance of paying attention to you if you provide a fabulous user-story about how Company ABC cut millions of dollars, but the story won’t hit home unless they know that your solution would fit with their system.
You have to find a way to meld the two together and a good rule of thumb is to remember that golf, or content, is 10% technical and 90% mental.
I could want to play a round of golf, I could get myself into the right mindset, I could even believe that I was going to play awesome, but that wouldn’t excuse the fact that I’d be working at about 0.4% of the technical capacity needed to actually drive or putt a ball. And Tiger Woods, who has that 10% of technical ability, could fail miserably on the course if he doesn’t get into that mindset.
If you’re going to play a good game, or close that sale, you need both aspects and they need to be (un-)balanced in a way that is interesting, relevant and adds value to a discussion.
It also needs to be arranged in a way that grabs and holds a readers attention.
And for that, we turn to Kayser’s 1-10-1 equation:
1-10-1
1 Second: Your title or subject line must capture the readers attention in one second to EARN the right to …
10 Seconds – more of their time. In that 10 seconds you have to intrigue, pique or totally discombobulate the reader into believing you are trying to share helpful, unique, specific information. If you do that you EARN the right to …
1 Minute – of their precious mind-time. In that minute you have to share ideas, information, insights and information that might make a real difference in their life of business or business of life. If you do that you’re on the right path … the P4 path. (that alliteration isn’t path-etic is it?)
Unforunately, what Kayser says is all to true. I’ve worked under that equation for the past 5 years as a journalist and content creator, but I’ve seen far too many writers who don’t.
And it doesn’t matter if the writer is tweeting, facebooking, blogging, or mailing their content. If you don’t give someone a reason to continue reading, they’ll stop. And if you don’t give a prospect 90% mental and 10% technical content, chances are they’ll stop too.
It’s a hard balance to strike and a hard skill to learn (afterall, writing is 10% technical ability and 90% your mindset … see, I told you it resonated with me!), but it isn’t impossible.
It takes a willingness to revise, to be revised, and to never get too attached to something you wrote or an idea you had to never want to strike it from the record.
I’m still learning. Are you?
Cincom launches French Acquire Website
August 20th, 2010
I didn’t know I could speak French. Oh wait, I still can’t. But I can copy and paste like a champion!
Cincom’s newest WordPress site, the French language Acquire site recently went live. I served as the lead project manager on the site, placing much of the content and images on the site.
The turnaround on the site was relatively quick, especially as we were dealing with a language that most of those on the team don’t speak and we weren’t able to recognize small spelling and grammar errors ourselves. However, through collaboration with our Eurpean colleagues we managed to deliver a site that almost mirrors the English Acquire site to a T.
Merci beaucoup to all who helped us accomplish this great international feat!
Print isn’t dead – The Future of Journalism in America
July 15th, 2010
Journalism.
Saying the word conjures thoughts of layoffs, pay walls, shrinking ad revenues and smaller newspapers.
It’s a pretty depressing thought to most people – unless you’re one of the four panelists at “The Future of Journalism: Transforming the Fourth Estate” at the 2010 Bulldog Reporter Media Relations Summit.
The panelists – Ellen Levine, Editorial Director for Hearst Magazines; Rand Morrison, Executive Director of “CBS News Sunday Morning;” Alan Murray, Executive Editor of the Wall Street Journal Online; and Jai Singh, Managing Editor of the Huffington Post – agreed that journalism is actually in a great position because the opportunities to interact and engaged with the audience is greater than ever.
“Journalism itself isn’t in trouble, the delivery, length, etc. is,” Levine said. “It will change. It will adapt.”
There is no lack of information hunger both in the industry and among readers, there’s just a revolution in the delivery systems and business models of the product.
For a long time, newspapers, magazines and consumers worked under the idea that people will get the news for free, but that business model is changing as organizations attempt to keep up with changing technology and subsidize the loss of ad revenue in any way possible.
This is already being seen with organizations like the Wall Street Journal adding a pay wall to their online content, and magazines like Wired publishing on an iPad app.
“Technology aspects will play a bigger and bigger role,” Singh said. And Levine agreed, citing the iPad as a huge game changer in the industry.
But Levine, who works primarily in print unlike the other panelists, disagreed with the idea that print is dead.
“When I drop my iPad into my bubble bath and not electrocute myself or ruin it, then I’ll admit that print is dead,” she said.
She doesn’t see print completely disappearing, but rather sees two different plans for print: luxury and cheap.
The cheap version of the news will be consumable and disposable. It will be printed on a lower-quality paper and cost less. The luxury version, however, will be printed on paper that is better quality and a larger size.
“There is still a market for print,” she said.
She also sees magazines moving towards a new subscription model. Currently, most subscription prices are highly discounted because magazines want to keep their subscription numbers levels inflated to attract advertisers, while the newsstand copies costs up to 200% more.
Levine sees a company like Hearst, which currently has 14 magazines with a high cover price, moving towards a subscription plan that isn’t discounted. Instead, the magazine will cost the same amount of money no matter where it is purchased, and they’ll hold themselves to a high standard so that what people are getting for that price is great.
Moving away from print discussions, all of the panelists agreed that the style of journalism is changing.
“Long is shorter than it used to be,” Morrison said. Not many pieces are 3,000 words anymore, but that doesn’t mean people won’t read 500 or even 1,000 words.
People will read or watch long, in-depth pieces, but they must be well written or edited and compelling when presented digitally.
And while it’ll be hard to convince anyone who has tried to find a job in journalism in the past two years, all of the panelists said that there are jobs out there.
“Journalism is fun and more exciting than ever,” Murray said. “However, you need to be at the very cutting edge of multimedia.”
The best young journalists are those that know how to build a following in social media, they are credible and fact check and they are consistent as they move from one medium to another.
Murray also joked, however, that any young journalists might want to reconsider their career goals and make their fortune before shifting gears to writing as any jobs in the industry don’t pay much.
Flickr photo courtesy of Valerie Everett
Want your pitch to stand out? Make it exclusive
July 7th, 2010No one wants to write about the same thing as their competitor
One of the biggest pieces of advice which almost every journalist speaking at the 2010 Bulldog Reporter Media Relations Summit tried to drill into the heads of those attending is to make sure that what you pitch to a journalist or editor is exclusive.
Alan Murray, the Executive Editor for the Wall Street Journal Online, doesn’t want to see pitches that begin with: “You might have seen our article in the New York Times.”
Tina Brown, founder of The Daily Beast, said she’d be willing to look at pitches that would add value to her site that weren’t being published elsewhere.
Ellen Levine, Editorial Director for Hearst Magazines, doesn’t want to spend time interviewing you, then start to write the story while you leave the office, or hang up the phone, and start shopping the story around to every other news outlet in town.
As a PR person, this might seem counter intuitive. You want your client, information or story to appear in as many outlets as possible to be seen by as many eyes as possible, so why wouldn’t you want to pitch to multiple channels, journalists and mediums? Plus, it’s not as though you’re guaranteed placement in a piece if you send a journalist your pitch, so doesn’t it make more sense to blanket your target area to try to at least get one placement?
I have the (I’m sure, not-so-) unique experience of wearing both caps – I spent 3+ years as a reporter with both my college and college town’s newspapers and I’m currently working in PR – so I can tell you that while the PR side of me wants to get my client’s products in as many publications as possible, the journalist side of me remembers that crushing defeat of getting scooped because my source shopped her son’s story around town.
Two years ago, I interned at the Features desk at the South Bend Tribune. I wrote a lot of stories for the Health section, but one in particular stands out in my mind – Living With the Consequences. One of my editors ran into a woman who’s son had been in a severe fireworks accident the year before and, since the Fourth of July was coming up, she thought he might be willing to speak about his experience to help raise awareness of firework injuries and the need for safety when handling explosives.
My editor assigned me the story and I called the woman. Days later I met her and her son, David Knapp, at their apartment in Mishawaka, Indiana. In 2007, then 18-year-old David had been lighting fireworks with his friends when they found a homemade firecracker made out of gun powder and a toilet paper tube in the house. Excited, the boys ran to the roof – where they had been throwing the other lit explosives into a fire pit on the ground – and David lit the fuse which burnt in a split-second. He lost his left hand that day and had been dealing with deteriorating eyesight due to pieces of shrapnel doctors had been unable to remove.
He wanted people to know that what happened to him could have been prevented had he and his friends thought about the dangers of fireworks while they were lighting them. Instead, David said they didn’t respect that danger, and takes full responsibility for his injury. He told me: “Fireworks are great as long as you’re safe about (lighting them), as long as you’re not lighting something dumb and not thinking.”
I put the story to bed that weekend, it would go to print on July 1 as the Health section ran on Wednesdays. I thought everything was great and moved on to my next story.
And then, on June 30, 2008 I turned on the 5 o’clock news from our competitor and saw David Knapp sitting underneath a park bench telling his story with much of the same phrasing before showing off his transradial prosthesis. I had been scooped – and, some may call me naive, but I was hurt as well.
Why did I waste my time interviewing David and his mother if they planned to talk to pitch their story to every Tom, Dick and Harry in South Bend?
I’ve carried that story and those feelings with me as I entered a career in Public Relations. I can’t say that I’ll never blanket an area with a pitch, but I’ll definitely think about it.
Do you ever think about the exclusivity of your pitches? Or have you ever been on the other side and put time and effort into something only to see it the story 18 other places?
Flickr image courtesy of pshutterbug
Confidence, collaboration, technology are future of PR
July 1st, 2010
What does the public relations department look like at your corporation? Are they a standalone division? Do they have a separate (most likely smaller) budget?
If you answered yes to either of these questions your corporation might not have much a future as technology becomes a bigger force in the world, according to leading minds in corporate communications and public relations.
“Technology has become the force and function,” Martin Murtland, Vice President, Solutions for Corporate Communications with Dow Jones & Company said at the Bulldog Reporter Media Relations Summit on June 28.
It has become the catalyst that should be breaking down the silos that keep marketing, public relations and communications in their own separate worlds in organizations.
“We need a whole new business model,” Aedhmar Hynes, CEO of Text said. “Communications and marketing need to develop brand goals and then decide on the disciplines and skill sets necessary to achieve those goals.”
Hynes and Murtland were joined on the panel by Peter Land, Senior Vice President of Communications at PepsiCo Beverages America and Matt Harrington, President & CEO of Edelman U.S. All four agreed that the future of Public Relations lies in collaboration, storytelling, and prioritization of social media.
“Don’t get carried away thinking this [technology and social media] is all new and different – it’s a lot of the same,” Hynes said. You just have to adapt to new ways of using it.
Prioritization is key, Land added. PR helps shape a story, but your company (hopefully) won’t be the only people talking about it. You have to decide when you’re going to engage — you can’t correct every blogger who makes tiny mistakes about your company, nor should you want to.
You also have to remember that not everyone will love your brand, he said.
In other words, when Joe Schmo tweets that he hates the taste of Pepsi One, you shouldn’t drop everything to placate him. Pick your battles.
While third-party advocacy is more important than ever in the “pop-culture universe” that we live in, you can’t constantly combat those that say negative things. Instead you have to cultivate your fan base.
And what do you do once that fan base is in place?
“At PepsiCo, we put ourselves out there. We turned control over to the consumers,” Land said.
He referenced the PepsiCo crowdsourcing movement DEWmocracy 2, which recently gave way to three new Mt. Dew flavors – Typhoon, Distortion and White Out – which were created, branded and marketed by fans on social media.
“It’s almost like we took the ad agency out of the equation,” Land said, because no one better understands the product like those that use it. “We aren’t consuming the product like our fans and clients are.”
But not every company has as much power as the B2C behemouth that is PepsiCo, which is also crowdsourcing ideas for social responsibility with it’s Pepsi Refresh Project. They can’t leverage a huge social media fanbase, nor is that fan base the most important part of the future of public relations.
So how can PR in other organizations grow?
The ability to succinctly and compellingly tell a story is key. Which means writing in plain English — not corporate gobbledygook — that your consumers and target markets will understand.
You also have to be able to create ideas for content and be dynamic in doing so. PR could do everything right and a product still might not sell, but that doesn’t mean the time and effort spent working on that project was wasted. Instead, look at it from every angle to get great content – for example, was your project sustainable? Write a blog post on that. Did it bring new, value-added talent into your organization?
Remember that you support the brand, but ultimately, that supports the organization as a whole. Figure out what positives your organization can take out of a negative experience and write about those.
Publishing that writing is equally important – whether it be in a press release, third-party publications or on your own publishing platform like a blog.
You also have to determine how you’re going to measure success when using online tools – both quantitatively and qualitatively. If you’re only looking at the number of clips and columns or your Google ranking, you might not be seeing the whole picture. Make sure you’re also looking at whether or not those clips and rankings are moving the needle and impacting your business.
And remember, as Peter Land said…
“The future [of PR] is about confidence and being equal. You want to be able to walk into your CEO’s office and make a suggestion as to where you go next. You have to be aggressive.”
2010 Bulldog Reporter Media Relations Summit wrap-up
June 30th, 2010
Well, I’m back from my first business trip that wasn’t financed on the shoe string budget of a student newspaper (the destinction of that first, shoe-string budget trip was to Los Angeles in 2008). One of the perks of being an adult!
I just attended the 2010 Bulldog Reporter Media Relations Summit in New York City.
The conference was great. There was a lot of great discussion on the future of public relations, media and journalism and how the futures of those three will more cohesively converge as social media and networking rises to greater prominence in society and business.
Fay Shapiro, the Senior Vice President and Group Publisher for Bulldog Reporter, was incredibly nice. She took care of the two of us attending the conference, pointing out who we should meet and introducing us to other attendees. Because of her, we decided to crash one of the round table discussions of entertainment PR – because technology and entertainment are so similar! – and were able to meet Michael Musto. If the name doesn’t ring a bell, google him. You’ll recognize him. He writes La Dolce Musto for the Village Voice and has been on countless television shows. Believe me, his delicious brand of sardonicism is entirely New York and entirely recognizable.
I was also given the opportunity to meet Ellen Levine, the Editorial Director for Hearst Publications. I actually studied her in a few of my college classes and she became one of my heroes so it was a treat to be in the same room as her, let alone shake her hand. When you’re an English Writing major at a women’s college it’s inevitable that you’ll study powerful women with powerful jobs in the publishing industry – especially if said women went to a different women’s college (in Levine’s case it was Wellesley).
I’m currently working on blog posts on three of the events:
and
Pictures are also forthcoming, as is a blog post on my time in New York.
Check out what attendees of the Media Relations Summit said on Twitter by searching for #MRS10!
Cincom Launches Facebook Fan Page
June 16th, 2010Are you looking for a place that publishes Cincom blog posts, let’s you know what trade shows or conferences Cincomers will be attending, and posts photos and information from Cincom’s 41 year history?
We’re not talking about our newsroom – because you can find most of that information here as well. Instead, we’re pleased to announce that Cincom has a new Facebook Fan Page.
Important Stuff Here
All of Cincom’s blogs, including the newsroom and Expert Access, publish to the Fan Page each time they’re updated. It also includes a calendar of trade shows and conferences Cincomers are attending, and we have the capability to upload photos and video to the page as well.
A new era in presentations
May 27th, 2010A presentation without PowerPoint? It’s possible
On May 20, John Mangan from Cincom Systems and Dale Wolf from Compass Clinical Consulting spoke at the May Institute of the Southwestern Ohio Chapter of Healthcare Financial Management Association.
Their topic was Social Media and the SM capabilities that hospitals have available to them today. They discussed everything from Twitter to LinkedIn to YouTube sharing the stats, numbers, success stories and things they thought were interesting and important.
Sounds great, right? After all, Social Media is “the wave of the future” and it seems like everyone and their mother is signing up for some service or another.
The info is especially pertinent to hospitals as Ad-ology reports that SM influenced 40% of recent hospital or urgent care patients, a statistic which jumps to 53.8% when looking at recent patients between the ages of 25 and 34.
But, how were John and Dale supposed to convey the power of social media to a room full of hospital financial managers in a compelling and cohesive way?
The most obvious choice is a presentation software like PowerPoint or Keynote. They are presentation staples in any organization as they allow a user to easily create a presentation that is – hopefully – succinct, engaging and powerful.
(Side note: Do you know how to make your PowerPoints succinct, engaging and powerful? Check out Seth Godin’s Really Bad PowerPoint and Carmine Gallo’s The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs.)
PowerPoint would have allowed the presenters to store all of their information and example links in one place, but it wouldn’t have led to a cohesive presentation. Nor would it have added any value aside from putting statistics in front of the audience.
But what other option is there? SlideRocket would have added a flashier component, but still wouldn’t have shown the vast value and connective capabilities that Social Media encompasses.
Enter a new competitor: The Website
Really, the only way to create this presentation was to build it on a platform that allows you to plug-in to each aspect of SM – a website.
Using WordPress as a host, I (with some great help from Pius Ekhaeyemhe and Steve Kayser) set up a domain name for them, loaded the WhiteHousePro theme by PageLines and started aggregating their content. (In case you’re wondering about the name, yes, the Barack Obama White House uses the WhiteHousePro theme…)
The end result – Social Media for Hospitals – is pretty powerful.
With plug-ins and widgets I was able to insert both Dale and John’s Twitter feeds as well as Ed Bennett, the Director of Web Strategy at the University of Maryland, Medical Center – and the man behind the bible for those hospitals looking into entering the social media sphere, The Hospital Social Network List.
I embedded videos showing the fun, yet informative nature of YouTube.
I linked to ABC News stories showcasing how surgeons are using Twitter in the operating room.
I even used the blog capabilities of the WhiteHousePro theme to showcase a successful case study in social media and to include a number of “slides” with statistics which one of the presenters wanted to use.
All of the information which John and Dale needed to deliver a powerful presentation was right there, interconnected on one platform.
And the best part of all?
No handouts!
Audience members didn’t have to furiously write down any URLs of examples they might want to see again after the presentation. Nor did they have to keep track of any printed slide decks.
Instead, they only had to remember one URL – http://socialmediaforhospitals.cincom.com. The entire presentation – all the examples, case studies, Twitter feeds and information – is still live on the Internet, accessible by anyone regardless of whether or not they attended the Southwestern Ohio HFMA May Institute.
And what’s better than the best part?
Because the domain was built on WordPress, which has an easy to use back-end that both Dale and John understand, the information on the live site is not stagnant!
The blog can be continuously updated as new stats and information are released about Social Media and hospitals. More YouTube videos can be added. Different case studies can be highlighted. And discussions can be facilitated through the use of comments on the blog.
So what am I saying?
Is PowerPoint going to become extinct? No, of course not. Some people would probably feel more comfortable using PowerPoint to present.
But what I am saying is that there’s a new contender when it comes to creating presentations.
For our purposes, the website was the best possible route – it is interactive, maleable, engaging, creative and a catalyst for discussion. And the presentation wasn’t too shabby, either.
So go ahead, take a look. Can you use a website to suit your presentation purposes?
I dare you to try, because once you start analyzing and creating you’ll start to understand the full potential of using a website.
Thumbnail photo courtesy of Flickr user h.koppdelaney
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