Hoi Polloi

Irrational exuberance about the iPhone: who's praying now?

As an former Apple user still wearing an 'evangelist' badge in a PC world, I'm impressed with what PR and buzz --rather than advertising-- has achieved for a brand that graced Wired magazine ten years ago with just one word: "Pray."

So the prayers did work. Because what Apple's doing with the iPhone is not just entering the phone market. It's charging into the PC market. As Wall Street Journal's Walt Mossberg rightly observes this is computer with a service plan attached to it.

You've got to agree that it's a very expensive toy. But Apple knows its raving fans (or fan-boys) don't consider price. They're into that other P in marketing: passion. Is it Microsoft's time to start praying?

Return on Tweets could be the new ROI for Dell

If you've always wondered if Twitter was a passing fad, here's something to make you think again.
Dell is using Twitter to announce limiter Twitter-only discounts for those who subscribe to their tweets.

It's from the Dell Outlet Twitter account. The price for these refurbished items have an expiration, a bit like an eBay auction. The URL takes you to a micro-site with a 'Special Twitter Offer.' It encourages you to Add Dell Outlet as a Twitter friend.

As many predicted, the gap between a new web 2.0 application, and the creative uses of it, has shrunk like heck.

Could ROT (Return on Tweets) become a measurement tool?

IABC Report: Dow Chemical's stunning 'Human Element' misses the other human element

Attended a session on the Dow branding case study today at IABC's international conference in New Orleans,

This campaign, launched last June, was one of the most memorable branding campaigns in recent times. The Human Element ads are indelible images.

The copy is powerful in a straightforward way. It's about "Sodium bonding with chlorine, carbon bonding with oxygen..." The close ups of faces, the texture of waves, the energy of a waterfall. This is the shall we say, bonding of words, images and ideas that you don't usually see in corporate branding exercises.

As the presenter noted, proudly, not once was the Dow name spoken. Only a fleeting glimpse of the red diamond logo at the end. I watched it again, and couldn't help but notice the word 'element' (or 'elemental') occurs eight times, with the big picture painted in sweeping strokes, with hints of biology (synapses) and lots of chemistry.

But branding is much more than stunning images and good copy. It's a positioning statement that has to leap across every 'synapse' and connect with the other communication efforts, to touch the lives of everyone the organization comes into contact with.

Dow launched the campaign internally as well, bathing its building with giant images, revamping its web site, providing employees with the background to the concept and philosophy, and encouraging them to set up their own periodic table with pictures of people they work with.

It struck me as a campaign waiting to be integrated with other media --imagine employees creating their own human element posters, and uploading them to Flickr. Imagine them being able to tell their own Human element stories in podcasts, or on YouTube. I bet those stories would be as powerful and sincere as anything its agency FCB could come up with. Wouldn't that be the the proof of branding via the human element?

In summary: Don't get me wrong. It is a terrific case study. But a global company telling a global story to a global audience just can't afford to not engage it's own people.

This was funny: The presenter asked us what came to our minds first when we watched the commercial. One person raised her hand and said, "It made me wonder what Dow had done wrong, and was trying to cover up." Another said he was trying to calculate the cost of each of those marvelous segments of video!

On a related note: Paul Argenti, management guru who gave the keynote at the the IABC Foundation lunch today opened his remarks with a blistering analysis of why strategic communications is needed so badly. People are extremely cynical of communications, because of business communication failures from the likes of  BP, KPMG, Tyco, Enron etc. "Transparency is a strategy and a condition," he noted.

Translated: skip the tag lines, and bring back that human element!

IABC Report: The revolution will be blogged, tagged, and globalized

Walk through the networking area at the IABC International conference here in New Orleans, and you'd be forgiven if you thought you had mistakenly stepped into a new media event. Flat panel screens display models, hubs, portals, feed rooms, and video products that all promise to engage audiences more, track marketing better, and simplify PR and media relations.

In one analysis, this is the fork in the road for for communicators wrestling with the trusty old tools of engagement and the spanky new ones. Topics range from "Is corporate communications a thing of the past" to "Be Heard. Bringing a brand to life." to Building brands and community via e-marketing" to "The good the bad and the unethical." The booths for Melcrum and Ragan Communications, the American and British contenders for social media communicators' hubs are strategically located at different parts of the room. Everything you hear or see seems to have an 'e' factor, a global dimension, or a PR-meets-marketing angle. The lines are blurring. The oxygen of new media fills the room.

Terrific stuff. Invigorating to say the least. The coffee pots aren't conveniently located close to the meeting rooms, but even at 7.30 am, people seem incredibly alert. 

Alan Scott's session on "The Blogging Explosion" had that kind of energy. Scott, the CMO of Dow Jones' Enterprise Media Group laid the usual groundwork with references to the Cluetrain Manifesto etc. The four trends we should be aware of are:

• Commodization & Competitiveness
• The New Message Battleground
• Buyers Reward Authenticity
• Markets are global conversations

What was interesting, and telling, was that the presentation turned into great participation. Questions posed by members of the audience were being answered by others. When Scott referenced Bub Lutz's blog he was corrected by someone from GM.

The blogging explosion, Scott maintained was humanizing the corporation; better, it was providing insight via text mining --gold for CSR, corporate intelligence, PR, HR, Marketing, product groups, and Sales. The disruption (or it it upheaval? Or revolution?) is easy to see because you could buy a camera or car tires without paying any attention to the carefully crafted communications from the marketing, PR and web folk at those companies. You know, folks like us...

It reminded me of the words from song The revolution will not be televised:

The revolution will not go better with Coke.
The revolution will not fight the germs that may cause bad breath.
The revolution will put you in the driver's seat.

And our seat belts are fastened, too.

 

IABC Conference report: 'Straight talk' but no blogs for Motorola's Stu Reed.

Stu Reed, a Motorola VP and a passionate proponent of 'straight talk' checked most of the boxes in communication this morning in a very engaging presentation.

Reed, was feted by IABC as this year's Excel (stands for "Excellence in Communication Leadership") award winner, which is to say he's the cherry on top of communication this year at the international conference. The kind of boss everyone would want to have.

In his straight talk about straight talk, he admitted he started off getting a 'C' in communications when Motorola conducted an audit. His lessons learned are well worth recounting:

• The most important communications should address the 'What's in it for me' factor.
• Communication is pretty simple, but binary: Go/No go.
• Communication is a process, not a fad.
• Don't communicate only when it feels good.
• Be proactive, even when you have to do reactive communications.

But there was one thing that stuck out --remember I said he 'checked most of the boxes.' Stu is still not ready  to launch into blogs. He's holding on to the belief that he would rather make sure his team enhances existing communication processes before adding one more thing.

Controversial? Yes. At a later session this topic came up. You know, the 'what to do if your bosses don't get social media' question. To give Reed credit, he 'gets' the transparency, and the part about responding quickly and directly, and has done a terrific job sans social media. He was also largely talking of employee communications.

But as the critics would put it, engaging your different constituents, be they internal or external, is all about conversations not just communications.

Sidebar:
None of this is to imply that Motorola execs do not blog. Padmasree Warrior, Motorola's executive vice president and chief technology officer, has a wonderful blog called Bits At The Edge. She writes in a style that belies her IT side, with the kind of openness that we sometimes long for in corporate communications. In one post earlier this year titled Mea Culpa Warrior refers to a Dilbert strip about embarrassing blogs.:

I know why I feel blue. It is unadulterated guilt! My blog! I have shamelessly neglected it for almost a month.
Now God is messaging me through Dilbert...
Sigh.

Mea Culpa? Seems like they've got straight talk in their DNA, with or without blogs.

No wonder Stu Reed --and Motorola-- got an A today in New Orleans.

Off to the IABC conference

I'll be covering Marketing Communications and PR at the IABC conference in New Orleans from tomorrow.

No, not live blogging --though who knows what might come up, as this is a hot button issue at this conference! Off to an eventful start --with a fight delay on my favorite airline out of Phoenix.

The latest update is that there's been a security breach at LAX, with people drenched when sprinklers went off.

The other Olympic logo, and what it teaches us about checking with Joe Public first.

  Discussing what constitutes a good logo, is as safe as discussing what makes up a great cup of tea.

In the latter, it's anything from the leaf structure, to the mountain elevation in which the shrub is grown, to the fermemtation process of the dry leaf, the water in which it is brewed, the milk you add, to the ritual (and crockery used) in serving the beverage. Tastes change, and ultimately it's the end user's perception rather than the 'tea taster's' that is relevant.

The Vancouver logo could add some perspective. It wasn't "awarded' to an agency, but was the result of a competition opened to the public, in the early spirit of, you know, user-generated content. There too, people weren't happy. (It was called the 'offspring of the Michelin Man, among other things!)

But there was a difference. In Vancouver, it was the design community that protested most. In the UK it was the hoi polloi that was livid--who said the logo looked like "two characters from The Simpsons engaged in a sexual act!"

Vancouver threw the logo design open to anyone. The brief specified that the logo must."

• Capture and reflect the unique image and spirit of Canada, Vancouver and Whistler
• Capture both Canada'€™s passion for winter sport, and the energy and excitement of the Olympic Winter Games
• Reflect Canada's love and commitment towards our spectacular natural environment
• Embody Canada’s values and aspirations, celebrating our diversity and inclusiveness
• Provide a broad symbolic platform for interpretive storytelling – an emblem that can convey a range of meanings

The winners explained that it represented the "inukshuk" or €œthat which stands in the capacity of a person" -- a sort of a guide to help people find their way through the wilderness. It stands for friendship in Inuktitut.

What does the London logo stand for? It was left to Sebastian Coe, Chairman of the 2012 Olympic commitee, who defending it saying:

"We don't do bland. This is not a bland city"

That's it?

Joe Gomez, from the UK sent me this, calling it an ill-fitting jigsaw, and a broken window that is"jagged and wobbly to look good on their laptops, mobiles and TV screens."

If Sebastian Coe is the equivalent of the 'tea taster,' I would rather trust Joe Public -you know, people like Joe.

Timeshifting and the role of aggregators

An eMarketer report says that podcast listeners think that transferring podcasts to portable players is too complicated and time consuming. In 2006, there were 10 million podcast listeners. That will jump to 25 million next year. The report, based on surveys of people in ten US cities. Weekly listeners' growth is much slower, but steadily increases

This brings me to the point about why technology sometimes cannot keep up with changing lifestyle --in this case a practice we almost take for granted: time-shifting.

Having tried out many software applications, from Juice to iTunes, I know the frustration when downloads move like treacle, or iTunes just won't grab a feed you want. It often reminds me of the time we needed a user manual to operate another time-shifting device -the VCR.

iTunes is dead easy to use, but not every podcast I need is available through the interface. Direct downloads from a podcaster's site involves that extra step, and if they aren't using a good aggregator, the bandwidth may be terrible.

Which is where good aggregators come into play. Services such as LibSyn (stands for Liberated Syndication!) make it very easy, at a nominal fee.

Googled someone lately?

My post ("Googling as due diligence") made me wonder how often we communicators use Search as due diligence. Now you can tell us!

As in previous one-minute surveys, we'll report the results at ValleyPRBlog (Don't worry, you won't be asked for personal information!)

Take the quick survey here.

Awaiting Release of BBC's Alan Johnston

Alan, our hopes soar as we await your release.

Alan, a BBC correspondent, was kidnapped more than three months ago.