SEPTEMBER 24, 2009

A colleague recently sent around a very interesting BusinessWeek piece about the efforts companies are making towards restoring public trust in their brands. It was, I thought, a great look at how McDonald’s, American Express, and Ford are tackling the core problem of distrust in an era when largesse, recklessness, and complacency among major corporations have led to a financial panic and recession.

While McDonald’s and Ford have primarily improved their public standing by actually improving their products, American Express’ story, I thought, was more interesting because its products aren’t exactly tangible. It, primarily, is in the business of moving money around - a valuable, essential service - but the extent of the average consumer’s interaction with AmEx involves swiping a card at the grocery store and paying up at the end of the month.  The same is true of all credit card companies, really.

So traditionally credit card issuers have competed at the margins. Credit cards are more or less functionally identical, so companies had to lure new customers by touting perks like the security of their cards (AmEx “Blue” cards),  the quality of their customer service (AmEx platinum cards), or the ubiquity of card-accepting merchants (Visa). AmEx even benefited from a false underground rumor of an exclusive “Black” card issued only to celebrities; in response to the rumors, the company actually started issuing a similiar “Centurion” card in 1999. Rewards like cash back and airline miles are other competitive battlegrounds for issuers.

But given the new austerity of the recession and the leeriness of consumers punch drunk from commodity bubbles,  financial panics and record unemployment, AmEx needed a new marketing tack. So it turned to the stalwart of American business mythology - the yeoman entrepreneur, repairing bikes and baking bread in once-vacant storefronts across the nation.

As someone with an entreprenurial bent, I love the ad. I really, really do. I’m incredibly inspired by stories like these, where an economically beleaguered place like Detroit, thanks to plummeting costs of living, attracts artists, entrepreneurs and other risk-takers to rebuild the city. My escapist fantasies usually revolve around moving to places like Baltimore or Cleveland and participating in their ongoing rebirth.

AmEx is right to run campaigns like these on two levels: first, as an emotional matter, I think most Americans are kind of like me - we envy the freedom and the boldness of entrepreneurs, and alignment with those virtues is never a bad thing. But on a more substantive level, the only surefire way to improve America’s moribund corporations is to enable small businesses to mount challenges to their dominance, and American Express’ fate is directly tied to the health of the broader corporate sector.

I would have liked to see more substance in the campaign, though. What concrete actions is the company taking to improve small business’ access to credit? Is it working with Chambers of Commerce in places hard-hit by the recession to offer business tips to would-be entrepreneurs? How else is it promoting OpenForum, its online resource for small businesses? Is it working with governments to remove barriers to business creation? You never find out.

So, big business - if you want my trust, don’t try to align yourself with my values, or sell me on your brand image. I want to know exactly how you can help and what you’ll do in the event you fail to help. Information that doesn’t accomplish one of those two things just isn’t particularly relevant.

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AUGUST 6, 2009

Twitter addicts started off the day with bad news when we learned our favorite micro-blogging site was experiencing service outages early this morning. At first, even Twitter didn’t know what was causing the problem, but soon announced via its blog that it was the target of a denial of service attack. I still am unable to connect to Twitter as I post this and am admittedly experiencing a twinge of withdrawal, but hardly to the extent of the Woot team!

In case you missed the drama, here’s a round-up of posts covering today’s social media apocalypse:

Facebook Down. Twitter Down. Social Media Meltdown.(via Mashable)
Serious Twitter Outage Ongoing, Denial Of Service Attack (Updated)(via TechCrunch)
What Twitter outage means for you (via The Red Tape Chronicles)
Twitter Brought Down by Denial-of-Service Attack(via GigaOM)
Twitter, Facebook, and LiveJournal Down at the Same Time! (Update)(via ReadWriteWeb)

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JULY 29, 2009

In January, when Congress and the Obama administration decided to allocate around $800b for an unprecedented economic stimulus package, the federal government announced its commitment to spending the money in a transparent way, with plenty of opportunity for citizen oversight. Reviews of the administration’s transparency initiatives have been mixed, with commentators of all ideological stripes faulting the President for not following through on a few campaign promises, including a seven-day public comment period for all bills on the President’s desk. But, I think, by any objective measure, the Obama administration has been among the most transparent American administrations in history - not that that’s saying a whole lot.

A few months back, though, I talked about how transparency can come back to bite you politically if the appropriate context is not given for the information disclosed. And it’s happened again - recently, political bloggers seized upon a report from Recovery.gov, the federal government’s searchable database of stimulus projects, suggesting that the feds paid $1.2m for two pounds of frozen ham.

Any reasonable person would look at that and assume there was a typo, or that some key information had not made its way into the report. But our political discourse features more than a few unreasonable people, who assumed the worst: that the federal government had bought ham at $600,000/lb. Luckily, the USDA cleared things up - apparently 760,000 lbs of frozen ham, packaged in 2lb units, were purchased, with the meat going to food banks hit by state budget shortfalls. But, regardless of the perfectly reasonable explanation for the mistake, I wouldn’t be surprised to hear this tale around the Thanksgiving table in a few months.

Jake Brewer writes about the episode at the Sunlight Foundation’s blog, criticizing the USDA for having to resort to a press release, rather than simply disclosing all the information within Recovery.gov. And he’s right - a database of government spending isn’t very useful if relevant details like “quantity purchased” aren’t readily available. But I think this misses the point: you can disclose every fact in the world about a government transaction and still have someone take it out of context, sometimes in a dishonest manner. The episode of the fish passage barriers, from a few months ago, is a perfect illustration of that.

I’m starting to believe that transparency for transparency’s sake is putting the cart before the horse -  what’s needed before transparency can work as a check on government secrecy and power is a cooperative and thoughtful atmosphere, one where an observer’s first instinct in a case like this is “that can’t be right” - not gleeful celebration over having caught one’s political enemies emptying the treasury for a package of frozen ham. We’re not there yet.

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JUNE 30, 2009

Tweetboard is a new application for Twitter that creates “micro forum” discussions on a website by displaying tweets about a topic in a threaded conversation format. It’s still being tested, but from what I’ve seen of the application, it seems like it could be a smart way to add some depth and convenience to blog discussions.

The best applications often see the weakest parts of a service and figure out a simple solution - in this case, the creators of Tweetboard probably saw an opportunity to give tweets some more context by helping users have focused discussions on websites that are connected with their Twitter accounts. Twitter is, after all, a stream of information, which makes it difficult to visualize and track a conversation, especially for archival purposes. Tweetboard allows commenters to publish their comments as a tweet with a link to the location of the Tweetboard conversation. This effectively advertises the conversation in the larger Twitter community and helps drive more traffic to the site using Tweetboard.

With the advent of blogging and microblogging, we’ve seen conversations take the form of comments sections, @ replies and hashtags. Although each method has its own strengths, the threaded discussion format widely adopted by most forums and message boards is arguably the best at managing multi-user conversations. Tweetboard strives to bring more organization to Twitter conversations by adapting the threaded format.

As new web services are developed, we are given new avenues through which to communicate. Unsurprisingly, this can lead to oversaturation and social network fatigue - it is difficult to keep up with multiple profiles on separate sites. However, there has also been a trend towards open profiles. More sites are opening up their API to developers who can explore ways to share information between sites. As these applications form links between social networks and other sites, we get more value out of our online activities. With the link between a blog/website and Twitter through Tweetboard, I can offer my thoughts in a comments section on a blog and then have the conversation fed to my Twitter account, where the subject is then added to the Twitter community’s ever-changing and current mess of topics. Imagine how much more interconnected Twitter’s trending keywords can be if user conversations on other sites are also incorporated: we would probably be able to view busy, active conversations across a greater portion of the internet.

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JUNE 24, 2009

News Corp.’s MySpace is undergoing some major changes this month, and people are wondering what it means for its future. Blogging Stocks painted a dire picture yesterday at “The bloodbath at MySpace continues”. It is reporting that about two-thirds of the global MySpace workforce will be fired, going from 450 to 150 employees. Last week, the company slashed about 30% of the U.S. workforce.

Mashable reports that everyone’s default friend, Tom Anderson, will still have a position and an “ambassador role” with the company, though it comes with a large paycut: Dream Job: MySpace’s Tom Gets $500k Per Year to Stop Coming to Work. He’ll still maintain his profile page and will continue to be the face of the company.

It doesn’t surprise me that MySpace had to make tough decisions to keep its business afloat. It has been struggling to keep up with Facebook in terms of unique visitors and monthly visits all year. If you’re wondering how MySpace’s situation compares to Facebook, it’s a completely different ballgame - Facebook has 850+ employees and is actively hiring!

Social networking sites have become a very popular medium for communication - a daily communication tool for some, and not just 18-24 year olds. I have a profile on MySpace and rarely go to it, but I check Facebook everyday and use the Facebook Blackberry application to update my status and upload mobile pictures when I’m away from my computer. Facebook has always been one step ahead of MySpace. In its infancy, you could only join Facebook if your college was an approved network. The exclusivity made it appealing, and Facebook addiction followed. Facebook kept up the good work by having great user interface and adding fun applications. It seems like MySpace is always playing catch up. In a sense, social networking sites are like cell phone providers: you only really need one. It’s most convenient when the people you talk to most use the same company. Sorry MySpace!

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JUNE 15, 2009

I have failed you, master.

And by master I mean Gayle, the Queen of Social media here at TMG. Last April she talked about this newfangled thing called Twitter and how she was going to shy away from it. At the time I too was going to resist Twitter, but it’s gotten so catchy as more and more of my blogger friends adopted it. I guess if you can’t beat them- join them, ain’t that right, Gayle?

This new social outlet started grew slowly. First, I had an account simply regurgitating the feed from my blog. Then I slowly started to pay attention to some of the conversations out there on the Tweetscape. Twitter for me grew from a feed on my Google Reader to an occasional check of Twitter.com to a TweetDeckwindow at work. Now my addiction is full blown; this past weekend I installed TweetDeck at home so I can monitor Twitter at all times, like one of those resistance fighters staring at The Matrix.

My recent immersion into Twitter has given me new perspective into the expected Twitpocalypse, a bug derived from the unexpected number of Tweets that was poised to crash the entire system. Like Y2K, the bug wasn’t as bad as expected, but it is a sign of how large this new social media medium has grown.

Despite the avoidance of impending Twitter doom, there are signs that Twitter may be reaching a plateau, or even a decline. Numbers charting Twitter’s growthshows that its growth rate is slowing down compared to other social media giants like Facebook.  So maybe Twitter will one day go by the wayside like Friendster, but for now it still remains a viable and groundbreaking form of communication - and I’m a part of it.

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JUNE 9, 2009

When I worked on Capitol Hill many years ago, if you wanted to share your opinion with your member of Congress you needed to sit down and write them an old-fashioned letter or look up their office number in the phone book and call them.   Times have changed, as Roll Call magazine pointed out earlier this week - now, you can contact your Senator directly through Facebook.

Today, lobbying organizations are using Facebook to mobilize supporters, open up discussion about political topics, and facilitate communication directly to Congress.  What used to be a small opening in access to politicians is now a flooded gateway.

I can’t help but think, does this ability to generate mass form letters to Congress or the White House really make a difference?  Personally, I have often supported the ONE campaign by submitting automated emails that are forwarded to President Obama asking him to end world poverty.  I know it makes me feel good to take 30 seconds and weigh in on an issue of great importance, and I hope that I am making a difference.  But am I?  At what point does saturation negate the impact?

I do know that when the first congressional office I worked in was inundated with thousands of form letters about a satellite TV issue, we listened (and griped about having to open all of those envelopes).  Building a collective voice, and the ability to do so quickly and easily, is necessary in today’s swiftly moving news cycle.  As referenced in Roll Call, the Democracy in America Facebook campaign to garner support for Sonia Sotomayor’s nomination to the Supreme Court seems to be working based on numbers.  What are some of the possibilities and pitfalls in this approach, I wonder, especially as it relates to companies and how they use Facebook?

In searching the blogs for an answer, I was intrigued by this example of a successful charitable campaign by Target identified by Su Yuen on her Bitbot blog:

Target wanted to donate US$3 million to charity this year but didn’t want to do it in the traditional way where charities receive the money and a picture of them holding a gigantic mock cheque appears in the papers. They wanted something that would capture the attention of youths on Facebook as well, and hence created a Facebook application on their page. In the application, fans could vote for their favorite charities and at the end of the 2 week campaign, the US $3 million will be split amongst the 10 charities based on the percentage of votes they received. Almost immediately, this campaign has given the charities MORE than enough reason for them to lobby all their supporters to get onto the Target page and vote for them. The campaign is now over but according to Inside Facebook, the campaign garnered 75,000 fans after just 4 days. 

In her conclusion, Su Yuen states:

I know coming up with a good reason for getting people to lobby their friends and organization members for your initiative may be hard as you don’t want it to sound too gimmicky either (and potentially end up ruining your company’s reputation) but if you get it right, you should have a pretty good chance of generating a lot of buzz around your Facebook page.

I would state it even more strongly.  There are some constants in effective communication, no matter the method used, and they include sincerity and transparency.  No matter the volume, the heart of it has to ring true.

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MAY 21, 2009

Last night, I participated in a panel on crisis communications and social media for the Social Media Club of DC’s monthly meeting. It was a lot of fun, and an honor to meet my co-panelists - Dallas Lawrence, head of Levick Communication’s Digital Media Practice; Andy Carvin, Senior Strategist for NPR; and Jon Eick, author of the So Good Blog and Online Brand Manager at New Media Strategies.

I love this topic - how companies can use social media in crisis situations. I thought the panel was valuable because we had a couple of different perspectives - Dallas and me from the agency side (people trying to defuse crises); Andy from the media side (people reporting on crises); and Jon, who represents the agency side at work, and is a detached-social-media-observer through his blog, which focuses on food marketing.

I’ve been reading through the tweets from the event, and the following points raised by the panel seem to have resonated best with the expert social media audience:

• Every negative attack is the start of a conversation.
• Companies get a lot of credit for experimenting with social media- it’s a fairly forgiving community.
• Being a part of the community online from the start can diffuse a crisis before it starts.
• It is much easier to convey the pain of not using social media than explain the benefits of social media to some corporate leaders.
• Don’t forget the importance of using social media internally to communicate with employees.
• Don’t wait till the storm hits - have a plan in place to handle a crisis in advance.
• Don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Not everyone is on Twitter, not everyone is on Facebook.
• You have to be there all the time on a consistent basis for social media to work.
• Not every social media tool is right for every company.
• Don’t feel like you have to have the last word in a dialogue.
• Silence is never an option with crisis communication. Say something, even if you’re saying that you can’t comment.
• Companies should have how-to guide for employees to use social media, not what-not-to-do guide.

Jeffrey Levy summarized the panel at his Government 2.0 blog last night. He talks here about how to use the learnings from last night in a government setting:

[G]overnment agencies badly need to get going with listening strategies.  If we don’t at least know what’s being said in social media channels, we can’t possibly respond.  This goes far beyond traditional newspaper clips.  One of my goals for the near term is to set something up so we know what’s being said about EPA online.

One thing I think gov’t agencies have to be careful of is to ensure that our messages are truthful.  We can’t ever be seen as creating propaganda.  But that doesn’t mean we can’t respond to inaccuracies and tell our story.

Thanks to the excellent, engaged audience, and to the organizers - @valerieelston and @annagabbert!

Here are two videos from the panel:

Six social media steps for crisis communications
How to respond to negative comments to your social media

Dallas and I will be presenting next week - similar show - at the Washington Women in PR’s monthly lunch on 5/27.

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MAY 20, 2009

Call me old-fashioned, but I still prefer to go shopping at an actual store – not online.  I would much rather see/touch/examine what I’m buying before I have it shipped (and I’ve had too many bad experiences with returns).  Yet, I still research products online before heading to the store, to make sure it’s even worth leaving the house for.  Recently, I found window curtains I loved on a store website and was so excited about them until I noticed a bad review (it still amazes me what people actually take the time to review).  And, now, I’m struggling to decide if I should listen to the person I’ve never met or buy the curtains! That got me thinking about how much people allow consumer review sites to influence their decisions.  I read just the other day that Google has now tweaked its searches to pull more from sites like Yelp and LinkedIn.  According to Business Insider, “The idea is to improve people searches and searches for product reviews. Results from reviews sites will now include snippets from actual user-reviews.” 

Consumers have always asked friends and family about products, but, now, frequently rely on perfect strangers, as well.  Yelp, a user review website, boasts that it has over 10.6 million people access its website each month.  In a USA Today article, a chiropractor in LA said he gets 80% of his business from online reviews!  Morning News Beat reported on a shopper survey that stated:“Seven out of ten survey respondents said that they check online product reviews before actually purchasing things, and 62 percent said that they spend at least-a half-hour online each week specifically reading consumer product reviews.” 

Before working at TMG, I used to work for a company similar to Yelp, and working there made it easy to see how important good reviews are to companies.  Customer review sites are forcing businesses to listen to consumers.  Companies that frequent these sites will know what is being said about their products, how to fix any problems, and validate their customer’s concerns.  It’s just another way companies can show that they’re listening. 

Now, would you buy the curtains, or heed the reviewer’s advice?

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MAY 7, 2009

Nothing beats feeling appreciated, and receiving a quick “thank you” is, more than often, all it takes. When I put a lot of thought into a gift for someone and don’t even receive a thank you for it later, I admit that I get very disappointed. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not one of those people that gives in order to receive - I don’t expect a handwritten note or a big production. But a simple “thanks” said aloud is all I’m really looking for. Knowing that someone liked what you gave - or at least appreciated the thoughtfulness - really makes me happy. Apparently many others feel the same way…

The people at smart USA — the car company that famously makes their cars so tiny you could fit two of them in a standard parking space– have recently experienced just how much people appreciate being thanked.

To reward those who had faith in the company early on, patiently waited for their cars to be produced, and bought vehicles, smart USA sent “Emergency Kits” to buyers. These kits each included a thank-you letter and three $5 gift cards to use at well-known coffee, gas, and book retailers. This cost the company a total of $492,440 because it sent kits to every purchaser of the 25,000 cars sold in 2008. The campaign has proven so effective, smart USA plans to keep it around. In addition, the company has chosen not do any traditional advertising.

The director of communications for smart USA, Ken Kettenbeil, thinks that mail has more power than any other media. Ken says, “We have received a lot of positive (consumer) e-mails forwarded from our dealers. We’re getting people thanking us for sending them a thank-you gift.”

With the economy as bad as it is and consumers changing their spending habits and being more selective in their purchases, the “little things” just may be make the difference. If you’re a company, reconsider investing the time (and money) into thanking your consumers for their loyalty. There’s something to the phrase: a little goes a long way.

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