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How To Generate Buzz

December 20th, 2011

In today’s media-savvy world, one of the most important things you can do to increase your opportunities is to generate buzz. There are a number of activities you can undertake to increase your public perception and generate the kind of buzz that has the potential to expose you and your brand to new revenue opportunities. I say, “has the potential” because the unfortunate reality of this method is that there are no guarantees that generating buzz will generate business. But the other realities are that 1) there is more chance that increased buzz will present you with chances to generate business and 2) you can do a lot of this work yourself so at least your activities don’t have to be expensive.

All of your activities will relate around media — specifically you’ll be dealing with both public media (newspaper, radio, TV news shows, etc.) and private media (blogs and social media sites). Interestingly, the two have a symbiotic relationship — public media will increase your blog readership and your blogging will entice public media to cover you.

Creating the actual blog is easy. Just go to www.wordpress.com and register for a free account. Then contact an administrator to build your initial site and host it for you. You could do that yourself but since you most likely have no idea what you’re doing, I suggest you find someone to help you. You want to look for someone who is knowledgeable, responsive, and inexpensive.

Setting the blog up is the easy part. What’s harder is having something worthwhile to say day after day and week after week. There’s not much I can do to help you with this except to suggest that you’ll grow into it over time as you experiment with what works and what doesn’t and as you begin to find your own unique voice. Things I can tell you from experience is that consistency is critical, shorter posts (two pages max) are better than complicated, multi-part documents, and a personal view or revelation is better received than a pure business-like essay. Most important, be sure to write about things that both interest and help your audience instead of posting updates about what you or your company has been up to lately.

I’m too impatient to wait for readers to find my blog on their own, and I’m neither popular enough nor presumptuous enough to believe people care about what I write enough to search me down, so I chose to send my blog out to an ever-growing list of readers. This adds some expense and effort but I believe it’s well worth it in reader volume. Still, most bloggers just post their data and hope the rest of the world beats a path to their literary mousetrap. I know many bloggers think my technique is akin to spamming but it works for me.

Because my entire strategy is built around getting people to read my blog (and then hire me to speak at their conferences and then hire my firm to build their brands), I use the other social media sites (specifically LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook) to generate traffic to my blog. For that reason, I accept almost every single person who invites me to join their SM rosters and I post to those sites with the goal of generating interest in who I am and what I write about.

To make life a little easier, I use www.ping.fm to send my messages to all three sites simultaneously. To make my Twitter management as painless as possible, I use TweetDeck to segregate both my followers and those I follow so I can continue to accept and “refollow” anyone who wants to follow me while having immediate access to the tweets of those I care most about. And I’ve ended any concern about whom I accept on Facebook by accepting the fact that I use the site for business, not as a personal communication device.

Once you’ve established your blog — both technically and as part of your weekly To-do list — the next activity is to create podcasts and post the videos on YouTube. An oft-repeated statistic is that YouTube is currently the world’s second most visited search engine (after its parent, Google) and soon its volume of searches will outpace Google itself. Because different people consume information in different ways, these video posts can be simple re-reads of your written posts or new content that takes advantage of the video format (you can show examples of your points, for example, or do magic tricks or hand puppets or whatever else you think will add interest).

These activities may seem overwhelming, but they’re really not. They just require a little bit of knowledge, a commitment of time to both learn the techniques and create the content, and the discipline to do them time after time, week after week. But after a couple of months of activity, you’ll have enough critical mass of content established online to undertake stage two — pursuing public media.

Here’s where you’re going to reach out to various reporters and other bloggers to get them to write about you and direct people to your online persona. The easiest way to do this is to simply call them. Consider your public relations outreach to be a daily part of your new business cold-calling activities and set aside the time to establish relationships with reporters and bloggers. Once they know who you are and what you do, they’ll be much more likely to want to include you in their stories and come to you for information.

Here are a few rules to keep in mind when dealing with reporters:

1.    Never lie to them. Even in today’s shifting journalistic environment when standards are dropping faster than a hooker’s panties, most journalists still live and die by their reputations. The worst thing that can happen to a reporter (other than being fired) is for their editor to have to print a retraction because they got something wrong. If you don’t know an answer, either say so or change the subject. Don’t make it up.

2.    Ever notice how reporters tend to quote the same people over and over? Every wonder how you can become one of those people? Make yourself available to the reporter when they want to write about you and when they don’t. Your goal is not to generate lines in the paper or minutes on air but to build a relationship with the reporters so they come to think of you as the expert in your specific field. That way, they’ll use you as a research source and will be much more likely to think of you when they need a quote or an example.

3.    Take them to lunch. These are the four magic words of PR as far as I’m concerned and a great way to establish a relationship that’ll pay off many times over. And, by the way, don’t only take working reporters to lunch. Because their world is so volatile, reporters live in a very unstable environment right now. If they are unlucky enough to be laid off, they find it an added indignity to be dropped by all of the fair-weather friends who used them when they had a public outlet but no longer see any value in the relationship. Remember that many reporters will be back in the public reporting sector sooner or later. They will certainly remember those who were supportive when things were tough. They’ll also remember who stiffed them. Who would you rather be?

Your bottom line should be to generate as much interest in you and your activities as possible. While there are no direct metrics to extrapolate how many blog readers or magazine articles it takes to generate additional income, a good rule of thumb is the more the merrier. Work hard to make your professional persona ubiquitous and it will pay off in perception and interest.

The other day the CEO of one our largest clients was sitting in my conference room discussing a project he wanted us to do for him. While he was talking, his phone rang and he glanced at the screen. “I’m sorry,” he said, “but it’s one of my board members. Pardon me while I take this.” During the conversation, he mentioned to the board member that he was in my office talking to me about the new project. “Oh, you know Bruce?” he asked the person on the phone. “Do you know him from when he presented at our board meeting?” He listened. “Oh, you know him from his blog.”

Here’s the beauty part: My client and I were just talking about us starting a robust social media program for him and now he saw the direct benefit of what we do. I was no longer a vendor selling a service but an expert who clearly practices what he preaches. I don’t yet know what the financial result of the project will be and there’s no reason to believe that we wouldn’t have gotten the project without the unplanned interaction but it certainly helped sell my point of view.

These sorts of things happen to me all the time. With a little work, they can happen to you, too.

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Learning From Creatures, Colleges, and Companies.

December 12th, 2011

My daughter sent her college applications out a couple of months ago and is waiting for her acceptance letters to arrive in the mail. So far she’s received two green lights and no turndowns so I’m proud to report she’s two for two.

She wrote her college application essays about her love of photography and the environment. She talked about taking her camera, nicknamed Nick Canon (it’s a Canon SLR, get it?) on nature hikes and how she’s going to choose her school not just for its academic offering but also for its natural surroundings.

Yesterday she texted me a copy of the acceptance letter she received from one of the schools. In the margins of the laser printed form letter an admissions counselor scrawled in longhand, “You and Nick Canon are going to enjoy the scenery at COLLEGE.”

How smart is that? Not only does the customized letter show that someone actually read her essay and paid attention, but those 12 words also created all kinds of warm and fuzzies. All of a sudden, a school that was in the bottom half of her desirability list leapfrogged to the top three on the list.

Scientists have been researching why users are so addicted to their smartphones and Blackberries (it’s no surprise they’re called “Crackberries”). What they’ve found is that every little “ding” stimulates a shot of dopamine into the bloodstream of the users. You can almost hear Sally Field exclaim, “You like me. You really like me” every time the phone rings. It’s such a powerful charge that Apple has recently exploited it further with the iPhone 4S’ Siri app. Each time the phone does your bidding and answers affirmatively with your name, it’s a satisfying and fulfilling experience.

Lighted doorsills on cars. Social networking sites that send you an email when someone posts your photo. Restaurateurs who bring you a complimentary amuse-bouche or after dinner drink. Beautifully designed products that make you smile each time you look at them. Doctors and nurses who take a little extra time to sit and talk with you about your health and your lifestyle. People who use your name when they speak to you. Pets who love you unconditionally.

Each of these uncommon delights gives us a little “Atta boy” or “Atta girl” that reminds us that we matter. Each one makes us feel good about ourselves. Each one makes us want to go back for more.

Marshall McLuhan said, “The Medium is the Message.” What we’re discovering is that not only is the medium the message, but the message is also the medium. And if done properly, both of them are the massage – specifically for our egos.

Thanks to computerization and technology, most products we buy are very good at doing what they’re supposed to do. For example, when was the last time you had a television set that broke? TVs have become so reliable that the industry had to invent an entirely new type of TV – the flat screen – just to keep us buying them. Apple is so accomplished at regularly upgrading their products to create desire that you don’t really buy their goods, you subscribe to them. All of a sudden, a product’s popularity isn’t just measured by its functionality, but by how that product makes us feel about ourselves. If we feel welcomed, pampered, pleased, delighted, we buy. If we feel validated, we buy a lot.

I don’t think most people like rats. They can be dirty, dangerous, and destructive. Throughout history the rodents have carried numerous diseases and have been responsible for immeasurable human suffering through plagues and pestilence. Just a glimpse of the rodents’ beady little eyes, gruff gray fur, and scrabbly-skinny tails provokes fear and loathing.

According to Wikipedia, “rodents have sharp incisors that they use to gnaw wood, break into food, and bite predators.” And the family of common rodents includes not just rats but mice, porcupines, beavers, guinea pigs, hamsters, and squirrels as well. That means that squirrels and rats are related. So why do people hate rats but think squirrels are cute?

Ah, it’s the distinct differences between the two that make all the difference. While rats have those gross, scaly tails, squirrels have broad, fluffy ones. Rats look matted and mangy. Squirrels have thick, luxuriant fur. A park full of squirrels is delightful. A park full of rats? Disgusting! Rats have those aforementioned beady eyes. Squirrels have big, shiny eyes. In fact, the dimensions of a squirrel’s face are similar to that of a human baby.

In other words, rats gross us out while squirrels appeal to our maternal and paternal instincts and make us feel good about ourselves. And therefore, them.

So has evolution crowned squirrels as the original branding gurus? You’ve never heard anyone described as a “dirty squirrel,” have you? How about a “squirrel fink”? No one’s ever “squirreled out a friend,” have they? And when was the last time a bad situation was described as “squirrels deserting a sinking ship”?

No, it’s the rats that got the bad rap. And the squirrels — like other savvy creatures, colleges, and companies — get all the peanuts.

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The Three Goals for a Successful Blog Post

December 5th, 2011

The other day Patrick sent an email suggesting that I link my blog email titles to my actual blog at http://www.TurkelTalks.com . That way, readers could add the posts they’re interested in to their InstaPaper accounts and read them at their leisure. Post my blog to my blog so readers can find my blog? Who knew?

Remember when I wrote that “I have no idea what I’m doing”? Well there’s the proof. Lucky for me, Patrick cared enough to help me get this blogging thing a little closer to right.

When I was a kid, my folks had a copy of the Whole Earth Catalog laying on the coffee table in the living room and I used to spend a lot of time sitting cross-legged on the rug paging through the book. I loved the collagey, hand-assembled aesthetic that suggested anyone could do this. And no matter how many times I thumbed through the book, I always discovered something new to look at.

I also remember reading Abbie Hoffman’s Steal This Book and thinking about what great practical jokes his insurrection techniques would make. I was reminded of this the other day listening to NPR. One of the organizers of “Occupy Wall Street” suggested that consumers should take the self-addressed stamped envelopes they get with credit card applications and mail them back with weights in them to cost the credit card companies money. Hey!! THAT was in Hoffman’s book. Clearly I wasn’t the only one who read it and paid attention.

It dawned on me that today’s Internet communications are just an amped up, over caffeinated, technologically powered version of what came before – a great sharing of information between people, most of whom will never meet each other.

Just look at this blog. While it appears to be the work of one person, it’s actually the joint effort of an entire community that many of you have contributed to:

Patrick helped me link to InstaPaper.

Three different Davids, Stella, Mike, and Seth have suggested plenty of subjects for me to write about.

Gually keeps me typo-free. Werner keeps the blog operating. Eblis keeps the network singing. Zoila pays the bills.

Vilma, Seth, Henry, and Tim generate lots of comments and conversation.

Jeanna, Yvette, and Lyan post links on Twitter.

And all of you keep the blog’s critical mass growing by reading the posts and forwarding them to your friends and coworkers (11,255 at last count) who then sign up to receive it as well. Plus, all the notes and comments I get are a great impetus for me to keep on writing by reminding me that I’m not just yelling into an empty canyon.

Besides the operation of the blog itself, lots of people have been involved in activities surrounding the posts:

The blog has generated speaking opportunities. Luis, Mike, Andrea, Mark, Meryl, and many more have invited me to present my ideas on subjects we’ve talked about here.

The blog has reunited old friends. Susan and Bill read what I wrote and got back in touch years after we last spoke.

The blog has created new friends. Mike, Marcelo, Lisa, and Steve all started conversations based on what they read.

The blog has created business. Lisa, Stephen, Bern, and Jeff came to our agency thanks to what they learned about us.

And hopefully, besides being entertained, some of you have found useful ideas buried in these pages that you’ve used to make your business – or your life – better.

So while the blog post Patrick loaded to his InstaPaper account probably won’t be around as long as the Whole Earth Catalog or Steal This Book, as long as you (and Patrick) enjoy the time you spend here then we’ve done good work together.

When people ask me what I’m trying to achieve with this blog, three words come to mind. I want my words – and everybody’s efforts – to be useful, enjoyable, and valuable. After all, time is money. As my friend Randy Gage posted on Twitter the other day, “You know how you feel when someone steals your money? That’s how you should feel when they try to steal your time.” I always want the time you spend here to be worth your while.

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How Light Can You Travel?

November 28th, 2011

Those of you who know me or have been reading this blog for a while know that I am obsessed with traveling light. In my mind, there are only two types of luggage: carry-on and lost. I prefer the first kind.

I’m very careful with what I carry and how I carry it. I prowl camping stores for folding toothbrushes and smaller and smaller bags. I constantly try to pare down the electronics I need for presentations and entertainment. I look for new ways to mix and match what I wear for meetings and sightseeing. And I experiment with new folding and packing techniques to take up as little space as possible.

As I said, I’m a little obsessed. So obsessed that some of my tips and tricks were reported in an article that was reprinted around the world. And speaking of around the world, my wife and I spent five days in Austria for a friend’s incredible 50th birthday party celebration, chock-full of cocktail parties AND even a black tie event, and we did it all with carry-ons. A few folks who unwittingly donated their luggage to Heathrow’s dread Terminal Five showed up at the formal in the blue jeans and tee shirts they had traveled in, but it wasn’t us. And just last month we spent 11 days on a trip that included two presentations, three business meetings, and a week of vacation, and again we managed the whole thing with carry-on bags only.

But the other day, as I was getting ready for a business trip to New York and Greenwich, I saw a Twitter post from my friend, Peter Shankman, that read, “Doing a 24-hr trip tomorrow, EWR to LAX, one speech, then home. Taking only my @scottevest – LOVE that.” and I thought, “I have one of those, I can do that, too.” So I accepted his unchallenged challenge and edited my minimal travel kit down even further. (Yes Mom, if all my friends jumped off the roof, I would too).

The morning I wrote this article, I left my house with just the jacket and the clothes on my back. I left my laptop in my briefcase, replaced by the iPad I’m composing this post on. And yes, I do prefer reading actual books to scanning digital text – and when I’m at home, that’s what I do. But I’m sure the subject of the book I’m reading won’t mind if I continue trying to decipher his philosophy on my iPad.

To carry as little as possible, I didn’t even bring my beloved noise canceling headphones or Bluetooth keyboard. Instead, I’m listening to Dave Matthews on earbuds and actually typing this post on the iPad’s glass keyboard, something I thought I’d never do. Oh, the sacrifice! Other electronics stuffed into the many pockets of my jacket include my cell phone, a cable to connect to a projector, and the smallest charger I could find.

My toilet kit is just as sparse – a folding toothbrush, tiny travel tube of toothpaste, a disposable razor, and some gel deodorant in an itty-bitty ziplock bag. That’s it. I’ll use hotel soap and shampoo and shave with their moisturizer (don’t worry, regardless of what the TV ads say, shaving cream is just slippery soap anyway). I thought about putting a cologne-soaked cotton ball in another tiny ziplock bag, but c’mon, that’s too precious, even for me. I’ll have to settle for smelling like soap.

Since I set off on my quest to travel as light as possible, I’ve pretty much reduced my wardrobe to black, gray, and blue. That way, everything matches no matter what I put on. I was explaining this to a friend the other day and he asked if people ever notice that I mostly wear the same thing all the time. “No one’s ever noticed or said a word,” I answered. My wife, who sees me almost everyday, remarked that I do not in fact wear the same things – which both proves my point and shows how little it matters. After all, if the one person in the entire world I most want to look good for hasn’t noticed, why would I care what anyone else thinks?

I’ll spare you the nitty-gritty details about fresh clothes and laundry, but basically the minimalist traveler has three options: carry spare underwear, socks, and a tee shirt for each day you’re away; wear your unmentionables for days in a row (yuck); or choose quick-drying versions and wash them in the hotel shower at night. After years of experimentation, I’m partial to ExOfficio’s travel skivvies and SmartWool’s base layer black pullovers, but you can find lots of different brands online and see which you like best.

Lucky for me, I don’t run on Wednesdays so packing jogging gear this time wasn’t an issue. Even though I’ve gotten my workout kit reduced to a thin little bundle, thanks mostly to the Nike Free running shoes that have no heel cup and therefore crush down to little more than the height of their soles, I’m not sure how I’d be able to bring that stuff without a small bag at my side. If you’ve got some solutions, I’m eager to hear them.

What else? A pile of business cards doesn’t take up much pocket space. Neither does a small sketchpad, two pens, or a few harmonicas, although I concede it’s a good thing I don’t play the cello. I don’t need a belt because I wear my pullover untucked (quicker through security, too). My eyeglasses have auto-tint lenses so I don’t need sunglasses (I told you I was obsessed), my keys are locked in the trunk of my car, and my only jewelry is my wedding ring. Even my wallet is edited down to two charge cards (business and personal), ATM, two insurance cards (auto and health), and my driver’s license. That’s my entire travel inventory.

The real secret to all this, besides my obsessive-compulsive tendency, of course, is the technical jacket by Scott e Vest. It’s got enough zippered and Velcro pockets and pouches to please a Sherpa. If I was willing to shoulder the added weight, I could probably schlep along the entire World Book encyclopedia and 50 pounds of goat chow. The other secret is a hard-earned, Zen-like acceptance that we don’t need most of the crap we dutifully tote along. Truth is, walking through an airport without carrying anything at all is a truly liberating experience and something I’ll bet you have never done.

Of course, like most obsessions, my need to travel light just gets more and more intense with every high. What I’ve discovered is that my good time friends – the camping toothbrushes and quick-drying underwear – turned out to be the entry drugs of the light-travel addicted. Worse, mainlining a Scott e Vest jacket and quick-dry drawers only satisfies for so long.

Arnie Gellman turned me on to the Jack Reacher action novels by Lee Child. Reacher is a retired military policeman who travels around the country with just a folding toothbrush and an ATM card – no charge card, no cell phone, no nothing. When he gets hungry, he eats. When he gets tired, he sleeps. And when his clothes get dirty, he buys new duds and leaves the old ones in the trashcan by the clothing store’s fitting room.

I have seen the future. And it’s even lighter.

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How To Make Money From Blogging.

November 22nd, 2011

It was in middle school literature classes that literary tools such as onomatopoeia, sarcasm, and symbolism, were first introduced. I had already learned about onomatopoeia from Mad magazine where the sound effects balloon blasting out of a shotgun in a saloon read, “BARROOM!!” I learned sarcasm from my brother. I never quite got the hang of symbolism.

During classroom critiques, our teacher would point out that when the author used a snake, that character was not really a snake. Instead, it represented evil. “Jeez Louise,” I thought (or something symbolically similar to that), if they wanted it to be evil, why didn’t they just name the character “evil,” instead of confusing everyone with the damn snake?

But now that I’m all grown up I want to impress you with all the fancy editorial techniques at my disposal, including symbolism. So let me be clear, this particular post is written about blogs, I talk about blogs, and the ideas will work on blogs. But it’s not about blogs, if you get my thrust (nudge nudge, wink wink). The blog is merely the symbolic device.

Most people who watch beer commercials hate them. They say beer commercials are sexist, offensive, and stupid. Beer commercials play to the lowest common denominator. Beer commercials do nothing for them.

You know who says that? People who don’t buy beer.

Beer commercials are aimed at the folks who do all the beer buying. According to a CBS study, 64% of American adults regularly drink alcohol. Of those, UCLA says 5% of beer drinkers consume 53% of all beer sold. And those beer-drinking guys like those ads.

A couple of years ago I was invited to substitute teach in a marketing class. One of the students asked me what I thought made a good ad. I said something about an engaging visual and a powerful message that caused an emotional response in the reader, hopefully strong enough to enhance desire and stimulate purchase.

The student said that my explanation was different than what their instructor had said. Her theory was that an ad was good if an alien who just stepped out of a spacecraft could understand it.

WTF??!!

Since when do space aliens speak English? Since when do they have mouths to drink beer, feet to wear sneakers, or whatever else they would need in order to consume the product being advertised? And besides, who’s ever heard of space aliens carrying cash or credit cards?

Now let’s think about your blog. Let’s say you have 10,000 subscribers but only 20 of them matter. After all, I already like you. And if I owned a one hundred million dollar company with a $500,000 budget for whatever it is you do, I would hire you in a heartbeat. Really I would. Scout’s honor.

But I don’t.

So if you want to make money, maybe the folks who can hire you (and the people they listen to) are the only readers who ultimately matter.

Want to have fun? Write your blogs for all your readers. Want to make money? Write your blogs for the people who make the decisions about where to plunk down that half million bucks.

The rest of us give you lots of “atta-boys,” make you feel good, and tell you what a gifted writer you are. But last time I checked, your mortgage company won’t accept compliments in lieu of cash. Or beer, for that matter.

If your blog exists to help you make money then what matters most is what the people who can become customers think. And if you aim your prose directly at them, they’ll be much more likely to respond the way you’d like.

But of course I’m not just talking about blogs, am I? Because the blog is just a literary device that represents other, more important, matters. What does the blog represent, you might ask? Sorry, I can’t tell you. Symbolism just works that way.

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Can Any Good Come From the Horrors at Penn State?

November 15th, 2011

Last week we talked about people and companies who have botched their brands, such as Toyota, Lightsquared, and Herman Cain, and companies who managed crises superbly, including Tylenol and Ferrari (TurkelTalks: They Never Even Saw It Coming). But who knew that an even bigger – and more horrific – story was brewing with the almost unimaginable allegations of child molestation and bureaucratic disinterest at Penn State? Many of the responses I received through the blog, and all of the responses that came as direct e-mails, asked what Penn State should and could do to rescue their brand.

The simple answer is that the only thing they can do to protect the institution is to not try to protect the institution. All the powers that be at Penn State can really do is take care of the children who have been harmed and try to ensure that these horrors won’t happen again.

But the bigger question is, what can we all do to help make children safe in our society? And while changing our institutions and our mores to protect our kids is an enormous and never-ending undertaking, there is something we can all do immediately.

Right now there are about six million children in the United States who have life-threatening food allergy. Sarah Boudreau-Romano is a pediatric allergist and mother of four children, three of whom have food allergies. As part of her life calling, she has created a blog to help educate the world about the reality and seriousness of food allergy and to help support those families who live with this 24/7. Dr. Boudreau-Romano just uploaded a blog post that explains a new piece of bipartisan legislature drafted by Senator Durbin and Senator Kirk that will allow schools access to injectable epinephrine in the case of a severe allergic reaction.

So while the plight of child welfare seems almost overwhelming in this day and age, here’s something we can do to make children safer.

Dr. Boudreau-Romano’s blog was nominated to the Circle of Moms’ Top 25 Food Allergy Blogs and is gaining popularity every day. With your help we can push her blog to the top of the list and build the kind of credibility and critical mass she needs to further champion the legislation on Capitol Hill.

Here’s the site link: TheAllergistMom.com  (you can vote by clicking the pink badge to the right of the site). Or you can go directly to the voting link HERE. And if you’re active on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or anywhere else online, why not pass this story – and the link – on to your universe of friends and contacts? We’ll harness the power of geometric progression just like the old Fabergé Organics Shampoo commercial – “They’ll tell two friends, and they’ll tell two friends, and so on and so on and so on.”

Just in case you’re wondering, I don’t have any pharmaceutical clients and neither of my children have food allergies (okay, my son doesn’t eat peanut butter – but it’s not a health issue!). But if just a small percentage of you (my 11,255 enlightened readers) click on the site and vote for Dr. Boudreau-Romano’s blog, we can harness the power of the Internet to make our country just a bit safer for our children.

That certainly won’t help JoePa or the Nittany Lions rescue their brand, but it will help at least six million children and their parents. Pretty damn good results for a few seconds’ effort.

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They Never Even Saw It Coming. Or, Five Steps To Save Your Brand.

November 7th, 2011

We’ve all seen the famous scene in Casablanca where Captain Renault reacts to the graft taking place right under his watch. “I’m shocked, SHOCKED, to find that gambling is going on in here!” he says as the croupier hands him a pile of money. The movie was a prescient statement about today’s world where business and political leaders are seemingly shocked by events that they knew about and consequences that they should have known were coming.

A few weeks ago I wrote about hedge fund billionaire Phil Falcone and his ongoing battle with AT&T and other cellular communications companies. While Falcone may be in the right, poor handling of his public persona and private battles conspired to help him snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Where some media training and a strategically aggressive communications campaign could have changed his situation, now he very well might watch a billion-dollar investment waste away to nothing.

How about Herman Cain? Just a month ago this rising political star was the darling of the Republican Party, now he’s watching his poll numbers, and his future, swirl around and down the toilet of public opinion.

It was a little more than a week ago that the news broke that Cain was accused of sexual harassment when he was president of the National Restaurant Association. At the time, his response was that that he knew nothing about the claims and the rumors were patently untrue. But on Thursday word came out that Cain had actually paid $45,000 to settle the claims of one of his accusers. $45,000 cash! Kind of hard to forget about that, eh?

In a defense of sorts, campaign spokesman J.D. Gordon said that the campaign had raised $1.2 million since news of the allegations. “Mr. Cain’s supporters around the country have rallied around him…as we battle this appalling smear campaign.” Gordon’s suggestion, of course, is that the $1.2 million is proof positive that Cain couldn’t possibly be guilty. Needless to say, one thing has nothing to do with the other.

“They have not followed the cardinal rule of Crisis Management 101,” said Steve Caldiera, who worked for Mr. Cain at the restaurant association and says he’s a friend. “Above all, you get everything out there right away.”

The worst part is, there was no need for either of these disasters. If companies and candidates would simply practice effective Brand Aid, they’d build strong brands that would resonate with their consumers and protect their futures.

Tylenol Did It. Toyota Didn’t.

Corrupted Tylenol products were accused of poisoning their customers, yet thanks to a well-orchestrated marketing response, Tylenol created the textbook case for rescuing a damaged brand. And when five Ferrari 458 supercars burst into spontaneous fireballs, the Italian company’s quick and aggressive response not only rescued their brand but added value directly to their bottom line. Toyota, on the other hand, botched their unintended acceleration problem so badly that even though experts later exonerated the car company of any wrongdoing, estimates are their brand lost over a billion dollars in value.

The steps for rescuing an endangered brand are easy to recite but not so easy to implement. Still, with some advance planning and creativity, profitable brands can build an effective response to most any bad news that comes their way. Or as they used to say about naughty congressmen, bad news doesn’t matter unless you’re caught in bed with a live boy or a dead girl.

Five Steps To Save Your Brand.

1. Confess. Steve Caldiera was right. You must get all the information in front of the public as quickly as possible. Just like obsessively tormenting a painful cavity with your tongue, nothing is worse than bad information that oozes out slowly. Instead, it’s crucial to step up to the plate, admit all your wrongdoings, and move on. If the public needs to hear bad news, they need to hear it from you. Once.

2. Define. As my good friend Ray Ruga constantly reminds me, define your issue before someone else does. Nature abhors a vacuum and the competition is just waiting for the opportunity to fill empty airspace with negative comments. Decide on your best strategy and stick to it.

3. Act. Fix the problem permanently and unequivocally. Tylenol took all their products off the shelves, not just the potentially tainted bottles. Ferrari replaced every damaged car with a brand new vehicle regardless of mileage or ownership status. Besides demonstrating that you care, your customers can’t effectively complain about problems that no longer exist.

4. Apologize. Apologize honestly, sincerely, and completely. “I’m sorry if you were upset” is not an apology. If your words of remorse contain “if” or “but,” chances are you’re not being as contrite as you should.

5. Relate. Finally, make sure that your entire brand mitigation program appeals to your audience’s emotional side. As we discussed in the previous post, Falcone failed because his explanations were full of technical “speeds and feeds” details while his competition was talking about farmers not being able to produce food and planes falling out of the sky. Remember that people make decisions based on their emotions and justify those decisions with facts. Brands that forget this simple truism do so at their own peril.

Remember to act quickly and decisively. Today’s 24-hour news cycle doesn’t leave any opportunity to wait or delay. Your brand reclamation program should be crafted long in advance and sit patiently on the shelf next to the fire extinguisher. You never know which one you’ll need to save your life.

And above all, remember to call us to help build your brand value. After all, crafting powerful and successful brands is exactly what we do.

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Define Your Issue Mind Map

October 30th, 2011

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How To Get A Job.

October 30th, 2011

Last week I wrote a bit about The Real Value of Tourism and its effect on the world. Specifically I wanted to explain my thoughts on how travel gives us a better understanding of cultures around us and how the tourism industry creates jobs.

After I published my post, I read one of my go-to blogs, Who Will Lead? by my friend John Calia. John was writing about the Occupy Wall Street movement and about how they need to transition their brand message from a general, unfocused protest to a directed force. John wrote this about the protesters:

“I’m in the camp that thinks they should be marching on Washington. But where specifically? The White House? The Capitol? The Fed? The Department of Treasury? Too complicated. Let’s just occupy Wall Street. Another obvious observation: they have worked hard and played by the rules and feel screwed by the system. They need jobs.

But, here’s the problem. The jobs aren’t coming back and it has nothing to do with Wall Street. It has to do with technology and the Internet in particular. Have you been to an airport lately? If you have, you probably checked in to your flight at a kiosk which spit out a boarding pass and directed you to your gate. Remember how many people it used to take to check you in? Do you think those people are getting their jobs back?

…The Internet has disrupted a lot of old methods of doing business. Thousands, if not millions, of jobs have vanished by way of the use of RFID technology, websites that have replaced travel agents, retail stores, schools and data centers.

…The fact is that email destroyed the post office, Netflix destroyed Blockbuster and the guys who invented that airport kiosk destroyed all those airport jobs. And, all of us are willing participants. Oh, and by the way, if you have an iPhone, you can even skip the airport kiosk. How’s that for power in the palm of your hands?”

Is John right? Has the technology we know and love replaced the jobs we need? It used to be easier to feel smug because technology was only replacing less skilled jobs — such as the airport tickets John wrote about. But now that radiologists in the US are losing their jobs to radiologists in India reading X-rays over the Internet, stockbrokers are losing their jobs to online trading services, and musicians are finding less and less opportunities to play for pay thanks to easy access to free music, the problem is cutting a swath across blue and white collar workers alike.

Even web designers who were taking jobs from older, traditional advertising designers just five years ago are finding their jobs are now disappearing thanks to the proliferation of do-it-yourself websites in a box. And speaking of boxes, now that Pandora’s has been open, we can’t go back to the way it was. Or to completely mix my metaphors, you can’t put the toothpaste back in the tube.

Of course, technology has created so many new jobs that it’s become cliché to say that the 10 most important jobs of the future don’t even exist today. The major difference is that workers will no longer have one or two careers over their entire working lives. Instead, futurists suggest that having 10 – 20 different jobs in a lifetime will be the norm. And even the word “job” might be the wrong description. Thinkers from Tom Peters to Seth Godin all suggest that the worker of the future won’t have a job but will be an independent contractor, using their laptop and Internet connection to become their own factory of one.

Imagine what this will do for higher education. In the past, a liberal arts education was considered de rigueur. Students weren’t taught specific job skills; instead, they were taught how to think and how to learn. Then, thanks to swelling student populations and a shrinking job market, vocational education of a sort became the norm. But instead of studying to be air conditioning mechanics, truck drivers or plumbers, students studied to be lawyers, computer engineers, and doctors. Upscale jobs to be sure, but vocational training just the same.

But how can you train for a specific opportunity if you don’t feel confident that your skills will be relevant when you graduate, let alone when you retire? And how do you even apply to college when the field you’re planning on studying hasn’t even been created? Instead, we may find that the liberal arts — and a corresponding general math, engineering, and science rigor — become popular once again as students realize they need be versed in fundamentals and well-prepared for a lifetime of learning.

Being an unflappable optimist, I see this current situation as a powerful readjustment to the better as we move forward into the Brave New World digital technology is hurtling straight at us. And firmly believing that you have to know where you’ve been in order to figure out where you’re going, I see powerful parallels for our time in many of the technological revolutions of the past, from Guttenberg to Whitney, Copernicus to Einstein.

Opposable thumbs seemed to have been the adaptation our distant ancestors needed to thrive. Clearly a flexible, chameleon-like ability will become the crucial Darwinian life skill of our time. Because as McCluhan’s medium becomes the message, the adaptive change we need today will be the ability to change and adapt.

I’m looking forward to seeing how the 900+ “Occupy” protests around the world evolve their brand messages into one focused demand. I’m even more curious to hear how you will evolve yours.

Why don’t you post a comment and let us all know what you’re thinking?

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The Real Value of Tourism

October 24th, 2011

I spend a lot of time working in the tourism industry so I think about it a lot. But for the past couple weeks my wife and I have been traveling throughout northern Spain and I’ve been living tourism as well.

Because travel is such a normal part of our everyday lives, we seldom stop to think about how significant an industry, and what a world-changer, tourism has become.

It’s not just the fault of our casual thoughts about travel, though. Rather it’s because the industry has never figured out how to demonstrate to the world at large how much commerce it is responsible for. After all, the categories that are included in tourism’s official revenue totals usually include transportation, lodging, and some services (tour guides, for example) but often don’t include most dining, professional services or retail sales. Omitting this last category is especially foolish when you consider that shopping is now recognized as travelers’ number one activity worldwide.

Think back to the last place of interest you traveled to. Maybe it had been a famous battlefield (Gettysburg, say, or Pearl Harbor) or an important maritime community (Barcelona or San Francisco) back in the day. Regardless of its previous claim to fame, now the area probably supports its citizens by attracting tourists. Today its former glory (or infamy) has been replaced by hordes of world citizens in brightly colored tee shirts pulling over-packed wheeled suitcases. But despite the crowds, travel is still so underrated as a source of revenue and taxes that until very recently even the United States government didn’t have an office specifically dedicated to attracting tourism to the country.

That is particularly surprising when you consider that unemployment is one of the most pressing problems the world over, with the US unemployment rate at 9.1% and Spain’s count almost reaching 21%. Not only do travel related businesses create a significant number of jobs, but travel is one of the few industries where a worker can enter reasonably unskilled and emerge a short five or 10 years later as an assistant manager, for example, with a real career path and significant opportunity to responsibly support their family. At home, we call this rags to riches story the American Dream, but it’s actually the dream of aspiring populations all over the world. And thanks to the tourism industry, it can come true.

Tourism is also a relatively “clean” industry. Sure there’s the carbon impact of moving bodies from place to place and the development issues of providing lodging for all those bodies. Compared to mining or manufacturing, however, tourism’s ecological costs are negligible.

But there’s an even more important service that the sector provides in today’s world. Because when we travel to other places around the world, and when people from other countries visit us, the world becomes a smaller, and a friendlier, place. More than 140 years ago, in his classic travelogue Innocents Abroad, Mark Twain explained it this way:

“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.”

I couldn’t have said it better myself. Truth be told, I wouldn’t try.

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