Slow-Jamming Prez Is Height Of Cool

The following article by Vanessa Horwell, Chief Visibility Officer of ThinkInk, originally appeared on Marketing Daily on 05/03/2012.

The first American president to appear on television was Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Speaking at the opening of the 1939 World’s Fair in New York City, he declared the event “open to all mankind.” But for all Roosevelt’s TV-friendly oratory, it wasn’t until 1960 with the election of John F. Kennedy, historians argue, that television fully matured. Used with expert precision, Kennedy became our first “TV president.”

The same technological evolution can be seen with former president Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. Clinton may have been the first president to send an email, but it is Barack Obama, with his social media-savvy Facebook, Twitter and YouTube accounts, that have allowed him to take top honors as the nation’s first “multimedia president.”

Too Cool for School? Not This Prez

It’s that media/tech-savvy distinction that allows Obama to connect with young voters –- better than even the saxophone-playing-Clinton once did. Obama’s presidential “cool” allows him license to use Kennedy’s favorite communications medium in new ways too. On April 24, Obama was the guest-in-chief on "Late Night with Jimmy Fallon" -- where he joined the host in a bit called “Slow-Jam the News,” where current events are put to a relaxed R&B beat.

But humor was only part of Obama’s continuing call to cool. His presence was a superb lesson in public relations.

Obama took the opportunity to connect with Fallon’s college-aged and 20-something viewers to address an issue that is central to their futures -– student loans and mounting debt. The five-minute opener (with nearly 5 million YouTube views when I wrote this post) featured a smiling and hand-waving president who morphed into mocking seriousness. With a bluesy backbeat, the chief jammer began: 

“On July 1st of this year the interest rates on Stafford student loans -- the same loans that many of you use to help pay for college -- are set to double,” he said. …“What we said [to congress] is simple. Now is not the time to make school more expensive for our young people.”

The camera returned to a smile-suppressing Fallon, where he delivered the follow-up line in a raspy, deep voice. “Ooooh yeah. You should listen to the president." 

Public Relations 101: Stay On Message

With performances like that, who needs costly political ads or even stump speeches? Obama chose the student loan topic deliberately. Hours before the live taping, Republican presidential challenger Mitt Romney began backpedaling when it came to his opinions on the “student loan crisis,” first tacitly endorsing the July 1 deadline and then breaking with Republican colleagues to support the president’s call to keep student loan interest rates in check.

Perhaps the Romney campaign would like to blame it on the leap year.

On February 29, at a campaign stop in Ohio, Romney answered a question from a law student that illuminated his position regarding student loans and the need for market forces -- not public handouts -- to determine the fair cost of financial aid.

“The right course for America is for businesses and universities and colleges to compete, and for us to make sure that we provide loans to the extent we possibly can at an interest rate that doesn’t have the taxpayers having to subsidize people who want to go to school,” he said.

That’s an opinion that speaks to the Republican base. But throw in his campaign advisor Eric Fehrnstrom’s Etch a Sketch comment about being able to rewrite political narratives once the general election gets underway and you’re left with a politician edging toward a John Kerry-style flip-flopper.

We still have a long horse race ahead in the game of presidential politics. But Obama’s smooth, humorous and televised quasi-Romney dig will continue to serve him well. Not only does the president rely on a host of media outlets to disseminate his message, he’s skilled at shifting his tone throughout events.

Obama understands that shifting tone is different than shifting message. We’ll have to wait and see if Romney has been properly schooled and if Obama can remember his own lessons come fall.

But for now, I’ll still agree with the Roots rapper Black Thought, who at the end of President Obama’s slow jam session called him the “POTUS (President of the United States) with the mostest.”

Indeed.

The following article by Vanessa Horwell, Chief Visibility Officer of ThinkInk, originally appeared on Marketing Daily on 05/03/2012.

The Cure For the Common Mind Virus: Fewer “Bored” Meetings And Less Pop-Cultural Poo

I beg your pardon? For those of you who are unaware, the title of this post was inspired by a friend – and brilliant branding specialist Bruce Turkel and his Monday musings on what he calls, “mind viruses” – not a sadistic reference to Alzheimer’s or other brain disorders. In everyday speak “mind-viruses” are the modern iteration of water cooler talk or the pop cultural nonsense increasingly crowding out valuable real estate within our collective cerebrums.

Turkel’s post raises the question, how do the words and terms (and TV shows and styles of board room attire and eats and…and…and…) we mindlessly discuss reach that critical mass where they become discussion points? As a marketing professional, Turkel is right in addressing the issue. In other words, he asks, where is the pop cultural discussion “tipping point” and when does something become a “hot topic?”

But as evidenced by his observations gathered from what sounds like far too many of the mindless meetings that I attend – the answer to his question may be less fascinating and more frightening.

So where does this cultural discussion point threshold lie? I’m not sure where in the brain the processing occurs, but I can tell you, it’s not a high standard, and it’s getting disastrously lower by the day.

The fact that many of Turkel’s meetings are littered with so much verbal rubbish suggests that more should be done to keep references to the Kardashians, Lindsay Lohan, and Beebs out of what should be productive meetings. I’ve had to sit through meetings where the latest episode of Glee or the demise of Lost garnered more discussion than the topic we had travelled some 3,000 miles for did. Now that is brutal.

The fact is, thanks to marketers’ already near-constant bombardment via a host of mediums like smartphones and tablets, but also through the “diehards” like television, radio, and print, we are constantly being distracted and programmed to think “this is important,” when in actuality it’s really not.

Earlier this month the New York Times wrote about how office technology is getting in the way of productivity. While true, the bigger problem is all technology and not just office technology. But as a public relations professional and one who’s often on the side of praising marketing genius, can it be that we’re all victims of our own success?

Maybe.

Recognizing this, perhaps it’s time we work to make board meetings less boring and stick to the agenda so we can all be more productive – and get out of the boardroom and to the bar, where it’s okay to talk about the cover of People, or who watched The View, or what Kelly Rippa was wearing yesterday.

Besides, they’ll be plenty of time to gossip about the Gossip Girl –and whatever else – later. Now I’ve got a meeting to attend and don’t want to be late. I’m sure it will be mind blowing – one way or another.