On Digital Ethics (and Google, Twitter and Egypt)

With the Egyptian “revolution” now a week old, an inevitable note of skepticism has crept in to some of the media coverage. Not about the movement itself; even the most hardened cynic accepts that the time is long overdue for the autocratic regime to exit gracefully (or exit by any means possible, at this stage). Rather, some critics are questioning the seemingly altruistic motives of social media outlets like Twitter, YouTube, which are loudly and publicly providing a forum for Egyptians to inform and vent about current events. This has led to a loaded question – are these entities just exploiting an opportunity for some freebie PR?

The answer to that is yes, and no.

But so what? The Egyptians that post updates have to brave violent regime supporters on a rampage and the risk of arrest simply to get their message heard. They’re far away from caring if someone makes money from the coverage. And why should they? Changing their country for the better is what counts right now.

Also, maybe, just maybe, Google deserves it. The engineers at SayNow, another company now under the tech giant’s umbrella, put in extra man-hours on a super tight deadline to get “Speak to Tweet” built. Speak to Tweet allows people without access to the internet – like in, well, Egypt, where the government has cut ISP service – to dial a phone number, leave a message, and have it digitally morph into a Tweet for broadcasting. To me, that’s a huge positive that helps push along this strong wind of change. Why shouldn’t Google be at least compensated for its efforts?

Fast Company has called into question Google (and Twitter’s ) digital ethics, and whether their motives are pure. Come on people, Google is, after all, a business. It’s in the game to make money. Even the richest media outlets don’t have a limitless pool of resources and cash; any activity they engage in is going to drain both. Isn’t it good, then, that one of those activities Google has chosen to engage in is providing services to those who need them?

And really, that’s what matters right now.

You can read what Jesse Lichtenstein from Slate has to say about this topic as well - http://www.slate.com/id/2283615/?wpisrc=newsletter_tis

Stomping Out The Democracy Stompers, Social Networks Mean That We Can't Be Silenced

The Revolution is happening now, and yes, it is being televised. And Facebooked, and Tweeted, and emailed… Following the recent political unrest in nearby Tunisia, Egyptians are openly into the pro-democracy act - once again - taking to the streets to call for the ouster of autocratic President-for-Life Hosni Mubarak, and in revolt of the corruption in government and suppression in their society. This speaks to the power of smart ideas, particularly good ones – once they catch on, they grow and intensify like a wildfire.

Because standing up for democracy is a very smart idea.

We can thank technology for this, the enabler of information sharing, but at the end of the day, regardless of the medium they are transferred by, it is the ideas that count, and the great ones that take hold and last.

Democracy is so long overdue in this region, a region that has suffered under the leaden boot of autocracy for a much longer time than it should. People were not happy with this arrangement, but what could they do before they had living, viral social networks to voice disdain for their leader or to help organize protests and uprisings?

As in most repressed societies, the only choice for citizens was to keep their collective head down, hope they didn’t get on the bad side of the government, and pray that it would all change one day.

Well, guess what? It seems that one day is here. Encouraged by the impact the Tunisian protests made with the very quick series of resignations in the government, Egyptians are out en masse in the streets pushing their rulers to do the same, with unrest not seen since the bread riots in 1977.

Regardless of the outcome, at the very least, it shows the autocrats that they can’t rule by fiat as easily anymore. The cracks in their calcified and obsolete system are visible to the world.

More to the point, it demonstrates that there’s no stopping an excellent idea, and democracy is one of the very best and longest lasting ever invented by us - and an idea that's now being helped along by a Tweet, a Facebook post - or a million.

What Goes Up Must Come Down / MediaPost

The Council of PR Firms is really upbeat about where our industry is heading this year. I could feel the optimism leaping from its recent quarterly survey, wherein over 80% of the companies polled said their final 2010 revenues exceeded the figures of the previous year. Even better, almost 60% of respondents expected PR budgets to be higher in 2011, with just 2% thinking that they will decline.

Why? New clients are coming through the gate. Another figure well in positive territory was the 56% of respondents opining that new business prospects were stronger than at the same time the previous year.

Well, duh. 2009 was a real crapper of a year, so comparing bad and worse doesn't reveal a totally accurate picture.

I don't want to be the Cassandra on the catwalk here and say that bad times are going to creep back and bite us. On the contrary, I'm thrilled about the council's news and think those optimistic projections are terrific for our industry. Positive vibes are contagious. Those delicate green shoots we waited for to sprout last year have now grown into bushes (well, knee-high little ones, at any rate). Clients did return in 2010, and although they weren't spending as much as they were previously, at least they were spending. At the same time, those new accounts -- that 56% of respondents are excited about -- started to emerge.

Budgets are rising; skepticism is melting. Hooray for that.

Continue reading here.

SKINNING ADVERTISERS, SELECTIVE CENSORSHIP AND BLACK KETTLES

Like Mark Twain’s favorite inevitabilities (death and taxes), grass-roots censorship seems to be something we’re stuck with. Thanks to the efforts of the innocuously-named Parents Television Council, big-name advertisers like Taco Bell, H&R Block and Wrigley have pulled ad their spots from MTV’s controversial new program Skins. We’ll save the discussion about why H&R Block would advertise during young adult programming for another time.

The advertisers were shocked – gasp, horror, faint! (because of course they had no idea about where their ad dollars where going) when they discovered that Skins depicts teenagers having several varieties of sex (jealousy perhaps?) and drug consumption, and withdrew their commercials accordingly. I’ll leave aside the question of why anyone, in our theoretically enlightened modern era, should be so surprised that teenagers engage in this behavior. After all, the United States has the highest rate of teenage pregnancy in the industrialized world. I’ll also sweep past the disturbing idea that major corporations with huge ad budgets and resources can be so easily cowed and spineless.

I’ll blow past these, because the really irritating element of the PTC’s push is its hypocrisy and ugly, self-righteous moralizing. They are defining moral-threatening content on their own, extremely narrow basis; essentially, it’s the sex and drugs that bother them. However, fast food outlets and manufacturers of harmful, sugar-packed drinks can target teenagers and children in their spots, and that’s fine? America has the most serious childhood obesity problem, sorry not problem – epidemic - and that kind of highly-targeted advertising is one of the causes of it. Excessive consumption of fat and sugar-laden food and sodas has a direct and proven effect on this nation’s health, as opposed to some underage nudity or fake pill-popping. It’s a shame the PTC isn’t particularly keen on addressing that much more pressing problem.

And, like any sort of censorship effort, the PTC’s push aims to kill the patient instead of simply removing the appendix. If content is so ugly and offensive, anyone can exercise their rights as a consumer and a citizen of democracy and CHANGE THE CHANNEL. No one is forcing anyone to watch. If enough people channel-flip away from Skins, the advertising will melt away in a hurry, so mission accomplished. The wider American viewing public should vote with their remote controls whether the show should be broadcast, not a heavy-handed reactionary group like the PTC.

What’s your view? Is the Parents Television Council right to pressure advertisers to drop Skins and sweep these issues under the front mat so that the county can continue with its sex-ed programs that teach children abstinence and produce the highest teenage pregnancy rates in the world?

I think this is a case of the pot calling the kettle black, don’t you?

Read more about this in The Huffington Post: Is It MTV's Job to Raise Our Children?

One More Message And Your Brain Might Explode

As you're reading this email/tweet/Facebook post or RSS feed there's every likelihood that your brain may just explode...

Look at the latest numbers released on THE BIG THINK - http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2011/01/by-the-numbers-internet-2010/

* 107 trillion – The number of emails sent on the Internet in 2010.
* 294 billion – Average number of email messages per day.
* 1.88 billion – The number of email users worldwide.
* 480 million – New email users since the year before.
* 89.1% – The share of emails that were spam.
* 262 billion – The number of spam emails per day (assuming 89% are spam).
* 1.97 billion – Internet users worldwide (June 2010).
* 14% – Increase in Internet users since the previous year.
* 152 million – The number of blogs on the Internet (as tracked by BlogPulse).
* 25 billion – Number of sent tweets on Twitter in 2010
* 175 million – People on Twitter as of September 2010
* 600 million – People on Facebook at the end of 2010.
* 20 million – The number of Facebook apps installed each day.
* 7.7 million – People following @ladygaga (Lady Gaga, Twitter’s most followed user).
Oooooh. That last one was a little sad.

Now, I realize I’m adding to these numbers and the information overload – I'm just curious to see if your brain really would explode.

If so, have the nurse shoot me an email, or you can fill out my brief questionnaire on SurveyMonkey. I'm baking a pie chart.

A Lesson From Julian Assange/ from MediaPost

If 2010 was the year of austerity, 2011 may well be "The Year of Authenticity." After all the crap we've been dealt during the past few years, consumer and media patience is dwindling rapidly for those that present a false front to the world and less-than-sincere motives. Witness last year's outing of the "power" couple that crashed a White House party. And remember Bernie Madoff? Enough said.

These days, it's hard to fake it if you really can't make it.

Perhaps the latest example of a growing distaste for fake motives is Julian Assange. The founder of WikiLeaks has presented himself as a truth-seeking crusader, exposing the wrongs of the world's governments. It's true he has a cult-like following of supporters, but a lot of people are not buying into the white knight shtick anymore -- an encouraging sign that truth, honesty and ethics in media are still very much an expected standard.

Assange didn't publish those thousands of pages of classified diplomatic briefs to illuminate dark secrets and to make the world a better place. He did it to make a pile of money and glorify himself as a "liberator of information." But he's not. He is a thief who has obtained information illegally, jeopardizing global diplomatic relations to grow his business and earn a princely sum for a book about his ho-hum life. There are millions of unrecognized citizens who have done more to help their fellow global citizens than Assange has ever done, and no matter how tightly he wears the coat of righteousness, no matter how much the words "transparency" and "responsibility" are spouted in proximity of his name, the only person that Assange is benefitting is himself.

Think about it.

The flood of secret material released by his organization does nothing to make the world a better place. It does the opposite, risking months -- no, years -- of painstaking diplomatic work and at worst, putting lives in danger. Few cables in the WikiLeaks pile illuminate a shocking, grievous wrong; instead, they are generally thoughtful and considered situational analyses. For the most part, they weren't even particularly revelatory. U.S. diplomats think Russia is essentially a mafia state? Shock, horror. Arab leaders consider the Iranian president a dangerous fool and want him eliminated? Gosh, no one saw that coming either.

And the tiresome claims of righteousness in releasing the cables really start to fall apart in light of Assange's later moves. Soon after his actions made international headlines, the WikiLeaks founder inked a book deal in excess of a$1.3 million to write his autobiography. But this was no sellout: according to Assange, $1 million plus is required because of the "need to defend myself and to keep WikiLeaks afloat."

What for, I ask?

Transparency in Communication

Nobody argues that more transparency, honesty and openness are needed to make the world a better place. That's the noble goal of journalism and, in fact, any type of public communication. The difference, however, between most fair-minded communication efforts and bottom-scrapers like WikiLeaks is authenticity. And while we're at it, we could include BP as part of the latter description.

People have gotten wise to all of this and to the authenticity of WlkiLeaks and Assange's motivations. In a recent BBC World News America/Harris poll, 39% to 47% of respondents disagreed with the statement that "Wikileaks is helping to provide transparency in government." A similar number disagreed with the assertion that "publishing these documents could be embarrassing or hurtful to any given administration, but it's not dangerous."

This runs counter to the initial reaction to Assange and his organization as being good-hearted whistleblowers. But the world, it seems, is coming around to realize what WikiLeaks and its founder really are -- self-serving and destructive entities, not at all the crusaders for truth and transparency they claimed to be.

So what has any of this got to do with PR?

It's very simple. People have no more time for truth-fudging and ulterior motives. We have been done over too many times. Our new decade will demand truth and transparency -- when it's authentic. The same applies for corporate communications and messaging. Global PR machines will become even more despised and mistrusted, and the PR cover-ups will come back to hurt brands a hundred times over. Personal agendas and egos be damned -- there will be revolts and backlashes on scales we've never seen before when people discover the (dishonest) truth and motivations behind certain actions that enter theirs and the media's domain.

We used to joke about truth in advertising. Now the joke, as Julian Assange has taught us, is on transparency.

http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=142624&nid=122451

My response to the Giffords shooting

I burst into tears watching TV. Just like that.

I was at the gym on Saturday when I saw the headlines flash across the TV
screens that a congresswoman had been killed in Tuscon, AZ. Gabrielle Giffords.

I stood there, frozen, and cried.

It was a very strange and unexpected reaction because I'm not usually a cry
baby. It takes a lot to push me over the edge, or reduce me to tears. But this
news broadcast did it.

I didn't cry because of the people that were senselessly killed - although that
is an absolute tragedy.

I cried because on Saturday my world changed. And so did America.

Maybe I'm overreacting in that last sentence, but I felt hopeless and violated.
Even though I'd never met Congresswoman Giffords, or anyone from Tuscon, I felt
a deep sense of personal loss.

The day we start shooting our elected officials and instilling fear and terror
upon our fellow citizens, is the day we join the ranks of countries we find
deplorable. We're engaged in two wars and we've lost thousands of soldiers in
the name of fighting terror and yet at home, we have something just as nasty
bubbling away beneath the surface.

A caustic political undercurrent that is dividing the nation, ideologically and
culturally.

While Congresswoman Giffords' shooter may have been off his rocker, the fact
remains that the growing intolerance against the left, or the right, is, well,
intolerable.

We can't allow different views or "values" to turn us into a nation of haters,
or worse, killers.

We can't allow the extreme views of some "politickers" to cloud our judgment,
and we mustn't allow those extreme voices to constantly taint the airwaves and
internet with misinformation and lies.

There's a great piece in Sunday's NYT " In the Shock of the Moment, the
Politicking Stops... Until It Doesn't." Please read it.

Politics is one nasty game, that's very clear. I'm glad to be in PR.. But when
we start killing in "the name of government," it's game over for everyone.

Did anyone else react like I did?