Focus on the Family Bring messing with The Super Bowl? Sacrilegious!!!

I read an article by Jim Edwards on BNET today, which really got me worked up

It seems the social conservative group Focus on the Family, headed by the always-entertaining “9/11-was-God’s-punishment” James Dobson, has bought itself a 30 second spot during the Super Bowl. For their millions, FOF joins an elite fraternity of deep-pocketed advertisers that includes GoDaddy.com, Anheuser-Busch and Cash4Gold… all like-minded institutions with a similar political agenda.

Wait, let me get my facts straight. It’s Anheuser-Busch that has a petition out to stop the passage of the late Sen. Ted Kennedy’s Hate Crimes Bill, which increases the penalties on those who commit hate crimes, right? No? Then it must be GoDaddy.com leading the charge to deny same-sex couples the right to marry. That’s not right either, is it? I got it: Cash4Gold is the company that advocates treating homosexuality as a disease.

No, it’s Focus on the Family that holds all of these positions, but you can bet they won’t be prominently featured during the spot. Instead they’re trotting out All-American Good Guy Tim Tebow to talk about values, family, puppy dogs and ice cream. Awwwww. If you want to get the full quotient of hate, you’ll have to visit their website for that.

So why is FOF joining all of these consumer products and services companies and dropping the gross domestic product of Guam on half a minute’s worth of airtime during the Super Bowl? I’m sure they think their message of intolerance and fundamentalist Christianity should be viewed by the widest audience possible, and since they have the resources, they have every right to secure that viewing. Right?

But honestly, does that message belong there? After all, CBS, which is broadcasting the big game this year, denied an ad by MoveOn.org in 2004 critical of then-president George W Bush. (That liberal media bias really is daunting, isn’t it?) Will it eventually become commonplace for organizations with political agendas to save the resources they might put into more constructive pursuits for an advertising nuclear option that, it should be noted, is entirely contingent upon football fans not getting up to get a beer at that exact moment?

Maybe FOF thinks it’s rallying its base, that Joe Sixpack is more likely to be watching the game on Sunday Feb. 7 than shopping at the Berkeley Co-Op. Maybe it’s some of the timely context they’ve been presented with, considering the ongoing challenge to Proposition 8 in California and today’s Supreme Court ruling that legitimizes corporate-funded political messages as free speech. But whatever their internal rationale may be, that message has no place on broadcast television.

Because of their intolerant, abhorrent agenda - and regardless of the actual content of the spot - FOF’s Super Bowl ad is more like one of the hate crimes they seem to want legalized and less like an expression of first amendment rights.

The best way to discourage groups like this, speaking as a viewer, is to make sure that their ad dollars go wasted. If they’re betting on a big audience for their message of intolerance, then don’t give it to them.

I imagine I’ll be up getting a drink when it airs, and I encourage everyone else to do the same.

Get Your Good On

Go on, give until it hurts – then just give a little more, you’ll feel better. Honest.

The horrors we’ve witnessed this week (if only digitally or electronically) have proven to be yet another eye opener for this country.

Life is indeed temporal, and although we attempt to safeguard ourselves, our families and property from forces beyond our control, stuff happens. Every day. Carpe diem and all that, but what should we be reaching for to genuinely enrich our quality of life and overall well-being, when death, misery and destruction is lurking around every corner of the globe?

Of course, that’s for each of us to decide, but studies are showing that it isn’t a holiday in the sun or a designer handbag. St. Francis was probably right when he said, "For it is in giving that we receive."

A couple of years ago, neuroscientists from the National Institutes of Health scanned the brains of volunteers who were asked to envision themselves making a generous donation to a charity and then to envision keeping the money for themselves. They found that when the volunteers envisioned altruistic, selfless acts, a primitive part of their brains lit up like a Christmas tree - the same response rendered when the subjects thought about food and wait for it…sex!

And this moral bio-coding isn’t exclusive to humans - studies also showed that even rats experience empathy. When a rat was given food and its neighbor in turn received an electrical shock, over time the well fed rats chose to forego the food.

We’re social creatures and are inter-dependent on each other for survival. We’re biologically programmed to look after each other. Over the coming days and weeks, in the midst of our own struggles to stay afloat and survive in an economically fraught jungle, we’re likely to be bombarded by requests to donate to the Haitian relief efforts. As a PR person, I know that there’s a good chance that people will start to feel inundated, then overwhelmed and finally tune out when they hear the words “Haiti” or “earthquake”.

But if or when this happens, I’m hoping we can remember to be as good or better than the rats, and remember just how good being good feels.

What’s in it for us? Lots. So much so, in fact, that it could be argued that an altruistic act is really an impossibility. Ha!

So if you want to feel REALLY good today, (perhaps you’ve already eaten and aren’t in the mood for sex), follow this link to the Red Cross site and “get your good on”.

New Year, New Decade, New Focus

New Year, New Decade, New Focus As befitting the start of a new year, we've all made a bunch of resolutions and promises to do more (or less), work smarter (not harder) and generally do much better in 2010. This, too, applies fully to PR.

And me? This year, I have sworn to do more for clients (within reason!) and do better overall -- personally and agency-wide. So here are my PR resolutions for a new era and a peek at how we're going to be doing things 'round here this year:

Do not overpromise or under-deliver

For many of us in 2009, we fell into the trap of saying "yes" to clients instead of saying "let's think about this," or "no." The desire to hang onto clients -- at all costs -- magnified those actions, and not necessarily for the best (see my earlier post "Great Expectations"). Instead, we're starting the year by laying down new ground rules, à la this is how we do it.

Spend more time feeding our minds with quality content and journalism

If the retailer's motto is "an educated consumer is our best customer," then our mantra is an educated PR pro is the best PR pro. Staying current and accurate are keys to success in our industry, and that means doing more than a quick Google-search worth of research before writing an article or release. Digesting quality news from quality outlets helps put stories in perspective, builds mental bridges between ideas and concepts, and generally lends depth to the work we do.

Embrace social media and mobile not by becoming self-taught "experts" but by learning from leaders in the respective fields

Social media and the mobile channel have matured as serious means of communication, and so should be our understanding of it. This does not mean relying on our mastery of personal Facebook profiles to design an effective social media strategy, or letting our iPhone obsession define our knowledge of the mobile space. These will increasingly become the core outlets of our outreach efforts, and we should give them the respect they deserve -- by letting the actual experts teach us.

Read the rest of my resolutions on Media Post.

On Hamfisted Fundraising

From the Wall Street Journal, Eric Felton's op ed “Sorry I Gave at the Store” posed some interesting points worth looking at.

Felton takes issue with retailers having their sales people advise customers of discount and savings, then boldly suggesting they donate the money they just saved to a particular charity the retailer is canvassing for. This type of “salesmanship” puts people in a very uncomfortable position: the person may be in debt, out of work or simply prefer to donate to a different charity of choice without coercion at the cash register and without feeling obligated. Or not.

My view is that while this new modus operandi may seem like a practical way to fundraise, it could actually work against the retailer and the charity(s). The last thing a shopper wants – one who has just finished the typical retail transaction, i.e., chosen an item, looking forward to a receiving discount, taken item to the register and is fishing through his/her wallet to pay for said item – is to be presented with a guilt trip to donate money at that point of purchase.
Most likely, this will result in a) the alienation of a retailer’s customers who go home feeling intimidated by the store, and b) the creation of a negative association with that charity. In my mind, this will decrease the likelihood of customers either returning to that store and of them donating to that charity again.
A tactful and yet still effective approach would be for a transparent and honest effort between the retailer and the charity before the customer gets to the cash register. Think shelf-wobblers, price tags, and in-store displays letting shoppers know that the retailer is working with XYZ charity and how the store’s customers can help.

Otherwise, I see the above as a lose-lose scenario. I’d love to hear what you think. Leave a comment and/or take the poll located on the sidebar.

The Week That Was #2

Here we go again with what I think were some of past week’s highlights!

Tacky Tacorama!! No you can’t have your Taco and eat it too.
There’s backlash from the blogosphere this week as a new Taco Bell infomercial leaves viewers with a feeling of a flat Saturday Night Live ad parody. Apparently, the infomercial was meant with "a wink" (or did they mean tongue-in-cheek) to get people talking.

“Winks” or not, the tacky Taco Bell campaign is actually attracting precisely the type of cheap talk the fast food company doesn't want. Positive comments about Taco Bell on blogs and social media have fallen to 67%, compared with 73% positive before the campaign rolled out, Advertising Age reports, citing Zeta Interactive. It seems that you can’t have your taco and eat it after all. (For a glimpse of the advertising community’s distaste about the ad, click here.

As for the poor woman who spent two years on a severe calorie-restricted diet only to lose 54 lbs, what sort of madness is that? Any nutritionist worth their grain in a sodium-free diet will tell you a) that level of weight loss over a 2-year period is not so dramatic as Taco Bell would have us believe, and b) consuming just 1250 calories per day is not healthy. Me? I’d rather stick hot pins in my eyes than live for 2 years on such a diet – only to have lost 54lbs. Heard of the gym? Oh no, you’re too busy sitting on your arse doing the drivethru diet every day.

But my real gripe with Taco Bell is their hokey nutritionist telling us that “if everyone replaced their regular fast food items with items from Taco Bell’s drivethrudiet menu, they would consume less fat and less calories.”

Thanks for the amazing revelation Ruth Carey and BOOOOOO to DraftFCB. Now, where’s the beef?


Berlusconi - oh so pretty - again!
This week, Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi reappeared without his bandages, nearly a month after a rally in Milan where he was struck in the face with a small replica of the Milan Cathedral by a man with a history of mental illness. Berlusconi suffered a broken nose, fractured teeth and a split lip. Ouch.

Plastic surgeons were called in to repair the damage, performing procedures to which Berlusconi is no stranger having made headlines 5 years ago when he underwent the knife to regain a more youthful appearance. (“Oh vanity! The name is Berlusconi!”) Even at the age of 73, a man can’t feel too pretty, apparently. An Italian newspaper wrote that “as a result of the surgery the prime minister looked half-way between Boris Karloff and a baby.” How dashing!

And despite last month’s attack and resulting injuries, Mr. Berlusconi seemed in a jovial mood and was spotted shopping in the lovely artsy French town of Saint-Paul-de-Vence (home of La Colombe D'or where I had lunch amongst paintings by Matisse, Léger and César, and where Picasso was rumoured to have paid for his meals/board by drawing on napkins). It’s reported that Berlusconi and spent "tens of thousands of euros" on items including “sensual” bronze nudes and a lithograph of President Barack Obama as Superman in one of the lucky galleries.

Although most of Italy despises the man (along with most of Europe), Berlusconi carries on blithely surrounding himself with shiny objects and carrying on like a playboy. Perhaps proving that, as Fernando said, "It's not how you feel, darling - it's how you look!"


Good News/Bad News
The good news is that China overtook the US as the biggest auto market in 2009 (and automakers should see more strong growth this year, according a report in the Associated Press.

Why is this good news you ask? Because it may just force the US auto industry to get its act together – finally – and stop resting on its laurels and build cars that Americans want and need. It’s not too late.

The bad news, however, is that the Chinese are going to pollute our little planet to death. Boosted by Beijing's stimulus, 2009 passenger car sales in China soared to 10.3 million and total vehicle sales are estimated at 13.6 million, the China Passenger Car Association said. That represents growth of about 45 percent from 2008.

What I want to know is what’s going to happen to all the bicycles?


Pirating the Obama Brand
The world fell in love with Michelle Obama’s unique sense of style and fashion last year, modeling outfits from J.Crew to Kors to Claiborne; she was donned our modern day Jackie-O. Now, BHO is getting in on the act, although without his express permission.

In an AP article it was reported that Barack Obama's rugged, windswept image was taking centre stage in Manhattan's Times Square after The Weatherproof outerwear company had purchased an Associated Press photo of the president at the Great Wall of China, in which, to their great fortune, he was wearing their jacket. And without his permission, they built an ad campaign around it. Tsk, tsk, tsk.

The AP reported that Weatherproof, after being contacted by the White House, pledged to take down the billboard — in about two weeks, leaving them plenty of time to get some more miles out of it. "We need time to create a new ad campaign," explained Freddie Stollmack, president of Weatherproof. "We can't have an empty billboard." In the meantime, he said, the ad campaign had been "absolutely" the right thing to do. Yeah, right. I think what Stollmack meant to say was “We need to recoup our huge cost for the billboard and AP photo, and we also want to make a mint from our unauthorized use of our President’s image – so sod off will you!”

Advertising analyst Marian Salzman, president of Euro RSCG Worldwide public relations said “Look, The Obamas are more fashionable than anyone who's been in the White House in years. Right now they're the style setters. Look what he's done for the BlackBerry.’

Obama’s image has been used commercially for everything from ice cream to Chia Pets and he could sue based on laws in many states, including New York (where Weatherproof is based), that protect individuals against the unauthorized commercial use of their image which mislead the public with implied endorsements.

In this case, it’s unlikely to result in a lawsuit as that would only attract still more attention, as was most likely anticipated by Weatherproof.

I’m just waiting for the President to appear in the next Calvin Klein commercial - as part of the President’s full disclosure policy perhaps? After all, his predecessor Clinton was up front with us on whether it was boxers or briefs.

One More Mobile Divination for 2010!

These predictions come from a recent column in MediaPost by Ryan Deutsch, vice president, strategic services and market development for StrongMail Systems. It’s definitely worth a read! His forecast? Cautiously optimistic (my preferred stance), while straight up on what's working and what needs work!

"As we all gear up for the new year, I figured I would join the long list of bloggers making predictions for 2010. As a courtesy, I am going to keep my positions simple and VERY straightforward, as this will make it easy for each of you to call me out at year's end for any and all completely incorrect calls that I made.” Cheers, Ryan!

The Year of SMS, Sort of Could it be? As email marketers, we have heard for years how critical SMS communications would be to brands and consumers. In fact, I recently heard an analyst joke that we just finished the Decade of SMS Marketing. It felt like each year would be the year for marketers to invest heavily in mobile programs, but that investment never seemed to become a reality.

While mobile has become critical for alert and time-sensitive communications, applications for direct marketing have not materialized. While some brands have leveraged mobile in a meaningful way (to capture off-line options to campaigns, for example), few have committed heavily. I think 2010 will be the year of mobile - but not from a traditional direct marketing standpoint. As applications proliferate on mobile devices and further integrate location services, we will see marketers trying to leverage true location marketing.

I think 2010 is the year for early adopters in location-based marketing. If you are not the early adopter type, be sure you are using mobile for critical alerts or offline opt-ins while you wait for location-based case studies to hit the street. Then make sure you have a mobile (iPhone/Android) application ready to go for 2011."

You can read the rest of Ryan's predictions on MediaPost here

There's No Free Lunch - and there doesn’t need to be

Artists and corporations have lost billions to the “borrowers’ market”, i.e., illegal downloading. But at last, a win-win solution appears on the horizon for all - including the pirates…walk the plank anyone?! It seems the debate over online content "FOR FREE" (jeeez, how I hate that expression!) has finally found an amicable resolution for, at least, the music industry.

This month, FreeAllMusic.com, offers a service that allows users to download songs "which may be copied and shared — unencumbered, in other words, by digital rights management restrictions."

What's the catch here then? Well, instead of paying the 99 cent iTunes fee, you’ll have to watch a 15- to 30-second ad. The ad, however, is of the viewers choosing, and as the viewer is in full control over the choice of song and commercial, the viewer has opted in, engaged and is a whole lot more receptive to the message delivered.

Says FreeAllMusic.com, “We have made this process easier than stealing.” Brilliant, but what took you guys so long?

As technology morphs, marketing and marketers will follow suit, finding, creating (or stumbling upon) new solutions to accommodate changing needs and trends. To be sure, these are truly exciting and challenging times to be involved in marketing. And I find stories like the one about FreeAllMusic inspiring as it shows how capable we are of adapting to new environments and of handling the challenges they pose. For those armed with some creativity and vision, the sky really is the limit!

2010.....BRING IT ON!