About Experts... They Are Not Always Right

Just read an interesting NYT article about a blogger who accurately predicted the European debt mess.

Besides feeling a bit of shame at never having read the man (he's a countryman of mine, Edward Hugh, and who sounds just fascinating), my initial reaction was... of course! It's always the obscure but attentive amateur analysts that make the good calls, but their message is usually buried under an avalanche of mainstream media-approved 'experts'. The NYT lumps him in with previous economic Cassandras (like Nouriel Roubini, of the subprime collapse fame) that have since been lionized, or at least vindicated, by the events they portended - as tragic as they are. He's also mentioned alongside one of my all-time favorite op-ed columnists, Nobel winner Paul Krugman.

There's a larger message here, something about how the blogosphere has democratized the concept of expertise, and how the guy or gal that has everything figured out is always hiding in plain sight.

Or maybe the message is that while equivocation and pollyannaism may sell newspapers, it's only those that are laboring to make unpopular pronouncements that are actually making good predictions. Or maybe it's just that with so many opinions out there to be read and viewed, one of them is bound to hit the nail on the head??

Either way, Mr. Hugh's blogs have made their way into my RSS feed. I hope you start to follow as well.

You can read the article on NYT here - http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/09/business/global/09blogger.html?pagewanted=2&ref=business&src=me

"I Want My Life Back, Waaaaa, Waaaaa"

“I just want my life back.” – BP CEO Tony Hayward

As a tough-as-nails chief executive of one of the largest energy companies in the world, I’m not given to nostalgia, except when I am. Today’s one of those days.

I was sitting in my ‘command center’ at the New Orleans Four Seasons- where I remain despite the fact that it’s so much more Spartan than my usual corporate command center, because I recognize that it’s important to be ‘on the ground’- and I got to thinking about the good old days. That was the good life. And as I took a look around at the four tiny bedrooms of this suite, all totally crammed with daily briefings and newspapers and open laptops streaming video of those silly little robots at the bottom of the sea, I realized: I want it back. I want my life back.

Is that so wrong?

I mean, I don’t want to return to the halcyon days of my youth, booting a football ‘round a verdant little pitch outside Windsor (I guess for you Yanks it might be like tossing the pigskin on a clear summer day at the beach- er- in the back yard). No, nothing like that. I just want the life I had six months ago back.

Back then, every time I mentioned oil it was at a shareholders meeting, or some convention, and everyone I was speaking to would cast their eyes up at me with a look that can only be compared to worship. With a barrel of the light sweet stuff going for almost 66 quid (sorry, a hundred bucks), who could blame them?

They used to look at me like a god, now every time someone looks me in the eye- which happens a lot more often now- they look at me like I’m the destroyer of worlds. It’s enough to make a man want to crawl aboard his yacht and sail to some distant shore without any frickin’ tar balls on it.

In fact, that’s where I was six months ago. December kind of sucks in London, so I took the old sloop down to the Virgin Islands. Not your Virgins, ours. Just kicking back in my deck shoes, wearing Bermuda shorts, sipping rum the color of the stuff smeared on those Louisiana pelicans.

See, that’s the kind of life I want to get back. Dark rum, Bermuda shorts....

It was warm and breezy six months ago in the Virgin Islands, not humid and sweltering like it’s been here. I don’t know how people on the Gulf coast do it. I’m actually pretty impressed with their resiliency. They can’t fish, they can’t go to the beach, and it’s muggy all summer? And they had a storm around here a while back, right? Wow.

Still, no one has to go through what I go through every day since that stupid rig exploded. So many questions and accusations! “Tony, you broke a bunch of safety rules.” “Tony, how long is it going to take to stop the leak?” “Tony, you lied about the amount of oil being spilled.” “Tony, what the hell is a Top Hat?”
Look, I don’t know, all right? I know you all don’t run a company with a $109 billion market cap, and none of you are CEOs with a $1.5 million salary, so let me explain how it works. I hire guys like me, guys with very nice suits and long resumes and great club memberships. I know those guys. Then those guys hire guys, and I know some of them, too. But when those guys hire guys (and so on and so on), I don’t know them. They’re not calling me and asking, “Hey Tony, you think we oughta check the blowout thingy today, or can we let it slide for a week?” If they had called me and asked that, of course I’d have told them to check it. But they call the guys hired by the guys hired by the guys that I hired. How am I supposed to know what they said?

And everybody breaks rules. If we had to follow every ticky-tack safety regulation those bleeding heart Labour and Democrat politicians push through, we’d still be juicing Texas tea from rusty derricks like Daniel Day Lewis. Except all the roughnecks would be wearing fire-retardant full body padding and taking a break every ten minutes. Fortunately for our North American operations, the kids in charge of enforcing those rules in the US were too busy boffing each other to notice when we let some standards slip.

Nobody minded, six months ago. We were all getting along so well! Now it’s a different story.

It’s like you break curfew one time, and you’re grounded forever. How is that fair?
Anyway, this thing’s going to go on for a long time. You just know I’m going to have to take a salary cut, and I’m going to have some monster hotel bills if I have to stay here the whole time and look concerned. I’m not looking forward to that credit card bill, you know what I’m saying?

So I guess I’m sorry. I mean it, I wish none of this had ever happened.

You all see that tough-as-nails CEO Mr. Hayward; really, I’m just a very sad little Tony. I want to sail on my boat and watch a little World Cup.

That’s what I’d be doing if I didn’t have to be here in this slimy, oily swamp.

So if it’s not too much trouble, I’d like my life back, please.

Best,
TH

PR Is No Substitute For The Truth / from MediaPost

When I wrote a column about BP last month, I wasn't expecting to a) eat my words, or b) write about BP again so soon.

But alas, here we are.

At the time of my column, "Advice To BP That It Didn't Ask For," I and several PR peeps felt that BP had been transparent, genuinely not at fault and were doing the best they could in the terrible circumstances à la "it was all Transocean's fault Ma, honest."

I hate being wrong but we were wrong. Very wrong.

It's hard to feel sorry for liars. It's even harder to feel sorry for those people and companies that deliberately mismanage information and mislead the public for financial gain (hello, Goldman Sachs).

But what is absolutely sinful about BP's actions -- and there are many -- is the company's blatant disrespect for our intellect, for our country and for our lives. You may feel I'm getting off PR-focus here, but the fact remains that when a company tries to sustain a sheen of purity in the midst of massive oil slicks, toxic shrimp and environmental seppuku, PR and "positioning" is no substitute for the truth.

We believed Tony Hayward and we believed BP. But they lied to us and to themselves.

Actions Speak Louder Than Words

Taking back what I said a month ago, no amount of full-page mea culpas pasted in all the country's major broadsheets will change public perception right now -- or anytime soon. In fact, these ads may just have the reverse effect when you consider the millions being plundered from fixing the problem, and being diverted to the "We're going to fix this" ad campaign instead. I don't buy it and no one else should either.

Open Mouth, Insert Foot

It appears that no one believes anything that BP has to say, tweet or print anymore, and that it has lost all credibility and control of its brand.

Case in point? A new Twitter account called BPGlobalPR, a satirical send-up of BP's blunders. With 130,000 followers and counting, it quickly provides a sense for the level of mistrust and hatred that is cursing through America's veins, online and off. When compared with the 12,000 followers on BP's feed, BP-America, it's clear that people have tuned out from the grimace-inducing comments issued by BP, much preferring comments like "Money can't buy happiness. But Tony Hayward did buy a giant yacht he calls 'Happiness'. It has a frickin' helicopter pad on it!" and "Flew in a ton of seafood from Asia last night, ate almost half of it and slept for 12 straight hours. What a weekend! #bpcares" on the faux BP blog.

So now that almost everyone knows about BP's misinformation strategy, I tried to imagine what Thomas Friedman or John Stossel would have to say about the company. Sadly, neither were available for comment when I contacted them last week, so I have taken a creative liberty in recreating their imagined responses:

Click here to continue reading.

SLAPP Me Senseless and The Malcontent Bitch Session

A recent article in the NYT is an interesting introduction (for me, anyway) to the concept of a SLAPP - a strategic lawsuit against public participation.

At first blush, there is an appealing David vs. Goliath aspect to the example used in Dan Frosch's article - a college kid railing against the (perceived) injustice of big, bad corporate America in the way that college kids do today: by launching what amounts to a Facebook flame war.

And in the context of SLAPPs, any sympathy for the college kid is understandable.

But there's something else going on here, something about the power of social media to really, really impact companies -- much more than -- as Frosch mentions, "a tirade in a bar or a rant in a public meeting."

The undeniable fact is, with such a user-generated megaphone like social media at anyone's disposal, there ought to be some responsibility for its power - a power, by the way, that WE have all bestowed upon it.

So while Mr College Kid has his right to speak his mind, he does so essentially at his own peril. For if social media becomes the mouthpiece of the malcontent bitch session, its power will wane and eventually no one - not college kids, not corporate America, nor you and I - will have any use for it.

When Two iPhones Make Out, from Mobile Insider

I had to share a brilliant article by Steve Smith called "Phoney Sex" with some great insights into the hyperconnected culture of personal technology.

One of the article's leading points has a particular resonance with me, as both a mobile marketer and, of course, as a human being. Before long, our devices (at our bidding, mind you) will be interacting with the world around us, registering approval and disapproval of everything we encounter, from advertisements to potential sexual partners, based on self-calibrated measures of taste and preference.

We are at a point, as Steve implies and I agree, where the advancing current of our technology has met a tidal shift in our attitudes toward personal publicity, and the force of both have created an irresistible and self-reinforcing spiral that will define our culture for a generation to come.

You can read the entire piece Phoney Sex: Whatever Two Consenting iPhones Do In The Privacy Of Their Own Conversation on MediaPost.com.

Come Together / from MediaPost

A few weeks ago, Vocus released a survey about the divergent attitudes amongst us marketing and PR professionals and our take on integrated communications. The survey, also featured in MediaPost's Center for Media Research, looked at the differences in our perceptions surrounding the effectiveness, priorities and purpose of integrated communications.

One of the most surprising findings centered on the definition of integrated communications itself. And this raises a question: is something as ill-defined as integrated communications preferable or even valuable for companies? Is there a benefit to bringing together communications functions of two distinct practices (marketing and PR) that can barely agree on each other's applicability or raison d'être?

The answer is a resounding YES, and for two main reasons;

1) Despite the disconnect between marketing and PR professionals regarding the philosophy and aim of communications, these are viewed and consumed by outside entities (consumers, in the case of B2C companies, businesses for B2B) in the same way. That is to say, various communications are inherently linked, and so they must be developed and disseminated in an integrated way.

2) Integrated communications leverages the power of both PR and marketing to achieve unified aims. Rather than a mash-up of at-odds tactics and strategies (as does exist with separate PR and marketing entities), the sum of techniques used in a robust and integrated communications program becomes so much greater than its individual parts.

We All Own It

While the Vocus survey stops short of making a pronouncement on the value of integrated communications, integrating our efforts (yes, I'm talking to you, Marketing Department) is the only way to effectively engage and manage the diverse communications channels available today. Just as the survey finds that both PR ad marketing practitioners perceive social media outreach as being part of their scope (43% of PR professionals feel they should "own" social media, while 34% of marketers make the same claim), an integrated approach is really the only way to maximize the benefits of this still-growing medium. It's impossible to be effective in a vacuum.

Talking of Social Media

Social media is a great example to support the above statements - that both the PR and marketing aspects of corporate communications are linked. Facebook pages or Twitter feeds function equally as awareness drivers and marketing vehicles. The commonality here is brand engagement, and that is neither a strictly marketing nor a strictly PR function. It is a function of integrated communications, period.

That said, social media demonstrates that it's often necessary to use different tactics to achieve different results. Even as social media resists easy tagging as a 'PR' or 'marketing' medium, it produces different end results if traditionally marketing-related or traditionally PR-related techniques are used to activate it. And users of social media can usually tell the difference between sales and outreach efforts, and each may be relevant under different circumstances. But to make this resolve, and to reap the most rewards from communication in this channel, everyone has to be on the same page.

Integrate Baby, Integrate....click here to continue reading.

Digital & PR Agencies Getting Hitched

A great piece in Adweek by Brian Morrissey about Digital and PR agencies coming together. All I can say is ABOUT TIME!

Why? To paraphrase Kevin King, managing director of Edelman Digital;

"To execute a robust digital strategy, you have to ... do everything." Kings feels that "traditional" digital agencies aren't adept at being nimble enough to react as quickly as needed in social media. PR firms, steeped in the 24-hour news cycle, don't have that problem, he said.

AMEN.

Click here to read the entire piece on Adweek.com