To Like, or Not to Like?

What does it mean to “like” something online? That designation was vague from the get-go, and with the power-punch of overzealous marketing and social media campaigning, we've become veritable liking machines. Every post has a heart, a thumbs-up, or a plus sign next to it, and after it gets published (whether it's a sentence or a full article), there's StumbleUpon, Tumblr reblogging, and Google +, in addition to standard Twitter retweeting and Facebook liking. My brain hurts already…

In reaction to our increasingly noncommittal “liking” trend, Neil Strauss of the Wall Street Journal mourns the loss of the real online opinion. Gone are the those pioneer days of internet nonconformity, which Strauss blames on a blend of general development and advertising, served with dashes of greed and the ever-present search for “opportunity.” Plus, the internet's gone the way of approval-seeking and of time-wasting, he adds. It isn't only the lack of comments and the bland “+1” labels that reek of herd mentality, but the time-suck of retweeting and view counting that could be funneled into worthwhile internet activity – say actually opining in the comment box.

Lest you write off this post as the ranting of a disillusioned blogger, remember last year's drama when Facebook changed its previously-titled “fan” system to the maligned “like.” Critics also rallied against the switch from “Old Facebook,” but this was something different. Instead of aesthetics, this was about definitions - and clever marketing tactics. In Facebook's case, studies showed that people were twice as likely to click “Like” rather than “Become a Fan,” and that's most likely because the word is nonthreatening, bland, and well, noncommittal. Is that the definition of engagement? Um, no.

Sarah Jacobsson, in a PCWorld article, expounded her issues with “liking” things on Facebook: “'Liking' something on Facebook is a quick, easy way to acknowledge something—give it props, say—without having to be involved at all. […] Facebook seems to think that it's the language that's stopping me -- and that I view 'liking' something as less involvement and therefore easier to click on than 'becoming a fan' of something. This, at least, is true -- I do view 'liking' something as less threatening than 'becoming a fan' of something. But that's because it is true.”So really, “liking” is a very lazy direction to take when it comes to online interaction.

Think about it from the other end: if you're publishing an article that took you hours, would you rather see 50 “like” clicks, or 50 comments on the content you've produced?

That question should be a no-brainer, much like the act of “liking” itself.

A Life Before Email? Does Not Compute

Our tablets, phones, and laptops of 2011 chug away in harmony, not unlike J.C.R. Licklider’s 1960 vision of human-computer symbiosis. Licklider—a veteran of Harvard and MIT computing-based endeavors—maintained that the human-computer connection would allow machines to address mundane, time-consuming tasks in a highly efficient manner. For the field, his work was outstanding; for a trained psychologist, his contributions were absolutely incredible.

Licklider saw computers as tools with tremendous capability, even convincing his employers to purchase a $25,000 computer in 1957. Imagine? He imagined future work desks as command stations tethered to the wall, with the essential “umbilical cords” completing a “telecommunication-telecomputation system.” Much like his conceptual sketches of electronic libraries and information retrieval (hello eBooks!), Licklider was years ahead of his time.

In fact, Licklider's ideas were accurate enough that they seem basic to us today. Using a computer for essential tasks? Sure. Plugging in at work for the ultimate human-machine team? Done. We use our “machines” to handle the mundane and necessary, and that includes email, which originated with two geeks leaving “Read Me” notes on disk files in the '60s. They wanted electronic mail for practicality's sake, and we still do today – despite the naysaysers who claim that email is dead. But were we productive back when we weren't answering emails every few minutes? We were, but just not as concerned with hearing back from someone a few seconds later. Others argue that we're getting worse in the productivity department: according to a recent study, American office workers spend up to three hours daily on tasks that aren't work-related (44 percent of that time “playing” on the internet), with lost productivity cost employers an estimate of $750 billion last year.

It's also about expectations—and memory retention. Once we know what our machines can do, it's easy to decrease acceptable communication waiting time, permanently. But while Grandma still says that handwritten thank-you notes are more considerate (and, of course, human), there's another reason to turn to paper occasionally: permanence. If you don't want your words to be edited, muddled, or misconstrued in the digital age, making hard copies wouldn't be the worst idea—this New York Times piece says it all. Plus, with new studies showing a 15 percent to 20 percent increase of memory retention in 3D digital media, we're in for a wild ride in advertising.

And I don’t care what anyone says, email is definitely not dead.

What Happens When “Hearsay” Goes Viral and Global?

Gossip seems to travel faster than ever these days. When a rumor about a company picks up steam via Twitter or Facebook, it can send a PR division into a complete tizzy and overdrive on clarifications and retractions. With that kind of speed, companies have a rock-solid reason for finding social networking-savvy PR representation—unless they want to become a post-gaffe trending topic.

Even if a company has a huge budget for PR backing, crises can and will occur. Delta Air Lines, for example, which got hit hard after making a switch. The rumor? Delta and Saudi Arabian Airlines (SAA) joined forces, meaning that Jewish passengers couldn't board Saudi Arabia-bound flights. It began with an article published by WorldNetDaily, which spread to the Huffington Post. With headlines like USA Today's “Jews Not Able to Fly on Delta Flights to Saudi Arabia” (title since removed), things were not looking good for the largest airline in the world.

Delta could very easily have quashed the ill-intended rumors and clarified any controversy with a well thought out and timely statement. Instead, it seems that paralysis struck its crisis team – panic took over in the anti-Delta free-for-all, which lead The Economist to say that its efforts were “incomplete, unhelpful, and basically added fuel to the fire.” In any case, Delta's full response was submitted far too late to have any real effect - and that battle would be considered lost by any PR company.

For the record, Delta hasn't banned Jewish travelers. Saudi Arabian Airlines joined SkyTeam Alliance, so Delta will be offering tickets from SAA. As Saudi Arabia has their own visa requirements, some Israel-born Jews will have difficulty buying tickets, although this isn’t anything new - and there are workarounds. But does it matter anymore, considering how much negative feedback is still present on Delta's explanatory post?

It's not just Delta, of course. Facebook went under fire for changing its privacy policy, later switching it back after The Consumerist broke the story. In 2008, musician Dave Carroll claimed that United Airlines damaged his $3,500 guitar, which the airline refused to reimburse until he went all out on YouTube. Another PR issue of note happened in 2009 when Toyota's ad agency, Saatchi & Saatchi, offered $15,000 in prize money in a Toyota-sponsored video contest, and then proceeded to choose one considered not only sexist, but “lewd.” Despite public outcry, there wasn't much response from Toyota to smooth things over—and this drama claimed Get Satisfaction's blog's lowest rating. And then there was the safety issue… but that’s for another post.

Crisis or not, bad news moves fast regardless of whether ­truth has little weight in initial rumblings. That means that PR companies need to hustle a lot faster, have a crisis plan in place, and have crackerjack monitors watching (bad) buzz to deliver a swift attack right back. It might not be easy for every company to do this, but surely the world’s largest airline could spare a few team members to ward off boycotts, inflammatory headlines, and tweet storms that stretch for a week.

And before crisis management? How about trying some crisis prevention, front and center.

The Great (Work) Happiness Debate

We've heard it before. Americans are working more and getting paid less; job security's nothing like it used to be. A study in 2006 showed that American working families are clocking in 11 extra hours of work per week compared to their 1979 counterparts, and those who hold professional positions in medicine and law now consider a 40-hour workweek “part-time.” While I’m in neither of those professions, 40 hours is definitely part time for me.

The 50-hour workweek is the new 40-hour workweek in the high-powered world, and if you don't agree, you could be in for a pay cut. The Center for American Progress report highlighted in the Huffington Post states that professional women get pressured to put in longer hours, noting “'Part-time' [female] lawyers often take an immediate wage cut of 20 percent per hour for a 'part-time' schedule of 40 hours a week.”

And we get little comfort from economist Todd Buchholz if our salaried positions are sneaking in extra time. Buchholz began a writing a book about how we're torturing ourselves trying to make it in the rat race, and then he concluded that the rat race was what makes us whole.

In other words, the pursuit of success is actually what makes us the happiest.

The frontal lobe craves action, and in a life of leisure? Confusion, followed by brain-withering—Buchholz points to retirement, which he says ages us. At least it's comforting for those pulling 50-hour workweeks with paychecks better suited to 40 hours.

In Buchholz's train of thought, perhaps increased hours represent a change in employee lifestyle. Are we defining ourselves by our jobs more than before? Community involvement can't hold a candle to the good ol' days of knowing thy neighbours, and now that we're always plugged in, it's even harder to unplug to pursue hobbies or socialize. As companies try to foster quality “employee engagement,” wouldn't that inspire us to work extra hours in return for feeling valued?

We're looking at black and white when we should get out a palette and start mixing for the right shade of Compromise Gray. While Buchholz says we need to work to stay happy, we're not sure how much we need to work to stay happy.

Surely it's relative. Will the part-time life—“Rat Race Lite”—still suffice as long as we feel we're getting ahead? I’m not so sure.

Dirty Men, Double Entendres, Damage Control

I almost started this column four weeks ago, just after news broke of Anthony Weiner's pecker being paraded on Twitter. But I hesitated: what's the big deal? It's a harmless pic ... pervy men post tasteless photos of their willies all the time. It will blow over.

And blow until last week it did.

Over the following weeks, I watched as Weiner's story morphed from a computer hack to a misjudgment, to a televised apology à la Tiger, to a string of lies that revealed Anthony Weiner to be not only an insidious liar but a destroyer of progressive ideals and a shatterer of political integrity.

Okay, maybe that's going a little overboard, but Weiner's shenanigans demonstrate a trend among male politicians -- the crown for which, until recently, was held by Republicans. A trend that highlights how hypocrisy, lies and political sex scandals have become acceptable in our society.

It seems that perviness, narcissism and good old-fashioned idiocy are bipartisan offenders. I won't go into the "why" here, but how can they think they'll get away with it? Is the public to blame?

Perhaps.

One rule when being sworn into office is not to lie to your constituents. Another is not to expose your private parts to the universe. Clearly, a lot of men can't help themselves with the latter, but we've tolerated a growing number of sex-related scandals in the past few years (Sen. David Vitter and Mark Sanford's, for example) that have set a precedent.

So why have we accepted that it's okay to deceive, deny and lie publicly if you're a politician? One could argue that when a degree of morally bankrupt behavior gets a pass, it lends a teachable moment to A-listers' PR factories. Each indiscretion, however miniscule, provides a backdrop for the next literal battle of the bulge, Weiner-style. For social networking scandals, there's the hacking defense; for extramarital affairs, there's sex-addiction rehab. Just as our communication options have skyrocketed, so have options for finger-pointing.

There's no doubt that Weiner's lack of a PR powerhouse made a difference in how he handled his scandal. The end result of resignation may have been the same, due to the last straw that was wife Huma Abedin's pregnancy news, but the timeline and details would have been different.

Weiner committed many a foul that could have been squelched by a PR professional. The laundry list includes calling a CNN producer a "jackass" and responding to initial inquiries with a political-brand blend of defensiveness and near sarcasm. Not to mention the bald-faced lying. Backtracking on hacking claims didn't enhance the sincerity of Weiner's following press appearances, nor did his lack of a promised "investigation" into the Twitter-centric rumors.

To continue reading, click here.

Women's Pay: Equal Or Is Answer Elusive?

When International Women's Day rolled around in March, I contemplated the topic of why men make more money doing the same job as women. In the PR industry. Was this the truth, or had I succumbed to a perpetual myth? Or was I dredging up ghosts à la Feminine Mystique? Undeniably, some discrimination within the greater marcomm industry still exists, but is it pervasive enough these days to warrant such a generalization? From my own experience, as employee and employer, I couldn't see the pay inequality.

Demystifying the pay divide

Statistics, however, skew the results in men's favor. Spread over all industries, men simply earn more than women because they occupy a higher percentage of the highest-paying jobs. This does not suggest that there's a blatant discrimination, just that women are still playing catch-up in earning advanced degrees and breaking into the traditional higher-paying fields such as engineering, medicine, and law.

Warren Farrell, author of Why Men Earn More: The Startling Truth Behind the Pay Gap -- and What Women Can Do About It," asserts that women are still more comfortable moving into jobs that promise the more flexible hours required by the primary family caregiver. While this point makes me a bit squeamish, I can see the merit in such a position -- not that women are assuming their "traditional" (barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen) roles -- but because a good number of women I know do, in fact, plan for a future with children and move toward flexible careers. Which, unfortunately, can preclude them from those that are higher-paying.

Another possibility is simply a chicken versus egg scenario: maybe the more flexible jobs -- traditional jobs that women excel at and gravitate toward -- have undervalued or pay-discriminated against women for so long that low pay has become standard pay?

Regardless, the answer is elusive.

So what about the PR industry?

To continue reading, click here.

Word Crimes gone viral!

It's everywhere. Trite, silly marketing jargon is creeping beyond its boundaries and is now infiltrating the social media!

Word Crimes! Don't forget to send me your favourite offenders for inclusion on this year's Bull@%#$ Bingo!

The below is reprinted from theage.com's Executive Style column. For your cringeworthy enjoyment, I submit:

Mind Your Jargon

Jargon is bad enough in the business world but social media is adding a whole new layer of gobbledygook, and it is sending me around the twist.

My eyes glaze over whenever I hear talk about being on the 'same page', about 'going forward', 'key drivers', stuff that’s 'mission critical', taking the 'viewfinder' over the 'mission statement' and seeing what's at the end of the 'digital tunnel', with the 'low hanging fruit' and 'key drivers'. And the list goes on.

Forbes writer Christopher Steiner, puts it well: “For people bent on achieving superstar status in the business world, knowing one language is often not enough. Unfortunately the second tongue most popular to many American corporate types isn't Spanish, German, French, Italian or Chinese. It's jargon, a heinous amalgamation of terms with unknown origins and delivered with no explanation, irony or even a crumb of guilt.”

He then lists some of the worst examples: drill down (as in drill down to what? oil?), ducks in a row (how do you do that? have you ever had to deal with ducks? and if you ever manage to do that, what good comes out of getting the birds to stand in a straight line), price point (which is the same as saying price, so why the extra word?), think outside the box or square (why the box? what’s wrong with just thinking?), giving 110 per cent (as opposed to 100 per cent. that means you have to do more than what you are capable of. it’s ridiculous nonsense), synergise (sounds so much better than combining and streamlining), it is what it is (fair dinkum?), take it to the next level (what exactly does that look like?), solution (what exactly does that mean?), managing expectations (which usually means preparing people for the worst), and break down silos (as in getting people to talk to each other).

Vanessa Horwell at Media Post has her own list that includes terms like “proactive” (which the dictionary defines as creating a situation or taking control of it, rather than just responding which, when you think about it, is the opposite of sitting around and waiting for things to happen), and sole survivor (the word sole is redundant because a survivor is the one person who survives) and, one of my pet hates, non-essential personnel (which basically dismisses the grunt workers keeping everything going as unimportant).

Writing in the Harvard Business Review, author Scott Berkun says jargon feeds and encourages lazy minds. “To use these words with a straight face is to assume the listener is an idiot. They are intellectual insults. They are shortcuts away from good marketing and strong thinking since they try to sneak by with claims they know they cannot prove or do not make any sense. Marketers and managers use jargon because it's safe. No one stops them to ask: exactly what is it you are breaking through? … Pay attention to who uses the most jargon: it's never the brightest. It's those who want to be perceived as the best and the brightest, something they know they are not. They use cheap language tricks to intimidate, distract, and confuse, hoping to sneak past those afraid to ask what they really mean.”

And indeed it might be getting worse. Julian Fernando argues that social networking sites and blogs encouraging people to contract words, and in effect create a new language.

“Clearly, there is enormous potential for the clarity of expression to be diminished, and for what reward? 'U' is hardly more efficient than 'you', and even less efficiency is gained from 'da' (although by saving those one or two characters you might be able to add a smiley face somewhere). LOL achieves far greater efficiency gains, but what does it mean? For a long time, my mother thought LOL meant 'lots of love'. Are we really such a society of comedians that we all burst out laughing at every text message we receive? Or has it become a ridiculous catchphrase (or catch-all phrase) to express anything from uproarious mirth to mild embarrassment (or nothing at all, as in 'I went to the shops, LOL').”

If he’s right, it means that social sites like Facebook are creating a new kind of jargon, adding to all those business buzzwords, and fogging up our language up even more.

What are the worst examples of jargon, buzzwords and language mangling you’ve heard?

Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/executive-style/management/blogs/management-line/mind-your-jargon-20110521-1exh3.html#ixzz1NwYOpACn