Stirring the BS PR $hitstorm

I didn’t want to write a post like this, but alas, the public relations $hitstorm must be stirred yet again.

What do I mean by this? Last week, MediaPost (where I have a bi-weekly column) published an article by George Simpson, president of George H. Simpson Communications, titled “More PR BS” where he cried foul over a piece written by Rosanna M. Fiske, chair and CEO of the Public Relations Society of America. In it, Fiske calls for better accountability when it comes to measuring PR’s ROI, or return on investment in marketing non-speak.

Simpson characterizes her 508-word article (it really was that long, I checked) as a blatant waste of time; a classic example of bloated PR language that promises much, yet says little. The article champions seven principles for measuring global standards as highlighted by a recent conference in Barcelona, Spain. The obvious heavy hitters include: quantitative goal setting, measuring outcomes (like increased business revenue or number of media clips) versus measuring the cost of what goes into a campaign, and the crème de la crème of the measuring sciences – the ability to replicate ones results.

There really is a lot of BS that goes in PR.While I agree with their obviousness and to some extent the redundant nature of Fiske’s post, I really don’t see the need to throw Fiske under the public relations bus. When I first read Simpson’s provocative title, I truly wanted to agree with him.

Our world filled with, no, gorged on superfluous language. (Simpson, by the way, manages to throw in the word circumloquacious – pot, kettle, black) But I really don’t see the harm in reemphasizing the need for measurable standards in an industry with a track record of, errrr, circumloquacious language and standards.

The fact remains that in order for Public Relations to be taken (more) seriously, it needs to better address these issues. Like political science and psychology, PR struggles at times with applying the scientific method to its results.

In other words, sometimes a little from column A and a little from column B doesn’t add up to C. But this obstacle hasn’t stopped the other two disciplines from growing and gaining legitimacy. Neither should it stymie PR.

Simpson’s overly simple litmus test for a successful PR campaign is if after said event the phones start ringing: ringing from your client, ringing from fans that they liked what they saw or read in the papers or on other digital media, and ringing from your enemies that you’ve stolen their thunder or piggybacked on a campaign they had already pioneered for their clients.

Is it all really that simple?

Ah, no.

I wonder what would happen if Mr. Simpson tried to disarm one of his client’s concerns by saying, “Don’t worry, we’ll know if our campaign was a marketing hit once the phones start ringing.”

Forgive me, but if I was one of those clients, I’d be desperate for something a little more reassuring. You know, something more measureable, like at least an attempt at business-world serious ROI figures. Barcelona and the Fiske-endorsed seven principles may not be making the world safe for democracy, ending world hunger, or returning humankind to the moon, but at least it’s a start.

That’s a lot more than I can say for Simpson’s “Put together a string of good stories in good publications” lukewarm advice.

Supersized Profits from a Supersized Pig: Cult of McDonalds McRib a Marketing Knockout

I've had a lot to say these past two months about Apple and its visionary former CEO, the late Steve Jobs. But for today’s blog post, let’s leave Apple aside and change food groups. Enter McDonalds and the McRib.

In case you haven’t heard (CNN deemed it front-page-worthy last week and it led the news on three of the major networks), the gut-busting artery clogging cult-classic, McRib, is back, re-released October 24^th.

Introduced nationally in 1982 and a menu mainstay until 1985 after slumping sales saved it from the butcher, the McRib nevertheless may just well be swine-dom's – and the Golden Arches – greatest success. Rather than rolling its snout in the mud at a failed sandwich and marketing campaign, McDonald’s turned the boneless “fantastically flavorful” sandwich into a mega hit.

Except for Kentucky Fried Chicken’s nasty Double Down, (a sandwich whose "bun" is two fried pieces of chicken, mmmm I can feel the lard accumulating on my thighs right now) I can't think of another fast food sandwich that captures CNN's news hound attention quite like this. When you're a company who boasts, "99 billion served" it's hard to top yourself. But McDonalds and the McRib have done it again – and flying in the face of a high-volume national debate over the obesity epidemic.

In terms of marketing, kudos – or ribs – to McDs.

McDonalds marketing folks took a failed pork sandwich and turned it into a recurring limited edition hit. The McRib enjoyed a 16-year break after briefly being brought back last fall. Such an approach, combined with creative, playful marketing, and even self-mocking humor, helped not only CNN take note of the sandwich’s periodic return, but it has been mentioned almost daily on multiple morning radio talk shows, has been lampooned by the Simpsons over the years, and has enjoyed multiple billings on David Letterman’s Top 10 List.

Embrace Your Inner Pig

Swiftly embracing today’s social media generation, McRib fans can visit the sandwich’s Facebook and Twitter pages as well as check out the McRib locator website, complete with a Google map showing where the McRib is being served as a countdown timer ticks away the days until the sandwich goes back into annual hibernation.

The result of all this pig pandemonium? Last November during the McRib’s 2010 cameo, overall McDonalds sales enjoyed a 4.8 percent US sales increase, according to CNN. To be sure, such marketing success is not all about fun and games and over-the-top pig humor. It also serves as a reminder for PR professionals and our clients. Promoting your brand doesn't always require reinventing the wheel. Sticking with what works – and even what doesn’t work at first – can go a long way too. Not taking yourself too seriously is also a great way to demonstrate sincerity – a corporate characteristic that many in the public feel is sadly lacking.

All this for a greasy, sauce-laden sandwich.

Singing The Blues For Pink

The following article by Vanessa Horwell, Chief Visibility Officer of Thinkink, originally appeared on Marketing Daily on 10/25/11.

For a color whose name doesn’t even get top billing on the visible spectrum of light, pink has certainly developed potent staying power. From the Pink Panther to pink Cadillacs, and everything in between, this dainty mixture of red and white has also come to symbolize a less benign issue: the hundreds-of-millions-of-dollars-a-year-fight against breast cancer – the third deadliest cancer in America today and No. 2 killer of women.

Are you surprised I didn’t say it was the No. 1 killer of women and the second deadliest cancer in the United States? You can thank the power of marketing for shifting those perceptions.

Not only has breast cancer taken more than 240,000 lives since 2005, according to Cancer.org, it has also commandeered an entire month through powerful -- some would even say extreme, marketing influence. For the past 25 years, October’s ghosts and goblins have had to share the stage with the specter of breast cancer and its increasingly corporate-like kissing cousins – Breast Cancer Awareness Month and the inexorably linked Susan G. Komen for the Cure Foundation.

While no one can deny the impressive global awareness and funding these organizations have brought to the breast cancer cause – Susan G. Komen alone raised about $420 million in 2010 – am I the only one who thinks that all the merchandising: the pink ribbons, the pink-clad NFL teams, the Bank of America pink checking accounts, the pink armbands, pink lunchboxes, pink Kitchen Aid food processors and whatever else has been Pink'd for October is diluting both the issue at hand and, in reality, siphoning more money toward profits than for research for an actual cure, and skewing public attention away from other serious cancers -- or other causes, period?

When was the last time you paid attention to cervical cancer, or colorectal cancer? Why don’t any NLF teams wear ribbons to support Male Breast Cancer – something that kills, on average, 450 men per year?

Pinkwashing: Where Does All the Money Go?

In 2002, Breast Cancer Action launched a side project called “Think Before You Pink,” whose goal was to raise awareness over the types of companies that chose to go pink, and “encourages consumers to ask critical questions about pink-ribbon promotions.” Doing battle with so-called “pinkwashing,” their motto is “raise a stink.” Here, too, donations go to cancer research. The organization asks consumers to do some research before a pink product is purchased, for example:

• How much money from your purchase actually goes toward breast cancer? Does it say so plainly on the box or packaging?
• Does the company you’re purchasing from have a cap on the amount it sends in donations regardless of the number of pink-related sales?
• Are funds being raised through direct purchase, or is a clever marketing scheme disguising the fact that you need to purchase additional merchandise from the company in order to make a donation?
• How, specifically, is your money being spent?

I was reminded of the need to research when I received an email from Etsy (a site for artisanal wares), promoting all things pink but without any visible endorsements. Showcased vendors were promoting their wares with descriptions such as, “This apron knot dress is a great way to show support for all those around us touched by Breast Cancer and a fashionable and fun way to show your support for the fight for a cure.”

I don’t know about you but I don’t that think fun and breast cancer belong in the same sentence, and it’s precisely this sort of overreach that at first confuses consumers (who exactly am I giving to?), then moves onto cause fatigue (not another pink promotion!!), and finally cause alienation (what a sell-out; I want nothing to do with that brand).

Have Sponsorship Dollars, Will Go Pink

Susan G’s overreach, too, seems to have gotten the organization into several snafus, the most notable when it partnered with Kentucky Fried Chicken to sell pink buckets of chicken to franchise operators, where 50 cents of every purchase went to the “For the Cure” campaign. Seriously, KFC?

Needless to say, the public and media backlash was acute, and the partnership short-lived. Is a pinkwashed KFC really going to unclog all those red blood vessels? Fried chicken is a well-known contributor to obesity, critics said, and obesity is also linked to cancer. How can a campaign be genuine if, on one hand, money goes to a worthy cause and, on the other hand, unnecessarily shines the spotlight on a fast food chain driving its sales and profits?

The truth is, it can’t.

Then there was the perfume brouhaha where independent testing of the chemicals in Susan G.'s Promise Me perfume revealed that some of them might be linked to cancer. For its part, the foundation released a statement saying that the levels of questionable ingredients fell “well within the guidelines of the International Fragrance Association,” but that out of an abundance of caution, the perfume’s formula was being tweaked.

Of course, the plot thickens when you consider the driver behind this story was cancer charity rival Breast Cancer Action. Is it possible their constant nitpicking is also part of their own marketing campaign called "my charity is better than/more deserving than yours?"

For consumers, it becomes very tiresome and, if that example raises questions of agenda bias on Breast Cancer Action’s part, this one won’t. Earlier this year, Stephen Colbert took Susan G. Komen to the court of public opinion when he teased the group’s million-dollar-plus effort to squash nonprofits that allegedly appropriated the “For the Cure” slogan. Who can blame these smaller nonprofits wanting to cash in on what's become a multimillion-dollar marketing machine.

To Komen’s credit, the organization makes no bones about its size, its influence or the way it does business.

“It’s a democratization of a disease,” said Komen CEO Nancy G. Brinker, in a recent New York Timesarticle about the pinking of professional football. “It’s drilling down into the deepest pockets of America. …America is built on consumerism. To say we shouldn’t use it to solve the social ills that confront us doesn’t make sense to me.”

Raising awareness is all well and good, and Americans have huge hearts and pocketbooks when it comes to giving, but why must that awareness come with a pair of New Balance sneakers or a Kitchen Aid blender?

The truth is that it shouldn’t. Since when did we start needing to get something in order to give?

Let’s Reconsider Our Disease Consumerism

Pink’s 2011 October reign is almost complete. Soon we’ll be on to November, which is officially recognized as Lung Cancer Awareness Month. You remember lung cancer, don’t you, the No. 1 American cancer killer that took nearly a million lives in fours years? It’s got a color and a ribbon, too, though it shares its pearl-colored badge of honor with multiple sclerosis. Only its marketing budget can't compete with pink.

As we close out the final months of 2011, why don't we leave the color spectrum and our "disease consumerism" aside? Perhaps my singing the blues over pink may convince others to think about the effect that one cause's marketing efforts have had on so many others.

From breast to colorectal to pancreatic and prostate to ovarian, esophageal and all the insidious rest -- cancer kills indiscriminately. Choose whichever form of runaway cell growth you want and re-focus on the color of money instead: donate all that you can directly to treatment and screening sources of these other unadvertised cancers – having done your research first, of course.

Trust me. That blender – pink or otherwise – can wait. Because all cancers and life-threatening diseases are equal-opportunity killers, even if the marketing budgets of the nonprofits that support them aren't.

The following article by Vanessa Horwell, Chief Visibility Officer of Thinkink, originally appeared on Marketing Daily on 10/25/11.

Are Marketers About to Face Facebook Fatigue?

Call it a building generational misstep.

Just as marketers seem to be catching on to social media’s professional usefulness, new data suggests sites like Facebook may be losing some of its youngest faces, today’s college students and recent graduates, who will soon form the next generation of adult consumers. Fed up with the site’s frequent rules changes, feared invasions of privacy, and overwhelmed by the never-ending stream-of-consciousness thoughts that seems to ooze from its millions of users, so-called “Facebook Fatigue” is growing.

The “disease,” which was diagnosed by Inside Facebook, a blog who owes its existence to tracking all things Facebook, (along with social gaming and mobile applications), found that while the number of Facebook users continues to grow, growth rates have slowed. In the US, some 6 million users have defriended the social media site, dropping its total number of nationwide users to 149 million, down from 155 million in recent months, a nearly 4 percent drop. Across the pond, UK Facebook user numbers also took a dip, where 100,000 people –out of about 30 million users – deleted their accounts.

So what’s the big deal if Facebook’s portrait these days isn’t as bright?

The Facebook usage study coincides with marketing research that suggests Fortune 100 companies –if belatedly – plan to ramp up their spending sharply on social media campaigns in 2012. A summer 2011 study by Booz & Co. and Buddy Media, as reported on eMarketer, found that nearly a third of respondents said they expected to grow their social media budgets to as high as 10 percent of their overall marketing budget in the next three years. More than a quarter, (28 percent) predicted their social media spending would surge to 20 percent of their marketing spending.

As with any hot new trend like social media at large and Facebook up close, it’s critical marketers, aided by their in-house and external Public Relations partners, remain fresh with the times. Anyone remember Friends Reunited, Bebo, (short for Blog Early, Blog Often) and MySpace? Well, maybe you remember them, but when was the last time you checked your profile or sent a post? Chances are it’s been a while.

Thanks to the growing bonds between social media and mobile communications, its likely the new medium will continue discovering ways to reinvent itself and maintain popularity. In other words, if it’s not Facebook or Twitter, chances are it’ll be something else.

So is there a building generational misstep?

It’s too soon to tell. But when marketers express confidence over their social media spending plans, remind them that on today’s fast-changing digital high seas, it’s easy to miss the boat.

Two Weeks On, Apple Endures

Two weeks may not sound like a lot of time, but for a company that’s just lost one of the world’s most influential technological and social innovators, it is.

That’s why in the huge wake left by the passing of Steve Jobs, tech writers, bloggers and PR professionals, continue to hang on almost every word the company says, and look for signs, no matter how small, that suggest the company is foundering.

On Wednesday, 14 days after Jobs’ death, the naysayers may have found one.

For only the third time in nearly a decade, (cue the foreboding music) the financially conservative tech giant missed its quarterly earnings estimate – a fact that sent the stocks spiraling downwards by some 22 points before today’s Nasdaq opening. As of 10 o’clock this morning, Apple’s stock was down 5.4 percent.

I don’t know about you, but this latest sign of the purported apocalypse hasn’t caused any iPhone 4 or 4s, or any of my iOS devices to suddenly crash. (My Blackberry, however, is another story) Over the last few weeks, both before and after Steve Jobs’ death, I’ve written about Apple’s long-term vision, its ability to manage its message, and its resilience going forward. So lets set the record straight – a missed earnings call by any other company, like Goldman Sachs and Google, generates news, for sure, but few people start questioning the company’s future. Miss a few more earnings estimates, however, and legitimate concerns mount. Apple Q4 sales still rose 39 percent to $28.3 billion and the company ended its fiscal year with $108 billion in sales.

Only Apple has the bragging rights to call this a “poor performance.”

The Street writer, James Rogers, rightly points out three reasons why the bite into Apple’s profits won’t last: An already better-than-expected Q1 outlook, an expected uptick in iPhone 4s sales, offsetting sales declines in older models, and the staggering $81.6 billion the company has in on-hand cash.

Apple’s aim high and shoot low forecasting approach should serve as an important reminder for PR professionals. No matter how groundbreaking and dare we say media controlling Apple can sometimes be, the company often underestimates its projected performance to its own advantage. (Yesterday’s miss aside) Clients, especially young startups, run the risk of being overzealous when it comes to the type of messaging and marketing campaign they seek to launch. Reigning in those expectations sounds like a good idea to me.

Two weeks without Jobs and Apple’s message still bears fruit. And it will for a long time to come.

IPhone 4s-teve: There Was No App For That

The following article by Vanessa Horwell, Chief Visibility Officer of Thinkink, originally appeared on Marketing Daily on 10/12/11.

It’s unfortunate that for all the hype, “The Jesus Phone” -- or its latest upgrade -- couldn’t do more to help its creator.

Billed as the device that could almost turn water into wine (at least in app form), Apple’s muted unveiling of its iPhone 4s, and not the much-ballyhooed fifth-generation earlier, was met with a chorus of naysayers that a Jobs-less Apple, (a reference then only to his departure as CEO) might mean bad tidings ahead. Apple, it was said, in a rare fumble, mismanaged the hype express, failing to mitigate and control the Internet rumor mill.

In fact, so under-woven were supporters after the initial announcement that Apple stock tumbled an iOS-crashing $20 to $355 a share a day when both the Dow Jones and tech-heavy Nasdaq enjoyed 1.4% and 3% gains, respectively, before a robust recovery stopped the bleeding. Apple ended the trading day down some $2 or 0.6%.

To be sure, now that the technological shock has passed (the human one is just beginning), Apple’s electronic awe is flooding back. Model number aside, the specs are impressive: a new processor seven times faster than the iPhone 4, an 8-megapixel camera, better battery life, and an almost artificially intelligent talking personal assistant called Siri.

Some 48 hours late --, the time it nearly once took to download several DVDs to bulky desktop computers -- and we are stunned by how much has changed. Last Wednesday Steve Jobs, who had been battling pancreatic cancer, died. He was 56. Looking back to Tuesday, it's very likely some of Apple's less-than-shiny rollout was due in part to the behind-the-scenes building tragedy. The fact that would-be tech insiders, bloggers, journalists and PR leaders didn't report any of this -- clearly being kept out of the proverbial loop -- reinforces how shortsighted we may have been in Apple's negative critique.

Shame on us.

Rather, Apple’s performance over the last few days was message control at its finest. While we don’t know what time Jobs passed away, we do know the announcement came around 7:40 p.m. Eastern time -- some three hours after the close of business and nearly four after the close of the Nasdaq, where Apple’s stock is traded. Whether this was by chance or design, we’ll never know.

Unlike media outlets like CNN that had plastered Jobs’ picture across its homepage as it began its homage, Apple relied on its Jobs-honed, simple, sleek, approach. Apple’s homepage featured a black-and-white portrait of their leader, circular glasses rimming his eyes, a piercing look that jumps off the monitor (or smartphone screen) as he inquisitively pinches the salt and pepper scruff of his beard. Click on the image and visitors are brought to a concise, three-sentence tribute, along with a link to email one’s memories of Steve to the company.

At the end of the day, whether the iPhone 4s is derisively called the “Peter phone” and not the “Jesus phone” doesn’t much matter. In retrospect, CEO Tim Cook’s gray tenor Tuesday and iPhone4’s stuttering launch, was more appropriate than ever, and a clear sign that an Apple without Jobs, whether it wants to or not, must continue updating its message. Like Apple so often successfully does: The public was once again misdirected over what was truly unfolding.

Robert Mead-Green, in his TechRadar blog, rightly points out Cook’s southern drawl, his somewhat muted style, and his desire to share the mic and limelight with fellow Apple executives -- a far cry from the one-man-band hoopla that Jobs was famed for delivering. The point: Managing your message means updating it too. That’s exactly what they’re doing. Kudos to them.

Or try this analogy: Companies -- and ballplayers -- can’t always hit home runs, even when they want to leave the crowd whooping and hollering. Sometimes a well-placed bunt does just as well or better.

Apple’s “bunt” Tuesday and press redirection in no way suggests the tech giant is heading to the Minor League -- with or without Jobs. What’s more likely is that a quieter launch gives the company healthy breathing room from now until next summer (or sooner) when the iPhone 5 arrives.

Looking ahead, while uploading some perspective, Apple has had numerous product hits in the last decades, and few duds -- think Apple’s original “hockey puck” mouse or the $7,500 20^th anniversary Macintosh, released in 1997. Thanks to his commitment and total dedication to the company, Jobs’ ideas and inspirations, like spare parts for a classic car, are poised to keep Apple well stocked with his genius and vision for at least the next decade.

Until now, there has been a belief on tech blogs and in PR circles that whatever Apple touches turns to gold (I actually wrote that in another column last week). The iPhone 4s product launch and our metaphysical recall in no way diminish that mystique.

Jobs wasn’t Jesus. Nor are his phones. But the way Jobs and Apple handle its stardom in even the darkest of hours is almost religious.

When it comes to the tragic passing of a great visionary like Steve, and all the surgeries and efforts to save him, it’s too bad there wasn’t an app for that.

If given a little more time, perhaps he would have designed it.

The following article by Vanessa Horwell, Chief Visibility Officer of Thinkink, originally appeared on Marketing Daily on 10/12/11.

Stop The Presses!

Yes, there are still presses!

And, no, we’re not talking about cookie presses, juice presses or drill presses, but rather that staple of mechanical print writing that for oh, about the last five and ¾ centuries –iPads and other iOS devices aside— dominated the newspaper and communications industries and marked the dawn of our information age, version 1.0.

That was the heartening, (and perhaps stunning) conclusion in a recent article on The Daily, which profiled a Brooklyn “pressman” Dan Morris and his efforts through his business, The Arm letterpress, to help a now-niche industry prosper in decidedly digital times.

Considering that I recently wrote about the power of old school print and supported our cheers with data that suggests print media – in all formats – may have endured the worst of its circulation declines, I wanted to throw my support (and ThinkInk’s), albeit digital, to Mr. Morris’s work. His business, launched in 2005, offers Sunday DIY classes on the mechanical printing art while his own 1950s-era Vandercook presses, according to The Daily, pump out wedding invitations among other individualized requests.

Morris’s passion for print preserves our written heritage. From Gutenberg to Jobs, we all should offer a simple thank you.

Now start those presses!