Ecuadoran Asylum or Not, Assange’s – and WikiLeaks’ – Credibility is Shot

In a desperate bid to dodge extradition to Sweden – where he’s wanted for questioning on a sex-crime accusation and which would likely turn him over to the US government – Julian Assange, WikiLeaks founder and document dumper extraordinaire has found political asylum in Ecuador.

The WikiLeaks founder, who has been ensconced in the Ecuadoran embassy in London since June 2012, got confirmation today that Rafael Correa, Ecuador’s president, has decided to shelter the beleaguered Assange in his country, believing the latter’s human rights are likely to be violated if English police arrest him.

I absolutely agree with the Miami Herald’s South American Bureau Chief Jim Wyss, Ecuador is a bizarre choice for Assange, (I’ve written about Wikileaks in my MediaPost column back in 2010 and 2011) whose website has  leaked reams and reams of classified government documents, videos and photos. Correa, on the other hand, has a penchant for clampdowns on – and multimillion-dollar lawsuits against - the country’s press.

But in the end it may not really matter, not for Assange or WikiLeaks. At least it won’t matter when the organization is now pulling sophomoric rubbish like faking an article to make it look like a New York Times columnist supports its iffy “mission.”

This summer seems to have been one long string of assorted PR fiascos that, I admit, have been somewhat fun to skewer on this blog. And yet, to the PR professional in me, these calamitous blow-ups still have a nails-on-the-chalkboard effect. I have to cringe.

And cringe I did when I read WikiLeaks’ smug tweeted admission of responsibility for the fake op-ed piece, which has since been taken off the Web, attributed to the New York Times’ Bill Keller. In the bogus column, Keller seems to say that WikiLeaks’ activities should be protected under the First Amendment. Once the article was outed as fake, Keller took to his own Twitter feed to deny any connection with it.

Whoever is tweeting for WikiLeaks actually characterized the hoax as “successful.” Well, I guess if their intention was to blow their own credibility out of the water, then yes, it was very successful indeed. Particularly for an organization which purports to increase transparency and challenge our world’s corrupt power arrangements by exposing their innards, credibility is the very cement holding together the cinderblocks of its purpose.

Without it, the whole house falls apart.

Uncovering the truth is supposed to be WikiLeaks’ entire raison d’ etre. So, when it brags about having fooled the NYT and everyone who pays attention to these issues, it’s cutting off its own nose to spite its face.

After all, what did WikiLeaks really accomplish by pulling that stunt? Did it help itself in any way? No, all it did was tell the world it can create very convincing fake documents.

And that’s just going to make the world think twice about the authenticity of its next document dump. 

Associated Press Takes a Closer Look at the Need for Microfinance in the US

About two weeks ago, I wrote a post about the pressing need for microfinance services – particularly microcredit, small loans for very small businesses – here at home in the US, not just in the developing world. In that post I featured OUR MicroLending, a Miami-based microcredit company that has disbursed over 1,050 small loans to over 600 South Florida micro-entrepreneurs, to the tune of around $6.2 million, who were turned away by the big banks after applying for loans. In our current credit crunch, the company is giving these hard-working merchants a way to restock, expand, hire and, by extension, stimulate their local neighborhood economies. OUR MicroLending is also working to expand its operations to the entire state of Florida and, eventually, the rest of the country. Because there is so much unfulfilled need for these types of services here, I was heartened to read an excellent Associated Press article, published last week, about the fine work microfinance organizations are doing in the United States. OUR MicroLending had a starring role in the story, which appeared in the Washington Post and at least 25 newspapers and websites, spreading the message of financial inclusion far and wide. My congratulations go to AP reporter Laura Wides-Muñoz for a great piece. Here’s hoping some struggling entrepreneurs who don’t know about microfinance read it and realize there is hope.

Engagement After The Fact: How Mobile Technology is Becoming a Hotel’s Best Post-Stay Emissary to Maintain the Guest Connection After Checkout

The following article by Vanessa Horwell, Chief Visibility Officer of ThinkInk, originally appeared on Hotel Executive.

“A good rule to remember is that a guest is always a guest once they have stayed with you and the services you provide.”
– Scott Nadel, Chief Operating Officer, DMC Hotels/Dhillon Management.

It may not seem like a profound statement or idea, but it’s surprising how so many hotel brands and hoteliers fail to remember and act on this simple piece of advice. At its heart is the optimistic, glass half full notion, that in a perfect scenario, the customer experience never truly ends – not if you’re trying to engage guests and keep them loyal. It just evolves into different stages and levels of outreach and engagement. For once a guest leaves your hotel, business and leisure travelers alike often begin planning for their next trip, eager to lock in competitive prices, air travel benefits and potential room upgrades. For guests, barring something unexpected or calamitous, another getaway is always around the corner. And once they turn that proverbial corner, your hotel should be the first one they think of and consider. But it isn’t unless you are creating some form of continued engagement after they’ve checked out of your property.

The Start of Something Beautiful

In the last few years, mobile technology in the form of feature phones, smartphones and tablets have gone far to reinvent and re-imagine the continuing customer experience. While much has been written about mobile’s pre-stay and in-stay possibilities, including mobile booking, mobile checkout and a host of in-room and on-site hotel amenities, the post-stay experience has been largely ignored or thrown in as a last-paragraph addendum. But connecting with a guest after the bellhop has delivered bags and the bill paid is equally important and should be considered not the last step in a transaction, but the first step in a future stay. Think of it is as the start of a long, meaningful relationship – if done properly.

Restaurants and Mom’n’ Pop stores are often fond of hanging from their doors vintage red and white signs that read, “Please come again soon” or “Thank you for your business.” But for hotels looking to maximize mobile, turning the medium into the ultimate post-stay emissary, “please come again soon” shouldn’t be a siloed request – it should be an expectation that is carefully and non-intrusively cultivated. In other words, mobile can (and should) be a privacy-respecting approach that entices, not enrages and can include follow-up emails, Twitter and Facebook interaction, digital surveys, future deals and discounts, as well as providing the transparency for open guest dialogue, and the granting of reviews, whether they’re positive or negative.

There’s no getting around the fact that we live in a what-have-you-done-for-me lately culture. Failure to connect with a guest via mobile following their stay is like saying a brand doesn’t care. In these still-uncertain economic times, hoteliers would be wise to avoid that perception at all costs.

Hitting “Send” at the End: Why Mobile’s a Must

But before delving head first into the specifics as to what mobile can do for improving the post-stay experience, it’s important to recognize why mobile has become such a dominant player in the hospitality industry to begin with. For starters, mobile has in only a few short years, grown to become the dominant everywhere and anywhere technology. Nearly half (46%) of all US adults own a smartphone, says the most recent Pew findings, and tablets enjoyed a significant 2011 holiday season uptick too, nearly doubling to a 19% percent adoption rate. Combined, the adoption rate for smartphone owners who also own a tablet is expected to grow by 40% by 2016, according to Javelin Strategy & Research. Already consumers use their mobile devices to “window shop,” purchase goods, price compare, book flights, arrange travel plans and discuss these transactions with their friends via social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare and others. Mcommerce, while still only a fraction of overall commerce spending, has grown considerably and if current forecasts prove accurate, global transaction values could grow to $37 billion by 2016.

Airlines have been great examples of how to monetize the mobile experience and to weave its pocket-powered potential into their ancillary revenue profitability models – at least during pre-flight and in-flight. Air passengers not only expect but demand that their mobile devices keep them connected pre-flight and even pre-gate. In fact, a recent study by PC Housing, a temporary housing corporate provider, showed that business travelers are all-but addicted to their mobile devices. Most are between 25-50 years old, are workaholics and they carry three to four mobile devices – 95% own a smartphone and 64% own a tablet. Both percentages show a marked increase from 2011 with 44% and 33% adoptions rates respectively. And bringing it back to the hotel, fully 90% of these mostly male (60%) travelers expect WIFI connection at their place of lodging.

If travelers expect mobile to be a critical component to all aspects of their lives, there’s no reason why the same expectations wouldn’t apply at the end of their travel experience as they leave the hotel lobby.

Socializing the Digital Post-Stay Emissary

One of the most important post-stay tactics hoteliers should consider has garnered a good deal of press lately but it deserves constant restatement. Since the first lodgings opened their doors, guests have remained eager to discuss their travel and hotel experiences. Customers will discuss their bad experiences more than their good ones, and hotel guests are no different.

But that’s why mobile and social media can be such powerful teammates. Hotels that design their mobile websites and apps should consider letting guests have the freedom to write about their experience – no matter its positive or negative spin. Doing so instills a perceived sense of honesty, trust and transparency. And confronting negative reviews with follow-up emails or phone calls demonstrates earnestness in learning from past mistakes. Wyndham Hotel Group, for instance, is the latest hotel chain to make such an offer. In March 2012 Wyndham began displaying TripAdvisor ratings and customer reviews. The program began on the Wyndham Rewards loyalty program website, but the company plans to expand that offering. Whndham’s move was but the latest of a slew of hotels that have embraced this level of post-stay guest communication. Starwood initiated website-published customer reviews in October, along with Marriot and Four Seasons shortly thereafter. Meanwhile Hilton Worldwide said they would be adding customer reviews by the end of the year.

Together these steps reinforce what Kate Zabriskie, author of Customer Service Excellence: How to Deliver Value to Today’s Busy Customer has said about the customer experience: “The customer’s perception is your reality.” The bottom line is that with Facebook averaging around 500 million mobile users per month, and upward of 300 million photos were uploaded (many directly from high megapixel smartphone cameras) guests are already posting and sharing their travel experience. Hotels have an opportunity to get ahead of this communications bandwagon, not by controlling the online conversation per se, but encouraging its redirection back toward a hotel’s mobile website, app, or standard web landing page.

From the Soft Sell to the Harder Sell: Discounts, Deals and Follow-ups

If the possibility of continuing mobile dialogue and willingness to post even negative reviews is about “soft selling” a hotel brand – indirectly trumpeting it’s eagerness to please guests even after they’ve left, then the second post stay mobile benefit comes down to the “hard sell,” or more aggressive marketing tactics like discounts, package deals and the possibility of upgrades. Here, email and SMS can work just as effectively as social media. But if a hotel tries to attract repeat guests with rich media or augmented reality maps showcasing a hotels’ latest improvements or a promotional video, smartphones and better still, tablets (and laptops), are far more capable of delivering that content.

But if budgets are strained, simpler approaches may work best. Telluride Alpine Lodging, of Telluride Colorado, for instance, owner of several branded hotels, offers 10% discounts to: repeat guests, military veterans or AAA members. On the other side of the country, VillaDirect vacation homes, of Kissimmee, Florida, (specializing in rented vacation homes near Orland and Disney World) also offers returning guests discounts divided into three tiers: silver, gold and platinum with discount rates of 5% to 7.5%. A quick check on the company’s Facebook page reveals 48,289 “likes,” and as of this article’s writing, 412 people were talking about the company. In addition, the company’s Twitter page showed 155 followers. Increasingly, mobile will be the dominant way in which users access this information.


Much More Than a Digital Post Card

It’s hard to believe that it wasn’t too long ago that hotels corresponded with their guests via traditional post cards, follow up thank you notes, and the occasional six month phone call. While some hotels continue this tradition out of a sense of nostalgia, its purpose has lost much of its meaning – especially in view of the mobile and digital times we live in. The greatest difference between then and now: mobile allows the potential for a constant two-way dialogue through multiple communication channels (social media, email, SMS) all in a single device.

Too often mobile’s hotel progress has been consigned to a guest’s pre-trip planning and in-trip (and in-room) lodging amenities. But the reality is, when a customer checks out, their next check in could be only a matter of weeks or months away. Guests will always be guests as Nadel rightly points out, but whether or not they return, is what matters most. Sam Walton, the Founder of Wal-Mart, characterized a customers’ importance like this:

“There is only one boss. The customer. And he can fire everybody in the company from the chairman on down, simply by spending his money somewhere else.”

Mobile is increasingly the ideal way to prevent that from happening, interacting with guests, offering deals and discounts, and providing a medium for them to discuss their travel experience anywhere and everywhere – and long after they’ve left your hotel.

The following article by Vanessa Horwell, Chief Visibility Officer of ThinkInk, originally appeared on Hotel Executive.

How To Tackle Information Overload

The following article by Vanessa Horwell, Chief Visibility Officer of ThinkInk, originally appeared on Marketing Daily.

"Distringit librorum multitudo."

To be clear, the above is not gibberish -- nor did I decide in a fit of rage to start banging my keyboard, bookending that in quotes. Although, on second thought, sometimes the idea does come up for a vote -- especially around 5:30 a.m. when before I turn to my hubby I turn on my iPad and BlackBerry to see what’s in the news, on the blogs and the dozens of emails that have come in overnight. That’s the typical start of another day in PR agencyland.

The opener is actually a Latin quote from the Ancient Roman philosopher Seneca, who in the first century AD lamented that “the abundance of books is a distraction.”

Fast-forward 2,000 years -- and if Seneca were alive today, he’d likely dunk his head in the nearest aqueduct, overwhelmed by today’s digital information onslaught. Never mind the estimated 700,000 scrolls the Royal Library of Alexandria held -- the ancient world’s most important information repository. I can get three-quarters of a million hits on a single Google search on my BlackBerry while I’m reviewing and skimming texts on three other screens in my office, all at the same time.

But this isn’t a morning rant. Information overload -- and how it affects industries like PR -- is a very serious matter. It’s become so troublesome that tech industry writer Jonathan B. Spira, author of “Overload! How Too Much Information is Hazardous to your Organization,” estimates that info inundation and the productivity inefficiencies it generates cost the U.S. economy $1 trillion in 2010. $1 trillion. There is even an Information Overload Awareness Day to help us poor sufferers. Ironically, though, I didn’t get that email.

What spurred this article was a post I read on the Council of Public Relations Firms blog, which I had hoped would offer up some concrete advice. It wasn’t a bad post per se, nor was it poorly written. It’s just that the nine-paragraph “novella” was about five paragraphs too long.

The advice boiled down to: carving out time to have in-person meetings with colleagues rather than wasting digital ink over long emails and missed communications, setting aside “free thinking” time to allow yourself a chance to properly digest the words you’ve consumed, and skim and scan material rather than dig deep. You see? I summed up the entire article in 46 words. That’s a 96% reduction.

It may be hard for us in the PR industry to admit, and it’s probably just as much of a bitter pill for our clients, but so much of what we read (and write) can be said in far less space. And if it can be said in less physical or digital space, the information those words carry takes up less brain space too. That should leave all of us with more brain juice to do our jobs better and in less time.

Newspaper editors are fond of the expression “tight and bright” to describe copy. Barring The New York Times and few other heavy hitters, most news stories come in at 500-700 words. Still too long? No problem. The inverted pyramid style of writing that is popular in journalism front-loads the most important information, so that the five Ws are answered no later than the third or fourth paragraph. Usually.

Beyond more effective skimming and an industry commitment to churning out greater substance and less fluff, some measure of tuning out might be in order. Just because today’s technology allows endless publishing and limitless word counts doesn’t mean we must feel compelled to fill that virtual space every time.

Often I find myself giving the same advice to clients, especially ones where the glut of incoming data can sometimes dim the picture rather than brighten it.

A little more Googling revealed that the latest Information Overload event was held in February 2012. Considering the scope of information inundation and its predicted growth, it’s likely the event won’t be its last. And if I manage to get caught up and….and….and…. I’ll make a point of attending the next gathering.

Besides, more information can’t hurt.

Or can it?

The following article by Vanessa Horwell, Chief Visibility Officer of ThinkInk, originally appeared on Marketing Daily.

How the Path to Financial Success Has Many Roads and Why Microfinance is Often Overlooked

Imagine a woman who founded a courier company and now has offices and employees in two counties shuttling documents for clients such as architectural and law firms. Envision another woman who turns the love of her native country into a living by selling Colombian souvenirs, crafts, food and clothing. Or dream of a man and his staff who profit from their talents by crafting creative signage and painting custom designs on cars and boats.

These are just three of hundreds of hard-working South Florida entrepreneurs who have wielded maybes and can-dos into realized storefronts and American middle class status. And they’ve done this through a unique financial channel called microlending. While microlending is well known across Latin America and in developing nations, sadly its existence, popularity and prevalence stateside remain in a nascent phase.

Unfortunately, most of the news I read and hear about microfinance in the U.S. involves providing those services abroad when in fact a vast underserved population exists right here. Don’t get me wrong, helping the disenfranchised in places like Sub-Saharan Africa and Asia is a noble thing. But I’m often left wondering why so little of the microfinance conversation involves helping out low-income entrepreneurs right here at home.

Now more than ever, microfinance can be the homegrown vehicle that turns this trend around - especially as the latest jobs report shows the same stubbornly high unemployment, lackluster job creation and consumer penny pinching across the board. The result is that hundreds of thousands of marginal-income families have slipped through the proverbial cracks and our snail-paced economic recovery continues to widen that fissure. Good credit becomes bad credit and access to traditional bank loans dries up.

People can help, and not just by giving donations or crowdfunding, the latest personal investing trend. Many of the recession’s forgotten casualties don’t want handouts; they want opportunities to work themselves out of a financial hole. Kiva Microfunds, a San Francisco-based tiny loan lender, clearly has the right approach. The company connects donors who wish to give money in as little as $25 increments and has lent out $335 million across 62 countries, boasting a 99% repayment rate. Closer to home, Our MicroLending, of Miami, has disbursed over 1,050 loans totaling $6.2 million to over 600 micro-enterprises whose owners use the funds to restock, remodel, expand and hire.

Fortunately there’s other good news as well. Microlending is also increasingly interwoven with the phenomenon of impact investing. Impact investing is the process by which investment takes into account not only direct ROI, but evaluates the social and environmental benefits of doing so. Like mircolending, social impact investing has numerous secondary and tertiary benefits. Blighted neighborhoods on the brink of collapse revitalize, crime rates fall, juvenile delinquency drops and a community or neighborhood has the chance to rebuild. And just this past spring, Morgan Stanley, inspired by its own studies on the matter, announced the launch of its Investing With Impact Platform. J.P. Morgan predicts that, by 2020, there will between $400 billion and $1 trillion invested in ways that have a positive social impact.

So it’s definitely possible to do well by doing good, no matter where funding comes from. A November 2011 report by the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business put the number of microfinance institutions in the U.S. at 362. A strong start for sure. But clearly there can (and should) be more. Investing in microfinance for American entrepreneurs and making sure people out there know that this service is available, that self-employment is an option if they’ve lost their jobs, can do a lot to help ease the protracted financial suffering that has left so many of our fellow Americans penniless and without hope.

To dream is priceless. But acting on dreams comes at a price. Mircofinance and social impact investing are paving – and paying – the way forward to turn entrepreneurial dreams into reality. 

No More Bulls#!t: Let’s Just Be Straight With Each Other

Lots of people – in fact, too many people – in the legal, medical, academic, government and other professions like to pad their documents with a level of verbosity (a big word for long-winded) that makes them sound really important.


Here’s an example from the Plain Language Network, the website of the international plain-language movement, taken from a life insurance application form:


Before: If you fail to comply with your duty of disclosure and we would not have entered into the contract on any terms if the failure had not occurred, we may void the contract within three years of entering into it. If your non- disclosure is fraudulent, we may void the contract at any time. Where we are entitled to void a contract of life insurance we may, within three years of entering into it, elect not to void it but to reduce the sum that you have been insured for in accordance with a formula that takes into account the premium that would have been payable if you had disclosed all relevant matters to us.


After: If you fail to disclose any relevant matter and we would not offer you insurance if this matter were known, we may within three years (1) void the contract or (2) reduce the sum for which you have been insured. If your nondisclosure is fraudulent, we may void the contract at any time.

I don’t even want to begin to point out everything that’s wrong with the original wording. It just sounds like gobbledygook. Verbal whiplash. The second is an actual statement that anyone who speaks English can understand. At 53 words, it’s also 54% shorter, but with the same meaning. Just imagine how much paper and gigabytes of data would be saved if all written material could be reduced in half but with greater clarity. Why can’t we just say what we mean and bury the B.S.?


I ask this because I am tired of having to slog through mountains of legalese every time I have to protect my rights to the name of my business, ThinkInk. Or trudge across a swamp of medical-ese any time I or one of my kids has to see a new doctor. Or try to pick out the real meat in client work that a journalist or media outlet would salivate over and ignore some of the bloviated doublespeak.  


It boggles my mind to even try to think how much time – and, after all, time is money – we waste just trying to make sense of the hefty documents that are such an inescapable part of our lives. Recently I came across a Bulldog Reporter article about how the Veterans’ Benefits Administration saved $4.4 million just by editing one letter that was sent to the country’s millions of veterans.


Let me repeat that little jaw-dropper. Revising one letter = saving $4.4 million. Can you imagine the sums of money government wastes just on verbal baggage?


And that brings me back to the world of marketing and PR. Granted, when you are marketing something, B.S. – or its kinder, gentler cousin, “spin,” is almost impossible to avoid completely. But, considering all the documents we produce – pitches, press releases, whitepapers, articles, thought leadership – I wonder how much time and money we, like government, are misusing. Our job in representing clients comes down to shopping a message to media and achieving that goal in the most cost-conscious way possible. Not just for our own budgets, but also for the people we represent.


While many of us may be afraid of sounding unprofessional if we use plain language, I think we’d do well to remember that, in the end, everything we do comes down to communication. Why not try to do that as effectively as possible? All we’d be doing is saving time and money while cutting sesquipedalian language from our copy. Wouldn’t that be nice?

Ralph Lauren’s Olympic Uniform Controversy: The Right Way to Handle a PR Foul-Up

Ever since the media flap that erupted when ABC News reported on Ralph Lauren outfitting the US Olympic team with uniforms made in China, I’ve been scrutinizing everything in our office to see where it’s been made.

The keyboard I’m typing on and the mouse I’m using? Made in China. The mousepad? China. The phone on my desk, the chair I’m sitting on and much of the stuff in our office-supply closet: China. China. And, yes, you guessed it, China.

According to Mark Arena of PR Verdict, Ralph Lauren, the go-to designer for US Olympic uniforms since the 2008 Summer Games in Beijing, has been outsourcing these functions to China all along – in fact, most of the objects that surround us every day are made there – but no one really bothers about it.

So why now? Politics.

It’s a presidential election year, and President Obama’s re-election campaign has been relentlessly hammering the presumptive Republican nominee, one-percenter and car-elevator owner Mitt Romney, over his record of outsourcing jobs to other countries while at the helm of private equity firm Bain Capital and as Massachusetts’ governor. All of a sudden, the heated debate over outsourcing of American jobs has created a PR landmine for Ralph Lauren.

Would people have cared if it wasn’t for the Olympics? Probably not. Or if they did, it wouldn’t have landed as lead story on network news.

An All-American identity is the keystone in RL’s branding arch, so to speak. Its main emblem, apart from the horse-and-rider Polo logo, is the American flag. It is Americana at the very core. On the flagship website, you see the waving Stars and Stripes in the words RALPH LAUREN, just above a photo of the much-discussed uniforms, which the company says it is proud to create. Ralph Lauren went wrong because it forgot that when you’re in the business of selling Americana, it helps to be perceived as 100% red-white-and blue. (Still) Red China garments just don’t feel right. And in an election year, politics, like the Olympics, is a game that attracts many spectators. This time Ralph Lauren got mixed up in a pre-game tussle that didn’t need to happen.

That said, if you build up your brand as a paragon of American-ness while outsourcing the making of Team USA uniforms to China during an election year - where outsourcing is a major issue - your PR team shouldn’t be shocked when the proverbial **** hits the fan.

I half-agree with Mark Arena’s verdict that RL handled this well. Yes, it didn’t ignore the issue. It acknowledged the problem and promised to rectify it in time for 2014’s Winter Olympics.

But the damage has been done. “Sorry” doesn’t cut it. And let’s face it, in our mile-a-minute, tweet-a-micro-second culture, is anyone going to remember this little PR snag – or its lesson – on Friday February 7, 2014, at the opening of the next Winter Olympics, a whopping 817,000+ minutes away? My Magic 8 Ball says ‘no.’ More than likely it will leave another company open to similar slipups. Even so, companies need to remember that nothing they do happens in a vacuum and often products and promotions that bear no obvious linkage to other events, be it politics or world news, somehow becomes relevant. It also doesn’t hurt to remember election year rally-around-the-flag sensationalism.

As for our office? At least our desks and chairs come from Sweden-based Ikea. Even here, some 22% of the brand’s inventory is made in China. But unlike RL and petty politicians, I doubt any of our clients will mind which nations constructed our furniture – Olympic and election year or not.