Canuckflack

Just had a front row seat for the anti-Bush protesters marching through Ottawa, and thought I’d pass along a few thoughts about the execution of the march:

• The aboriginal drums were a good idea. They really reverberate off the office blocks and draw the attention of the workers inside.
• When it comes to signs, stick to big letters, small words. “Buck Fush” comes across clearly, the longwinded diatribes were illegible.
• If you’re going to throw around totalitarian analogies, try to be original. A swastika over an American flag? Who would find that serious? And what was with the PRC flag?
• The coordinated anarchist cheerleaders were magic!
• If your anarcho-syndicalist group is going to carry a 10 foot by 20 foot anti-war flag at waist level, make sure to swing it in the air so we can actually read it.
• Where were the performance artists? The people on stilts?
• This sign, no matter your politics, was funny: A village in Texas has lost its idiot.
• A rented cube van is only as valuable as the sign it carries. One in the march looked like a lost moving van

You know what was missing? Vendors. Hawkers. How were bystanders supposed to voice their support? Where were the $1 buttons?

Here’s a handy guide on “How To Organize a Protest.” And here’s one from the Rainforest Action Network.

BTW- the Canadian Press headlined a story today “Bush in Canada for first stage of world charm offensive.”

Old line media (I mean newspapers! Come on, people: stay with me) are facing a real problem: their circulation is declining. Younger readers just aren’t jumping at the chance to cough up $25 a month to have the paper delivered to their doorstep.

I suspect it has something to do with irrelevancy: this demographic doesn’t feel a pressing urge to spend time flipping through 35 pages of flyers, antiseptic comics, city editorials, birding columns or small-minded columnists to find the information they need.

As subscribers of the Sun Times, Newsday and others know, this decline has prompted some publishers to cook the books. Others have commissioned reader surveys to dig deeper into the psyche of the elusive Generations X and Y.

Their findings? As the OJR observed earlier this fall, young adults are picking and choosing their media: radio, alternative weeklies, RSS, Google News, and news service websites. Information doesn’t come a la carte anymore: it’s a multimedia all you can eat breakfast.

Last week, Wired reported on the results of focus groups commissioned by the Washington Post. Their stunning finding? A large number of young adults would not even accept a FREE subscription to the paper. Their principal objection? The clutter of old papers around the apartment.

The WPost ran an article about the circulation troubles today. You’ll have to look down, look wa-a-ay down to find mention of their own troubles.

At The Washington Post, for example, daily circulation has fallen from 779,898 to 717,696 over the past five years … The paper chalks up some of that drop to the increased popularity of its Washingtonpost.com Web site and Express, the free daily it launched in August 2003, which will soon print 175,000 copies each day.

It’s a comprehensive article, covering the fraud, deceit and promotional gimmicks attempted in the quest to grow paper sales.

And that’s the problem. You’re not in the paper business, folks! You’re in the news business! Step out of the 1970s and smell the LCD screen, people! Give me some freakin’ options to consume your news!

Can I pay $2 a month to get movie listings and restaurant reviews for my neighbourhood delivered to my phone? How about a custom search function, a la Google Alerts, that delivers news of interest to me, billed to my credit card?

And not at the ridiculous rates you charge now. $4.95 for an article? That’s a pricing structure left over from when corporate librarians were the only ones with access to Dialog, LexisNexis and Infomart. It doesn’t reflect your costs of production, or your costs to store the information.

Oh, I know what you’re going to say. People like the touch, the feel, the smell of fresh broadsheet in their hands. There’s an existential aspect to old-fashioned newspapering. Sure there is. That’s why I have a printer which, after rebate, cost me $30.

The paper business isn’t going to die quickly. The technology is going to evolve underneath them. For example, the NYT ran an article on podcasting. But why don’t they make their “audio slide shows” accessible in this new format? These are revenue streams they’re not even considering.

Many news organizations will adapt, and many small community papers will continue to thrive thanks to a loyal local base, but they should stop and take their heads out of their paper mill invoices. Their readers will thank them, and the beavers, deer and eagles of British Columbia, Ontario and Norway will thank them.

It’s a nice crisp fall day in Ottawa, and President Bush has just landed on his first official visit to Canada’s capital. He’ll be making a brief visit to Parliament Hill, then will travel to view several culturally significant but interminably boring local sights.

Plenty of organizations across the country are exercising their democratic right to protest various issues of personal interest, and you can watch some of them congregate on the Parliament Hill Cam - which is supported by a department of the Government of Canada.

CBC News Online’s Paddy Moore is on the ground filing every few minutes. He reports that some of the protesters on the Hill are playing “Rebel, Rebel” from a loudspeaker.

A webcam and a minute-by-minute blog: shades of the new world of participatory and instantaneous reporting.

Here’s one of the ‘nets hidden treasures: football coverage in the Guardian. You may not follow the sport much, but if you’re a fan of wit, sarcasm and cross-cultural comparisons, it’s the read for you.

Today, the paper began their description of Wayne Rooney’s new house quite caustically:

The thing about being a professional footballer in England is this. Unless you’ve carpet-bombed half of Cheshire to make way for your mansion’s helipad and snooker complex, really, who the hell are you?

If your latest girl never emerges in metallic bikini bottoms from the 18th-century chapel you’ve converted into a state-of-the-art tanning salon … You don’t, after all, want to be a loser, one of those no-marks who doesn’t have a football boot-shaped swimming pool that can be seen from space.

Another drawing card? The work of Barry Glendenning, who provides minute-by-minute live coverage of significant internationals. An example? How about this exchange from Tuesday’s Manchester United/Lyon game:

43 mins: A corner for Manchester United, won by Ruud van Nistelrooy. Ronaldo plays it short to Gary Neville, who sends a low drive screaming across the box. Cris clears. In a perfect world, Cris would have crossed, facilitating no end of lame puns, but then nobody ever said life was fair.

Watching the pretaped Today Show “tour” of the new FAO Schwartz store on Fifth Avenue, I noticed that one segment featured an FAO executive and Katie zooming around on Segways.

FAO’s aiming for the high end of the market with $18,000 antique cast iron locomotives and a $50,000 kid-sized Ferrari. Sure, there are tchotchkes and more reasonably-priced toys - but the expensive toys are leading the media coverage.

The question is: will FAO win market share with their new strategy, or is this unfortunately a PR campaign that will burn bright then fade away, like the Segway?

Magma Communications, a successful Ottawa ISP for business and government customers, has provided a perk beyond foosball and cappucino bars for its HQ employees: an outdoor hockey rink, with boards and nighttime lighting.

The new edition of Eye magazine has a number of incisive pieces on branding, as Design Observer points out.

John Waters writes in his introductory editorial:

“Personally I hope never to use the ‘B’ word again. In the course of editing this issue, I have literally typed it out more times than I have had hot dinners – and that can’t be good. But if I have learned one thing from the gurus, it’s that when you write about ‘branding’ it is best to start off with a self-serving personal anecdote, followed swiftly by an dollop of uncritical brand worship – reproducing the logo as big as you can get away with. It’s madness. Brand madness. And that’s what we promise.”

Of particular interest are the two characterizations Nick Bell makes of designers in his piece “The steamroller of branding.”

As Michael Bierut notes, by describing these “agents of neutrality” and “aesthetes of style,” Bell has

“nailed the choice that many designers feel they face. They can choose to become the passive, “objective” voice of their clients, or they can be creative fountainheads, beholden to no one but their own imaginations.”

Some elements of truth in that argument for PR folk as well, eh?

(Eye only has an extract of Bell’s piece, but Bierut has won permission to post the two descriptions on Design Observer)

Is the office holiday committee looking for unusual event locations? How about some skating? There are 30 professional hockey rinks across Canada and the United States facing an interminable lockout. And the NHL players who aren’t playing in Europe are kind of at loose ends. The opportunity for PR and marketing folks? Events at marquee facilities with recognized stars.

With sizeable fixed costs, facility managers are looking to fill their arenas, even if they have NBA or AFL franchises to fall back on. I mean, when’s the last time an NHL arena hosted a PUBLIC SKATE in December?

On a local level, second and third line players may be available for regional, local or retail promotions. Or front-line players could headline charity events - like Jeremy Roenick’s “Wicked Weekend” golf and hockey do in Arizona in a few weeks.

Of course, the lockout is hitting luxury box owners hard as well. An Ottawa Hill & Knowlton VP was actually forced to take clients to a Beastie Boys concert last week.

On another note, Molson Canadian’s protesting the lockout with a fan ad spoofing Culture Club’s “Do you really want to hurt me?” Well worth watching.

Quite serendipitously - given today’s post about management fads - I was reading through the lyrics to Tyrannosaurus Hives - particularly “Dead Quote Olympics”:

This time you’ve really got something it’s such a clever idea
But it doesn’t mean it’s good ’cause you found it at the library
Yes they were smart but they are dead
And you’re repeating all that they said
You know it don’t make you clever like you thought it would

Sure, Blender calls the song a “rote punk-a-rama exercise” …

What do the bandmembers think of the song? Nicholaus Arson and Vigilante Carlstroem spoke to XFM:

“This song is about people who go to the library and read stuff and then put it in other people’s faces. They just read stuff without understanding it and then try to explain it to people.” (listen to this quote on XFM)

Case studies are being rewritten. The photocopiers are warming up. The powerpoint specialist has had her vacation days cut back. The cerlox machine has been pulled out of storage: it’s time for a new management fad!

Malcolm Gladwell will be bringing out a new book in January: Blink: The Power of Thinking without Thinking

You can hear the business consultants salivating. Sure, “Tipping Point” has had a good run. It’s provided the intellectual heft for thousands of rehashed conference presentations and breakout meetings. You had to know, though, that the concept would become stale. Showing up in the food section is a good sign.

The smoke signals began in earnest earlier this month, as Fast Company tagged Blink as an idea reckoned with in 2005.

What idea is this, exactly? Let’s hear from Malcolm Gladwell himself:

Intuition strikes me as a concept we use to describe emotional reactions, gut feelings–thoughts and impressions that don’t’ seem entirely rational. But I think that what goes on in that first two seconds is perfectly rational. It’s thinking–its just thinking that moves a little faster and operates a little more mysteriously than the kind of deliberate, conscious decision-making that we usually associate with “thinking.” In “Blink” I’m trying to understand those two seconds. What is going on in inside our heads when we engage in rapid cognition? When are snap judgments good and when are they not? What kinds of things can we do to make our powers of rapid cognition better? (gladwell.com)

Interestingly, British newspapers seem to be the first to be thinking through the work:

“Gladwell’s theory of Blink is both liberating and dangerous. You know whether your hunch was right only in hindsight. Human creativity is a wonderful thing … and it is inextricably linked to human error.'’(Daily Telegraph, free reg. req.)

Of course, this idea has been germinating with Gladwell for some time. He first explored it in a 2002 article: The Naked Face: Can you read people’s thoughts just by looking at them?

Preorder the book, it’ll make nice Festivus gift and you’ll be at least two months ahead of the USA Today featurette on the idea.

CNN’s new anchor promos are quite funny (check them out here). The one featuring Wolf Blitzer and Paula Zahn reflects the new media environment CNN is facing: Wolf is speaking directly to a young woman eating a sandwich at her desk. As he tries to run through the important international news, she interrupts him with “read it already,” “got the email” and, finally, a buzzer sound. She then turns to Paula, who delivers a local health story. The young woman finishes up by saying “Thank you, Paula. THAT was helpful!’ with a scornful look in Blitzer’s direction.

Wolf, and the others, truly are competing against newspapers, radio stories, emails from friends abroad, rss feeds and local television news. And their coveted viewers are quite quick to judge whether their offerings are useful or not.

It’s official. Michael Milken has left the nastiness behind him. The public brawls with Rudy Giuliani. The comparisons to Gordon Gekko. That uncomfortable period in jail. Hundreds of million of dollars in fines, and hundreds more in civil settlements. Companies that flamed-out and collapsed under the weight of junk bond debt.

How’d he do it? A single-minded (and self-financed) crusade against prostate cancer. Incredible advances in research, the recruitment of other high profile spokespersons, and a very careful cultivation of the media on medical and personal health issues. And a whackload of money.

The result? This week’s 8000 word piece on his work, and a nice shot with Lance Armstrong on the cover of Fortune.

Of course, Milken’s been working on a number of public policy issues over the last ten years. The American Prospect took a look at his Milken Institute in 2000. The verdict? A lot of good work, but:

“The problem with the institute can be summed up in six words: too much Milken, not enough institute. Far too much of the think tank’s business seems designed to advertise its own importance–and, by extension, that of its founder.”

Back in 1990, Tom Peters had nothing but glowing things to say about Milken:

“The high-yield securities (junk bond) market that Milken and Drexel Burnham created was the most effective prod for the massive industrial restructuring America needs to be competitive in the 21st century.

If there is a single tragic flaw that mars our biggest enterprises, it is conservatism — the failure to fail, and fail big, in an era of unprecedented volatility and ambiguity. In a chaotic world, your strategy must be chaotic enough (sufficiently failure-strewn) to up the odds of keeping pace with the times.” (Peters, to his credit, has this column on his website)

And if you want the unvarnished truth from Mike himself, just look at his notes for reporters here.

Today, the DVD set of the July 1985 Live Aid performances goes on sale in Canada. At long last, a painless opportunity for Midge Ure and Paul Young fans to throw away their Betamax concert bootlegs, 85 lb. Betamax machines, and join the rest of us in the 21st century.

As producer Jill Sinclair told the Globe and Mail, there were some complications pulling together okays from all those big 80s pop stars:

“There were the usual vanities,” she says, “people wanting to look at the tapes and being horrified by their hair. And the thing is, they do all look awful. It was the eighties.”

Indeed, watching the DVD now, what is striking (after the intensity of the performances) is the severity of fashion crimes and also the relative innocence of pre-Internet culture.

To watch the show is to be thrown back into the gaudy heart of 1985: Is that actually Bono’s hair, or is a yak squatting on his head? Why were Spandau Ballet ever allowed to have a hit single? Was there really a time when we thought George Michael was straight? And what is that in Freddie Mercury’s pants?

Peter C. Newman has spent decades reporting on the politicians, financiers and power-brokers that help grease the Canadian economy. In an excerpt from his new book, he reminsces about his time as a reporter on Parliament Hill:

“The ‘rules of thumb’ for Press Gallery coverage of Ottawa, all of which contained a grain of truth:

How to Cover Ottawa

The ‘rules of thumb’ for Press Gallery coverage of Ottawa, all of which contain a grain of truth:

1. Any Ottawa news story more than six weeks old is news all over again.

2. If you want to allege that an MP molests pigs you don’t have to produce the pig. You just have to get him to deny it.

3. Any story you don’t have to retract is a great story.

4. In any situation where estimates are used (casualties, crowds, etcm) the largest estimate is the most accurate.

5. If it’s important enough, they’ll say it in English.

6. A ’source’ is someone at the Press Club bar. An ‘informed source’ is someone at the Press Club bar who has talked to someone not at the Press Club bar.

7. An ‘informed source familiar with the minister’s thinking’ is the minister.

8. A story on polls is only news when it confirms what your editor wants to hear.

9. The only reason anyone in Ottawa talks is when they are trying to hide something.

A note about #5: remember that Canada is a bilingual nation, and that politicians sometimes have messages specifically for their Quebec constituents that they will only deliver in French.

(excerpted in the Ottawa Citizen. Not online)

So, what do we know about the evolving breed of New York publicists/heiresses/socialites? You know - like Lizzie Grubman with a lot of money.

The New York Observer has run an interesting little piece on Lauren Davis, who spends her days prepping publicity for the J. Mandel fashion house:

She’s part of a new breed of socialite-cum-publicists—”socialists”? “publicites”?—who are leveraging their network of rich friends into a lucrative career of their own: seamlessly promoting both charitable and commercial causes.

What’s your preferred investor relations strategy when your company is circling the drain of the NYSE? Do you share corporate information with shareholders, analysts and reporters to the fullest extent possible under securities law, or do you limit financial disclosures and “guidance” to what is nominally required while you determine the breadth of the problems your management team may face?

Earlier this year, Nortel’s new CEO, Bill Owens, embarked on an admirable strategy of open and frank communication as his management team began the dissection and restatement of the telecommunication company’s financials.

It has rapidly become apparent that, over the past six years, Nortel may have been cooking the books well enough to win the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval. Sales prebooked, expenses deferred, institutional “hardness” - and not the Hulk Hogan or Ron Jeremy sort of “hardness.”

This has forced Owens to push back his own deadline for the full disclosure of financial concerns at the company - several times.

The latest delay, announced yesterday, may be galvanizing shareholders and analysts tracking the stock:

“This is very bad. It was only two weeks ago that management told us we will have the results for mid November and now they don’t. What little credibility they had is almost gone,” Tera Capital fund manager Duncan Stewart told Reuters.

This despite a clear explanation from Owens about his motivation for the delay, and his evident dedication to a thorough investigation.

While Owens and his team may be faced with challenges and financial chicanery unforeseen when he set his first deadline for disclosure, their inability to provide final books for several years’ worth of financials is definitely undermining the open and honest communications strategy. Even worse, the unmet deadlines may actually be affecting sales:

“In our view, this latest delay strains management credibility. We also believe that these delays are beginning to have an impact on Nortel’s ability to sell its products,” [A.G. Edwards analyst Greg Teets] wrote.

The lesson? There are two. Any communications strategy is only as valuable as the results you can promise AND deliver; and you can never control your target audiences: you can only inform them and hope to guide their analysis.

A letter to the editor of the Guardian, published today:

Can someone tell me why, after publishing a fulsome interview with Richard Desmond some months ago, you have followed with a self-congratulatory piece (Richard Desmond: my struggle, October 25)?

As usual, Desmond has given an article that has so many flights of fancy, he could be damaging the ozone layer with his hot air. This is either because: a) you are too lazy to fill the space you have with original copy or b) your editor is disappearing into a horrible orifice where he shouldn’t.

Michael Gannon, London

Considering the hiccupps (okay, full-blown tuberculotic coughing fits) the US diplomacy program has been suffering, I really shouldn’t be surprised that the US government hasn’t participated in a world fair in several years.

In fact, Congress banned the federal financing of world’s fairs in 1999.

Luckily, the US pavillion at the 2005 fair in Aichi, Japan will be funded by private donations - and the VIP suite will be designed by Thom Filicia of Queer Eye.

As the NYT tells us:

The 7,000-square-foot suite, Mr. Filicia said, will have a “clubby” look — with real leather floors donated by Edelman — and an industrial feel, since much of the building’s warehouse structure will be exposed. Mr. Filicia said that Pier 1 — which he represents on television — will donate dishes for corporate entertaining.

Leather floors? What sort of feature is that for a VIP suite? Maybe Thom can explain it:

Thom: You know this leather headboard—which you can clean easily. I don’t even want to get into it, but just a little FYI.

Apparently one Canadian news organization has more than domestic market domination on its mind. Canwest’s new contract for freelance writers demands:

“the right to exclusively use and exploit the Content in any manner and in any and all media, whether now known or hereafter devised, throughout the universe, in perpetuity.”(from Paul Wells)

While most PR folk struggle with monthly time sheets, monitoring clippings and - god forbid - AVE measurements, your target audiences, potential customers and zealously identified stakeholders are appropriating, modifying and personalizing your corporate messages and carefully structured identities.

Andrew Zolli has touched on the fundamental challenges facing marketers, brand managers and even PR teams as logos, brand attributes and corporate identity programs become commonplace in our life.

This blossoming of branding in every sphere of life has not reduced us to mindless consumers — in many quarters, it’s had just the opposite effect. From Skater Kids to Soccer Moms, a new ethos of brand participation is emerging. People now increasingly see brands as shared cultural property, rather than privately owned intellectual property. Familiarity breeds ownership: brands are ours, not the companies that supposedly own them.

People do funny things with brands when they believe that they own them. They tattoo logos on their forearm. … They add, subtract and remix the meanings supposedly dictated by the brand’s corporate parent. And they do all of this without asking for permission.

Expanded monitoring programs, focus groups and ongoing tracking polling can help a corporate communications program keep tabs on how their work is being interpreted among many different demographic groups, but Zolli rightly points out that more sophisticated work is needed, on a practical and academic level, to really understand how far consumer culture has evolved.

… Market researchers have a vital role to play here, but traditional measures — such as unaided recall — simply won’t cut it. What we need to do is help corporations dig deep into the culture, and unearth the complex web of meanings and social participation that surrounds their brands. We need robust ethnographic and qualitative research to help them find new ways of connecting in a peer-to-peer, open way with their constituencies. And we need to help companies understand and take their new role — as stewards of human meaning, not just economic value — seriously.

(November American Demographics, not online)

“The Tarleks came from the west — they grooved. White belts shining in the pounding sun …”

WKRP’s own leisure suit-wearing Herb Tarlek will be in Toronto Wednesday to star in the video for the Rheostatics’ new song, “The Tarleks.”

The quote from the song, and some mighty fine commentary about the new Rheostatics album, can be found on thismagazine’s blog.

Of course, we have all forgotten that Herb, Lucille, Herb the Third and WKRP were the subject of the first reality tv show: “Real Families.”

SPCA Worker: Mr Tarlek had placed some ducks in the window of Hunter’s Department Store as an advertising gimmick with his radio station. At noon, one, two and three PM, the ducks would do a little dance, sort of a jitterbug.
TV Hostess: Mr Tarlek had trained the ducks?
SPCA Worker: No, the ducks danced on a little stage made of aluminum foil. We discovered that under that, Mr Tarlek had placed a hot plate. He would turn it up, and the ducks would dance, and he would turn it off and the ducks would go on about their business. You know the interesting thing about this case was that this man Tarlek and another man named Carlson were cited for throwing live turkeys out of a helicopter to their deaths.

Dave Balter helps cut through the B.S. about viral marketing, buzz marketing and word of mouth in a ChangeThis manifesto, “The Word on Word of Mouth.”

So what’s the easiest way to tell these mediums apart? Viral and buzz marketing are the cause. They are manufactured marketing initiatives that are intended to capture people’s attention and get them talking …

Word of mouth is the desired effect. It is a natural, honest occurence, and it’s very difficult for a manufactured marketing message to create it. It’s a medium made up of the conversations and communications between people. Word of mouth can go viral. When that honest opinion is fun, unusual, sexy, exciting, urgent, undiscovered, or shocking, it’s worth sharing, and it will move farther much faster. But for that to happen, you must have actual brand advocacy, and people must be willing to go out of their way to share an opinion, an experience, or their passion about a product. The reason that word of mouth is so powerful is that it is a mutual conversation; you can’t find it with a hundred other messages waiting to be deleted from your inbox.