Canuckflack

The Canadian Museum of Civilization has just launched a retrospective of Canadian Design in the 1960’s. Featured are such Canuck icons as Northern Telecom’s Contempra phone, the Thermos jug, and the Ball B-Q.

I have some quibble with the presentation of the new exhibition on the museum’s website: it takes three clicks to actually get to a picture of 60’s design from the museum’s splash page, and five to get to more than one picture.

Compare that to the National Gallery’s exhibition on 60’s art, which is featured on the first page of content.

The CBC’s website has plenty of clips dealing with 60’s cluture, including this one on a revolutonary new product for increasingly busy housewives: ready-to-eat turkey roll.

Pharmaceutical Executive recounts how a packaging decision by a marketing team had unexpected side-effects on a pill under development:

Decisions made in one functional area, such as marketing, can significantly affect others. So open decision making is critical, particularly during late stage development. In one instance, the marketing team for one drug manufacturer’s COX-2 inhibitor decided to change the tablet’s size close to launch. The team made the decision from a branding perspective.

The idea was to make the name printed on the tablet more visible for target customers. To modify the size, excipients were added. These additional components affected the medication’s absorption rate and altered its pharmacokinetic properties. Although the impact was realized before registration, the decision put timelines at risk.

Open communication between the marketing and clinical teams could have prevented unnecessary delays in the drug’s registration or launch.

WHEW! Thank god the two teams finally got their act together and mitigated the impact. Lord knows we wouldn’t want to delay registration or launch! It’s not like there are other problems with COX-2 inhibitors to deal with.

Of course, marketing executives would have a far easier time if pharma companies slowed their merger mania: their unwieldy amalgamated names could score 688 points in Scrabble.

Recently, Dame Ellen MacArthur finished a quick circumnavigation of the globe, sponsored by the home improvement giant B&Q. A friend assures me the following letter ran in the Times of London recently:

“Dear B&Q, congratulations on getting your boat round the world in 71 days, 13 hours and 19 minutes.

Can you please explain why the kitchen set that I ordered from my local B&Q 96 days ago still hasn’t managed the 13 mile trip from the store to my house?”

MacArthur’s return to old blighty is well-timed: B&Q has been getting grief after a recent downturn in sales, and there’s nothing better to distract questioning analysts than a look at an expensive boat.

And don’t think B&Q hasn’t been trumpeting their association with the sailor at every opportunity - to nearly absurd levels. Here’s some marketing hyperbole, as cited by The Friday Project:

‘B&Q’s own brand power tools from the Performance Power range were used to build the B&Q trimaran. This has proven that the tools have been challenged to extreme limits and demonstrates to our customers that if they can help protect the B&Q trimaran against the dramas of the high seas, they can be trusted to improve the comfort of their homes!’

Oh, I see you there. Putting the finishing touches on that fact sheet - the one shining up the benefits of the latest semi-automated industrial drum welding machine. It might be boring, but those 3.75 billable hours will cover the gas bill. And we’ve all heard from Jack, the new outside sales guy, how well that stuff plays with the procurement folks on the road.

“This may suck,” you say, “but my future is sitting right there in that courier bag - 900,000 delicious little bytes of twisting plot and dramatic flourish.”

There’s an ibook hiding in there, the keys worn bare by hours of concentrated writing in company lunch rooms, airport waiting lounges and Starbucks. In the side pocket, a 512 meg usb stick on a keychain.

That little stick is your last shred of hope for a truly intellectual career - the draft script you’ve been working on since you finished that Learning Annex creative writing course in 1998.

Sure, picking up the 512 meg stick might have been an unbridled act of optimism - but every great work needs to be protected. Some may rely on the waterproof binding of a Moleskine notebook, but you prefer the semi-hard aluminum and tinted lucite of an American-branded, Chinese-sourced memory stick. On an oxidized carabiner.

You’re in luck. Rick Paulas has your number, and is now offering advice on “how to write an Academy Award-winning screenplay“:

“There was a period when the Academy voter pool was believed to be comprised exclusicely of octogenarian cyborgs running on a castor oil/liquefied granola bar fuel blend. This was the 1980s, when Chariots of Fire, Gandhi and Driving Miss Daisy received top honors. More recent intelligence suggests that this is wrong — they’re predominately septuagenarian.”

So. The client refuses to go on national TV. It doesn’t matter, you think. You’ve read the briefing books. You’ve had the pre-interview with the client and the producer. You’re a public relations pro - why not you? Might be a good chance to wear that new Hermes tie!

It’s just you, another guest, and the host. Do you have the cojones to work your way out of this mess?

SCARBOROUGH: Penny, did you call — is it true that you called these people in the pre-interview scum-sucking bottom-feeders?

NANCE: Hey, I might have said that, but I meant it in the nicest way possible.

Hey, are you a PR parent? Maybe an Uncle Flack or an Auntie Publicist? Have you ever re-gifted schwag for your nephew, niece or cousin?

This is the book for you. The Boy Who Cried Fabulous, by Lesléa Newman.

In addition to having a wonderfully cheery and positive disposition, little Roger may be a little … Patty?

“Newman need not mention the G-word, but when little Roger stops a woman on the street to say, “What a fabulous purse, it’s simply divine!” we all know exactly where he’s coming from. (That’s right, kid: When Mom shouts, “Go straight — straight to class,” just stick to being fabulous instead, and everything will be just fine.)” (EastBayExpress)

Of course, if you’re a complete nut, you might not like this book.

Lake Tahoe’s hip. They’re with it. Watersports. Skiing. Resorts. Spas. They’ve even got one of them new-fangled websites:

www.gotahoe.com

Now - what is there to do at night?

When it comes to Hunter S. Thompson, I’ve always preferred the Bill Murray Where the Buffalo Roam to the Johnny Depp Fear and Loathing.

And, strangely, I’ve always liked Hell’s Angels the best.

There’s a great, and representative, selection of faxes between H.S.T and Walter Isaacson of Time here.

The Washington Post tells us about some historians getting their knickers in a knot about the new gimmicks at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Museum - including 1860 tv campaign ads.

The whole thing is enough to make John Y. Simon’s skin crawl.

Simon … teaches history at Southern Illinois University… Ever since he read about the life-size figures of Lincoln and his contemporaries that BRC will be installing in dioramas throughout the museum, he’s been the go-to guy for outraged sound bites.

… “Six Flags Over Lincoln,” he calls the whole enterprise, and “the modern equivalent of the old wax museum,” not to mention “Las Vegas East.” Children already see plenty of Disneyfied things, Simon believes, and are more likely to be moved “by the authentic, by grandeur, by spectacle.” …

I don’t know about that. One exhibit in particular has been designed in Holavision®, and I’m sure there will be dozens of preschoolers expecting an appearance by Dora the Explorer.

Today, the Times provides some welcome instruction on how to be an intellectual.

Two hints:

Intellectuals ought only to live in cities. If you must live in the country, try to ensure that it is in some form of converted church or lighthouse. Geography matters. Intellectuals ought to live in North London, Cambridge, Edinburgh, Durham or Devon. In South London, Oxford, Glasgow, Newcastle or Cornwall, you are merely a smartarse.

Clutter your house with books (many decorators will sell them by the yard) and cultivate an eclectic speciality (Scottish jazz, Afrikaaner ska, 18th-century punk rock, etc) among your CD collection. This will help to obscure the fact that you don’t own any Beethoven.

I also have it on good authority that suede shoes with metal buckles and pink shirts also impart an air of eccentricity, therefore superiority.

Don’t you hate it when your client lies to you. A lot? Ronnie Fowler, the potential owner of the Minnesota Vikings, has apparently embellished his personal biography. So much so, in fact, that’s he’s halfway through his apprenticeship as a calligrapher.

Late Tuesday afternoon, Fowler’s Twin Cities public relations firm, Tunheim Partners, began issuing some clarifications to his biography,
which Fowler’s company, Spiral, Inc., supplied to the firm, said Leslie Kupchella, the Tunheim executive on the Fowler account. (Star Tribune, reg. req.)

“So this week at McGill, the ministers of foreign affairs, international trade and international development will show up to paint a smiley face on a departmental apparatus in chaos and a foreign policy on hold.” (Paul Wells)

Just stop, concentrate and visualize that. Wouldn’t three bobbing yellow heads make a far more interesting visual for the 10 o’clock news?

Maybe with some political aides holding message balloons over their heads?

Sure, it’s no Paul Simon memorial water tower, but …

Interested in the diverging communications strategies employed by Merck and Pfizer in the aftermath of public and regulatory criticism of their Cox-2 drugs? There’s a very good piece in this month’s Medical Marketing and Media.

“Merck and Pfizer bookend Big Pharma, polar opposites in personality and business strategy. They have been tested in recent months, and their responses provide a brilliant primer in crisis management — and a note of caution to competitors who have not put their crisis communications plans in order.”

First, a thought about the humble (and unbranded) typewriter from March 1905:

“It is a far cry from the monkish calligrapher, working in his cell in silence, to the brisk ‘click, click’ of the modern writing machine, which in a quarter of a century has revolutionized and reformed business. Its introduction marks an era of progress not inferior to that brought about by the telegraph and telephone.” (Scientific American, sub. req. )

Now, some quotes from Apple execs introducing the Apple Newton in 1993:

“We want to show how this technology, which still has a bit of Buck Rogers in it for most of us, will change the world.”

“This is not about shrinking a computer down,” Sculley said. “It’s about making things easier than the things I already think are easy, like the telephone.”

“The Macintosh was a revolution for the desktop. The Newton is a revolution for the pocket,” [said] Sculley.”

“When PDAs become a reality, we’ll be very well positioned,” Sculley asserted. “We’ll make money at every step of the value chain, and so will our third-party developers.”

Ouch. Sometimes it hurts to run ahead of the pack.

NOW Magazine: “After Years Of Failure, Techies Working On Cyberdildonics Might Actually Be Making Some Inroads.”

Great. Just great. PPV porn and cyberdildonics. Looks like there’s a looming staff shortage at comic book stores and Radio Shack.

A snippet from Question Period:

Question - (Bob Mills, Conservative): Kyoto will be in force on Wednesday. The government has no action plan. Why will the Minister not release the plan for hot air credits by Wednesday?

Response - (Byron Wilfert, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary): The Minister made it clear he won’t buy hot air from Russia or from the member.

Hot air from Russia? Makes me yearn for the days of Andropov, Chernenko and old-school Pravda.

Professor Stephen Brown casts a slightly more realistic eye on my apparent theme of the week:

“Don’t get me wrong - I have nothing against customers. Some of my best friends are customers. Customers are a good thing, by and large, provided they’re kept well downwind. Look, clearly companies can’t survive without customers. The issue is how best to attract them.

The traditional marketing approach advocates servility, pandering, abasement, oily obsequiousness and what have you. We’re creeps, basically. We peddle an unattractive mix of pseudo-empathy, pretend intimacy and fake friendship. I suspect most customers yearn for the days when purchasing a bar of soap didn’t mean entering into a lifetime value relationship.

… The crucial change that many managers and hug-the-customer gurus have yet to grasp is that contemporary consumers are marketing savvy. They are wise to the wiles of marketers. They know the customer is king. They are fluent in Brandsperanto. I call them Generation ®.”

From the Austrialian Financial Review (sub. req.)

Following up on my earlier post on decentralization and consumer apathy, a thought from John Winsor’s Beyond the Brand:

“Branding has been appropriated as a distorted form of communication in which the company always assumes the position of power and is not necessarily required to either listen or respond to feedback.

People are expected to sit quietly and listen; many react to this by tuning out much of what is said. They are developing a Brand Immune System: the reality is that people will only pay attention to your brand or your product when they actually need or want your product or service – not before, and usually not after.

You may have prepared a beautiful brand identity kit, complete with creative brief, custom cardboard box, colour swatches, sample logo applications and multi-format graphics files, but how are you actually building a relationship with your customer or stakeholder?

Let me rephrase for a public relations staffer: what steps are you taking to learn what is on the mind of your engineers, salespeople, the people who live around your new plant, your big customers, small customers, new customers, ex-customers?

Sending out pretty pieces of paper by FedEx will not prompt dialogue or create a conversation.

A rule to remember, even if you’re hopping mad about your coverage in the press: always keep your communications professional, well-considered and well-presented.

Take, for instance, a recent letter to the editor of Marketing:

“In a recent letter to Marketing, Nestle Rowntree managing director Chris White pointed out that sales of Kit Kat are, in fact, doing rather well.

I say ‘letter’, but in truth it was a three-line felt-tip scrawl, faxed to us, asking why ‘you guys never report the good news’, accompanied by an equally hastily clipped regional newspaper article about the brand’s bounce back.” (sub. req.)

There’s a backstory to the Marketing-Nestle relationship, and the rest of the Marketing piece is quite well-balanced.

In my drawer, I still have a news release that was faxed back to an old office with the words “TAKE ME OFF YOUR STUPID MAILING LIST!!!” written in black marker across the page.

This from IWantMedia:

ABC will use a time delay during this year’s live broadcast of the Academy Awards on Feb. 27 in an effort to screen out any wardrobe malfunction or foul language. This year’s host is Chris Rock.

Too bad there isn’t a way to fast forward through some of those acceptance speeches. TIVO - please work in a seven second time warp for live TV?

Oh - here’s a good Oscar acceptance speech generator.

Today’s theme, class, is on decentralization. It’s about the power of the individual to collect disparate pieces of information, perform independent analysis, and develop individual opinions and positions. It’s about bending, folding and mutilating - ignoring the rules. Forget the suggested serving size! How hungry are you?

We’re going to bounce around today, landing softly on several different ideas. I just finished Joe Trippi’s book (I know, I’m slow. I did read the TNR coverage) on the Dean campaign for president - a giant amorphous “open source campaign“, which essentially ceded tactical control to the previously apathetic, the newly energized and the true believers. As the Dean campaign discovered, these new acolytes brought energy and ideas - but demanded their voices be heard and reflected in the campaign itself.

A new book, Brand Hijack, pushes a similar idea: consumers are your greatest supporters and possibly your greatest detractors. They form an opinion about your brand even as your event team rolls out its latest sticker campaign or sampling program. They’re acutely aware of any effort to sway their opinion and their purchasing decisions, and are almost self-consciously independent.

Alex Wipperfurth, the author, warns marketers that their old world of command and control is fading: the traditional and intensive marketing campaign may not drive customers to the stores anymore.

“How do you market to an audience that rejects marketing?”… “Scrap the focus groups, fire the cool chasers and hire your audience.”

“Carefully plan every step, but be totally open to having the story rewritten along the way. … Free yourself to seize sudden opportunities that only last for moments.”

(Full disclosure: Penguin sent me a review copy of Brand Hijack. I still like it, and think Wipperfurth’s observations and ideas in many ways parallel and supplement existing public relations tactics)

I’ve also stumbled across a recent piece on Friedrich A. Hayek, who may be familiar to the more libertarian-minded among us. Hayek’s “The Road to Serfdom” challenged a 1930s fondness for centralized economic planning.

Bruce Caldwell, his biographer, told Reason last month:

But the mistaken notion that we can plan social structures and social realities and social institutions in the same way that we can accomplish goals like putting people in space is very, very seductive. … Hayek’s critique … attacked what he eventually called “rationalist constructivism,” the idea that we are able to reconstruct or correct society along rational lines.

He argued that you can’t easily improve on what he called “spontaneous orders.” There are many situations in which an order has arisen by individuals following rules. They often can’t articulate why they follow the rules, some of them are moral rules, whatever, and this has lead to a certain amount of coordination of people’s activity. To the extent that it’s done, that it’s allowed, groups that have followed those rules tend to prosper. … Language, the market, money, and more reflect this.

I know what you’re saying. “Colin? What’s with the economics lesson?” Let me throw a name out that you will recognize: James Surowiecki.

“Hayek was a true prophet of what we now call self-organization, making clear how and why order and intelligence can emerge out of the interaction of myriad individuals, even (or especially) without a planner or boss in charge. … The most interesting question is whether organizations—from government agencies to corporations—will start to take Hayek’s ideas seriously and recognize that by tapping the knowledge of their decentralized, locally informed workers, they can (just as markets do) produce a whole that’s significantly better than its parts.” (Reason, 01/05)

You HAVE TO LOOK AT Hayek’s “Road to Serfdom” in cartoons, originally published by General Motors and republished in Look magazine. Not very subtle, nor intellectually forthright, but a startling look at how some major economic players viewed state economic planning.

Of course, Public Enemy had their own take on mass-market attempts to convince and coerce:

“It’s a start, a work of art
To revolutionize make a change nothin’s strange
People, people we are the same
No we’re not the same
Cause we don’t know the game
What we need is awareness, we can’t get careless”
Public Enemy- Fight the Power

One last pragmatic observation from Things Magazine:

“Perhaps it’s the realisation that however edgy, ironic and out there you think you’re being, there’s always someone ready to recycle your authentic angst into just another sales pitch. The resulting pitch just makes other people madder and even edgier, and thus the cycle begins all over again… “

Siemens has developed a neat little app - an invisible digital graffiti service, which creates site-located electronic text post-it notes using almost any mobile device (with a GPS add-on). Leave a virtual note for your friends: “Waited for thirty minutes, left without you. Loser.”

Although the technology is about two years from the market, I think I can guess two prime groups of early adopters: trainspotters (Guardian, r.r.) and geo-caching afficionados.

Bombardier Aerospace, part of the global transportation concern, is considering a report recommending the outsourcing the technical publications and information unit to India- which means about 350 people may be losing their jobs. People like YOU - writers, editors, publication coordinators, clerks …

This is the new reality, folks. If you perform a routine task day in and day out, your job is likely at risk. And don’t trust management to level with you about possible outsourcing decisions. As the Globe tells us today, a Bombardier VP in customer support wouldn’t even admit the report existed until his staff confronted him with copies.

But look on the bright side. Experience has proven that, given an opportunity to balance demand and supply, the modern capitalist economy will arrive at an average wage for skills such as writing, research and phone babysitting higher than that currently being paid to Indians.

Unfortunately, that takes twenty to thirty years, and the average will still likely be lower than existing wages in North America and Europe.

Well, another local newscaster from my youth is dead. Bob McAdorey, a Southern Ontario broadcaster for nearly forty years, passed away this weekend.

Of course, I only I remember his later career as entertainment editor on Global News - with his giant [irish] afro, tweed jackets and outsized glasses.

But in the 1960s, working the afternoon drive time slot, McAdorey helped set the agenda for popular music in Toronto - meeting the Beatles and the Stones along the way.

“We kept it all clean up here. There was no payola as in the U.S. and we deliberately helped a lot of Canadians. It was personality radio. We were promoted like crazy back then. And the pressures were unbelievable. We dictated what records were going to go. And what kids would eat, drink.” (Toronto Star, r.r.)

Correction (17/02): I originally referred to Bob’s scottish afro.

Seventies design, all images, no text.

Not as stunning as Graceland, but damn close.

I work in-house, so I’ve had many opportunities to hear pitches, proposals and presentations from erstwhile suppliers. The common theme? “Man, do we have the program/product/publication for you!” Sorry guys, you lost me at “Hello.”

What’s missing from their spiel? Personalization: how does your proposal relate to my needs? How are you going to solve my problem?. How can you help ME? Dana points to a WSJ article discussing “why ‘listen and learn’ is a consultant’s mantra“.

I’d ask the same of our in-house comms staff: are you listening to your clients? How have you moved THEIR yardsticks?

Maybe we all need 7 Tips for Effective Listening, from the Journal of the Institute of Internal Auditors.

Like Tom Murphy, I recieved an email from Steven Phenix yesterday, touting a noble goal: spurring PR bloggers to build some online buzz for the positive aspects of public relations.

Unfortunately, this will be a long and difficult battle. We’re dealing with long-held perceptions of our profession, often confirmed with unpleasant experience. Evidence? Let me table a piece of evidence, which we can refer to as “Piece of Evidence #1″.

PRWEEK UK released the results of their latest salary study this week. The stats reveal that working conditions are improving for PROs in the UK.

What did the Times pull from the story? What’s their principal takeaway? Ummm: mingling is the key to good public relations:

“People who don’t know how to mingle won’t get on in the absolutely fabulous world of public relations. … more than 70 per cent of PR lovelies are out on business one night a week. Late nights play havoc with your skintone, so it’s not surprising that 20 per cent of employees find PR “very stressful”. “

Great. Sophie Wessex is not the role model for all public relations pros!

It’s three in the morning. Your office’s tiny little recycling bin is full of Coke and Red Bull cans, styrofoam coffee cups, and that bottle of Diet Dr. Pepper forced on you by the wonky drink machine on the third floor.

You’re pretty sure the landlord shuts the building’s HVAC off at 7pm - you can still smell that Dr. Pepper burp - and the flourescent lighting seems to be on some sort of irrational timer only reset by a switch forty yards away.

There are papers strewn about your office. Policy papers, spines snapped open, piled beside the HP printer. Multi-page memos folded and unfolded, underlined and highlighted, ripped at the staple thrown across the desk. Very important post-it notes with very important words piled up by the phone.

You’re working on a speech on short deadline, and past drafts are spilling out of the printer. A pile of annotated pages cover the floor around the recycling bin. Every executive, assistant, advisor and smart intern has chipped in with their comments and favourite phraseology - and they went home about seven hours ago.

Still, you’re in the zone. You’ve got some strong themes. You’ve got your speaker’s trust. You’re not tired. The ideas are popping, the words are flowing. Fatigue is only a flicker in your eyes, not a haze enveloping your thoughts.

Because you know what can happen at that point in the night: the trapeze act. Jumping from thought to thought, searching your brain for the easy transition. The speech becomes less of a work of art, and more of a compilation or synthesis.

Matthew Scully, a former Bush speechwriter, knows this is where speech writers can veer off the road:

“Another great challenge in State of the Union speeches comes around Page 10, when the entire thing can easily turn into a tedious grab bag of policy proposals. This is averted by skillful transitions. It was a point of pride that rarely have Bush speeches fallen back on artless devices like: “As we meet dangers abroad, so our work at home continues.”(NYT)

Another revealing commentary comes from Bush I’s chief speechwriter:

“State of the Union addresses often amount to not one but two speeches: the speech the president got stuck with, which sounds like a hodgepodge, and, somewhere inside it, the speech the president wanted to deliver, which sounds unified, authentic and complete.”

John Vernon has passed away. Come on, you know him: Dean Wormer.

Dean Vernon Wormer: Well, well, well. Looks like somebody forgot there’s a rule against alcoholic beverages in fraternities on probation!
Otter: What a tool.
Dean Vernon Wormer: I didn’t get that, son, what was that?
Otter: Uh, I said, “What a shame that a few bad apples have to spoil a good time for everyone by breaking the rules.”
Dean Vernon Wormer: Put a sock in it, boy, or else you’ll be outta here like shit through a goose.

While their site may not have much material under the “media” tab, I feel obliged to point out that the Mother Ship has a launched a new online arts magazine: cbc.ca/arts.

Worth a visit if only for their Alternative Canadian Walk of Fame. First member? Hammy Hamster.