Canuckflack

Not as much media relations as a gaping black hole that sucks in all light, sound and energy: that’s the philosophy of many of the Canadian billionaires profiled in the latest Report on Business magazine.

“… Peter C. Newman wrote in his autobiography that Fred Charles Mannix was the only Alberta tycoon he couldn’t rope into an interview. Legend has it that the family docked its PR manager’s salary every time the Mannix name appeared in print. …

… When we called The receptionist said she was not at liberty to disclose information about [Aminmohamed Lalji], not even his title …

… When we called We asked to speak with media relations, and were directed to [Michael] Gold’s wife, Libby. She politely, but guardedly, answered our questions. …

… Recluse factor MEDIUM-HIGH When we called, his assistant politely explained that Allan Thorlakson “generally does not speak to the media.” … “

I don’t get it. How can Coke’s ad agency - and senior management - sign off on a slogan that immiediately dredges up themes of alcohol abuse and dependence on anti-depressants? Honestly, my first thought upon hearing the new slogan was: “What, Coca-Cola makes Colt 45 Malt Liquor now?”

My first reaction is images like this Flickr picture of a bottle of anti-depressants.

More details on the $400M campaign directed by Wieden & Kennedy in AdAge.

Technorati: Wieden & Kennedy Coke Colt 45

Just in time for spring proxy statements, the Wharton newsletter discusses a late 2005 academic paper on the media’s coverage of executive compensation: “The Power of the Pen and Executive Compensation.”

“… What models, they ask, are used by the media “to select CEOs for negative articles about their compensation, and do firms and managers find this attention sufficiently costly that they respond by making changes to their compensation policies?”

Relying on 15,000 press articles about CEO compensation from 1994 to 2002, the researchers find “mixed evidence on the level of sophistication used by the press to select companies for negative press coverage. While such coverage is more strongly related to measures of excess total annual pay than to raw total annual pay, coverage is also related to CEO options exercises and total stock and option holdings.”

One sizeable weakness in their analysis: they apparently weren’t able to weight for the varying influence of different newspapers:

“…For example, the authors make no distinction between articles written by the business press, such as the Wall Street Journal and Barron’s, and national newspapers such as The New York Times and Washington Post, and regional newspapers such as the Atlanta Journal Constitution and Philadelphia Inquirer. Nor in this paper did they look at how local coverage in a company’s hometown newspaper may differ from national coverage. “We haven’t figured out how to digest local information when it applies to a global corporation,” says Guay.”

There’s further discussion of the article, and the work of a Times reporter, over at Ideoblog. The blogger, Larry Ribstein, makes the blunt observation that:

“… while we’re reexamining all levels of corporate governance, from inside executives to outside directors to securities analysts, we should do some hard thinking about the governance role of financial reporters in our major newspapers.”

The off-the-cuff survey. The quickie with a sample of 85 or less, designed to generate media interest but not really inform your policy-making process. It’s always good for some easy media hits, isn’t it?

Sure, unless a professional pollster decides to dig around in your findings and contest the claims in your news release. That’s what’s happening to the American Medical Association. Mark Blumenthal of Mystery Pollster is riding the AMA hard for the outsized claims made in their recent news release, “Sex and intoxication among women more common on spring break according to AMA poll.”

He’s analyzed the media coverage of the survey, and he’s posted excerpts of correspondence (from Cliff Zukin, the current president of the American Association for Public Opinion Research) with the deputy director of the AMA’s Office of Alcohol, Tobacco and Other Drug Abuse.

One excerpt from this official, who defends this “media advocacy tool“:

” … I have been involved in the development of public policy research for more than 15 years using this company and several others. We do not make any claims that this is a scientific study and again I ask why did you not have a problem with the other two public opinion surveys I have conducted. I also am afraid that you are looking at the media coverage and not what we issued…

As far as the methodology, it is the standard in the industry and does generalize for the population. Apparently I need to reiterate that this is not an academic study and will be published in any peer reviewed journal; this is a standard media advocacy tool that is regularly used by the American Lung Association, American Heart Association, American Cancer Society and others.”

Blumenthal, like Zukin, has problems with the validity of a non-random internet panel. And the AMA’s reporting of the survey findings with a “margin of error,” a methodological no-no. And the AMA’s decision to revise the posted news release (by removing the paragraph citing the “margin of error”) after they were questioned about it.

” … Also, as described yesterday, their methodology statement at first erroneously described the survey as a “random sample” complete with a “margin of error.” It was actually based on a non-random, volunteer Internet panel. In correcting their error — two weeks after the data appeared in media reports across the country — they expunged from the record all traces of their original error. In the future, anyone encountering the apparent contradiction between the AP article and the AMA release might wrongly conclude that AP’s reporter introduced the notion of “random sampling” into the story. For all of this, at very least, the AMA owes an apology to both the news media and the general public.”

Hmm. I still think there’s a use for the quickie poll, especially on soft issues like clothing styles, vacation choices, and beverage preferences. The AMA seems to have been caught out on a very technical matter, but one of great relevance if the public and the media are to properly interpret of their findings.

An added bonus; Jon Stewart has a comment on Fox News’ coverage of a potential Spring Break serial killer.

Technorati: poll survey AMA

Aside from the great smacks at hipsters making their toddlers wear Clash t-shirts and listen to the Hives, New York Magazine’s “Up with Grups” has some great demographic (and psychological) analysis for anyone managing - or working for - thirty and fortysomething hipsters.

“This is where the Grup diverges from the bobo, the yuppie, even the yupster. The Grup does not want a corner office. The Grup does not yearn for a fancy title. The Grup does not want—oh, please, do not ask the Grup to manage—a staff. “I just wanted to make fun stuff that went on TV,” says Peccini. “Then all of a sudden I’m doing performance appraisals and going to management seminars.”

A human-resources executive told me recently that there’s a golden rule of HR: To motivate a baby boomer, offer him a bonus. To motivate a Generation-Xer, offer him a day off. The Grup, I think, would go for the day off, too. If the boomer’s icon of success was an empire-building maverick magnate like Ted Turner, the Grup’s model would be Spike Jonze, the 36-year-old Jackass-producing, skateboarding, awesome-indie-movie-directing free agent.

Remember, the Grup of today is the slacker from 1990 who, fresh out of college, ran smack into the recession and maybe fiddled around with a riot-grrl band, then got a job at 25 for a Web-development company where she wore jeans to work and played Ping-Pong and stayed late and covered her desk in rare Japanese action figures.

Now that woman is 35, a VP at a viral-marketing firm, still dressing down because everyone knows that the youth market is where it’s at, yet is scared to death she’s going to ossify into the same kind of corporate stooge she swore she’d never become. For a Grup, success isn’t about how many employees you have but how much freedom you have to walk, or boogie-board, away.

Technorati: passionate users hipster demographics

A note about aging consumer evangelists: Billy Bragg, the British folk/punk/rocker, has a devoted following. Devoted, but a little long in the tooth. After all, he’s been around for nearly thirty years.

Still, doesn’t mean his fans are behind on the latest technological tricks to spreading their love for the guy. Much like the fans who post 3gp clips of Kelly Clarkson on YouTube, Billy could be heard exhorting the crowd at his recent concert in Somerville, Mass. that “despite house rules, for this very last song you can use flash photography and you can film me with your mobile phones, okay? Every other fucker does, so I don’t see why you shouldn’t as well.”

Later on, during an audience-led chorus, he asked “I hope you’re picking that up on your phones!”

He was obviously speaking to this person, who has actually posted his cellphone clip of “New England” from the concert.

Shoutout to Bradley’s Almanac for the boots of the concert.

A personal note to people filming with their mobiles, though: please stop drinking before the concert, your handiwork is often very shaky. And, for god’s sake, don’t sing over the chorus - especially with a fake British accent.

Technorati : social media Billy Bragg 3gp

If you live outside tiny little Ottawa, you’re probably not aware of the brouhaha brewing between the Prime Minister’s Office and the press assigned to the National Press Gallery. Let’s just sum up by characterizing it as a struggle for control of the agenda.

” … It’s not that different from the last gang in the [Prime Minister’s Office]. You can spread media chill and fear without actually writing a memo, which is what Mr. Harper did,” says Patrick Gossage, a media consultant who served as press secretary to Pierre Trudeau starting in 1976. “It’s an inherently adversarial relationship, just like the one between stock analysts and CEOs.”

He adds: “There’s actually a lot of Trudeau style in this government. If there was an issue [Mr. Trudeau] was passionate about, he had all the time in the world for the media. But he was also the king of the brush-off.” (Ottawa Citizen, yet again behind a frickin’ subscriber wall)

Now available, a transcript of the tentious discussion last week between the National Press Gallery executive and the PM’s Director of Communications. (Politics Watch) Lots of talk about microphone stands, press conference protocol and the Prime Minister’s agenda.

Chantal Hebert, writing in the Star, recalls Allan Fotheringham’s warning to 1993’s newly elected Liberal government:

“Chrétien, the veteran who has done it all, has a lot to learn if he thinks the old Trudeau/Mulroney secrecy gambit can be pulled off in this new Parliament … The public won’t put up with it any more, not to mention the press.”

[Hebert notes] In fact, though, Canadians and the media did put up with it for more than a decade as Chrétien went on to line up two more majority governments.”

In Metropolis, a look at how type design and application has evolved over the past twenty five years. Kerrie Jacobs notes the challenges and the benefits of the computer revolution on a well-established trade based on artistry and manual skills.

” … What we are facing is a crisis of authority. The authority of the artist and the designer is every bit as challenged today as the authority of the scientist and the legal scholar. We are operating in an environment where the value of objective truth–and, for that matter, subjective truth–has been diminished. …

The new typographers I find online are the graphic-design equivalent of bloggers. Digital tools combined with the Internet have turned any number of isolated individuals into “foundries” just as the same technology has transformed millions of individuals into “publishers” or “pundits.” Some of them are impressively talented, others are not, but there’s no hierarchy. Authority is elusive and up for grabs. There is no official anything. What is the truth? It’s hard to say. What is a typeface? Anything you want it to be. (Metropolis)

Entry #23, Jaimie’s Date Ready Pad, in the 2nd annual smallest coolest apartment contest 2006:

” … Design Tip: Good design, at its peak, is about keeping you and your guest (date) comfortable, entertained, therefore:

“Design is about getting laid”“

A wonderful analysis of the strengths of Terry Gilliam’s Brazil - and the weaknesses of the Wachowsky Brother’s V for Vendetta - in Slate. So you know, Brazil is in my top five movies of all time.

” …. Nothing better illustrates the simplism of V for Vendetta, or better highlights the unflattering contrast with Brazil, than V’s motto: “There are no coincidences.” The comic beauty of Brazil’s portrait of totalitarianism is that everything rests on random coincidence, which nudges the bureaucracy into its own blind and murderous momentum: A dead fly falls into a computer printer and—voil� —poor law-abiding Buttle is mistaken for dangerous subversive Tuttle. …

… Underlying Brazil’s antic nightmare is a rigorous understanding of the bureaucratic totalitarianism that dominated much of the world for much of the 20th century. Underlying V for Vendetta is yet more magical thinking about that evil omnipotent genius, George W. Bush. …

Remember, that’s the reviewer making the judgement about the Wachowsky brothers and Bush. I’m just dwelling on the more nuanced examination of totalitarianism and bureaucratic efficiency found in Gilliam’s Brazil.

A visual reference I didn’t cotton on to: the opening cloud sequence of Brazil parallels the “cloud-filled opening sequence from Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will.”

Some news on the modification of rpg video games to help train staff. Cold Stone Creamery, according to BusinessWeek, saw 8,000 employees download a new game that lets them role play in a simulated store. The practical goal of the game is to reinforce training on portion control and customer service.

That was 8,000 downloads in the first week. 30% of their workforce.

Persuasive Games, developer of the Cold Stone game, has put up some screen shots and information.

For you jaded types, Persuasive has also developed Disaffected, an “anti-advergame” that puts you in the shoes of an unmotivated copy shop staffer. From their site copy:

“… Disaffected! gives the player the chance to step into the demotivated position of real FedEx Kinkos employees. Feel the indifference of these purple-shirted malcontents first-hand, and consider the possible reasons behind their malaise — is it mere incompetence? Managerial affliction? Unseen but serious labor issues? …”

It’s a free download at their site.

Other companys, like Canon, are trying out the new training tools on PC as well as game platforms. For example:

“…Cyberlore, now rechristened Minerva Software Inc., is developing a training tool for a retailer by rejiggering its Playboy Mansion game. In the original, guests had to persuade models to pose topless. The new game requires players to use the art of persuasion to sell products, and simulates a store, down to the carpet and point-of-purchase display details. …” (BusinessWeek)

We both use pens, but to different ends. Words are our primary tool, pictures are theirs. Designers are driven crazy by frugal/cheap clients asking for “spec work” - either as part of a competitive process, or just to “give us an idea of what you’d do for us.” For public relations pros, requests for media lists, sample media plans or campaigns can be commonplace in some disciplines and some markets.

No-spec is a designer-led effort to turn these spongers away at the door. Hyperlinks, posters and logo competition protest letters are all available to help the design community wean itself from this destructive behaviour.

One highlighted comment from athyrius, a design blogger tired of being asked for freebies:

“… I remember very clearly the day a fellow professional looked me in the eye and told me, “I don’t open a program without getting paid.” That day I went home, heated my Ramen and thought about it for a while before deciding he was absolutely right. …”

Ramen and designers? What an exaggeration! Or is it? Let’s close off with a backhanded smack from the Princeton Review:

” … Like other design fields (graphic design, for instance), industrial design is the unfolding of art into commodity–which is to say, a chance to work in a challenging, creative field and not eat ramen every day. Industrial designers–working with engineers, marketers, ergonomic experts, and, of course, clients–spend their time creating fresh, new or improved, user-centered products and environments that increase the aesthetic and efficiency of everyday life.”

A clear example of keywords-based blog advertising not working: Over at Guido Fawkes, a slightly biting post about an MP’s official picture going tieless (and open down the chest a la Tom Jones) coughs up a recurring ad for Thomas Pink, the shirt maker who also draws sizable revenue from cuff link and tie sales.

CORRECTION: As Guido pointed out to me in a follow-up email, the ads are handpicked. And I was too busy playing the “aren’t I a clever man for identifying this inadequacy in blogging mechanics” to get the joke. I am a git.

A quick bounce through the growth of “sonic branding” this month in En Route, Air Canada’s in-flight magazine.

The main tool in sonic branding is a short audio prompt inserted in a radio, tv or online ad to highlight a brand identity. Traditionally, these sonic brand triggers have been used in radio advertising, but these ear worms are increasingly being marshalled to impose a common brand-based cue to tie together large multi-channel and multimedia marketing campaigns.

Radio ads, television interstitials, animated banner ads, computer start-up sounds and ring tones: every one presents an opportunity to place a sonic brand trigger in an attempt to prompt and reinforce brand recall. They can also be rolled out as part of - god help me - an I.V.R script.

“Multitasking and endless distractions have also eroded the effectiveness of the traditional commercial, once a marketer’s dream. But a three- or four-second sonic brand is insidiously effective and can be absorbed even while channel surfing.” (En Route)

Everytime I hear one of these two, three or four tone brand signatures, I think of a movie scene - it may have been in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off - where a secretary rings off the announcement tones on a small children’s xylophone.

The channel-surfing analogy is particularly apt here in Canada, where the Rogers group of companies (cable, radio, television, magazines, VOIP) has rolled out a short tonal signature to single out its various multimedia offerings.

Some examples of sonic branding from En Route:

Sounds Like a Brand

• The wacky Yahoo! yodel set to frantic banjo picking

• Lenny Kravitz’s new song “Breathe,” reflecting Absolut vodka’s “core values”

• Elwood Edwards’ chipper voice announcing to AOL users that “you’ve got mail”

• CBC’s new five-note “mnemonic” for its flagship newscasts

• T-Mobile’s cultish ringtone that has people with other phones clamouring (unsuccessfully) to download it.”

Dan Jackson, of the UK agency Sonicbrand, commented on the creative process behind the tactic:

“…”If we’re creating a company theme, or brand score, we ask clients for their brand values and music that they think represents those ideas. Corporations tend to use the same words – inspiring, forward-thinking, trustworthy… so we keep tracks that represent these values in our knowledge bank. We isolate what it is that our clients like about these tunes, then we go away and use our expertise to mix the ideas together to create an original piece of music.”

For example, Survivor’s “Eye of the Tiger”, from the Rocky soundtrack, comes up with alarming regularity. “It has a red feel to it, doesn’t it?” says Ali Johnson, Sonicbrand’s creative director. “It’s aggressive and positive. But we have to identify the element they see in that song that fits in with their brand guidelines. Is it the rock rhythm? Is it the driving guitar?”… (The Telegraph, 12/2004)

Is it the unspoken visual of the brand manager, american flag boxing shorts askew, standing over a toppled Apollo Creed?

Shout-out to AdAge for the initial pointer.

Prime Minister Harper has apparently thrown out that part of the political campaign book that encourages sponging off the fame and fortune of people with better Q scores. Brigitte Bardot has indicated that she will travel to North America for the first time in thirty years to speak to the PM about ending the seal hunt, but he’s not interested.

“I respect Mme. Bardot and many other famous people that have have celebrity causes, but it’s not in my nature to take photos with famous people.” (The Citizen, behind a freakin’ subscriber wall)

Meanwhile, his 14 year-old alter ego could be heard screaming silently “what are you dooooooiinnnnnggggg???!”

Looks like the British consumer price index is going upscale. The CD player has been dropped as a price indicator, and the mp3 player has been added on. Also gone is the home killed minced lamb, for all you amateur butchers used to calls from the national statistical agency. You’ll just have to find your fifteen minutes of fame some other way!

Interesting note in the chart of additions/removals issued by the Office of National Statistics:

“Television licence fee (removed from CPI only)”

noted that the state broadcaster will have to deliver “consistent quality and value for money to the licence fee payer.” Some ratepayers, assuming they read dense documents from the statistical agency, must have held faint hope of saving 10 pounds a month, even for just a few seconds.

As for commentary on the white paper itself, I was strangely affected by the direction to “continue to take fun seriously.” I suppose that means less children’s programming and more bespoke programming for sale to corporate training departments.

Some further commentary from the Guardian on that turn of phrase (do you think a technocrat or a flack thought that up?):

“… Luckily, the Department of Culture Media and Sport is able to help us here because, being the ministry of fun, they realised that they had to put a slightly jazzier spin on this already rickety attempt to redesign the past.

So, we had the directive that the BBC should “take fun seriously”, a slogan that would be more at home on the T-shirt of a joyless customer liaison officer at Chessington World of Adventures. The very phrase puts one in mind of Peter Mandelson singing his lungs out to Things Can Only Get Better, and so to a certain extent the viewing public must already be hoping that the BBC will disregard it and take fun instead with a pinch of salt.(Guardian)

I’ll just take a moment to complete the acrobatic leaps of logic in this post: the BBC is looking into better serving their audience with limited funds - the BBC is therefore moving heavily into providing their content as podcasts - which drives, in part, demand for mp3s - which we now know have been added to the U.K’s consumer price index.

Tune in tomorrow, when I’ll make a shilling disappear and find it in your ear.

Technorati: bbc cpi

Bringing new meaning to the term mystery shopper , a public relations campaign for the Australian security service (ASIO) emphasizes the variety of experience open to surveillance officers trailing a suspect:

“… “Sometimes, when I’m out following a target who’s gone shopping, I get to go shopping too,” [Australian surveillance officer “Alison”] says in a case study being handed out by Porter Novelli.

“Or sometimes, as I’m passing through an area following a target, I might see something in a shop that I like and think to myself, hmm, I have to go back there.” (Sydney Morning Herald)

Two details on the campaign:

- “ASIO said it planned to spend almost $1 million on advertising, including niche ads targeting people from non-English speaking backgrounds, and had already achieved some success.” (The Age)

- “ASIO, through Porter Novelli, has also used other case studies, including “Linda”, a working mother. Its technique is to offer the case studies to journalists, mostly from the Sunday papers.” (The Age, different version)

Many more examples of Porter Novelli’s recruitment ads and “officer case studies” can be found in this submission to the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security.

Technorati: Porter Novelli australia ASIO

Sample emoticons for e-kicking someone in the e-balls, from McSweeney’s.

There have been some questions about exactly what a Google senior policy counsel muttered about the FCC during a conference this week. Turns out he was citing an opposing viewpoint as an example.

Despite all the demonizing of the company in recent months, the number of mis-steps and retractions battering Google’s public image indicate that the company is still feeling out how to make the transition from a small business run by academics into one of the largest advertising delivery networks in the world.

Paul Kedrosky has some advice for Google staffers on how to make the leap:

“… it was a dumb thing to do. Why? Some reasons:

1. He is a senior Google rep, not some anonymous Slashdot poster
2. You should never say things in a public forum that can be excerpted and make you look childish
3. Google has developed a rep recently for talking out of its hat, so the company should be on its best behavior around media, not being silly and pointlessly provocative

What is it with these Google guys? Microphones are apparently like Kryptonite for ‘em.

Also referenced by Kedrosky: Google Charm makes its debut (BBC)

Some thoughts on the design and interpretation of topographic maps in Europe - and how maps may just reflect the emotion, the spirit, perhaps the pigheadedness of the region represented. Much of the argument revolves around taxonomy and legends in the maps themselves:

“… The spontaneity and randomness of the marks contrasts completely with their English equivalents, which through their ‘dictatorial’ nature somehow reinforce notions of land ownership and even class.

By contrast, walkers in the Pyrenees feel as if they are in the hands of a mildly deranged expressionist rather than a pedantic bureaucrat. These marks offer a Gallic shrug to the notion of rational wayfinding (or Wayshowing, as Per Mollerup’s recent book on the subject is called) and add a frisson of danger and unpredictability to a journey that accords with the dramatic and sometimes violent history of this spectacular landscape.” (Eye magazine)

Short review of Wayshowing at Information Design.

Social Design Notes suggests that New York could benefit from some “guerilla wayfinding” and provides the stencils to impose order - by indicating North, South, Uptown and Downtown.

BTW - no matter what the National Capital Commission may say, their new bronze streetside models of Ottawa’s downtown area do not function as truly useful wayfinding devices.

Technorati: wayfinding maps

A breakthrough in customer research has been revealed by the Onion: marketing researchers in Maryland have

… completed a map delineating and identifying the functions of each of the individual human heartstrings. “According to our research, ‘father dancing with his daughter at her wedding’ causes a strong desire to buy a digital camera,” Human Heartstring Project team-leader Dr. Joseph Portman said. “A child playing in the grass with a litter of puppies, on the other hand, makes you crave a microwavable rice dish.” …

Andy Borowitz helps me string along my historical analogy theme today with his comment about screenwriting as a collaborative medium:

BOROWITZ: One thing that’s always said very generously about screenwriting or Hollywood is that it’s a collaborative medium. And that’s collaborative in the sense of Vichy France, I think. Collaborating with people who have the power to crush you.(New Yorker)

I love it when significant newsmakers actually take the time to draw a picture of the links between historical trends and leaps in technology. And by trends, I mean events that took place before Steve Jobs and Bill Gates first leased storage space. Here’s Rupert Murdoch, speaking to The Worshipful Company of Stationers and Newspaper Makers in London:

“Those people, those companies, those nations which understand and use this new knowledge will be the ones to prosper and grow strong in our age of discovery.

History is populated with examples of how knowledge can transform the fortunes of a small company, a weak nation, a threatened tribe.

The caveman who first struck fire from a flint was possessed of knowledge that made him master of his universe - although not for long.

Knowledge, in the form of superior technology, won Nelson the Battle of Trafalgar. His brilliantly aggressive tactics decided the scale of the victory.

The victory itself was won before a shot had been fired.

The British ships had faster firing, more accurate, guns and better gunpowder.

That technological advantage ensured victory and allowed the British control of the seas in the decades that followed, contributing directly to the prosperity and innovation of the Victorian era.

From the wheel to the web, from the printing press to fibre optic cable, it has always been technology that has driven history. Those in the driving seat have always been those who fully understood and used that technology.”(Guardian)

You just know, subconciously, that Murdoch is imagining himself alongside Nelson, Stevenson and the Wright Brothers.

Or maybe he has a greater vision?

“In the first Age of Discovery, some six hundred years ago, the great European explorers stood on the rim of the known world and set sail, literally, into the unknown.

Technology had given them ships equipped, although barely so, for long voyages. Science provided rudimentary navigational aids, and royal and private treasuries the financing. But what sent Bartolomeu Dias, Christopher Columbus, John Cabot and Henry the Navigator across the ocean was not just a quest for new trade routes to the East.

They consciously sought to expand the horizons of humanity, to risk their lives to find a new world.

That is where we are today. We are immeasurably better equipped than our ancestors to face the challenges posed by some of the issues I have raised this evening.

But we must not lose our nerve. We must be prepared to take risks and accept that we will make mistakes, sometimes very large ones. Above all we must have what those great seafaring explorers had in abundance: the courage to use the technological change that is unfolding around us to help make a better world.”

I have to agree on one point, at least: we are immeasurably better equipped to launch blink-of-an-eye Web 2.0 apps from our den. Forget about that much larger hurdle of risking our lives for science, fame and glory.

I haven’t even read the report yet, but I can tell you I’m loving the graphic design. As a visual thinker, Hill & Knowlton really grabbed my attention with the latest Corporate Reputation Watch report.

Technorati:H&K corporate reputation

Coming out this spring: “I Quit but I Forgot to Tell You,” a book from retail consultant Terri Kabachnik discussing your unmotivated employees, the ones who “physically attend but mentally pretend.” (NRF SmartBrief)

Or you could read the precis of her argument in a 2004 issue of the Retailing Issues Letter from Texas A&M’s Center for Retailing Studies.

Of course, her research and observations FOLLOWED the classic psychological analysis of “Office Space”:

Peter Gibbons: You see Bob, it’s not that I’m lazy, it’s that I just don’t care.

Bob Porter: Don’t… don’t care?

Peter Gibbons: It’s a problem of motivation, all right? Now if I work my ass off and Initech ships a few extra units, I don’t see another dime, so where’s the motivation? And here’s another thing, I have eight different bosses right now.

Bob Porter: Eight?

Peter Gibbons: Eight, Bob. So that means when I make a mistake, I have eight different people coming by to tell me about it. That’s my only real motivation is not to be hassled, that, and the fear of losing my job. But you know, Bob, that will only make someone work just hard enough not to get fired.

Personally, I’m going to thumb through her book at the library, looking for the chapter on “blogging as an indicator of employee disaffection.” That’s right! I said it, bitches!

Yesterday, the U.K.’s Food Services Agency in the UK announced the rollout of a new nutritonal information design, with buy-in from three chains. Most of the food manufacturers pulled out of the scheme last month, and today the pile-on began. Tesco, with 30% of the domestic grocery market, has withdrawn as well.

“…Tesco, which also uses the daily allowance system, warned that the “simplistic” labelling could confuse customers, saying the sugar content of both cola and apple juice would be amber. A spokeswoman said: “We also found that red is taken to mean stop/danger rather than warning/consideration and could mean that people eliminate foods from their diet”….” (The Independent)

Good point, that. All the qualitative work undertaken by the Food Standards Agency indicates consumers value a clear design with multiple levels of well-communicated information such as the “multiple traffic light” just announced. Tesco’s fears, however, are justified. From the FSA’s Qualitative Signpost Labelling Refinement Research Report of Findings:

‘…Some respondents explained that the Multiple Traffic Lights colour-coding allowed them to make the first stage of their purchasing decision:
─ For example, if most colour coding is green or amber, the product may go onto the consumer’s ‘mental shortlist’ to be considered further, using either existing knowledge, the on-pack nutritional information or ingredient list on the back of the pack.
─ However, if the product had a lot of red coding, the product may be considered too ‘unhealthy’, and be rejected in favour of an alternative.…

That’s quite a hurdle for a voluntary labelling scheme.

Wal-mart’s marketing efforts have been so price-driven that everyone seems quite stunned when Bentonville execs bring up words like “brand” and “influence.” A little late to the party, but good to see none the less.

” … Stephen Quinn, Wal-Mart’s senior vice-president of marketing, told investors at a Bear Stearns conference that while the retail giant had firmly established its reputation for low prices, “we’re becoming very aware that the brand experience is what people buy into when they shop at Wal-Mart”. …

More broadly, he adds, the retailer is undergoing a “full brand identity programme” that ties into the retailer’s broader effort to change its reputation through new initiatives on environmental and social issues, and its drive to counter its US critics.

That is aimed in part at the third broad target of Wal-Mart’s marketing: to reach beyond the loyalist and the selective shopper, to the Wal-Mart “sceptic”, who visits the store only occasionally, but does not see themselves as Wal-Mart shoppers.

“Our goal with her is really to just influence her,” says Mr Quinn. “Just to get into her consideration in the next year or two.”

(Financial Times)

branding Wal-mart