… it’s about public relations, marketing, retail quirks, government communications and oddities … and written in Canada!
Cake’s Short Skirt, Long Jacket. An eclectic little song that made it big in 2001, to be quickly dismissed by the cognoscenti who once thought it was cool and underappreciated.
Today, we can mock the video for its basic premise: asking regular joes on the street to pass judgement on the song - after listening to it on a portable CD player. A portable CD player? Who under the age of 35 even uses one of those?
“French fries and sneakers: pure evil” - that’s the title of Steve Maich’s column in the latest issue of Macleans. In his analysis, the corporate social responsibility efforts of the world’s biggest consumer brands contrast with their continuing poor showings in pubic CSR polling: Nike, Coca-Cola and BP all suffer at the hands of activist groups, and are affected by the public’s myopia for much more harmful activities by less profiled corporations.
After all, it’s hard to get your community group riled up about picketing a two story building in a corporate business park.
” … What started as a well-meaning movement, aimed at getting business to promote the greater good, has morphed into an industry unto itself: it’s the discontent industry, and it’s driven by image consultants and professional lobbyists, none of whom can present a coherent vision of what it means to be ethical. Instead, the public is fed a constant diet of anti-corporate polemics like The Corporation, No Logo and Super Size Me, all painting business as a hostile force, warping society into a bleak dystopia driven by endless greed.
… The result is a world in which arms manufacturers do brisk business with regressive dictators while tech companies eagerly assist autocrats in squelching democratic rights, and yet an entire generation of supposedly intelligent people seriously believe the world’s most unethical corporation sells hamburgers.”
Technorati: CSR corporate social responsibility
It seems that McDonald’s is deploying a three prong approach to growing its share of the fast food consumer market among women: healthy menu choices; more focused messaging; and creating fashion and celebrity-driven buzz about the brand’s traditional character icons.
Global Chief Marketing Officer Mary Dillon is making some organizational changes, as well as refocusing the multinational’s marketing efforts towards specific demographic groups.
“… In addition to evolving the chain’s “I’m Lovin’ It” advertising platform to emphasize the “it” over the “I,” Ms. Dillon plans to evolve McDonald’s women’s marketing to more strongly appeal to them as mothers. …” (AdAge)
Pricing, salads and happy meal toys seem to be attracting this group, but McDonald’s is also working the celebrity cachet/retro style angle as well, designing faux classique tshirts for sale at select upscale boutiques.
” … To design the campaign, McDonald’s hired DIC Entertainment Corp., an entertainment-licensing company that has been successful at reviving nostalgia brands such as Strawberry Shortcake. The two chose vintage T-shirts, currently a hot fashion item, as their first licensed product. The shirts, which retail for about $55, include the chain’s old ad characters, such as Mayor McCheese and Grimace, and ad slogans, such as “You Deserve a Break Today.”
To get the word out to the cool crowd, McDonald’s set up a big display in February at Lisa Kline, a trendy Los Angeles boutique. The company also sold the shirts at Intuition, another well-known L.A. store. The two stores are known for their celebrity clientele.” (WSJ/Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)
Now, how could this guerilla marketing go wrong? Someone wearing a “Big Mac Attack” shirt shows up on SmokingGun after being arrested for assault? The “Grimace” tshirt shows up in a made-for-DVD movie produced and shot in the San Fernando Valley?
A number of journalists in Quebec, according to an “unscientific” survey (quite honest of them to admit that), feel that the communication strategies deployed by private and public sector organizations threaten the freedom of the press in the province.
“…Un sondage maison de la Fédération professionnelles des journalistes du Québec auprès de 224 journalistes indique que 42% des répondants estiment que les stratégies de communication des organismes privés et publics constituent la principale menace la liberté de presse au Québec.” (FPJQ news release)
Now in production, and scheduled for the Fox Reality channel in the fall, the final confluence of reality entertainment: reality television and porn.
” … My Bare Lady, which begins shooting in June, will follow the four female porn stars as they study at a London drama school and aim to land a role in a West End theatre production. (Guardian, reg. req.)
Regret the Error may take the New York Times to task for its corrections, but internally the paper depends upon greenies. So says Jonathan Landman, the deputy managing editor for digital journalism at the Times:
” … Greenies? They are daily critiques of the newspaper, prepared by editors with contributions from staffers and circulated throughout the newsroom. The odd name comes from the habit of Allan M. Siegal, the assistant managing editor for standards who has been preparing critiques of this kind for decades, of using a green marking pen.) (Ask the Editors, NY Times)”
Landman doesn’t think, however, that readers should be given a public forum to highlight these errors.
” … We do, of course, publish corrections and editors notes to correct the public record. But it seems to me that fingering individuals in public for writing less-than-ideal headlines or overusing buzzwords or splitting infinitives would do much more harm than good, making people fearful and overcautious rather than diligent and responsive.”
One blogger seems to have noticed - quite a while ago - that the Times corrects these minor grammatical errors even after they’ve gone online and have been pumped out through the RSS feed. If you have an eye for detail, you can spot the greenies and then track their deletion through your feed reader.
Are you a spam victim in waiting? An unsuspecting doofus only one click away from opening your PIII 900 Wintel to a keylogger designed by some 16 year-old in Belarus? Take the Spam IQ test, designed by Industry Canada’s Office of Consumer Affairs.
A car dealer in Prince George, British Columbia has managed to alienate a portion of his community - and customer base - by placing a poorly considered ad encouraging locals receiving government compensation cheques for past abuse to spend their money on his lot.
The car dealer is located in a community near an aboriginal residential school run in the past by the Roman Catholic Church. For a hundred years or more, members of Canada’s first nations were sent to live at these schools in an attempt to assimilate them.
“”You have a whole lot of individuals who went to residential school who were sexually and physically abused and working through settlements with the government and the churches, only to find out there’s some used car salesman at the end looking for your money,” [Grand Chief Ed] John told CBC News.
The dealer apologized in a subsequent edition of the paper:
“”Action Motors would like to apologize for our ad that ran Friday, April 21, in the Stuart Nechako Advertiser. We did not mean to offend anyone with this ad. We appreciate your support over the years and look forward to serving you in the future.” (National Post, behind firewall)
Or, to paraphrase: “Sorry about that. Still, whaddya think of that 94 Taurus?”
The latest buzz accelerator is sheep. To be specific, sheep decorated with advertising for a Dutch hotel company. The gimmick has drawn the ire of an asthetically-minded local mayor, who has threatened fines if the sheep are not removed in short notice. The result? 60 hits on Google news and counting.
“…Hotels.nl Chief Executive Miechel Nagel said the company would respond by increasing the number of sheep it uses in Skarsterlan to 60 and changing the statement on their blankets to ‘’Thank You, Mr. Mayor.'’
‘’Now it’s a freedom of speech issue,'’ said Nagel. He added the local economy also was getting a boost as farmers were being paid 15 euros to 20 euros ($18-$25) per sheep per month to wear the advertisements.
‘’Their value as lamb-kebabs is around 60 euros ($75),'’ Nagel said.” (AP/NYT)
Oh, to have the measurement and evaluation money available to drug companies. Medical Marketing and Media has taken a look at The Science of DTC (pdf), discussing the growth in pre- testing of direct-to-consumer advertising, as well as efforts to improve the clarity of the many DTC formats.
In part, it’s a reaction to the scandal surrounding the side effects ofVioxxl and the resulting attention levelled at DTC advertising by the FDA.
“We’re trying to cut to the issues at hand in DTC advertising,” says [Merck consumer marketing manger Ed] Slaughter. “Every time an FDA official gets up and speaks at a conference, they say, ‘If anybody has any data on this, we’d love to see it.’ This is an attempt to move the ball forward and answer that in a scientific, data-driven way.”
MM&M calls upon industry insiders and critics to comment on past and current DTC practices, placing special emphasis on particular initiatives to improve consumer understanding of pharma advertising. Initiatives like Pfizer’s Principles for Clear Health Communication (pdf)
… Even the highest-functioning readers are hard-pressed to slog through the dense, highly technical text in a typical brief summary. To improve readability, Pfizer adopted its Principles, mandating that communications
should explain a drug’s purpose and limit content to avoid clutter; involve the reader; make text easier to read through use of active words, conversational style, chunking and road signs; make the look of the content more inviting through use of white space, good contrast and elimination of ghosting and other competing visuals; and
select realistic visuals that motivate patients to take action. The company’s new consumer-friendly risk information format for print ads, wherein easy-to-read chunks of information are presented in bulletpoint-happy bubbles, was one result of those principles. (MM&M)
Funny how the editors of MM&M couldn’t follow the same advice in constructing that last paragraph …
Some academics have critiqued the presentation and positioning of risk information in DTC advertising, claiming it understates risk - likely to the benefit fo a sales pitch.
“… Drug makers often use flashy, sparkling graphics to distract viewers and divide their attention when risk information is presented during an advertisement, [Duke University professor of psychology Ruth] Day said. “Risk information is there,” she said. “It’s physically present, but functionally absent.”
For instance, she explained, Schering-Plough uses a “charming” cartoon bee character in its commercials for its allergy product Nasonex.
But, Day exclaimed, “Watch his wings.”
She demonstrated for regulators a simulation of how the bee’s wings move quickly during the commercial’s presentation of risk information. But, Day noted, when the narrator talks about the drug’s benefits, the “wings are not moving. In fact, he doesn’t have any wings at all.”
A plotting of wing flaps per second during the presentation of benefits and risks found “clearly more [flaps] during the side effects,” she declared.
Day’s research found that risk information is placed in less favorable locations in drug advertisements than is benefit information. (ASHP News Release)
Pharma Marketing Blog offered an alternate evaluation of Day’s presentation before the FDA.
Some more details on the creators of the Nasonex Bee (BBDO and Neal Adams here and here)
Technorati: DTC pharma PR measurement
You come to a fork in the road. You don’t know which way to follow. Which resource appeals the most: your car’s onboard navigational computer, with its limited portrait of the neighbourhood; your AAA TripTik; or your fearless certainty that “left is right”?
Each choice reflects your relative appetite for information, your interest in your immediate or distant surroundings. Do you only need intersection by intersection directions to the hockey arena, or are you more interested in visiting every sports facility in town?
If you’re fond of electronic maps - Google, MapQuest, Yahoo or onboard - you’re likely relying on information from two companies: NavTeq or Tele Atlas. The New Yorker explains how NavTeq updates its information, then mosies on down a garden path to discuss the development of previous generations of traveller’s guides and maps.
“A map is a piece of art. It is also a form of language—a rendering of information. A good map can occupy the eye and the mind longer than almost any other single page of data, including Scripture, poetry, sheet music, and baseball box scores. A map contains multitudes.” (New Yorker)
But your little 4 by 4 inch screen can’t show you all that information.
Also in the New Yorker: The Lonely Planet Guide to My Apartment:
LOCAL CUSTOMS
The population of My Apartment has a daily ritual of bitching, which occurs at the end of the workday and prior to ordering in food. Usually, meals are taken during reruns of “Stargate Atlantis.” Don’t be put off by impulsive sobbing or unprovoked rages. These traits have been passed down through generations and are part of the colorful heritage of My Apartment’s people. The annual Birthday Meltdown (see “Festivals”) is a tour de force of recrimination and self-loathing, highlighted by fanciful stilt-walkers and dancers wearing hand-sewn headdresses.
Technorati: maps wayfinding Lonely Planet
Is YouTube a long term business, or is it simply a intermediate step as we wait for high capacity pipe to connect us all up at blazing speeds? Once that pipe is in, we can just flip 30meg files to one another without the hassle of uploading to a central site. YouTube is really more of a storage facility than an easily searched database, and the tagging system is completely random. As for business models, where is their reliable and sustainable source of revenue?
That’s CNet’s question today: “YouTube: too rough for advertisers?” How do you attract the deep pocketed CPG advertisers who covet your 18-34 demographic viewers? And how do you reassure those advertisers that horrible juxtapositions of content and paid advertising won’t take place:
“Most of the sites prohibit pornography or anything that violates the law. Yet, one video featured on eBaum’s World Thursday showed a multi-car crash on an icy road. As cars continue to slide into each other, up comes a banner ad for Bridgestone tires.
[eBaum’s World director of advertising Karl] Heberger acknowledges that sometimes the video doesn’t quite fit the advertiser’s message or image. “The problem is advertisers want it both ways,” [Heberger said. “They want to be in front of that 18 to 34, but they don’t want to be associated with much of what that demographic finds entertaining.” (CNET)
Technorati: YouTube CPG advertising
After several years hard work, the Measurement Committee of the Canadian Public Relations Society has launched a new media measurement tool to support the measurement and evaluation efforts of PR practitioners in Canada.
“The MRP™ (Media Relations Rating Points) system provides communications and marketing professionals with an easy-to-use tool that measures the effectiveness of any public relations campaign. The 10-point rating system can be used for any type of media coverage (i.e. print, TV, radio, online). The MRP system can also be used to measure crisis communications and unplanned media attention after the fact.
The primary objective of the MRP system is to create a standardized reporting mechanism that can be widely accepted and utilized with ease to measure coverage results. This system can be easily customized by Company or by project. MRPs provide clear metrics to evaluate media coverage, track total impressions and cost per contact.” (Media Relations Rating Points User Guide)
Tested, in some form, by organizations like the Bank of Montreal, Second Cup, Kellogg Canada and others, it has been endorsed by the CPRS and IABC, and is supported by a subscription databank established and maintained by News Canada.
Key in this initiative is its breadth: with such a wide-ranging and well-tested mechanism, an opportunity now exists to implement a common measurement standard that will help corporate shops and agencies alike to effectively measure, and compare, performance.
Technorati: MRP measurement media monitoring
The White House press secretary has resigned, and the folks over at Democratic Underground have penned some very-not-so-flattering farewells … haiku style!
In the interests of fairness, let me point you to a previous post on the difficulties of acting as a government spokesperson.
Your fat flabby ass / disappearing through a door / don’t let it, hit you (link)
Miss Helen Thomas / outlasted the little shit / there is some justice (link)
Delighted you’re gone / Your lies no longer pollute / The peace of my home (link)
Lying’s not easy / Propaganda takes its toll / My soul has been lost
I do need a break / Spend more time with family / Who will lie for Bush? (link)
The BEST, in my opinion:
That’s an ongoing / investigation that I / will not comment on (link)
We often send executives to media training because they appear uncomfortable in public settings. Which is exactly how Eric Schmidt, the current Chair and CEO of Google, ended up standing in front of a blue retractable curtain, practicing his employee question and answer sessions. It looks like it dates from about 1988.
True to form, it looks like his agency gave camera duties to the most inexperienced person in the room. The proof is in the fidgeting with the camera and playing with the video settings DURING recording.
Dammit. Does that man not love emphatic hand gestures? (Google Video)
” … “Was it intentional? Absolutely not,” says spokeswoman Suraya Bliss, whose voice quavered as she spoke, perhaps because she was choking on the corporate line. “It’s not the kind of company we are.” …” (AdAge)
Bob Garfield rightly points out that the ad in support of the new Dodge Caliber can be perceived as denigrating, maybe even hateful, towards metrosexuals and homosexuals.
Before Google News, before Yahoo, before (gasp) Pointcast … people had to buy magazines to keep up with current events. They were sold at places called news stands. They’re still around, I know. But for most people under a certain age (quick - fifty words on the influence of Dennis Haskins on your teenage years) a news stand is where you find your girlfriend’s Italian Vogue (or your British FHM). In 1987, I found two of the most interesting - and perverse - magazines. They were to grace the magazine rack beside my john for years to come.
The first was Spy, which we’ve all heard of at one point or another. There was the piece on American Kabuki (mascot costumes) and there was Bunny Burgers, testing whether public relations firms would recoil at representing a fast food rabbit meat chain.
” … We needed to come up with a venture that would have the look and feel of a big, well-financed, image-driven, Madison Avenue - created powerhouse yet somehow lack fundamental common sense. The bad idea we settled upon was simple and all-American: a fast food chain called Bunny Burgers Inc., which would be selling ground rabbit, as well as salads and french fried carrots, at dozens of outlets in the eastern United States and Canada.
The company could follow the Red Lobster model — diners would have the opportunity to pick their own bunnies (Tuesday is P.Y.O.B. Night!) for broiling. The whole idea appealed to us because it simultaneously evoked sweetness and made the skin crawl.
We invited nine PR firms to bid on the account and assist us in determining whether the concept was feasible, public-relations- wise, and if so, what measures could be take to mitigate public hostility toward the consumption of bunny meat at a time of burgeoning sensitivity toward the animals with whom we share this fragile planet. At the outset, we feared that PR firms would hang up on us when we phoned to describe our fictitious enterprise and ask for help.
None of the firms hung up on us.” (Full Text)
A recent piece in Metropolis magazine lookeds at the magazine’s enduring cultural and design influence:
“… “It was an exercise in shoehorning material,” [former art director Alexander Isley] says–and partly a product of a Mad magazine-inspired use of buried text: the best stuff was often in the tiniest type, in the marginalia or the captions. Deadpan delivery remains a key part of Isley’s design approach, despite the very American insistence that funnies be accentuated by the visual equivalent of a laugh track. “The key was not telegraphing the joke,” he says. …” (Metropolis, and more on Isley)
The other magazine - more of a ‘zine actually - was Monk. Two gay men, travelling across the United States with their two cats, building an audience with their Mac. Aside from the more flamboyant tales, I was interested in how Michael Lane and Jim Crotty discussed the characters and communities they encountered. Just as appealing was their threadbare appeals for money - $100 got you a lifetime after lifetime subscription. I remember signing up for two years after reading only one issue.
Interestingly, the two found that advertisers were loath to commit to such a small publication: “… “People told us we needed to print at least 20,000, so that’s what we did,” Mr. Lane said. Promising to distribute every copy, they sold $12,000 in ads, more than covering the $6,000 in printing costs.” (NYT)
Oh, what they could have done with AdSense or BlogAds!
Christianity, the Brand - today in the NYT. Featured is Larry Ross, who has made public relations with the Christian community his career and vocation.
“Ross characterizes part of his job as finding the sweet spot where faith and the culture intersect, because religion on its own often isn’t enough, as he sees it, to generate mainstream press. He offers his handling of T.D. Jakes as a typical example. Today Jakes is the pastor of the Potter’s House in South Dallas, one of the fastest-growing churches in the country, with 30,000 members; he is also behind the “Woman, Thou Art Loosed” novel, film and gatherings, and he created the Metroplex Economic Development Corporation, which sponsors homeownership conferences and organizes training sessions for would-be entrepreneurs.
After listening to hours and hours of the pastor’s sermons, Ross realized that what might appeal to a broader audience were Jakes’s efforts to economically empower African-American youth — Jakes was a business story, in other words. Not long after that, Jakes landed a Page 1 profile in The Wall Street Journal. It was the preacher’s first major national exposure.” (NYT)
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Sometimes, fundamental shifts in how the traditional media works with its customers seem to fly under the radar - especially in Canada. Earlier this month the Toronto Star (a Toronto paper with national reach, circulation 984,700 daily ) added del.icio.us bookmarklets to all its online articles.
What does this mean? It means that columnists like James Travers, who today wrote about the new press regime being imposed by the Prime Minister’s Office, have a far greater chance of influencing online discussion of issues important to their readers - and the countless other people their readers influence. At least until his piece disappears behind the subscriber firewall after a week.
Unlike, say, the Globe and Mail, where columnists and editorials are always behind a subscriber firewall.
Which social media tactic has more impact, both on the reputation of the paper and the influence of the ideas it prints? The now ubiquitous “e-mail this” link? A site-based community for comment like you can find on globeandmail.com, or a more paticipatory vehicle like del.icio.us?
San Diego may need a new airport. Or maybe not. The San Diego County Regional Airport Authority is well into implementing a community outreach and consultation campaign on future growth plans for the facility. Some details about the campaign’s tactics are discussed in an article posted on voiceofsandiego.org: “Ghostwriting the Airport’s Story.”
As most PR pros would expect, the Authority isn’t working alone. It has brought on a local public relations firm that won a tendered contract worth up to $3.8M. GCS Public Relations has even won a Bronze Anvil for some of their work for the Authority.
An online investigative paper, voiceofsandiego.org has examined two years worth of the firm’s invoices, originally obtained under a California Public Records Act request.
One example: GCS Public Relations billed the Authority $3,140 for 16.5 hours labour helping to prepare an ostensibly third party op/ed published in the Sand Diego Union-Tribune in December.
“… Not all of GCS’s efforts happen behind the scenes. The public relations firm has pitched speaking opportunities to groups ranging from the Black Contractors Association of San Diego to the Borrego Springs Republican Women Federated. Staff members have e-mailed every Rotary Club in San Diego County. They convinced Vista school officials to allow students to earn credit for attending a local town hall meeting.
Airport officials and authority board members typically attend the meetings and hold question-and-answer sessions. The town halls feature a three-minute, 40-second video that explains the need for a new airport.” (voiceofsandiego.org)
This isn’t your traditional slapdash story demonizing the large public organization for wasting money and blindsiding the public. Instead, Rob Davis, the author, casts a careful eye on the way the authority and its public relations agency (and partners) have approached their shared goals - and how some members of the community have reacted to their solicitations of support. It’s well worth a read.
For more information, a year-old article from the San Diego Reader discusses GCS work in support of the Authority, and looks into the activities of the Alliance in Support of Airport Progress in the 21st Century, a lobbying group promoting the relocation of the airport.
Apologies for the affront to the collective genius of Frankie Goes To Hollywood/Edwin Starr. What is the true, quantifiable, worth of corporate social responsibility? Aside from polishing up Nike’s annual report? Or pulling a veil over the dirty workings of international oil conglomerates? Wal-mart must be wondering that as it tries to marshall positive voices in favour of its banking application, currently being heard by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. Voices like Andrew Young and the Salvation Army.
Arrayed against the corporation, it seems, is every community bank in the country, local activists, and a sizable number of members of Congress. And the Wal-mart haters. Wal-mart flavoured haterade must be on sale, because there are some people with some real issues speaking out on this banking application:
“walmart has decided to try to rule the world. The stores and their domination are bad enough. If they have control of a financial institution it could be a disaster. All their friendly, good old boy, we’re with you America ads are just a sham. They are out for one thing, the all mighty dollar, and it has to go into their pocket. I’m not fooled by their folksy attitude one bit. If they control a bank in any area they control the area, if you’re not with them, you’re against them and you get no loan for your new business.” (FDIC submission, .pdf)
Hearings are on now at the FDIC offices in Virginia, and:
“At times, the hearing felt more like a referendum on Wal-Mart’s integrity than the wisdom of allowing it to open a bank, with friends and foes of the retailer marshaling character witnesses. Testimony touched on Wal-Mart’s role in port security, its efforts to recover missing children, the generosity of its health insurance plan and the cost of a shovel at its stores.”
The corporation’s certainly facing an uphill battle. The lobbying battle against the application seems to be led, in part, by the Independent Community Bankers of America. Common themes, and phrases, run through many of the letters filed with the FDIC. Quite a few seem awfully similar, like the 49 or more nearly identical letters from the Citizen’s Tri-County Bank.
I understand the value, from the pespective of sheer quantity and physical impact, of organizing a petition or letter campaign. But what is the real effect of all that work (or, in the case of an online email campaign, not that much work)?
Research with members of Congress has shown that form letters, or letters that are evidently the product of an organized lobbying or petitioning campaign, are discounted by politicians. Communicating with Congress: How Capitol Hill is Coping with the Surge in Citizen Advocacy, prepared by the Congressional Management Foundation, provided quantitative and qualitative backing for this finding:
“I wish that outside groups would understand that overwhelming our office with form letters does
more harm than good for their causes.”—House Correspondence Staffer
“One hundred form letters have less direct value than a single thoughtful letter generated by a constituent
of the Member’s district.”—House Correspondence Staffer
“In cases where the Member/Senator has not reached a firm decision on an issue, 44% of staff surveyed said that individualized postal communications have “a lot” of influence, compared to 3% for identical form communications. As one House staff member noted, personal communications are more effective than form messages “because the recipient knows that the author was truly motivated by the issue.”
Your next drive-thru order at MacDonald’s may not be taken by a sweaty, slightly overweight and harried assistant manager with an ill fitting corporate dress shirt. If you’re in Hawaii, the person asking you about supersizing may in fact be over a thousand miles away - in Santa Maria, California.
Thanks to low-cost VOIP, centralized call centres and a standardized menu, remote order-taking has arrived.
MacDonald’s executives first floated the idea at a retail conference a year ago.
“”You have a professional order taker with strong communications skills whose job is to do nothing but take down orders,” said Matthew Paull, McDonald’s chief financial officer.
Paull said a “heavy percentage” of complaints the company receives are from drive-thru customers who got the wrong order. “Even if 95% of the time it is right, those 5% are very upset with us,” he said. (USA Today)
Today, the NYT details how one call centre 150 miles from L.A. is serving drive-thrus in Mississippi, Wyoming and Hawaii - among 40 locations.
“When the customer pulls away from the menu to pay for the food and pick it up, it takes around 10 seconds for another car to pull forward. During that time, [Doug King, CEO of the outsourcing firm Bronco] said, his order-takers can be answering a call from a different McDonald’s where someone has already pulled up.
The remote order-takers at Bronco earn the minimum wage ($6.75 an hour in California), do not get health benefits and do not wear uniforms. Ms. Vargas, who recently finished high school, wore jeans and a baggy white sweatshirt as she took orders last week. (New York Times)
I can see one benefit to the consumer: an outsourced call centre may be able to provide better service in spanish - if the right order-taker picks up. I don’t know whether these order-takers will be immediately familiar with local condiment or combo preferences.
Really, are we going to revert back to the old Automat restaurants, with giant displays of prepared food ready for sale at the drop of a quarter? It’s bad enough I can see the teenage “cook” take the sausage patty for my Egg Mcmuffin out of a plastic warming tray - like an Easy Bake oven - without dropped data packets ruining the call and completely depersonalizing the experience.
Remember, at lunchtime, Skype “Ronald’s McNuggets”
For further commentary, American Public Radio reported on the use of call centres in fast food in January 2005.
This just in from the world of marketing non-sequiturs:
“IN THE LATE 90s, I was working on a campaign to make Compaq hip. The firm attempted to buy itself coolness by sponsoring Sting’s world tour …”
I’m sorry. I think I must have misread that. Did you just associate hip and cool with the artist known as Sting? Was this the 90s, or 1983?
From MediaPost’s SearchInsider.
Public service ads aimed at moving health and risk-based behaviour may benefit from more motivational and incremental messaging: so says work by Magdalena Cismaru, of the University of Regina.
“Treats alone are not enough,” she says. “I don’t think there is a smoker in Canada who doesn’t already know that smoking leads to all sorts of terrible diseases. … What is much more important in people’s decision-making process is ‘how difficult will it be for me to make these changes?’” (Canadian Business, not online)
PSAs need to provide the audience with the moral or practical support to change their behaviours: in situations where consumers are unsure of their ability to break longstanding habits on their own, they may retreat from hard-hitting advertising and messaging.
The .pdf of “Using Protection Motivation Theory to Increase the Persuasiveness of Public Service Communications”, heavy in social science jargon, can be found on the Saskatchewan Institute of Public Policy website.
The claim: Canadian executives are poorly served by their speechwriters - or the agencies that claim they have speechwriters on staff. Scott Feschuk and Scott Reid think they have the answer. Formerly the speechwriter and director of communications in the office of Prime Minister Paul Martin, they’ve set up shop to produce bespoke texts for every Empire Club, Board of Trade, Rogers Cable 22 and Toastmasters appearance you may face.
“As a former reporter, Mr. Feschuk says he has sat through enough annual general meetings to realize that speechwriting is not a priority in Canadian business.
The work is usually assigned to the member of a company’s public affairs team who “makes the least amount of spelling mistakes,” he says. “And you can tell.”
“”There’s a market that’s not as well-serviced as it ought to be,” [Mr. Reid told the National Post] “Generally what happens is a large communications firm says it can do a speech and it gets pawned off on the lowest associate. It’s seen as low-hanging fruit. But if you’re a CEO who has to speak in front of 500 people, it’s a pretty intense experience and you want to be working with good stuff.” (National Post, behind a firewall)
I think they’re selling the industry short. There are a number of skilled speechwriters in Toronto and Ottawa. Equally, we’ve all worked on speeches at one point or another. There you have it - the peaks and valleys of speechwriting in Canada.
I also suspect, Michael Cowpland, Conrad Black and the Rick George aside, that Canadian executives didn’t feel pressed to deliver well-tailored speeches. Until Sarbanes-Oxley, that is. With stock cross-listed in Toronto, New York and London, off-the-cuff ramblings can cause tremendous complications with financial and legal regulators in many countries.
Technorati: speechwriting
What logical structures guide public relations staff in building and deploying an argument in favour of their clients? When confronted with a demand for an explanation “why?”, there is always a “reason” underlying the logic in your media lines and storyline. In his book Why?, the sociologist Charles Tilly identifies four
