Canuckflack

I’m mulling over an idea - a Conversation Audit - that would help companies evaluate whether they need a social media component to their regular marketing and public relations campaign.

The idea behind a Conversation Audit is to actually stop and take stock of the many ways you communicate with audiences, customers, consumers, stakeholders and regulators.

Only at that point will a company be truly equipped to judge whether a social media campaign is important to its needs.

Technorati Tags: conversation audit

Well, that’s it. I’m no longer professionally obsessed with the ebb and flow of daily news coverage.

For the first time in ten years, I do not work in corporate communications. Instead, I am now the Director of Research, Education and Outreach.

What does that mean? A startling change in work environment, for one.

There has always been one certainty in my life: that a call from a reporter would upend my day and reshuffle my work priorities.

That tends to encourage short-term thinking and discourage extended periods of reflection.

It has also fed my short attention span.

As the title would suggest, the Director of Research is responsible for managing long term research agendas.

I’m not unfamiliar with this world: I toyed with becoming an academic before this crazy communications work came along.

These people, though, have always been my clients.

(By people, I mean economists, statisticians, computer scientists, accountants … You know, skilled and trained professionals)

Now it’s time to raise my nose and look beyond the daily, weekly or monthly news cycle. Develop plans that have real strategic outcomes, instead of tactical milestones.

And, apparently, I’m no longer a talking head. Now, I’m a technical expert.

That means more public speaking.

“…and now,let’s all welcome Colin McKay, the Director of …”

At least I’ll still have a sizeable public education agenda to keep my marketing chops busy.

There are four rules that dominate the quantity and quality of your blog content:

1: when in a rut, drive readership and SEO love by creating a numbered list;
2: the more disappointing your actual paying job, the more you will write and post. This does not mean your blog will be any better - just busier;
3: the closer the relationship between the subject of your blog and a day job you love, the better the content; and,
4: the busier your day job becomes, the less time and inclination you will find to blog.

I had an executive coach who told me that being an executive was a lot like spinning plates: you had to make sure your passel of plates continued spinning at the end of their poles, and that none hit the floor.

At the moment, I am filling two executive positions.

My office is running the danger of looking like a suburban banquet hall after a Greek wedding.

First off, a geography lesson. The McDonald’s near my house has a giant two story play area. Big enough that the party room is in a second floor loft, hanging over the play area.

Scene, twenty minutes ago: a clutch of McDonald’s employees in full uniform, including the assistant manager, march through the play area in single line, on their way to the party room.

Following behind, some guy in a hundred dollar shirt and forty dollar pants. He was carrying a cerloxed document, something like the reports prepared by consultants.

He was also carrying one of those oversized personal organizers. You know, the black ones, woven of high tech polymers, with an oversized zipper around the edge. Sort of like a Trapper Keeper for adults.

Looking at the dirty floor and misplaced chairs scattered around the play area, Mr. “From Mitch And Murray Downtown” turns and asks a shift employee trailing behind him:

“Wow. Don’t you have someone working lobby?”

No answer. He repeats himself. Still no answer.

That meeting is NOT going to go well.

This will be a first. Faced with economic contraction and consumer apprehension, how will companies increasingly focused on service, brand differentiation, environmental qualities and aspirational marketing react?

How will consumers react? Unlike the last two economic slowdowns, consumers are feeling the credit crunch in their pocket book. Will they change their spending habits? Will they lower their expectations from products, brands or companies?

Or would they expect companies to eat the economic difficulties (including the downstream costs resulting from soaring prices for staples like grains and oil) and spare them the pain while continuing to deliver the quality?

Starbucks has sent a signal: it is slowing the opening of new stores in the United States. Frankly, Starbucks has overpopulated so many neighbourhoods with outlets it could probably close hundreds of stores and maintain its volume.

(Well, maybe. My assumption only works if people are going to Starbucks for its aspirational qualities, not simply convenience. If they think McDonalds or a local coffee house has an equally good morning coffee, Starbucks sales could fall)

Last night, John Moore asked “if Walgreens went out of business tomorrow, would any of us care?”

No. Not really. Just like we didn’t care that Pier 1 and Bombay Co. stores closed. Did YOU notice that Restoration Hardware was in the toilet?
Difference is, I don’t look for aspirational values in my drugstore. I look for cheap children’s Tylenol and brand name toothpaste. And maybe a wide selection of Mother’s Day cards late at night.

Forward-thinking companies like Target have been trying to find a price-sensitive but fashion-forward niche in the general merchandise market. Kohl’s is trying the same trick by hiring Dana Buchman. Ralph Lauren is creating a line of goods for mass merchandisers, with a separate identity from his bread and butter lines.
If the credit crunch continues, and the US dollar continues to be battered in comparison to international currencies, consumers may face a difficult choice between affordable products and all the wonderful product qualities they have come to appreciate and flaunt: environmental sensitivity, design, flavour variation, international influences, and individual portion sizes.

In the end, which comes first: value-added attributes, the pocketbook, or government cheese?

Technorati Tags: recession, aspirational marketing, consumer choice

Well, I’ve finished work on it. A handy little guide for exploring the world of social media and building support for social media in a large organization.

I think the advice in this 23 page guide to secretly implementing social media in organizations could be equally useful for any government employee looking to try out new technologies - I’m pretty certain on that point, since I’m a government employee in real life.

You can find the guide at this link, and please feel free to share it with your friends, colleagues and bosses.

Here’s an excerpt, from the introduction:

How do you do it? How do you bring a spirit of innovation and experimentation to the communications shop of a large organization?

I’ve worked in a large organization – the government – for the last ten years. You can find bright, creative and resourceful people around every corner, in every department.

During the course of their careers, many of these people have thought of a move that could improve their work or their environment.

From experience, we all know that small changes in process or presentation are easily won. After all, it’s just another line on an approval sheet, or a tweak on the website.

Large organizations can also be convinced to launch a large-scale overhaul of their systems – whether it’s a supply chain, assembly process or online order system.

But it’s a real pain to get them to rethink their relationship with humans outside the security fence. After all, our customer service reps seem to be doing a good job, right? That sales force really does have a handle on the needs of the community, doesn’t it?

In speaking to hundreds of workers and managers for large organizations (government and private sector), I’ve been asked the same questions, over and over:

• How do you convince your boss to even experiment with social media?
• Doesn’t it mean a lot of extra work?
• Isn’t this sort of stuff blocked by our organizational policies?

This Secret Underground Guide to Social Media for Organizations is meant to help you answer some of those questions.

Technorati Tags: guide to social media, instruction, dummies guide, introduction, organizations, government

Working through a meeting yesterday, and I came up with the following calculations to help you understand the probability of certain behaviours or actions occurring during a meeting:

Will the meeting be useful?

# of participants / # of decisions needed = X, where X<1 means the meeting is useful.

Will someone fall asleep?

If the (room lighting (in watts) / # of participants) > the room temperature (in farenheit), then someone will fall asleep

Will you leave to get a snack?

If on a conference call, length of call / # of participants = % chance you will leave to get a snack

Will you get stuck with work?

# of senior executives present / # or participants = % chance you will get stuck with work

Is it a colossal waste of time?

(# of “health breaks” + # of courses at lunch) / # of “breakout” sessions = X, where x<1 is an office retreat, x>1 is an association conference, and x=0 is an awards gala.

Will you start considering a new career?

# of windows in meeting room / # of powerpoint slides = X, where x<1 means you start thinking of better things to do.

Will the meeting organizer be mocked?

# of blackberries in room / # of participants = % chance meeting organizer will be mocked during his/her own meeting.

Was the meeting led by a consultant?

% chance meeting was led by a consultant = ((length of meeting) times (# of branded items left at each seat)) / number of times the following words are used (energize, operationalize, low-hanging, offline, priority, “report back,” or brainstorm)

Technorati Tags: productivity, time management, meetings

What are the desirable qualities of an designer? How about a creative generalist? How about an unceasing appetite for information, for synergy, for identifying relationships?

Here are two takes: a short answer from Steve Portigal, and a long exposition by Steve Hardy, the Creative Generalist.

What is it that makes a great design strategist?

A great design strategist may not see themselves as a design strategist. They’re probably someone who has had a few different professional identities and gets excited by the spaces where disciplines, schools of thought, and methods overlap. They are curious and easily intrigued: they like to observe what’s going on around them and they’re good at listening to people.

And they know how to use all this data to synthesize new patterns and communicate them clearly to a range of audiences. Charlie Stross, in the sci-fi book Accelerando, describes the profession of a “meme broker” and the intense amount of content they have to assimilate every day in order to do this.

Bruce Sterling calls this activity “scanning“ looking at all the sources one can and constantly asking what does this mean for my clients. Being able to work through all those data sources and pull out the implications is crucial for design strategy.” (Influx interviews Steve Portigal)

And here is the nub of Steve Hardy’s long but fantastic post:

I’ve identified five core areas at which Creative Generalists excel. They are:

• Wander & Wonder - finding possibility
• Synthesize & Summarize - presenting information
• Link & Leap - generating ideas
• Mix & Match - connecting people
• Experience & Empathize - understanding worldview

“Act like you just quit” - fantastic advice from Advertising for Peanuts.

That’s doesn’t mean flip your boss the bird, or burn down the Initech division where you work.

Instead, challenge the conventions, the traditions, the ingrained habits that have held you back.

Do you have a great idea gnawing away at your soul? Are there business processes you are certain can be improved?

Or do you just feel disaffected and detached from your work? Chances are, your colleagues and boss have noticed as well.

Think about that period between an old job and a new one. What’s your normal behaviour? You:

• immediately forget all the petty interpersonal conflicts that took up your workday
• begin forecasting the work environment, work projects and personal relationships you want to develop at your new job
• maybe even take a stab at career planning - imagining two or three steps into the future

That’s right. You embrace the opportunity to change, the opportunity to abandon all your old habits and your less-than-favourable practices.

Why not do that now? Change does not require packing boxes. It just demands a level of confidence and a willingness to risk the status quo.

You’ll be surprised by how others welcome your willingness to change your life and your performance.

Quitters may be dismissed out of hand, but you’re rarely faulted for trying your hardest.

I really feel bad about it. I do. Obviously, a lot of planning went into your meeting. There was an agenda with an allotted time for each item. There were highback chairs and a big heavy conference table. There was even a scent of Roberts’ Rules of Order in how the meeting was being run.

But I still fell asleep. Don’t get me wrong - only for a few seconds - but long enough for my head and shoulders to droop. And I’ll tell you why:

• Nomenclature. Someone started discussing nomenclature and naming conventions.
• There was a perfunctory review of minutes. Just once, I’d like someone to raise a highly personal objection to the minutes.
• A business process analyst was present, and was eager to contribute. I like their logic gate workflow diagrams, but they’re just too serious for any meeting of mine.
• A fundamental lack of windows. Listen. I have the attention span of a hummingbird. Please give me an alternate source of visual stimulation.
• Mood lighting. If there’s more than one dimmer switch in the room, there will either be too little light, or too much. That’s fine if we’re at a billards match or partaking of a slaughtered fattened calf, but not for a collaborative work space.
• Clear sightlines. If the sightlines are clear from one seat to another, how am I supposed to get other work done? Or read the latest New Yorker?

I mean, if it wasn’t for twitter, I would have been sawing logs like Paul Bunyan.

*Obviously, I am writing about a completely hypothetical meeting. Not the one you’re thinking of.

Technorati Tags: meetings, etiquette, office code, behaviour

I admit it. Scientists and communicators often don’t mix well. They certainly don’t share a love for numbers, or even for precision. After all, it is hard to communicate science to the public.

James Watson, the co-discoverer of DNA, has provided his colleagues with something of a guidebook to making your way as a scientist.*

As reviewed in Harvard Magazine, Avoid Boring People: Lessons from a Life in Science does dwell on his past as a Harvard professor and wunderkind, but also identifies some basic traits to help battle it out in academia and the world of science:

• Manners Needed for Important Science
• Manners Required for Academic Civility
• Manners Deployed for Academic Zing
• Manners Maintained When Reluctantly Leaving Harvard
• Science works better when the winners don’t take all
• Share valuable research tools
• Never be the brightest person in the room
• Science is highly social

As the review points out, Watson often broke these rules or didn’t demonstrate these traits. As communicators, however, we know that highly social systems are effective at creating “weak links” and helping transmit information and understanding.
*Watson isn’t without his oversize controversies, either.

New research tells us: more doughnuts, less pay:

“…Our results indicate that increased body fat is unambiguously associated with decreased wages for both males and females…”

from the abstract for Body Composition and Wages, authored by Roy Wada and Erdal Tekin. I’d quote more, but the SSRN wants $5 for the whole paper - and I still have to buy lunch.

Wondering what exactly is happening with the writer’s strike in California? Stee at Plaintive Wail has a running narrative of the strike and his work on the picket lines.

“… I also got into an email battle with the super-douchey reporter Dave McNary whose coverage of the strike in the trade rag Variety has been as slanted as a San Francisco hill. I haven’t been compelled to write a stern letter in a long time, but he pissed me off like no one since some stupid TV Guide critic thought Silver Spoons* was unrealistic. And now it’s REALLY easy to send a stern letter over email. Especially when the reporter has a button you can just click that opens up a mail document already addressed to him.” (Plaintive Wail)

You might expect it from the Writers Guild of America, but they’ve produced a solid video explaining why they’ve hit the bricks:

*You really have to watch the Silver Spoons video I linked. It has Ricky Schroeder and Alfonso Riberio breakdancing!

Technorati Tags: writer’s strike, wga, hollywood, ricky schroeder

Taking up the challenge from UGA’s Karen Miller Russell that “PR bloggers would write about topic x,” I submit my guide to Office Politics 101

1. Read Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People. TWICE.

2. Never annoy the assistants in the office. They can make your life unbearable.

3. Identify the five essential office characters:

• Knows Where the Bodies are Buried
• Boss’ Right Hand
• The Office Klinger (aka scrounger, thief, fixer)
• He Who Knows Everything (aka corporate memory)
• Everybody’s Social Butterfly

4. Acronyms are not your friend. Not when you don’t understand them, and not when you throw them around trying to look intelligent.

5. Read up on learning styles. The way a person collects, interprets and processes information affects how they behave in a conversation with you, how they interact with others in meetings, and how quickly and violently they will try to shoot down and bury your cool new idea.

6. Figure out the conversation nodes in the office. Where do people hang out and exchange information? The office kitchen? Starbucks down the street? Twenty years ago, your best bet of learning the latest corporate rumour was by hanging out with the senior executives as they had a smoke on the sidewalk.\

7. You have not explained your idea well enough. Whether you’re twenty or forty, you’re the new person in the office. You need to make reference to the past ideas, experiments, and failures of your new colleagues if you expect them to engage and understand what you’re trying to sell.

8. Always dress for the job you would like to have, not the job you have now. In some offices, that means kicks and jeans. Personally, I’ve just laid out a lot of money on suits.

9. Manage your online social networks and your offline social networks discretely. Facebook and other social networks have a place in the office, in my opinion. And I’m not upset if you take some time to organize your weekend while sitting at your desk. But I don’t need to know the details of your personal life - either by you speaking to loudly in the office, or by posting inappropriate pictures. (Hey. If the first thing you did at work was “friend” your new boss, then don’t complain when I notice the pictures.)
10. Share credit more than blame. Nothing says you’re a high performer more than being able to deliver high quality work - and convince others to help you do it. If you spend all your time complaining about how others are keeping you from doing well - then you’re the problem.

11. Speak to people. Email and IM can only get you so far.

Technorati Tags: office politics, office conflict, new job

Kevin Smith, in Toronto to “whore out” his new book, thinks Canada’s retail sector is bush league:

“…Yet for all his affection for this country (“I dig the socialized medicine and the crime statistics”) and his Canadian pals (including Jim Jackman, former producer of DeGrassi: The Next Generation) , he’ll never live here, thanks to its anemic retail sector.

“You want to choose from 30 different kinds of peanut butter, you get your ass to America,” he writes. “You want to decide between, say, three? Oh, Canada … . When I hit the food store, I need variety, bitch.” … (Globe and Mail)

On a sliding scale from “spawn of Satan” to “merely incompetent and possible malicious” - where do Google and Microsoft fit in? It’s an over-the-top comparison, but it’s amusing.

“… The new, perhaps-even-creepier model for world industrial domination is one where Google will amass a vast and detailed up-to-the-moment chronicle of customers’ innermost thoughts. Producers won’t need to profit by force-feeding narrowed product choices onto customers via industrial might a la Microsoft. That’s because sellers will know consumers psychology so intimately that they will be able to efficiently trick them into buying the worthless junk.

In cold war terms, Microsoft is 1970s Soviet bread lines. Google is the KGB propaganda and spying machine...” (San Francisco Weekly)

We’re forever searching for a way to effectively communicate the relative risks of an activity. What about the clear contrasts presented in a Risk Characterization Theatre data map?

200 characters - a book full of SMS messages sent by Australians. (Get Shouty)

Me, quoted.

Technorati Tags: Kevin Smith, Clerks, Google, Microsoft, consumer psychology, behavioural marketing

Yes, that is me quoted in the Globe and Mail about productivity tools and GTD. If you subscribe to the “treeware” version of the paper, you also get a four column picture of me, taken by Bill Grimshaw, a funny guy who really likes his job.

In the picture, I’m holding my Moleskine - and the roll of red duct tape I keep around to repair my Moleskine when it inevitably rips at the cover.

Technorati Tags: GTD, productivity, moleskines

“You guys got nothing to worry about, I’m a professional.”

In some ways, corporate social responsibility programs can be a Faustian bargain. We’ve become accustomed to corporations claiming environmental and social awareness, but we still listen to their claims with a cocked ear. We need to see a concrete action plan. More importantly, we need independent and verified proof of an effective CSR plan.

That’s why Mattel’s recalls have been so damaging to their reputation. A twenty year relationship with your foreign contractors isn’t enough anymore. Especially when your compliance program, while extensive and detailed, is self-monitored.

Nike learned that lesson a few years ago. CSR is no longer a cape to be thrown over your corporate shoulders, at very little cost and relatively little effort. CSR now demands an dedicated corporate infrastructure, a detailed reporting program, and carefully maintained relationships with non-governmental organizations and verification authorities.

Today, the problems fall to Woolworths - the Australian supermarket chain. Despite a report full of CSR programming, Green groups have challenged the company’s claims that its premium paper products were composed of “Sustainable Forest Fibre.” In fact, they have far harsher things to say about Asia Pulp and Paper, the source of the fibre.

As a result, Woolworths has had to pull the product from the shelves. They’ve also begun to redesign the packaging, to eliminate the questioned claim of sustainability. Finally, they’ve asked the World Wildlife Foundation to audit their supplier’s claims.

And therein lays the problem. Most consumers would prefer to hear from a slightly scruffy and clearly environmentally concerned specialist directly and in advance, rather than waiting for one to be called in.

As soon as you have to start swearing that you’re not cheating, you become the Horshack, Epstein or Dylan McKay of the CSR world.

The standards for a CSR program have shifted. Self-monitoring, in the face of increasing claims of health and safety risk, does not appear sufficient. It doesn’t matter if your monitoring program is effective: it’s the appearance that matters.

Especially if the claims of risk are coming from groups vested with more authority in the subject. Even two environmental specialists in a basement office can send a corporation running if their claims appear weak. Once again, in a crunch it’s the appearance that matters.

h/t to PR Watch

Technorati Tags: csr, corporate sustainability, Woolworths, grocery, supermarket

Algonquin College is a local community college with some reputation for an innovative new media program. Which makes the news that college administrators have “suggested” instructors not “friend” students all the stranger.

The note I’ve pasted below is unattributed, so I’m willing to withdraw it if challenged. But if it’s true, what was the motivation? Too many college instructors found wasted at keggers?

Even more damaging - the assertion that students are not “peers.” This from a college that encourages several professional development programs and career advancement courses?

“In order to maintain a professional working relationship at the college, with all students, it has been suggested that Profs not accept Facebook friendship requests from current students. Any current Facebook friendships should be terminated. However, once students have graduated, and become peers, then Facebook friendships can be restored.”

Technorati Tags: Facebook, Algonquin College, student relations

Two very different takes on the world inside an advertising agency, both with quite amusing passages.

The first is e, an older book about life in a London advertising agency. Full of backstabbing, deceit, clueless managers and fickle clients. Matthew Beaumont structured the narrative around the flow of emails among the copywriters, creatives, account managers, admin assistants and executives in the agency. And it’s hilarious.

Here’s an excerpt.

The second, less hilarious, is Conflict and Confluence in Advertising Meetings by Robert J. Morais. Morais was trained as an anthropologist, but has been working in advertising for the last 26 years.

He’s written a far more clinical, logical and balanced account of how an advertising agency tries to work together to win an account.

You can find that article in the Summer 2007 edition of the journal Human Organization.

Here are some choice lines:

… When viewing an array of creative ideas, clients will rarely say “None of this works: go back to the drawing board.” Instead, they declare, “This is an interesting range of ideas,” which is code for, “I don’t like anything you have shown me.”

… Experienced account managers know the difference between what clients say and what they mean. When a client asks, “Why did you choose that particular graphic,” it is code for “I dislike the graphic.”

… When senior agency executives select flanker positions to the far left or right of the conference table they do so to stress their separateness from other agency staff and to occupy a perch from which to offer commentary during the creative meeting. Their distance from the fray carries other symbolism: it is a vantage point from which they can make the “big picture” statements that demonstrate a mastery of the full business context of the creative work.

… Clients also know when agency executives exclaim “I agree with everything you have said,” they are about to disagree and prolong a discussion.

… Agency executives understand that advertising may be at the intersection of commerce and art, but commerce is the main drag, and clients control the road.

And what is so appealing about fiction that simply recreates your everyday office life? The Guardian Arts discusses.

Technorati Tags: Matthew Beaumont, Robert J. Morais, advertising agency, inter-office politics, team

I’ve been spending more than a few hours lately interviewing candidates for two different jobs in my shop.

They’ve largely been reliable and competent folk.

But that’s not what I want.

I want you to knock my socks off. Bedazzle me. Demonstrate the staid and boring error of my ways.

I know the interview is a stressful experience, particularly an interview for a government job.

You’re forced to answer a blindingly obvious questions about priorities and respond to complicated scenarios.

You’re faced with two, three or four “interview board members” with blank stares on their faces. There’s no emotion in their eyes, no inflection in their voice. All the normal signs of emotional interaction are missing, all for fear of corrupting an impartial competition.

And they’re scribbling in detailed “evaluation grids” all the time.

Get over it people. It’s showtime. Your job interview is a combination of karaoke, high school science fair exhibit and that one exam you somehow passed in third year even though you may still have been drunk and definitely didn’t study for.

Why are you showing up? Do you want the job?

Mitch and Murray sent me. They want you to straighten up.

If you are applying for a job in communications in the government of Canada, it’s probably a good idea to have an acquaintance with the government’s communications policy.

If you’ve read the detailed job description, you should have an idea of the work involved. Try to imagine scenarios we might pose. Ask someone who’s done the job before. Pick up the phone - it’s not hard.

But more than that: do some creative thinking, people! How can this job be done better? How can this job be more fun? How can you ADD value to the job?

I don’t want to hire boring but competent people. I want to hire interesting people who will do the job well.

After all, we all have to work with you.

How are you going to bring energy to the interview? You don’t have to be a four star bullshitter. You just have to be engaged.

Ask questions. Not “what are your normal work hours?” Think about the job, the location, the organization. Surprise me.

Calm and quiet may be reassuring, but it is not energizing.

Laugh. Smile. Speak in more than a monotone. Bring a strange pen as a conversation starter.

When we ask “do you have any questions” … HAVE SOME!

Otherwise, you’re just going through the motions. You know it. And WE certainly know it.

But don’t be too strange, okay?

Another oldie but a goodie:

Reasons to fire your client

• Your primary contact point is in the procurement office.
• They’ve just implemented an enterprise-wide e-commerce solution: EBay.
• At the last trade show, they handed out branded trucker hats.
• A 60 Minutes crew is sitting in their office - and you didn’t invite them.
• Your client only has a hotmail account - at the Kinko’s.
• You just can’t get over the internal motivational video - the CFO and CMO covering Whitesnake’s “Here I go again.”
• The CEO hit on Maria Bartiromo - on air!
• In Vegas for a trade show, the CMO asks you to keep the reporter busy because he wants to take a hooker upstairs and do blow off her stomach.
• The Russian security service drops by “for a chat.”
• Whenever you use the word “media,” the aged founder starts chattering about Marshall McLuhan and acid.
• They believe that a front page photo will steal their soul.
• The client asks “Can you get us PR but also keep us way under the radar? Thanks.”
• Their IR officer spends most of her time day trading.
• “Do you mind delaying your invoice for two weeks?”
• Their idea of targeted marketing is a t-shirt cannon.

Posted on September 30, 2004.

I’ve been digging through the archives (more than 1300 posts) for something suitably intelligent and prescient to post in anticipation of BuzzCanuck’s 1% army bracket.

Instead, I’ve come up with a thought - two and a half years old - that seems right off the pages of this week’s Strumpette.

Ketchum, Williams, Rosen and the wood shed

Jay Rosen has rightly taken the PR blogging community to the wood shed for our (relative) lack of commentary on the Williams/Ketchum contract.

Many PR bloggers DID comment on the controversy - even those of us who do not work or live in the United States. Nonetheless, we can be critcized for not feeding this important debate on PR ethics at the speed or volume expected by most inhabitants of the blogosphere.

Not that we’re dealing with an isolated case. As Jeremy pointed out, the industry seems to be backsliding when it comes to transparency and ethical behaviour.

Public relations has long harboured underhanded operatives and unscrupulous tactics: the only way to demonstrate our commitment to open, honest and two-way communication is with the unstinting and outspoken leadership of prominent professionals, firms and associations (maybe even bloggers!) in the industry.

Neville Hobson, among others, hit the nail on the head when he asked where our professional associations have been hiding during this ethical imbroglio.

Several bloggers have suggested the associations’ low-key reaction may be a defensive tactic, designed to preserve their relationship with prominent members and sponsors.

If so, what is the worth of their codes of ethics? Are they just another page in a boring membership package, or a laminated plaque for the firm’s lunch room?

But why was the PR blogging community so subdued in its reaction? Why didn’t a feeding frenzy of debate and recrimination erupt, as in other parts of the blogosphere, building and tearing down arguments by the minute?

This, I think, reflect the differing motivations of the global PR blogger community: as Steve and Jeremy point out, we have individual areas of interest and concentration, and we don’t necessarily jump on the issue of the day when writing for our blogs.

Of course, our collective reaction could simply reflect natural aversion of all PR pros to becoming part of the story.

And that would be a shame.

Originally posted January 20, 2005.

Technorati Tags: public relations ethics, PRSA, CPRS, IABC, ethical blogging, values, morals

Take one sophisticated computer model capable of predicting individual behaviour in a variety of urban settings. Add a large consumer or retail corporation interested in maximizing their in-store marketing efforts.

You can just predict the co-opting of an extremely sophisticated urban planning tool.

Not that this scenario has happened yet. Paul Torrens, an assistant professor at Arizona State University, has received a multi-year National Science Foundation grant to:

“…develop a reusable and behaviorally founded computer model of pedestrian movement and crowd behavior amid dense urban environments, to serve as a test-bed for experimentation,” says Torrens. “The idea is to use the model to test hypotheses, real-world plans and strategies that are not very easy, or are impossible to test in practice.” (ASU news release)

Once the academics have done all the heavy lifting, I can easily see commercial applications:

• modeling traffic flows at trade shows
• evaluating the efficiency of urban and suburban guerrilla marketing campaigns
• testing category placement at grocery stores
• maximizing the placement of shopping centre info booths
• calculating the maximum tolerable distance between airport departure gates

Pruned has suggested some other applications:

• simulate how a crowd flees from a burning car toward a single evacuation point;
• see how the existing urban grid facilitate or does not facilitate mass evacuation prior to a hurricane landfall or in the event of dirty bomb detonation; or
• design a mall which can compel customers to shop to the point of bankruptcy, to walk obliviously for miles and miles and miles, endlessly to the point of physical exhaustion and even death.

In practical terms, I wonder how much of this new modeling the folks at Disney theme parks will review and say “knew that. knew that. that’s not a surprise!”

Personally, I would like to see the results from one of the professor’s other projects:

Modeling Time, Space, and Behavior: Combining ABM & GIS to Create Typologies of Playgroup Dynamics in Preschool Children

pointer from CityofSound

Technorati Tags: traffic flow, urban design, patterning, shopping habits

Stolen directly from Dave Gray’s blog, Communication Nation:

“…A blog is a way of getting support and affirmation from the outside, for the things you are trying to do on the inside.

A blog is a way to keep your faith alive.”

I know blogs, podcasts, general and specialist social networks and plain old Yahoo newsgroups have helped me explore new ideas as a:

• public relations specialist
• government communicator
• blogger, and;
• all around know-it-all

Technorati Tags: evangelism, xplane, Dave Gray

This just in! Experiments conducted at Stanford reveal that “the brain’s ability to suppress irrelevant memories makes it easier for humans to remember what’s really important.”

There we go. Scientific evidence that my inability to remember insignificant details is simply the product of a highly functioning brain.

“…Memory allows humans to be predictive about what’s likely to be relevant to them as they go through life, Wagner explained. “What forgetting does is allow the act of prediction to occur much more automatically, because you’ve gotten rid of competing but irrelevant predictions,” he said. “That’s very beneficial for a neural information processing system.”…” (Stanford News)

So, to recap: it’s not that I undervalue what you’re telling me. It’s that I expect something much more important and personally relevant to come along any moment now.

It was 31 degrees celcius or more today. In a hot and humid capital city, that seems to be taken as permission to dress completely inappropriately.

I’m sure someone, somewhere, was wearing a mesh shirt to work.

Leigh Householder (AdverGirl) has some clear advice for a new account executive, including Eleven Unbreakable Rules for AEs and a Be A Better AE Cheat Sheet.

Technorati Tags: AdverGirl, account executive, advertising agency