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Speaking the truth at Southwest
0March 19, 2007 by Colin
An airline is an extremely complex system developed to manage complex technology and effectively manage risk and, frequently, the human element can be lost in the machinery. Despite some recent problems, it’s evident that Southwest Airlines has taken a conscious approach to ensuring the lines of communication are reinforced within the system – both with employees as well as customers.
Fred Taylor is Southwest’s senior manager of proactive customer communications, and his job is to explain delays, incidents and worrisome smells to customers. As well, he writes an internal report to help other employees explain these service problems.
One of the keys to his success is direct contact with the senior operations officers. Like most communications officers, he had a hard time nailing down the straight facts at first.
“… Over time, he won their trust. “When something goes wrong, Fred is one of the first people I call,” said Steve West, senior director in the operations control center. Mr. Taylor then gets word out to the rest of the company about what happened. “And my phone will stop ringing,” Mr. West said.
Mr. Taylor, despite that access, tries to keep the customer’s point of view. In his daily report he wrote of a San Diego-to-Las Vegas flight that was diverted to Los Angeles on Nov. 17 because the landing gear would not stay in the wheel well.
“The landing was routine from a piloting perspective. The customers’ perspective was another story,” he wrote, because they had been told to assume the brace position on landing. “We’ll send a follow-up explanation and an apology for scaring the stuffing out of these customers.” (NYTimes)
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Quotes taken out of context
0March 7, 2007 by Colin
What are we talking about? Blogs? I present quotes taken out of context:
“How do you think your work differs from traditional journalism? We’re taking the tools of journalism and applying them to people whom you wouldn’t normally apply them to — people who aren’t famous, people who aren’t powerful, people just like you and me.
What are you talking about? Journalism has always had human-interest stories. But a newspaper probably wouldn’t run an article where a cop remembers one weird incident with a squirrel when he was a rookie. That’s too far from any kind of normal news hook.
What’s so great about flashbacks to encounters with squirrels? We’re documenting things with no particularly uplifting social mission. The mission is that of an ambitious novel or movie: to point out universal feelings and moments.
Do you write fiction? I didn’t have any particular talent for fiction. I took a class in college.
Do you read fiction? No. No. No. No. I don’t know how to read. I get all my news from Jon Stewart everyday.
from: “Questions for Ira Glass, New York Times Magazine.” Talking about his NPR radio show, “This American Life.”
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Wal-mart wants to target “brand aspirationals,” among others
0March 2, 2007 by Colin
Aspirational. There’s a word you usually don’t hear Wal-Mart throwing around when referring to its client base. Sure, they’ve made attempts lately to market more upscale clothing – but didn’t Wal-Mart boot to the road one of the marketing execs charged with chasing this demographic?
Apparently, a year of intensive research has helped the company focus on three essential customer archetypes:
“There are “brand aspirationals” (people with low incomes who are obsessed with names like KitchenAid), “price-sensitive affluents” (wealthier shoppers who love deals), and “value-price shoppers” (who like low prices and cannot afford much more).” (NYTimes)
“Value-price shoppers” – that’s a nice analogy for the working poor. Reminds me of Chris Rock’s comments about minimum wage:
“Before I started comedy, I used to work at McDonald’s making minimum wage. You know what that means when someone pays you minimum wage? You know what your boss was trying to say? It’s like, “Hey if I could pay you less, I would, but it’s against the law.”
Now minimum wage used to come up to about $200 a week and then they’d take out $50 in taxes. That’s alot of money if you’re only making $200 a week. That’s kinda like kicking Monday and Tuesday in the ass.”
You can always count on independent community newspapers to thumb their noses at corporate America. This time, it’s the Cleveland Scene, with a snotty and sarcastic commentary on Wal-Mart’s commitment to the a development in the city. “The Devil Wears Wal-Mart: America’s favorite welfare queen cranks up the PR“:
“People of the metropolis tend to have more finely tuned bullshit detectors. While our country cousins saw lovable hillbillies, we saw prehistoric goobers who went sphincter on paychecks and health plans, and violated pretty much every civil rights and labor law they could find.”
[tags] Wal-Mart, consumer research, aspirational [/tags]
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Blog monitoring, astroturfing and keeping the young involved
0February 4, 2007 by Colin
- The Blogtrotters: behind the scenes at Umbria, trend trackers and blog monitoring service. (Denver Westword)
- Playing Dirty: the inside scoop on the role public relations industry in selling the “made in Canada” solution to global warming. It’s a full colonic, including a discussion of astroturfing and how the technique is used in policy lobbying by the big PR consultancies. (This Magazine)
- Phoning it in on a lazy Sunday: the NYT runs the yearly story on how tshirts and caps – preprinted with the loser’s logo – end up in Sierra Leone.
- How to keep the IM Generation involved – Paull Young’s notes on the AlwaysOn session.
[tags] astroturf, blog monitoring, blogger relations, climate change [/tags]
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Fabio needs a widget
1January 27, 2007 by Colin
The advertising community is still stunned that Fabio is a continuing draw for online audiences. Nationwide Insurance’s Super Bowl ad, which featured the long haired bohunk poling down the canals of Venice (or the Venetian hotel in Vegas), kept pulling viewers long after its first airing during the 2006 Super Bowl.
In true “B” star fashion, Fabio made sure his sponsors kept up on the info. Nationwide’s VP for advertising and brand management made that point in a New York Times piece about maintaining the buzz built from a Super Bowl placement:
“We got 1.8 million downloads on that one site. Fabio himself keeps me apprised of that.” (NYT)
Fabio’s life would be much easier if there was a widget he could install on that VP’s desktop.
Imagine what other information could be simply and efficiently distributed through widgets, rather than depending upon online media:
- Minutes Since You Last Saw William Shatner In Media
- Last Person to Misinterpret The Cluetrain Manifesto
- Average Episode Run of New Television Dramas Calculator
- Latest Coochie Flashed to Papparazzi
- Number of PPT Decks to Start With a Hugh Macleod Cartoon
- In/Out of Rehab Updater
- Dating/Not Dating/Slutting Around
- Friends/Not Friends with Paris
- Slept with Wilmer
[tags] Super Bowl, Fabio, Nationwide, widget [/tags]
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A New PSA: When Pigeons Attack
0November 25, 2006 by Colin
Say you’re a city in Great Britain. Say you have a rather disturbing pigeon problem, and you want to clean up the streets before assuming the mantle of European City of Culture 2008.You want to educate kids and community groups about the dangers of feeding “feral” pigeons. Personally, I would think this picture would do the trick, but one City Council thinks an endearing educational film would communicate this key message more clearly:
“Please don’t feed the Pigeons. Its bad for the Pigeons Its Bad for the City.”
“Ideas the team have thought of:
A short animated film, along the lines of a Nick Park (Wallace & Gromit, Creature Comforts, etc) style Pigeon hosting the film.
A Bill Oddie ‘Springwatch’ style educational nature style film. Preferably with Bill Oddie/Kate Humble or similar presenting.
The finished film would be circa 3 minutes.”
The picture is from a PowerPoint deck included with the quotation document. The deck also includes the print collateral and posters that will accompany the campaign, with a note that they are under embargo until next February.
Personally, I think the message “Pigeons could turn mean and crap on your head” works much better than “It’s bad for the city.” Children have a notoriously poor sense of allegiance to political constructs like City Councils and concepts of shared community responsibility. Maybe it’s because they’re politically disenfranchised, discriminated against because of things like age, literacy skills and capacity to reason.
As for community groups, the cumulative property damage caused by these “rats of the sky” would likely be a more resonant message.
It’s easy to swipe at government communications efforts, but just because your organization has to deal with a number of different constituencies doesn’t mean your messages should be dumbed down and rendered nearly meaningless.
In any case – a recent article in the NYT suggests that anti-pigeon feeding efforts may have to be highly targeted:
“…”In a city like New York or like Melbourne,” [Guy Merchant, director of the Pigeon Control Advisory Service in Britain] argues, ”the pigeon population is sustained solely by little old ladies and little old men that go out every single day and feed top-quality foods to the birds.” This isn’t the average office worker, flinging the last crumbs of lunch. … these feeders maintain a purposeful regimen. Lefebvre calls them ”marginal city dwellers whose interests in life do not much extend beyond feeding pigeons.” He describes, with disarming empathy, people who ”wait outside the backdoors of restaurants for day-old bread and patiently soften all the bread and break it into little pieces and then hand it out to the pigeons.”…”
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Playing the straight man – surviving client meetings
1November 16, 2006 by Colin
That lull in the conversation. The new client’s just finished their brief: the facts as they know it have been laid in full on the table, and they are now looking to you for insight and direction.
Your team has already read the brief. They’ve picked it apart, examined each fact, claim, assurance and outright lie from every angle. Your environmental scan has revealed the fundamental weaknesses in their analysis, the stakeholder groups and consumer activists just waiting in the wings …
In the second or so that hangs between the client’s last word and your first, you can make or break a relationship.
You can try to extend the lull with the strategic use of hands – a pensive finger to the temple, or maybe a worshipful tapping of the fingertips – but there is still an expectation hanging thick in the air: agree with me and tell me how to fix it, the client seems to be silently whispering. Or boring into your head with unblinking eyes.
At this moment, don’t shuffly your papers. Don’t review your notes. Those two moves imply indecision and uncertainty.
And you know that isn’t true. Everyone on your side of the table knows your team spent a hilarious 15 to 30 minutes brainstorming over the worst possible outcomes for this client. Headlines you wouldn’t want to see in the Globe and Mail. How proposed promo events could go horribly, horribly wrong. Personal observations about members of the client’s staff that you’ve worked with before. The weaknesses of the product line.
The key at this moment is preparation. Working through the responsibilities of each member of your team ahead of the meeting. Working through your own agenda for the meeting. Establishing a lead for the discussion. Having a really good poker face.
Learn from the example of Luke Wilson:
“… I think I’ve been playing the straight man ever since I first realized I was in over my head academically. Math in particular. And science, come to think of it. Not to overlook foreign languages. Not really knowing what was going on in class — and not really caring to understand or actually taking the time to study — I put a great deal of effort into my expression. Earnest yet vacant. Yearning yet lost. I had one simple goal for the teachers. I wanted them to think: This Wilson kid might not be that bright, but damn it, he’s trying. The poor bastard.” (NyTimes Mag)
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Lockjaw in Aisle 87 at Wal-Mart
1October 3, 2006 by Colin
Oh God. Wal-Mart’s thinking of updating their employee uniforms, and they’re thinking of going preppy.
” … Wal-Mart, long a symbol of dowdy, traditional fashions, is graduating to preppy.
The blue polo and khaki test, now being conducted in about 100 stores, may extend across the chain as early as November, depending on the response of employees and customers, John Simley, a company spokesman, confirmed.
Skittish Wal-Mart executives, who said they had not yet planned on disclosing the test, played down the experimental uniform. But they conceded that the existing smocks and vests, emblazoned with the words “How may I help you?” are unlikely to survive much longer. …” (NYT)
[tags] Wal-Mart, preppy, uniform [/tags]
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Second Life: the future of groceries?
0September 21, 2006 by Colin
Forget Peapod or Webvan: the real future of grocery shopping lies in the virtual experience available in Second Life. Or at least that’s the message from a reader responding to the NYT’s “What features would you like to see in the supermarket of the future?”:
” … Virtual Reality at home shopping … program would allow you to walk the isles just as if you were in the store … highlite things onsale … also would note items you have purchased in the past (soo you dont forget something) … Then my items would be placed in easy to carry boxes … I would recieve an email that my order needed to be picked up within 48 hrs … There should be a drive thru pickup window were I show my online reciept and my boxes are placed in the trunk of my car.” (NYT blog comment)
Or maybe something even more fantastic:
” … I’d like to see gallon jugs of designer gasolines, nested neatly between the orange juice and Perrier. I’d like to see genetically engineered talking cows like the ones in Douglas Adams’ _The Restaurant at the End of the Universe_ which walk up to you and point out their choices cuts, and wallow in despair if you forego the opportunity of lopping off an extremity today, thank you.
I’d like to see a whole separate supermarket section devoted to baby vegetables: baby carrots, baby corn, baby peas even more miniscule than regular peas. And you should have to trade you regular sized shopping cart for an itty bitty one when entering this section. I’d like to see a conveyor belt that ushers me through all sections and all aisles before shuttling me off toward the cashiers when I’ve gotten all my shopping done. Samples… I really love samples. I’d love for there to be little sample trays of everything in the supermarket… even the light-bulbs and cat litter.
I’d like for the e-coli infected vegetable of the day to be marked down 50% and clearly labelled as such. I’d like for dented cans to again be potential botulism sources… you know… to put a little sense of danger excitement back into buying the discounted stuff. I’d like the dying houseplants and wilted flowers to be a little more than 50 cents off the regular store price. I’d like there to be 42″ plasma screens inside specially maked boxes of Special K.
I’d like my shoppers card bonus points to pay off in the afterlife by affording me a better seating position vis. a vis. the Creator at the Heavenly banquet table. I’d like a shoppers bill of rights that recognizes and clarifies Common Article 3 of the Geneva conventions, because… well, it’s all ambiguous and stuff. …” (Dabid Flores, NYT Blog Comment)
Pointer from Marginal Revolution.
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Condi and Peter … enjoying a choice cuppa Tims
0September 13, 2006 by Colin
Choice placement for a couple of Tim Hortons coffee cups – in the hands of Peter MacKay, the Foreign Minister, and Condi as they tour his parliamentary riding. The photo — and a salacious article — were found on the NYT’s splash page.How does the marketing team at Tims quantify this placement?
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Another “it’s just like blogging” post – with H.S.T
0September 10, 2006 by Colin
Two points to be made about on-the-fly writing and publication from the early 1970s. First, from the NYT review of Hunter S. Thompson‘s Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72:
“…Perhaps whistlestop and jet-plane campaigning should be abandoned and the candidates should compete solely through the electronic media. …”
In the interest of context and full disclosure, I attach the lines that follow the above quote (and which I find amusing AND true):
“… What Thompson does know, however, is that whatever the campaign procedures, the White House will continue to loom in the imagination of power- addicted men as the glassine-bagged white powder does in the imagination of the junkie. Watergate was the attempted rip-off of a fellow addict. “Fear and Loathing” lets us understand why the men we elect to the Presidency may have needle tracks on their integrity.”
The second quote comes from the book itself, and relates more directly to the creative process.
“… The time has come to get full bore into heavy Gonzo Journalism, and this time we have no choice but to push it all the way out to the limit. The phone is ringing again and I can hear Crouse downstairs trying to put them off.
“What the hell are you guys worried about? He’s up there cranking out a page every three minutes … What? … No, it won’t make much sense, but I guarantee you we’ll have plenty of words. If all else fails we’ll start sending press releases and shit like that … Sure, why worry? We’ll start sending almost immediately.”
… Crouse is yelling again. They want more copy. He has sent them all of his stuff on the Wallace shooting, and now they want mine. Those halfwit sons of bitches should subscribe to a wire service; get one of those big AP tickers that spits out fifty words a minute, twenty-four hours a day … a whole grab-bag of weird news; just rip it off the top and print whatever comes up. Just the other day the AP wire had a story about a man from Arkansas who entered some kind of contest and won a two-week vacation — all expenses paid — wherever he wanted to go. Any place in the world: Mongolia, Easter Island, the Turkish Riviera … but his choice was Salt Lake City, and that’s where he went. …”
[tags] Hunter S. Thompson, H.S.T, Salt Lake City [/tags]
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Andrew Young and Wal-Mart
0August 18, 2006 by Colin
Ouch. Andrew Young’s comments about his own experiences with ethnically-owned neighbourhood retail and grocery stores may end up hurting his erstwhile employers rather than helping them.
You see, Young was hired to head what seems, at first glance, to be a Wal-Mart astroturf operation: Working Families for Wal-Mart.
Yesterday, he resigned after comments made to the Los Angeles Sentinel provoked reaction from a range of community and ethnic representatives.
” … Explaining his comments about Koreans, Jews and Arabs, Mr. Young said he was referring to the history of retail ownership in the neighborhood where he lives in southwestern Atlanta.
“Almost everyone who has come into my community has moved in, made money and moved out and moved up,” he said. “That process is still continuing.”
… “The only thing I can do,” Mr. Young said last night before he resigned, “is to ask that people judge me about a life of working together with people who are different and bringing people together without violence and without rancor. I would hope that would count for something.” …” (NYT)
(BTW – The Sentinel’s website sucks)
[tag]Wal-Mart, Astroturf[/tag]
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A Trade Show homerun, a marketing gimmick and how reporters screw up numbers
1August 9, 2006 by Colin
Three thoughts for today:
- Hershey’s hits a home run coming out of the 2006 All Candy Expo: a writer for Progressive Grocer drops by the company’s booth at the show and plants a big sloppy kiss on the company and its community health and education initiatives. The only way that piece could have come off better for the Hershey’s folk is if it came “with release.”
- Picked up my ticket for the Billy Bragg show in town September 23. Determined not to pay the Ticketmaster “convenience fee,” I bought it from a little independent music shop, End Hits. They’re likely suffering from the same pressures (and lack of attention) as other music shops, but the fact that their web presence emphasizes community events, local bands and new releases shows they’ve got their head on right. (As an aside – several different ways a kid could spend $20 on music)
- A book that seems promising (although it has not been reviewed by anyone) is Econospinning: How to Read Between the Lines When the Media Manipulate the Numbers, by Gene Epstein, the economics editor for Barron’s. From his publisher’s blurb on Amazon:
“… He then exposes shoddy reporting by a laundry list of economic journalists, providing the dos and don’ts to guide readers to the best options: who to believe, who to respect, who to argue with, and who to run away from screaming. From Paul Krugman (The New York Times) to John Cassidy (The New Yorker), as well as others including, but in no way limited to, Eric Schlosser (Fast Food Nation), Barbara Ehrenreich (Nickel and Dimed), Louis Uchitelle (Goldman Sachs’ Economics Research Group), and Patrick Barta (Wall Street Journal), Epstein does a point-by-point discussion on how readers can get their feet on the ground floor of economics information, and provides readers with a list of his trusted recommendations.”
(hat tip to marginal revolution)
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Tom Hanks’ reluctance to be interviewed – unless it’s a movie junket
0August 1, 2006 by Colin
… Mr. Hanks was initially reluctant to be interviewed for this article. “Why would I want to — so I could see my name in the paper tomorrow?” he joked. “I get my name in the paper when I go out and buy socks. I go to Gray’s Papaya in New York and I’m on Defamer.com.”
Quoted in a NYT profile of his production company, Playtone.
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Washington Post buys into the “generosity” meme
0July 31, 2006 by Colin
Steve made a point last week about building influence and audience through generosity – the free sharing of information and a willingness to send your reader off to other parts of the blogosphere for further analysis.
Today we find out from the NYTimes that the Washington Post will be embracing the concept fully – by installing services from inform.com that will serve related news stories for other outlets alongside WaPo-sourced material.
The key for WaPo – the new material will be embedded in pages generated by the Post’s CMS – meaning more revenue for the Post as well as more information for the reader.
Canuckflack
… Colin McKay has some thoughts about design, data, management, government and oddities … written in Canada!
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Blood Stains from the slaine Monks of Lindisfarne in the Viking attack of 793AD. Folios 191v and 192r of the Lindisfarne Gospels - written and illuminated by the Anglo-Saxon Bishop Eadfrith in 698AD.
Liber generationis Jesu Christi
“Lo, it is nearly 350 years that we and our fathers have inhabited this most lovely land, and never before has such terror appeared in Britain as we have now suffered from a pagan race, nor was it thought that such an inroad from the sea could be made. Behold, the church of St. Cuthbert spattered with the blood of the priests of God, despoiled of all its ornaments; a place more venerable than all in Britain is given as a prey to pagan peoples.”
Alcuin, Letter to Ethelred, King of Northumbria
Images: British Library
I had a Brooks Brothers 15 1/2 - 35 shirt and we used its front pocket to determine when the Pilot design was “pocket sized” - Joel Jewitt, discussing the invention of the Palm Pilot
http://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20130408043926-7298-early-employees-joel-jewitt-palm
Before I discovered the Internet
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