Getting It

Waking up in a reality show

Much to Molly's chagrin, our four days in Santa Monica involved just one celebrity sighting - a single Kardashian, teetering across the deck of a restaurant on ten inch heels at brunch-o'clock on a Sunday morning, long hair flying in the wind. 

The encounter she (Molly) had really hoped to have was with teen-hearthrob Zac Effron, ostensibly staying in our hotel for a round of PR engagements to promote his new movie. But unlike the Kardashian, Zac proved to be frustratingly elusive. 

Not so the reality TV production that overtook our San Francisco hotel yesterday and continues into today. 

Big questions. Are we brave enough to look for answers?

Six days on, I'm still working my way through my notes from last month's IABC World Conference.

I keep saying (and thinking) that none of these are new ideas. Smart communicators have seen them coming for at least the past five years. Smarter ones, even longer. But what is new is that we're now starting to see the case studies emerge from this new consumer/communications environment and evidence around what's working - a world where:

- 'us to them' and 'them to us' is no longer enough - 'them to them' is an integral component of any successful communication effort

- authenticity rules

- you can't capture minds without first capturing hearts

- content comes first, channel second

- content holds the key to connecting with the ideas that you and your customers/staff etc care about, and holding their attention

- a changing media landscape means content has to be sharper, smarter and savvier than ever to cut through the babble and make a connection

- your key influencers may well no longer be the people you thought they were

- a realisation that your greatest competition for slice of mind isn't information from the rest of the organisation - it's what's going on 'out there'. 

- conversations are the point of story telling

- finally, we get it that staff are people too, and communicate with (not just to) them as respectfully and strategically as any other audience whose slice-of-mind and commitment we're looking to win. 

What does it mean for you as a leader, a communicator, a business person, or all three?

What new skills/tools/resources do you/I need to bring ourselves up to speed with the new consumer and how they're connecting? These are just some of the questions we all need to be asking ourselves right now - whether we class ourselves as communication professionals or not. 

Getting even and getting it straight

Loving Air NZ's response to the Listener in this morning's major dailies and via You Tube.

Faced with assertions that service downgrades are inevitable in the face of a Pacific Blue alliance and questions around its motives, the airline obeyed the first and most salient rule of  issues management today: get your side of the story out, and get it fast. 

The temptation might have been for the corporate comms folk to spend the week thrashing the issue around and respond to the publication direct, but that would have lost them a great deal of valuable time, made the response look stiff and contrived, and left a window open for other media to have a field day. 

The Air NZ response is knee jerk, for sure, but it's part of its power. We just don't expect corporates to behave this way, which makes it refreshingly different.

I'm also a great fan of using controlled media when you're in this sort of situation. Sometimes the only thing to be done if you really want to get your point across clean, without reporter filtering or angling, is to buy the space and tell it how (you think it) is. 

Content was good, too. I loved the straight-forward, decorporatised language. Rob Fyfe at his best. 

Be interesting to see what the deaf community has to say, though...

Overwhelm 2.0

So much has happened in the social-media-goes-mainstream space over the past few weeks I have to confess to being overwhelmed to the point of paralysis.

Things that would have been unthinkable just six months ago – the Press shoving a phenomenal amount of weight behind its multimedia product, Christchurch’s campaign for mayor (complete with smear) going the YouTube way, TVNZ launching its anywhere, anytime campaign, Bill English’s son’s Bebo dramas and the guy being arrested as a result of an entry on the same site – are now just the way things are. The new now. Another reminder of the incredibly fast adoption rate associated with these technologies. And a reminder also of how alarmingly easily they slip into day-to-day life.

On that note, anybody with an inkling of discomfort about social media, what it’s doing to our society, our brains, our kids, our culture (the folk I routinely respond to with  ‘they said that about Elvis and probably about the introduction of the telephone, too’, but I am starting to concede they may have a point…) would do well to pick up a copy of Andrew Keen's The Cult of the Amateur - how today's internet is killing our culture and assaulting our economy.

Keen is an ex Web 2.0 evangelist now turned apologist who harbours deep concerns about what these tools (and the philosophies they are founded on and spawn) are doing to a whole bunch of sectors of society – especially mainstream media and the creative industries.

Keen worries about what all this audience participation is doing to our cultural standards and moral values – but his biggest concern is that ‘…the very traditional institutions that have helped to foster and create our news, our music, our literature, our TV shows and our movies are under assault as well’.

Thought provoking stuff and hard to argue with - but it doesn't change the fact that even if we're not approving (let alone participating) it's still happening around us. And organisational communicators, especially, need to understand this phenomenon because it's not going anywhere in a hurry. And its influence is seeping into ever corner of society.

On a light note, I found myself in an amusing spot between a TV network and a newspaper the other day – both parties jostling to provide video content for a website we’re working on. The newspaper has a multi media guy with a handi-cam (the size of which is the source of much mirth amongst the ‘real’ camera guys, still lugging their gargantuan gear), and they’re routinely out there shooting video content to complement their old-media offering.

One of those pivotal moments when you realise that it has all changed for good and the world just turned on its axis: that what it has been about for so many years - the channel - truly is becoming less of a point. It’s all about content now. And it’s all about immediacy, making it accessible when people want it, where they want it and how they want it. Can’t be long before we’re really not going to care whether we’re getting video from the local newspaper and in-depth feature analysis from the network news folk. So long as we’re getting it.

It’s an upside down world, for sure.

And the most upside down thing of all? That we can even conceive of the media supplying content to the PR company. I think that's the most upside down  - even inside out - thing that's crossed my radar screen in the past decade.

And I wonder why my head hurts.

Getting on with the neighbours

I got an email the other day from my neighbour, Mary.

Mary just razed a bunch of houses  (as you do) to redevelop a piece of land next door to mine and it seems we've run into a problem over some trees I planted last weekend.

I suppose we could have had this conversation over the back fence, and once upon a time maybe we would have - but time is short, work is long, and I am ashamed to say that despite Mary and I having been neighbours for three or four months now, we've never even caught sight of one another.

“Your tree is growing across the boundary line and is now growing through the wall of my new structure”, wrote Mary politely. “Would you please consider moving it?”

Sure thing, I typed back. Heck, it's no skin off my nose - the tree was nothing special - and there are plenty more where it came from.

Within seconds my email missive was in the hands of the enigmatic (but tidy - her garden is immaculate) Scary Mary Jones (last name disguised to protect her privacy) and just a few minutes later I had logged on and dragged the offending tree back a few feet. Order was restored on the island of Humuli.

Yep, Scary Mary and I (or at least, the Avatar me) are virtual neighbours. We're two of more than 9,000,000 residents registered as Second Lifers. And while my own presence there is limited to walking aimlessly around my weed ridden waterfront section (if somebody could show me how to grow actual grass I'd be grateful beyond belief) wondering whether I should build a house or develop a few units as rentals, a perturbing number of people are now making an actual living or facilitating making-a-living things there.

What am I doing in Second Life at all?

Not a lot, really – except watching the corporates roll in, and wondering how long it’s going to be before I’m going to need to understand how this place works.

Consider this.

The Swedes (hot on the heels of the Maldives) just established a virtual embassy in Second Life. A Hong Kong based property developer is Second Life’s first real-life millionaire. She rolls on in, snaps up land as it’s released, builds apartment buildings and houses and flicks them on or rents them out for a profit. It’s her full time job – and a lucrative one, at that.

Educational institutions are Second-Lifing in droves. It’s said to be a fantastic teaching environment, because you can actually walk (or fly, as the case may be) people through an idea rather than just show and tell. Check out this promo video from Ohio University for more...

IBM has bought an island in Second Life where it holds meetings with staff and clients. They have a petroleum company client that wants to use virtual worlds for training, and a UK grocer client planning to build a virtual store for online shoppers.

IBM takes the whole metaverse thing so seriously, it has earmarked US$10m for investment into virtual worlds over the next year. Some of this will go to the development of IBM’s own 3D virtual world. “We’re making v-business a priority, just the way we championed e-business during the dot comm. boom,” IBM says.

Meantime ABN Amro runs seminars for its customers at its Second Life facility, while big, credible organisations like Microsoft, GE Money and Accenture are running actual job fairs there facilitated by global HR giants like TMP Worldwide.

If that's not enough, tech consulting firm Gartner has issued a prediction that by 2011, more than 80% of Internet users will have a virtual presence, somewhere.

The corporates are getting it because 9,000,000 living, breathing human beings are getting it.

But the question remains: why? Why would any fully functioning, normal human being want a virtual presence at all? What do they even do there?

That’s the question I’m intrigued to look for answers to, and one that Tim Guest poses in his book Second Lives a romp through virtual worlds of all shapes and sizes.

Guest draws a number of fascinating conclusions – but the one I find the most interesting is this: once people have flown around a bit and changed their virtual clothes and body shape a few times (oh, you think my butt looks big in this? Cool, I'll just shrink my butt), once they have explored some of the wilder and crazier corners of the virtual world, they settle in to the sorts of mundane, day to day things they do in their first lives. They find a piece of land, buy or rent a house, shop for some furniture, plant some stuff in the garden, figure out how to make a buck and hang out with other (virtual) people.

They create the sort of life they have in the real world. And ironically, before they know it, they’ve created all the same problems they went to the virtual world to escape, too: like neighbours and boundary lines and trees.

I guess it could be worse.  Scary Mary was very polite for somebody with such a ferocious name. And even though her new structure - a daunting grey, Gothic looking building – is not the most attractive thing I’ve ever seen, I can have a row of trees up in front of it (so long as their branches don’t creep across the boundary line) in no time.

On the upside, maybe Scary Mary can help me grow some grass and I can get rid of the whole overgrown weed thing.

I think I’ll leave a note in her letterbox asking her over for coffee. That's if she has a letterbox.

Old media/new media collision

Great blog entry here from Pete Clifton, head of interactive content at the Beeb about Wikipedia edits and the issues social media raise for organisations, especially around issues of control (or lack thereof!).

Interesting that Clifton doesn't even consider the 'old rules' (thou shalt not invoke the name of thy employer in a public space, not ever, without ten layers of sign off in triplicate') in relation to these tools: he just accepts it's going to happen and control tactics are futile.

Organisations who accept that they are in the social media space whether they like it or are the smart ones. Blogging openly about the complexities they face is even smarter.

One of those old adages we PR folk bang on about all the time is 'don't put it on paper unless you're sure you're OK to see it on the front page of the Press.'

He's circumventing all that pesky leaked memo stuff and holding the conversation right out there in the open.

Talk about getting real.

Not getting it (2)

Sometimes I wish I had two blogs.

One where I could write in a very dispassionate and unemotional way about the things I like to write about (mostly, it seems, things of the bloggy/wiki/poddy variety and how they're changing the face of the world I work in) and one where I could flesh out the rest of the picture, as it is for me. The other, more human side of the story.

It's an interesting dilemma. Does this social media space allow us a little more flexibility to really chew the fat about the stuff that gets our (collective or individual) goat? Or are we just as obligated here as we are in other communications realms to stick to the point - and actually have a point.

I suspect it is the latter. Actually, I know it is the latter. A blog, like any other form of communication, has to have some idea of what it is about. Sure, it can cover random topics and traverse all sorts of seemingly unconnected things. But to truly make sense to the reader it has to have some connecting thread. Otherwise how can it collect any sort of an interest group and hold them. And really, blogs are about building a readership as much as any other form of media is.

I suppose I could wrap up what I am about to say in some sort of professional wrapping: like 'I can't be the only New Zealander who feels this way, and imagine what it's doing to Air NZ's reputation of trust' and all the usual PR blah blah, but this doesn't come from that place.

This comes from an altogether more personal place of disbelief and sort of disgust, really, that a company like Air New Zealand could stoop so low as to again (again!) sully the memories of two long-dead, unable-to-speak-for-themselves employees in defence of its own reputation - and all over something as trivial as a line in a Wikipedia entry. What's wrong with PR and comms people (one can only assume this was a PR and comms driven move) that we will stray so far from a place of reason and humanity and do such a thing? Who are we to think we can rewrite history - make nice like nothing ever happened, and even if it did, it wasn't our fault?

What are we thinking when we allow boards/managers/whatevers to push us into this sort of behaviour? (Yeah, yeah - I know. Keep the job/get the promotion/make nice with the client. Whatever).

This whole Air NZ/Wikipedia  thing just plain smacks of corporate cowardice of the worst kind, and I have to take my hat off to Maria Collins, quoted in this morning's paper, for her wise and thoughtful handling of this matter. I know who the bigger person is in my mind - and I know for sure that on the back of this, I would vote with my flying-dollar to skip right on past the Air New Zealand counter if I had a choice.

Corporates just not getting it

My first thought when I saw the front page lead, this morning's Press - Erebus censor found at Air NZ: 'what were they thinking?'

My second: I know exactly what they were thinking.

They were thinking that somehow the old rules still applied.

The Air NZ/Wikipedia fiasco is yet another example of 'social media creep' - the gradual, inexorable seep of a communications culture once tidily confined to the geeks and nerds of the blogosphere, now inconveniently (and persistently) oozing into the corporate world.

There are those who get it, who embrace it and who move with it. They may not completely comprehend the social media phenomenon (or its wider implications), but they at least acknowledge its existence, and vitally, understand that their consumers/staff/stakeholders are increasingly a part of it.

There are those who think they get it but show they don't (not looking at anyone in particular here) by violating the very tenets social media operates under. This is the group most likely to key message their blogs, plant PR fluff in those of others and mess with their Wikipedia entries. This group mindlessly and and doggedly applies old-world communications strategy to these new-world tools and pays little attention to the impact of being so out of step with their comms environment.

Then there are the ones who are in denial: either their eyes glaze over and they switch off completely or they'll shake their heads and launch into a diatribe about how 'it's all so weird, and why do they do it and you'll never find me in a place like that and how sad it all is'...(meaning  Second Life/Facebook/the enture blogosphere/wherever).

What they're missing is this: like it or not, these tools are influencing the way that ordinary people connect, they way they get and process information and what they expect from the organisations they connect with. Things are changing slowly but surely. That change is reaching the sort of critical mass that redefines the whole communications culture. And organisations are going to have to change eventually, too - or risk being left behind by being so out of step with the people who matter to them that they end up talking another language.

Social media takes no prisoners.

Its communications culture is largely anti-corporate, with an emphasis on increased transparency, impatience with inflexible and out of context messaging and a strong anti-hierarchical sentiment.  Social media is about values like trust and collaboration - breaking down the 'us vs them' sense that seeps through from so many traditional organisational communiques - and leveling the playing field.

Increasingly, organisations are having to show whole new levels of respect for their consumers, both in the way they communicate with them and the style of that communication. Mass, push communication is out. Niched, pull tactics are the tools of choice. It's a brave new world, folks, and that means a bunch of brave new rules.

Gone are the days when PR meant 'controlling the message' and 'managing a reputation'. Gone are the days when a giant, lumbering monolith like Air New Zealand had the power and the grunt and the weight to do what it wanted - and what it could - and maybe get away with not getting caught out.

This is the age of citizen journalism where every second person is an investigative reporter.  Those scrutinising the corporates are no longer confined to people with training with a press pass and the privilege of being able to be published. We're all potential journalists and publishers these days - and we're surrounded by media that never sleeps.

Expect to see more corporates being 'outed' for prettying up Wikipedia entries. Expect more con-men and confidence tricksters to be nailed for creating puff profile or trying to rewrite their own history in a bid for credibility. Expect more old school PR folk to come unstuck for trying to apply old world tactics to new world channels.

Social media is here, and it's here to stay. It's changing the way we communicate, forever. The old hierarchies, the pedagogical systems that protected publishers and broadcasters (and, ironically, those they reported about) by limiting those who had a vehicle to express an opinion are becoming less and less powerful. There are way more people with the power to say 'gotcha' - all the time.

Whatever Air New Zealand was thinking when it tooled around with its Wikipedia entry, you can bet it wasn't thinking that. But odds are on it'll think twice next time.

Getting the chance to talk back

Google news' latest move - allowing the subject of a news story to respond to that story right then and there - has to bring a smile to the face of corporate comms managers the world over.

The search behemoth (my Optymise buddy Robyn's favourite phrase: who made Google the boss, anyway? Oh yeah: it was Google) is testing the  new feature, letting people or organisations featured in a Google News storysubmit a written response that's published on the same page as the search results for the story.

I guess it's sort of like a cyber version of letters to the editor - only way more responsive and, importantly, right there on the same page as the story is published: again and again and again.

Can't imagine how mainstream media will even begin to compete. It's still just a pilot, but once this becomes an accepted stage in the life cycle of a story I know where I'd rather deal with coverage.

Hits all those good spots around community, interactivity, prosumerism and citizen journalism.

Hitting all the right spots

Given that it's been running since May you'd think I'd have caught up with Amex's very cool change the world promo  by now: but the web's a bit like that, isn't it? You just sort of stumble across little pockets of activity tucked away in tidy niches that never would have seen the light of your LCD screen if it hadn't been for one link or another.

Anyway. A pop-up bearing the Member's Project message appeared to me (like some sort of a vision of corporate communications perfection) a few nights ago when I was catching up with the latest at Salon.com (another whole story. If you don't read there, do. But finish reading here first. I have got a point and I will get to it: honest).

Suffice to say I was impressed by the elegant way the folk at Amex had managed to pull together a whole bunch of moving parts into something that works pretty seamlessly (oh for clients with budgets like that!), but more than that, I couldn't help but think that they'd managed to put a great big tick in the box next to every social trend going.

They've found a way to offer members together into something bigger than themselves (that whole 'transcendence' thing that's dragging sorry, tired old butts like mine back to their yoga mats) without resorting to a fundamentalist church experience; they've hooked into the whole social media trend, using every tool in the book to tell the story; they're letting the consumer mold and shape the brand (imagine those Amex founders turning in their graves at the thought of the customer - yes, the customer - deciding how to spend $5m of the company's money); they've found a way to take grass-roots activism mainstream and they've completely flattened the world; they're facilitating creativity and turning their members into 'prosumers'; they've built a virtual community; and they've turned social activism into an episode of American Idol by taking votes for a winning project.

Gone are the days - or gone should be, the days - of an organisation's social responsibility decisions being the preserve of a privileged few insiders. Amex has at the forefront of something we're going to see more and more: consumers so intimately attached to brands that they're even making decisions about the bottom line.

Now there's a campaign that Gets It.