Ethics

The Nelson Award: Bowing to the Red Pen

NelsonIt’s really not worth singling anyone out on this, although Valleywag certainly did, but I’m going to award this next highly prestigious Nelson Award to any PR practitioner who lets clients write their pitches and gets burnt in the process.

Sadly, the pitch letter will survive as long as PR agencies fail to position themselves as anything more than media relations brokers. As PR becomes more and more confused at the great opportunity that lies in front of them to actually interface with the public, as they were originally designed to do, through social media, the industry will continue to remain as low level direct marketers to journalists.

As if PR needed another nail in its coffin, allowing clients to essentially write your pitches manages to take it down another level on the trusted adviser scale to something that is roughly the equivalent of a glorified call center. I think this proves Strumpette’s point all too well.

Lesson: Be smart and give your clients a reason to trust you.

Viral Marketing with a Side of Spam

SpamYou know online marketing ethics have a long way to go when someone from a viral marketing company will all but endorse spamming on one of the top five blogs in the world.

Unfortunately, that’s what happened on TechCrunch this week. Dan Ackerman Greenberg from The Commotion Group guest blogged on TechCrunch about various methodologies that can be employed to push up viral content onto YouTube’s “most viewed” list and ultimately receive as many hits as possible.

Greenberg has since issued a clarification on his original post, which has already attracted about 450 comments, but his commentary doesn’t go very far to combat the idea that many online marketers still consider spamming, albeit of different degrees, to be a valuable part of marketing content online.

These kinds of ethical breaches are all driven by the old reach marketing myths that have been pushing bad marketers for decades. Yes, well in excess of 20 million people have viewed the Mentos videos on YouTube but what is the real brand awareness measurement that relates to selling more candy for the company? I find it hard to believe that millions of people watching Diet Coke fountains have really helped move the needle for Mentos. However, at least it was low cost and organic though and they never had to compromise their brand by spamming.

Greenberg is driven by this same kind of measurement.

So far, we’ve worked on 80-90 videos and we’ve seen overwhelming success. In the past 3 months, we’ve achieved over 20 million views for our clients, with videos ranging from 100,000 views to upwards of 1.5 million views each. In other words, not all videos go viral organically – there is a method to the madness.

Note that he’s not citing brand awareness surveys or product sales numbers. He’s justifying spamming message boards and creating fake “conspiracies” in his own YouTube comments by giving us the total number of views. How can you debate the tactics when you see “successes” like 100,000 or 1.5 million views per viral video? To support his “Content is NOT King” theory, Greenberg listed a few of his helpful hints for reaching wide audiences, like “make it shocking,” “use fake headlines” and “appeal to sex.”

It’s easy to point the finger at Greenberg and blame him for these kinds of practices but the real culprit are the advertisers that are fueling these kinds of behaviors with outdated metrics that aren’t suited for interactive media. Far too few companies are using legitimate key performance indicators (KPIs) in their online marketing strategies and, in turn, the majority are creating a market for unscrupulous marketers who will do anything to replicate the kind of numbers that impress them.

Greenberg concludes by saying “These days, achieving true virality takes serious creativity, some luck, and a lot of hard work. So, my advice: fire your PR firm and do it yourself.” If you’re looking for someone to buy blog posts, spam message boards and dilute social networks, then I really hope you do have to look beyond your PR firm.

Racing the Leopard

Mac vs. PCPatrick Galvin over at Buzz Builder recently posted his take on the recent Apple advertising campaign that is taking advantage of some negative word of mouth regarding Microsoft’s new operating system, Vista. Put simply, people have been having problems with Vista and switching back to Windows XP. Now Apple has introduced a new version of its operating system that is obviously benefiting greatly from the large enthusiast base that Apple has online.

While I rarely hesitate before criticizing the ad industry for not “getting” WOM, this campaign is a unique way for Apple to enter the conversation using advertising. It’s possible that the negative WOM surrounding Vista was only reaching a very tech savvy audience and not affecting brand sentiment on any widespread level so taking the conversation to mainstream media really allows it to blow up, which can only help a company with a marginal market share like Apple.

The real question for me lies in whether or not this is actually ethical. The Mac vs. PC campaign seems to focus predominantly on the problems with Microsoft’s product and has progressively focused less and less on the features that make Apple superior.

Now I use Macs everywhere but work (we have a client that is a major PC manufacturer) and I’ve been running Leopard for about a week. To be perfectly honest, the only major improvement I see on a daily basis is the new seamless back-up system called Time Machine. If someone asked me to name five things I love about Leopard I would probably stall at two or three. Is that a sign that Apple has to focus on negative WOM around Microsoft’s product because their product just isn’t that remarkable?

It appears that Apple’s market share was flat last month after a record increase in September. I’m curious if this is just a cyclical change or if Apple is having trouble conveying the value of their brand while focusing too much on the Achilles heels of their competitors.

BlogHer and How Advertising Changes Everything

BlogHer

Another one of the really interesting sessions at the WPP Stream unconference in Greece was a session that examined “mommy bloggers” and was facilitated by the premiere women’s blogging network, BlogHer.  Among the topics discussed were “why do mommy bloggers get more comments than other bloggers?” and “is reaching out to mommy bloggers an ethical way to market products and services geared towards children?”

While those questions remained largely unanswered, another wrinkle emerged without resolution.  While you could say BlogHer’s primary purpose for existence is to connect a large body of the blogging population and help them promote their content, it is also a business that pairs sponsors with bloggers.  Of course, Jory Des Jardins, who helped lead the session, and the rest of the crew at BlogHer, are as acutely aware of blogger ethics as anyone in the business but yet I can’t help but wonder what effect a major sponsor could really have on a network of small bloggers.

For instance, we recently finished an event with a major automotive manufacturer where active women bloggers were one of the key groups we targeted.  Keeping in line with our guidelines, we didn’t ask the bloggers to commit to writing anything about the brand or the experience but we focused on making it as engaging as possible and giving the bloggers access to everything they needed to cover the trip.  Since the client was new to blogging, they wanted to focus on bloggers with smaller niche audiences instead of someone big who could make a stink.  As it turns out, just about all the bloggers we invited out to LA for three days of activities gladly agreed to come and averaged just over 7 posts each without any prodding from the flack.

Now what if a few of those bloggers were sponsored by a competing auto manufacturer?  Would the blogger feel comfortable writing about a competing product while they were getting paid well beyond their CPM value by a major brand?  Also, how would the brand feel if they saw 7 gushing posts about one of their competitors on a site that they were supporting?  It brings up some interesting issues about marketing with influentials.

Obviously bloggers should be able to monetize their content, just like any publisher, and BlogHer is a great service that amplifies the voice of a very important segment of bloggers but I’m still a little torn over what is the best, and most ethical way, for these publishers to work with brands.

The Nelson Award: Scott Boras

Scott Boras

Today’s Nelson award goes to Scott Boras. While I’m tempted to give Scott Boras some leeway since he’s not really in PR or marketing, I think he has to take some responsibility for one of the worst timed announcements in recent memory.

Let me recap the situation, in case you’re completely unfamiliar with the game of baseball.

Scott Boras is the agent for Alex Rodriquez, who happens to be the best baseball player alive. Alex Rodriquez, or Arod, just had one of the best seasons ever in his team’s storied history and he has the option to opt out of his contract, possibly making $30 million a year as a free agent(he’s already the highest paid player ever at roughly $25 million/yr). In addition to his overall marketability, Arod is also concerned with managing his reputation and never quite felt at home in his home city, New York, due to other players having bigger personalities and stealing the spotlight. Justifiably so, Arod wants to be remembered as one of the best players ever and he’s already done the hard part. By the terms of his contract, Arod has until 10 days after the conclusion of the World Series to announce whether or not he’s choosing to opt out and become a free agent. Oh yeah, one more important detail, Arod plays for the Yankees, which are the arch rival of the recently crowned world champion Boston Red Sox (as a Yankee fan, it hurts to write that).

Scott Boras decided to announce that Arod was opting out of his contract in the middle of game four of the World Series, which, at least in the eyes of the media, proceeded to somewhat overshadow the Red Sox winning the series.

In the 70′s an announcement like this wouldn’t overshadow a world series because the world series is the bigger story. Unfortunately for Arod, it’s not 1978 and, while everyone certainly reported on the Red Sox winning the world series, the Arod story gave a larger body of media much more to work with than a four game sweep. Sure enough, every sports blog lit up with the Arod story, covering everything from the ethics of making the announcement during the world series to speculation on where he would go next. Essentially, there are limitless angles on the Arod story and, in today’s media landscape, there are limitless arms and legs of the media to cover it. The front page may say “The Red Sox Win” but the buzz is all about Arod, and that’s probably one of the best arguments for the Long Tail that I could imagine.

Unfortunately for Arod this is terrible timing for a PR announcement and not only his value but also his reputation took a hit. After game four of the World Series, the few Boston fans in attendance at Coors Field in Colorado even started chanting “don’t sign Arod.” It was that top of mind, even for Red Sox fans. Regardless of whether or not you’re doing PR for a laptop at CES or a designer during fashion week in Milan, timing is very very important.

When all is said and done, Arod will probably get his $30 million but he will probably never be the beloved player that he could have been if it wasn’t for gaffs like this. Scott Boras, this Nelson award is for you.

The Frontiers of Transparency

Quit Your Day JobA lot is made about the need for transparency in marketing but I’m starting to wonder if it’s just part of a larger cultural trend. As reality television has proven, people love to pull back the curtain. Perhaps the “need” for transparency online is really just more of a preference. How important is it really to know who is writing most of the blogs you read on a daily basis? Aside from a bio blurb and maybe some recognizable affiliations, don’t you really judge an author by the content they produce?

Another example of this is a recurring feature on the music blog Stereogum called Quit Your Day Job. The feature takes indie bands and asks them how they really support themselves. Naturally, this quickly destroys any rock star mystique, which we’re told is such an important part of the success of artists. Why do people want to read about the coffee shops that Hutch Harris of The Thermals worked at while the band was allegedly receiving widespread critical acclaim?

Maybe it has more to do with the idea that social media is more about the benefits of level ground than it is about pedestals and nimble information. Roughly 50 people comment on every one of Jonathan Schwartz’s blog posts. Is this because they worship him or because they want to be heard by him as peer without getting forcefully removed from Sun’s headquarters? It may not be a conversation but, if you’re passionate about data storage systems, your thoughts can appear on the same page as an industry luminary by simply commenting on their post. Does that make you feel more connected to Sun? Probably.

Ok, I’ve gotten tech CEO Jonathan Schwartz and Portland indie punk band The Thermals into the same blog post. My work is done here.

Agreeing/Disagreeing with Strumpette

Strumpette

Although I tend to like many of the people that Strumpette bashes, I do find her/his commentary on the PR industry to be, at very least, a healthy dose of reality in a waiting room of irrational euphoria. As it turns out, Strumpette retired or something but now she’s back…or maybe she isn’t. To be honest, it really doesn’t matter. What does matter is that she brought up some great points in her latest rant against the industry. Let’s take a look at her “10 headed hydra that is easting the PR industry” point-by-point, shall we?

1. Case vs. Opinion — PR is (should be) the business of making the case to the public on behalf of a client. Exclusively! Period.

Agree, mostly. PR should be making a case to the public in a creative and convincing way and all too often the idea of “conversation” is used as an easy escape hatch. I don’t think this means that conversational marketing can be dismissed but it’s an interesting point that very few have surfaced.

2. The Race to SEO — Search Engine Optimization is NOT communications.

Disagree. Search is a media channel whether or not anyone likes it. Google changing their algorithms isn’t that much different from a publication changing their editorial guidelines. Depending on the research you trust, 75-85% of brand awareness online is driven by search so if you’re not going to optimize for this space then you’re really just playing to the cheap seats. There is a lot more than just technology that goes into SEO/SERM and communications professionals definitely need to be involved in this process to ensure that messaging is being preserved and certain ethics are followed.

3. The Capricious and Radical Flattening of Hierarchies — Hierarchies are socially natural and necessary. But today we are rapidly tearing down those institutions and replacing them with a system (the Web) that doesn’t vet information well and certainly does not learn.

Agreed but I don’t think the Web is quite the level playing field that it is being made out to be. How many people would be talking about Hulu today if it wasn’t for the marketing muscle behind it? The Web may be more democratic than any media to date but let’s not trick ourselves into believing that the hierarchy is gone.

4. The Rejection of Healthy Discrimination — Along with rejection of natural hierarchies is its sinister companion, i.e. the wrongheaded liberal rejection of ALL things discrimination. In a world where all things are equal, Regent University is in the same client portfolio as Girls Gone Wild.

Completely agree! I often wonder if a big agency would turn down a porn site network if they had a $500k/year budget in their RFP. It’s seems like anyone is fair game as long as they’re not competing with your biggest client. If the benefit of signing on with an agency is to tap into their network and gain access to new opportunities then it would make sense for agencies to focus on verticals or at least a certain level of brand to reinforce some sense of purpose, at least internally.

5. The Betrayal of “Trickster” — As we’ve lost that ability to write, discern and make a case, we’ve found comfort with the radical transparency fascists. We’ve become an industry of bad lairs so we throw the baby out with the bathwater and discard the ART of Public Relations.

Agreed but I think this would better be titled “The Death of the Pitch.” Too much creativity goes into winning new business and then the actual servicing of clients becomes systematic and rote. It’s no wonder that true innovators, like Google, usually feel like they don’t need outside PR support to tell their story.

6. The Nonsense of Proprietary Common Sense — “Com”-munications starts with the prefix meaning “together, with, jointly.” Communications is the common sense. There is no proprietary anything in communications and anyone who tells you that is full of squat. The differentiator in PR is — and will only ever be — intelligence, experience, maturity and grace.

Disagree. The productization of communications services is good marketing and should be utilized by good marketers to promote the way they think. Sometimes you need to dress up a simple idea to make it appealing. This belongs in PR.

7. Pabulum vs. Counsel — We were once not long ago respected business consultants. We are now the creators and purveyors of pabulum.

Agree but I think PR was only looked to as “respected business consultants” for a brief period. The industry certainly didn’t start that way.

8. Value vs. Volume — Today we confuse volume for value. Used to be that a few good business contacts were all you needed to build a respected and coveted portfolio. Then were slid into the 20/80 rule. Today, it’s meaningless website traffic stats and Scoble’s 4,000 “friendz.” Today, it’s the 999/1 maybe rule, at best.

Agreed. Measurement has always been somewhat of a joke in PR, from inflated circulation numbers to pulling traffic stats off Alexa and Quantcast. We’re asked for it so we do it but I’ve never seen a PR professional throw the numbers away and explain the value of coverage in strictly anecdotal terms, which is really the most important part of PR reporting. If you can’t explain to clients the contextual value of coverage or engagement without resorting to flawed impression numbers then you’re not well-suited for this field.

9. Popular vs. Independent Vetting — Today, PR is the business of popularity. As our ability to measure has never overcome the kinda-ballpark-subjective, we’ve become the organizers of the audience driven American Idol.

Not sure. I think this is a reach vs. influence argument but its not entirely clear. I think I agree though.

10. The Dark Side of Empowerment and the Great Seduction — Certainly, repressing talent robs society; but give the keys to the Porsche to a 13-year old and the consequence is totally predictable.

I’m too much of a fan of social media to agree with this one. Yes, we’re in the early stages of consumer generated media and the noise is almost deafening but there are new filters popping up every week and I’m more confident with every passing minute that right content is finding the people that care about it. Sure, reading the comments on Gizmodo on the day that Apple releases a new iPod won’t give you much faith in humanity but screening processes are being developed and things can improve.

Keep ranting, Strumpette. We need you!

The First Nelson Muntz Award : PR Spammers

NelsonWhen I started this blog I was setting up the categories and thinking about what kind of recurring themes I might end up writing about. The first thing that came to mind was the somewhat delicious Internet phenomenon of bad marketers being called out on their laziness and poor ethics. While I still consider advertising to be the biggest culprit here, PR certainly is guilty of their share of unethical practices.

Then I had to think about what I would call this award. I eventually settled on calling it the Nelson Muntz award, due to his signature response being so close to what I imagine every blog commenter would actually say in real life after seeing someone get called out.

Today’s Nelson Muntz award goes to all PR people who essentially spam their pitches. In a somewhat controversial blog post today, Chris Anderson of Wired Magazine called out all the PR people who spam him press releases by posting all the addresses of the people he has blocked over the years. Unfortunately for the people on this list, not only is this professionally embarrassing but having your address posted on a popular blog means that most spam bots will probably find you within the week and you’re almost certain to start getting flooded with great deals on Viagra and hot stock tips.

Some commenters have defended the people on the list by saying that they may have bought Chris’ email address on a list with other contacts that they were told were interested in new announcements. Yeah, bad excuse. Would you hire a call center to mass pitch journalists over the phone or queue up some canned message to be blasted out of loudspeakers at a conference? It’s pretty much the same thing. By this point in the evolution of the Internet everyone is aware of spam and those who claim ignorance should not be involved with media.

Who are these people? If you look down the list, you see just about every major PR agency (um, except mine). Weber Shandwick and 5W are at the top of the list but only by a slim margin and, to be honest, it’s rarely the digital specialists at the agencies that make these gaffs. When you track down the culprits of these kinds of mistakes you generally find that they come from account teams that didn’t want to lose their portion of the budget by bringing in media specialists. You used to see similar mistakes when traditional media people reached out to analysts but now most larger firms have made strict rules that only analyst relations specialists deal with directly with analysts. It’s more tricky than it looks when you figure that some SVP somewhere is being judged (and ultimately paid) on the revenue that he or she is being asked to funnel out to another group. It’s doesn’t excuse the behavior but you can’t blame the individuals without blaming the system.

So, to PR spammers and the system that breeds them, I say “ha ha!”

1 2 Scroll to top