Living in the past = working in the past: How not to get “brandjacked” like BP Global PR

Here’s a scenario for you:

1. Let’s imagine for a moment that you are one of the largest companies and most well-recognized brands in the world.

2. Let’s also imagine that your company/brand is having a very difficult time with public opinion and PR lately because you have created an ecological and economic catastrophe of almost Biblical proportions.

What would you do?

Chances are that on the communications side, you would create a crisis response plan as robust as the damage itself. You would create a web page on your site to keep the public informed, provide updates on the actual response, post photos and videos of what you are doing to fix the problem, and respond to questions, criticism and anything else that comes your way. As a company with enormous resources, powerful connections and deep pockets, you would spare no expense: You would hire the best PR firms, the best web design firms, the best attorneys, and the best crisis communications monitoring and response professionals on the planet. Right?

Well, if you are BP, yes… and no.

On the traditional web front, I have to admit that BP has done a stellar job. The company’s Oil Spill Response page is very well designed, full of well-produced content, and stocked with helpful resources. Moreover, it is currently the default landing page for BP.com, which is smart. Anyone entering www.BP.com is automatically redirected to the Oil Spill response page. Here’s a screenshot:

So A+ on the traditional web front. Someone at BP deserves a pat on the back. No question.

But someone at BP also owes BP’s senior management an explanation. Because you see, in 2010, creating a pretty website to control the message isn’t enough anymore. Not by a longshot. PR, online/digital reputation management, crisis management require a little more savvy and understanding of media in 2010 than it did in 1995. As Nestle learned recently after Greenpeace brought the company to its knees using only YouTube and Facebook, PR professionals not well-versed in the world of Social Media and Social Networking sites are essentially as effective as a deaf and near-sighted sentry: You cannot defend a brand and its reputation if you cannot guard it, and you cannot guard it if you are not listening for signs of an impending problem.

While BP’s PR machine is busy creating content on their website and spreading it out via its official Twitter and Facebook accounts, it somehow completely missed two crucial steps:

1. BP didn’t think to scoop up relevant BP “identities” on Twitter. Like, for example @BPglobalPR (We’ll come back to that in a second.)  That a company of BP’s stature wouldn’t have someone on staff (in PR, Marketing, Legal, etc.) making sure that the brand’s identity is safe and sound on a Social Network as active and rapidly scaling as Twitter seems… strange, especially in 2010.

2. BP doesn’t seem to be monitoring key channels properly. Not in terms of what “key channels” mean when it comes to crisis management and digital reputation management in 2010. This apparent disconnect from the present state of media and communications management betrays a knowledge, insight and skill gap similar to that displayed by Nestle earlier this year that is frankly surprising, given what either company probably spends on retainers and other services dealing with PR and brand management.

Case in point: BP’s unchecked brand hijack (or rather “brandjacking”) on Twitter.

Here’s what’s going on: Since May 19th, someone on Twitter has been publishing updates under the @BPglobalPR handle” complete with a crisp BP logo and a profile identifying them as “BP Global PR”. Here is their very first update:

As a first contact, not a big deal. But then, things got a little more interesting:

You get the picture.

Funny stuff, unless you’re BP, and in particular, unless your job – at, with or for BP – is to make sure that this sort of thing doesn’t happen. I can only assume that when BP writes big fat checks to its PR partners and assets, they expect them to be on top of these things, as well they should. Evidently, that may not be the case.

Let’s reframe this for a second: Will anyone mistake these updates for actual BP missives? Not likely. (Although a few people did, initially.) The updates are obviously a joke. But what does this say about the effectiveness of BP’s PR team in this time of crisis? What does it also suggest about BP’s interest in listening to the public? On the whole, what does it say about BP’s communications, brand management, and reputation management teams? I will let you answer those questions for yourselves.

My biggest questions today are these:

1. With millions spent on PR, crisis communications management, brand management, reputation management, how did an enterprising joker on twitter manage to fly under the radar for a week now, in plain view, using BP’s own name and logo? How? BP, are your PR and communications experts purposely blowing this off, or do they not understand how much their job has changed since 1995? (5/24 Update: According to an interview given to Adage a few hours after this post was published, it seems that both answers may be accurate.)

2. Compare the fake BP twitter account to the real BP twitter account. What is wrong with this picture? Which one looks real, and which one looks fake? How does this happen?

Update: Although http://www.bp.com indicates @Oil_Spill_2010 as its official twitter account, Shannon Paul (@ShannonPaul on Twitter) was kind enough to point me to another official BP account on Twitter: @BP_America. Here is what it looks like:

Good to see that BP does, in fact, have a branded Twitter account. Next step: Linking to it from the BP website.

(Tip: If your company has a Twitter account, it doesn’t hurt to add it to your website’s contact/media/resources section.)

5/25 Update (This space moves fast): Some changes were made to the @BPglobalPR account’s appearance since Monday 24 May. New logo:

3. How does the fake BP twitter account have more followers (in other words, more reach and influence) than the real BP twitter accounts? (5/25 Update: Only 10 hours after the posting this piece, @BPglobalPR now had already scaled to over 16,500 followers. 24 hours later – see image above – over 26,800 followers.)

Perhaps BP should consider hiring the guy behind the fake BP account. By all accounts, he seems to have accomplished more with a free twitter account, a healthy dose of wit and a few burritos than BP’s entire PR machine could manage in spite of its enormous budget, resources, and access to top PR, communications and digital talent from around the globe. The lesson here may be this: If corporate juggernauts like Nestle and BP can be made fools of this easily – in the era of the participatory web (which is no longer an emerging shift) – then perhaps it’s time for the corporate communications world to retool.

Five years ago, I interviewed with a large PR firm in the midwest. They were interested in speaking with me because I had a blog, I had worked in manufacturing, and they were trying to understand how to break into the blogosphere for some of their clients. The most senior executive in the meeting – a respected PR industry veteran – angrily explained to me that PR was about controlling the message, that it had always been so, and that it would always be so. And that her firm would never deviate from that course, no matter how many people became bloggers. (To which I replied “okay, so why am I here?” A story for another day.) Anyway, the point: This was 2005. Just five years ago, THAT is what the mindset was in the upper echelons of the Fortune 500’s PR firm universe. Less than two years ago, when I still worked within the Fortune 500 world, I routinely dealt with HR managers who were only vaguely aware of LinkedIn, PR managers who had never heard of ZDnet, Mashable, or even Twitter, and Digital managers who had never worked with WordPress. I know this is difficult for those of you who live, work, and truly exist in 2010 to grasp the full measure of what I am saying, but it is important for everyone to understand that a significant portion of the workforce today (even key management roles) is not up-to-date at all. Many of the people making crucial decisions in the business, manufacturing, marketing, communications and PR worlds today are five, ten, sometimes fifteen years behind the times. And when they are, this sort of thing happens.

In the end, once the fat checks have been cashed and the pretty reports and powerpoint decks have been presented, the result is still this: Those retainer fees and hefty salaries and seemingly impressive resumes didn’t stop the embattled brands/clients that paid dearly for them from the kind of embarrassment that my 15-year-old could have crushed with a laptop and about 15 minutes of light typing. There is absolutely no excuse for that lack of readiness and professional proficiency at the Fortune 500 level, and that is a problem that needs fixing. The time for paying lip service to the “Can you handle Social Media” question has come to an end.

So here are a few tips to avoid this in the future:

1. Monitor all currently relevant channels, not just the ones that were relevant to your field ten years ago. If you can afford tools like Radian6, Scoutlabs and Webtrends, get a demo today. If you can’t, free tools exist, not the least of which on Twitter is simply… running keyword searches, including your company name. This is not outrageously complicated.

2. Hire people who understand the Social Media space. More to the point: People who work in it every day. If you are a PR firm, hire someone who gets this stuff. If you are a PR firm’s client, ask that your PR firm hire someone who gets this stuff. A few hints: If they claim to be “certified” in Social Media, pass. If Social Media “Guru” or “Expert” is in their title, pass. Want to find someone who didn’t convert to the new Social Media religion three months ago? Look for references here and here.

3. Understand that experience in the Social Media space varies greatly depending on the function. A Community Manager, for example, may not have the skills and experience to help you integrate Social Media across the enterprise, or measure the effectiveness of your Social Communications programs and campaigns. It is worth noting that there are specialties within the Social Web management world, and that the “Social Media manager” designation is far from being one-size-fits-all.”

4. Don’t leave this to the last minute. Invest in these “new” channels now. Start listening, monitoring and understanding them, even if you aren’t ready to say anything yet. Learn to listen before you learn how to engage.

5. Make sure you don’t leave yourself (or your clients) open to brandjackings. #BrandManagement101.

Until the laggards catch up though, I will continue to enjoy watching @BPglobalPR ridicule BP’s PR machine, one irreverent tweet at a time.

Other posts on the topic:

Published before this post: John Taylor’s “BP gets brandjacked on Twitter“

Published after this post: Adage’s “Why BP isn’t Fretting over its Twitter impostor” and Raymond Lutzewitz’ “Satire, a dangerous slope: BP Case Study” and of course, there’s also this (from The Guardian): “A Crash Course in PR, from the folks at @BPGlobalPR“

And things get weirder still: Time reports that BP’s official account may have been hacked.

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Digital Crisis Management: Putting things in context.

Yesterday, we looked at John Bell’s argument for creating a digital crisis management plan for your organization or client, in case your brand ever finds itself threatened by a PR catastrophe, (more of a when than an if, by the way) and determined a few simple things:

1. Putting together a digital crisis management plan isn’t that difficult or expensive.

2. Not having a digital crisis management plan will someday make your life unnecessarily difficult.

3. Not having a digital crisis management plan will cost you a lot more on the back end than what it would have cost you to put it together.

4. Better to have a digital crisis management plan and never need it, than need it and not have it.

Now that we’re all on the same page, let’s put it all in perspective. David Sarno and Alana Semuels wrote a terrific piece last week for the LA Times that illustrates the need for this type of planning in the era of the Social Web, citing examples of good and poor DCM performances among brands like CNN, Domino’s, Skittles and Amazon.com. From the article:

Last week, Domino’s was handed a PR nightmare when a video showed up online showing two employees laughing as they prepared food in a deliberately unsanitary way. The video quickly garnered hundreds of thousands of views.

Domino’s initial instinct was to try to dispose of the situation quietly by responding only to concerned consumers who had already seen the video, rather than risk broadening its exposure by making a public statement.

But chatter about the problem spilled over into Twitter, whose expansive micro-messaging network is becoming an online circulatory system for news, pumping information between media organs, consumers and businesses themselves.

The Ann Arbor, Mich., company posted a YouTube response of its own and even established a Twitter account to answer direct questions from customers.

“What we’ve learned is if something happens in this medium, it’s going to automatically jump to the next,” Domino’s spokesman Tim McIntyre said. “So we might as well talk to everybody at the same time.”

Okay, so clearly, Domino’s was listening and had a solid crisis management plan in place… though its digital/social web elements were still on the weak side. Fortunately, what the plan lacked in digital channel coverage, it made up for in adaptability:  The crisis management team quickly analyzed the problem, assessed the channels, and adapted to the situation. Most companies today would not have been so lucky or effective. Take Amazon.com, for example:

When Amazon was faced with its own consumer outcry last week, it decided to forgo the social media route.

Without warning, many gay- and lesbian-themed books began disappearing from the site’s search results and sales rankings. The Twittersphere instantly saw red, accusing the Seattle company of discrimination and censorship and demanding a response.

But Amazon stayed mostly mum. It waited most of a day only to cite an unspecified “glitch,” and when that vagueness only fomented the outrage, it released a second clipped statement blaming a “cataloging error.”

But Twitter abhors a vacuum, and commenters rapidly filled Amazon’s silence with boycott threats, petitions and caustic accusations — an outcome that suggests that the growth of social media may be driving up the cost of inaction.

So here we have two similar scenarios: An angry public driving an issue all over the social web (which incidentally carries over to the water cooler, locker room and car pool) that could potentially have a devastating impact on a company’s business and cause real damage to its brand. In one corner, we have Domino’s, which quickly understood that a) a slow or otherwise inadequate response and b) ignoring social channels like YouTube and Twitter would be ill-advised. In the opposite corner, you have Amazon.com, whose response seemed neither swift nor adequate (judging by the public’s response, anyway).

As a business owner or manager, ask yourself this: Which company would you rather be? The one that responds swiftly and well across all relevant channels, or the one that gets a black eye for not having planned for inclement PR weather?

Enter the ever brilliant Jeremiah Owyang, senior analyst with Forrester Research (and active thought leader in the Social Media space) with some advice for companies not yet active in the Social Web:

“Every brand misstep can spur social-media denizens these days, which affects even those companies that don’t actively participate.

To stay safe in the social media minefield, brands need to make sure to secure their own domain names in the various online environments — before any squatters do — and then start to build a community there. Then when a crisis happens, online or off, brands can then use that community to their advantage.“

In other words, Company XYZ shouldn’t wait for a crisis to establish listening posts and community hubs across whatever social web platforms seem relevant (usually the most well attended): Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc.

Your fans can become your biggest allies when bad press comes your way, and trust me on this: Given the choice between going at it alone (even with the best PR team in the world) and having several thousand brand advocates taking up arms for you on your day of need, you want the latter.

The point being (beating a dead horse again) that the world has changed. The channels of 2009 are not the same as the channels of 2005. In the same vein, the public at large, especially the hundreds of millions of consumers (voices) who now inhabit and seed the social web, are not as docile and easily manipulated as they might have been in 2005 or 1995 or 1955, even. The public’s role in the success and failure of brands is evolving as quickly as the technologies that empower it.

Every brand is accountable for its shortcomings 24/7 now. Every brand is under constant attack. Therefore every brand (without stressing out over it) should be monitoring trends and spikes in these attacks across all channels – traditional and digital. Every brand should know how to differentiate between noise and signal (what to ignore vs. what to address). And lastly, every brand should have a (digital) crisis management plan in place for those rare but inevitable days when a swift and effective response is required. (See yesterday’s post.)

Welcome to a whole new era of brand communications and customer engagement. The faster you embrace it, the better off you and your business will be. (And if you don’t know where to begin with either online reputation management or digital crisis management, shoot me an email, phone call or tweet, and I will hook you up with folks who can help you.)

Have a great Wednesday!

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Digital Crisis Management – a primer by John Bell

photo by Roby DiGiovine

Solid piece by John Bell over at Digital Influence on the relatively new and ever evolving PR discipline of digital crisis management this week. This is pretty timely as I keep running into PR departments and firms just now starting to get comfortable with the notion:

It’s almost a joke amongst communication pros. The first step isn’t the YouTube video response. It isn’t evaluating whether the Twitter uproar is gaining velocity or dying out. It isn’t even pulling your comms team together for a crisis meeting internally to figure out what to do. The first step is, of course, preparing for the crisis before it ever happens.

Bingo. John goes on to list a simple 4-step plan to get your organization (or client’s organization) up and running:

1. Get a Listening post program in place immediately. If you are not listening to your public across the entire Social Web – blogs, Twitter, Social networks, opinion and review sites – then you are at risk.

2. Get the C-suite smart about social media as a communications phenomena and channel. Any significant crisis is going to bubble up to the CEO of President to make decisions. Sure, s/he will look for advice from the VP of Communications, legal teams and more but that CEO will want to make their own decision. If she doesn’t understand the power of the social Web, then s/he may make a bad decision.

John suggests creating a training session specifically designed for the top executives, setting up an RSS feed for them and reviewing it weekly (showing them how to add and remove feeds on their own won’t hurt), and inviting them to your regular Social Media training sessions and discussions.

Great advice. PR and Social Media shouldn’t be treated by executives as some distant dominion of legal and coms. Today more than ever, executives need to learn to take ownership of this particular skillset, particularly CEOs. Business leaders are expected to comment and intervene in times of crisis, and waiting until the proverbial fit hits the shan to get a C-suite exec ramped up on all of this is ill-advised, to say the least. Start a program now, make it digestible and convenient, and plan to help your C-suite’s practical grow over time. This doesn’t stop with introductions and cursory overviews. This is monthly training for the rest of their tenure.

Here’s more:

3. Build a list of likely scenarios. Chances are your communications team already does this. What if our product or service fails and injures people? What if an executive is caught doing something shady? What if a video portraying some terrible act in our stores is published to YouTube? What if a growing collection of customer bloggers start talking about a customer service-nightmare together? What if detractors organize online and begin to use social media to attack you or your client? You can’t imagine every scenario, but if you identify the most obvious ones including the platforms online where they could manifest you can start to imagine the responses necessary.

4. Create your digital crisis management procedures and integrate into your larger playbook. Two simple ideas here: A) Plan your use of social media to respond and B) make sure you integrate with your other means of response (e.g. traditional media, outreach to stakeholders, internal communications).

The idea being that having an actual plan, having run your department through crisis response drills even, and establishing a procedural framework will help you respond faster and better than not having a solid plan at all. Common sense? Sure! But how many companies have well-thought-out, current crisis response plans in place today?  Quick: Whose responsibility is it to manage your social media channels? Do you know who the influential bloggers are in your industry? Which ones can you reach out to for help and which ones will turn on you? How will you respond to conversations and questions on Twitter, Facebook and the blogosphere? Who does what and how?

This isn’t something John suggests in his article, but consider running your communications team and your organization through drills. You know, like fire drills. Create a mock crisis scenario and test your company’s response to it via traditional media, social web, internal communications, HR, IT, customer service, etc. Observe, find out what works and what doesn’t, note how disruptive (if at all) responding to a crisis is to the organization (as this is good to know) and conduct a post exercise debrief to help everyone absorb all of the lessons learned. Then make the necessary changes and repeat until you are satisfied that your crisis management procedure is tip-top.

Drafting a document that clearly outlines crisis management procedures for your organization – defining roles, steps to be taken, channels, tactics, timelines, etc. – will be extremely helpful in the event of a real emergency. Best practices in this area may warrant recruiting representatives of all departments and forming a crisis response committe that meets regularly to review crisis response planning, division of roles, internal training, and interdepartmental collaboration. (Companies that place the full burden of crisis management – digital or otherwise – on their PR departments usually find out pretty quickly that a PR department alone cannot handle most crises on its own. Companies that plan for crises, however, rarely have to worry about them when they do occur.

Why is this relevant to Brands? Because some day, your taco or soft drink might make someone sick. Your car may have faulty wiring that will cause injuries and deaths. Your delicious nougat chocolate bar or seasoned potato chips might cause unexpected allergic reactions in children. Your dog food will kill thousands of family pets. Your laptop batteries will explode and start house fires. Your yard chairs will collapse without warning. Your medication will turn out to cause severe internal tissue damage when taken with alcohol. Your product will become the principal target of environmentalists. Your CFO will be arrested in Argentina with tens of millions of your investors’ dollars. Your principal supplier will be featured on 60 Minutes for operating illegal sweat shops in thirteen countries.

The impact of these types of situations on a brand, your brand, can be severe. Not having a plan in place (and a solid plan at that) puts you in a terribly vulnerable position, and could sink even the most respected company’s image. (Think back to Tylenol scare in the 80’s, Nike’s sweat shop allegations in the 90’s, and Taco Bell’s decision to remove certain food items from their menu when e-coli and salmonella outbreaks in the US threatened to undermine the public’s faith in their food’s safety.) So take another look at these four steps, and put together a crisis response plan that involves digital media and the social web. The benefits may not be immediate, but someday, you will be glad you took the time to do it.

For John’s full article, go here.

Have a great Tuesday, everyone. 🙂

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Brian Solis on the value of real conversations

A reading from the book of Brian:

As we’ve learned over the last several years, markets are defined by conversations and those discussions reveal everything about perception and awareness. We must, at some level, continually listen to, and identify, and join relevant discussions, even at the risk of creating less original content on our host platforms. Yes, that’s right. Participation isn’t only defined by producing content. It’s also about supporting and responding to the thoughts and work of others.

Through participation, we earn relationships and hopefully build authority by contributing helpful advice, information and insight. We also learn more about the subjects in which we’re interested, creating a deeper understanding of the dynamics associated with not only the subject matter, but also the community view and reaction to it. In the process, we establish and cultivate our online brand, reputation, and associated expertise that is only fortified through every new piece of content we publish and every comment we share.

If you aren’t already familiar with Brian Solis and his Pr 2.0 blog, go check it out. Subscribe to the RSS and add it PR 2.0 to your blogroll. Fantastic insights in every post.

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Marketing vs. Advertising vs. PR vs. Branding

In a nutshell.

Hat tip to Francois Gossieaux, who grabbed the baton from Digital Demystified.

Update: Spike over at Brains on Fire just pointed out that the original source is Marty Neumeier’s ZAG.

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Grabbing everyone’s attention isn’t so hard after all.

Oh no they didn’t.

“At 36lbs, 33″ long and 9″ wide at the front element, calling this lens a ‘tele’ is like calling King Kong a monkey.”

At $99,000 a pop, I doubt that B&H is going to sell many. And since there are only a few dozen of these lenses in existence, that point is moot.

What I see here isn’t a monster lens, but a brilliant bit of self promotion by B&H.

Well played, sirs. Well played indeed.

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If you want to thwart the success of a movie, don’t give it oodles of free publicity.

I am always amazed when well-funded and intelligently managed militant organizations on either side of the political, religious, corporate or socioeconomic aisle attempt to thwart the success of a movie, song, book or work of art by giving it more free publicity than it could have ever hoped for… and by doing so, end up ensuring its success.

Where would Madonna be without the legion of pro-family boycotters banding against her? How many of us would have ever heard of the Chocolate Jesus without the noise made by the folks who were so offended by that otherwise insignificant piece of art that they had to tell all the world about it? It goes on and on and on.

The latest installment in the boycott-to-fame saga: The Catholic League vs. New Line’s The Golden Compass. Here is the CL’s official stance on the matter (from their website):

“New Line Cinema and Scholastic Entertainment have paired to produce ‘The Golden Compass,’ a children’s fantasy that is based on the first book of a trilogy by militant English atheist Philip Pullman. The trilogy, His Dark Materials, was written to promote atheism and denigrate Christianity, especially Roman Catholicism. The target audience is children and adolescents. Each book becomes progressively more aggressive in its denigration of Christianity and promotion of atheism: The Subtle Knife is more provocative than The Golden Compass and The Amber Spyglass is the most in-your-face assault on Christian sensibilities of the three volumes.

“Atheism for kids. That is what Philip Pullman sells. It is his hope that ‘The Golden Compass,’ which stars Nicole Kidman and opens December 7, will entice parents to buy his trilogy as a Christmas gift. It is our hope that the film fails to meet box office expectations and that his books attract few buyers. We are doing much more than hoping—we are conducting a nationwide two-month protest of Pullman’s work and the film. To that end, we have prepared a booklet, ‘The Golden Compass: Agenda Unmasked,’ that tears the mask off the movie.

“It is not our position that the movie will strike Christian parents as troubling. Then why the protest? Even though the film is based on the least offensive of the three books, and even though it is clear that the producers are watering down the most despicable elements—so as to make money and not anger Christians—the fact remains that the movie is bait for the books. To be specific, if unsuspecting Christian parents take their children to see the movie, they may very well find it engaging and then buy Pullman’s books for Christmas. That’s the problem.

“We are fighting a deceitful stealth campaign on the part of the film’s producers. Our goal is to educate Christians so that they know exactly what the film’s pernicious agenda really is.”

Oh please.

Being that I am Catholic myself (hey, nobody’s perfect) I am being bombarded by some of my peers and local Catholic organizations with pro-Catholic/anti-Golden Compass propaganda every single day. That is all these people are talking about. I am getting emails, newsletters, petitions… Seriously. It’s getting old.

As if there weren’t enough other things that the Catholic League could be focusing its attention on – like war, famine, child abuse, corporate fraud, violence against women, poverty, out-of-control Sith lords, whatever the hell is going on with Michael Jackson’s nose… or the Devil, even. He’s still around, right? Causing all sorts of mischief and whatnot? Wouldn’t any of these things be worthier of the Catholic League’s energy and focus than New Line’s release of The Golden Compass?

You would think.

But I digress.

If the Catholic League is really bent on thwarting the success of The Golden Compass‘ release in the US, they are going about it in the worst possible way. Let me explain:

Before Bill Donohue and his army of politically charged minions (none of whom have seen the movie, by the way) decided to start this gi-normous publicity campaign for… err… against The Golden Compass, I wasn’t all that interested in the movie or the books. I figured “oh, this must be another C.S. Lewis Chronicles of Narnia/Harry Potter/Eragon/Lord of the Rings derivative dealio. Whatever.”

I might have been convinced by the family unit to go spend $10 to see it on the big screen, but that would have been it.

Maybe.

But now, thanks to the Catholic League’s unavoidable barrage of warnings against the story’s allegedly venomous anti-Catholic message and pernicious atheist agenda, I have grown curious about not only the movie… but the books as well. I mean really. How dangerous can this fictional yarn be to stir militant Catholics so?

CL President Bill Donohue should feel pretty proud of himself: Thanks to the holy media blitzkrieg he has unleashed upon the United States population, I am now the proud owner of all three books in the trilogy, and have officially started reading The Golden Compass. (It’s actually pretty damn good, and not at all a children’s book – not in the sense that Harry Potter is a children’s book anyway.)

Apparently, I am not alone, as three other parents (accompanied by kids ages 6-15) were in my local B&N’s checkout line to buy at least one of the books this past Sunday when I was there.

I look forward to thumbing my nose at the picket lines protesting the movie at the local multiplex next week when I go see it.

(Please don’t excommunicate me! Pretty please?)

The result of the Catholic League’s brouhaha/boycott/bonehead campaign:

– More attention towards the movie’s release than a two-week volley of primetime TV ads and judiciously placed banner ads – all for free.
– More interest in the source material (the book) that the movie is based on.
– Most likely a significant boost in revenue for both the movie and books compared to a scenario in which the Catholic League had just kept its big clumsy mouth shut.
– And last but not least, a renewed personal interest in the very tasty Nicole Kidman.

(Yes Madam Kidman.)

For an organization so terrified of a series of books that (in its collective mind at least) criticizes the Catholic Church through a fictitious religious dictatorship that exists in an alternate dimension, I just can’t help but wonder if constantly pointing out to every human being within reach of a radio, TV or newspaper that the books’ depiction of that scheming, corrupt, evil theocracy is in fact a direct attack on the Vatican is a good idea. Seems to me that in terms of PR, this sort of strategy actually makes things worse. Not only does it establish a clear link between the fictitious Magisterium and the real Catholic Church, but also firmly cements this connection in western pop culture for the next century or two.

Doh!!!

I could be wrong, but a smarter course of action – if my goal were to try and distance the real Catholic Church’s image from the fictitious Magisterium’s evil ways – would have simply been to say something like: “The books are fiction. They are set in a fantasy world of alternate realities populated by magical creatures and talking bears. The Magisterium obviously has little in common with the Catholic Church or any Catholic institutions: We don’t torture children. Our priests don’t own pet monkeys. You aren’t likely to find Nicole Kidman lookalikes running any Catholic after-school programs. What else is there to say?”

Boycott fantasies aside, making a mountain out of a molehill does exactly that: It takes a tiny little molehill no one cared about and turns it into a mountain no one can miss.

If I were New Line Cinema, I would be writing Bill Donohue and his organization a big fat thank-you check for all the free publicity. (Well… not exactly free. The Catholic League’s 23-page anti-Gold Compass booklet is available for just $5. Hmmm…. The plot thickens.)

As for the rest of you, next time you find yourself wanting to boycott or protest a political speech, an art collection, the construction of a foreign-owned superstore in your backyard or the release of a controversial new product, give some serious thought to the effect that your protest is likely to have on the success of the thing you are speaking against.

Not always, but sometimes, quietly dismissing something works better than attracting a lot of undue attention to it.

… Unless of course, your real agenda has more to do with exploiting every possible media opportunity to raise money and recruit members than actually doing anything.

Have a great Wednesday, everyone. 😉

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On the relevance of traditional advertising…

From the daily ad biz blog:

Traditional advertising is not the place to be these days. Not only is it losing relevance, it is also not the best tool to accomplish a myriad of business goals. Generate engagement with core consumers, build loyalty, drive interaction rates, these are just a few of the things that traditional advertising, especially TV, just doesn’t do well in comparison to other marketing disciplines. It’s not dead by any means, but it’s not the universal answer either.

AdPulp posted this article about Nike that gives further support to my argument, in case you don’t a take a no-name blogger at his word.

Advertising has ceased to be the go-to answer when it comes to marketing questions. With that in mind, how much longer until other agencies begin to drive the brand, be they online, promotions or PR?

And you know that PR is just itching to do it and get us back for years of condescention.

Well, yeah.

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Chill out: You’re letting someone else jump to conclusions for you.

Hey, at&t: Were your PR people all on vacation today?

This morning, tech websites and marketing blogs were abuzz with outrage over this portion of at&t’s latest terms of service:

“AT&T may immediately terminate or suspend all or a portion of your Service, any Member ID, electronic mail address, IP address, Universal Resource Locator or domain name used by you, without notice, for conduct that AT&T believes (a) violates the Acceptable Use Policy; (b) constitutes a violation of any law, regulation or tariff (including, without limitation, copyright and intellectual property laws) or a violation of these TOS, or any applicable policies or guidelines, or (c) tends to damage the name or reputation of AT&T, or its parents, affiliates and subsidiaries.”

A whole lot of folks mistakenly took this as at&t threatening to cut your service if you talked trash about them. (It got picked up by several major news networks in the same context as well.) Within hours, there was talk of boycotts. at&t looked well on its way to having to deal with a damaging PR disaster (for starters).

For the better part of the day, I also wondered what at&t was thinking, taking such a totalitarian censorship stance. (Even Apple wouldn’t be bold enough to take things this far.) I spent the better part of the hour I wasted sort of watching episode 2 of The Bionic Woman thinking about clever analogies to at&t‘s alleged Guestapo tactics. I imagined Volkswagen barring drivers from ever buying one of their cars again if they caught them complaining about their cars on their blog or facebook or myspace. I imagined Apple doing the same thing with its products. Delta airlines putting you on a no-flight list for emailing friends about a bad experience with their airline. Starbucks banning you from from their stores for getting caught recommending Lava Java to co-workers.

“Please step away from the counter and slowly place the scone on the ground, sir.”

No company would do this… except maybe this guy.

So I started doing a bit of research on the subject, because… at&t trying to control what customers say about them in this way didn’t make much sense. It didn’t take me long to find this on the Ars Technica blog:

An AT&T spokesperson tells Ars Technica that the company has no interest in engaging in censorship but stopped short of saying that AT&T could not in fact exercise its ability to do so.

“AT&T respects its subscribers’ rights to voice their opinions and concerns over any matter they wish. However, we retain the right to disassociate ourselves from web sites and messages explicitly advocating violence, or any message that poses a threat to children (e.g. child pornography or exploitation). We do not terminate customer service solely because a customer speaks negatively about AT&T.”

Well, duh. Too bad at&t‘s PR peeps didn’t unleash holy jihad on the scuttlebutt sooner. It’s way too late on the East Coast now, and the story is still- as I write this post – gaining traction across middle America.

Evidently, today’s events indicated that at&t‘s PR machine either doesn’t have internet access, or didn’t have a crisis plan in place for when stuff like this happens.

The term “asleep at the wheel” comes to mind… and that isn’t good.

Tssssk.

Even though this will blow over in a few days at the most, it is good to know that a) somebody is keeping tabs on potential corporate shenanigans (even if sometimes they jump the gun a little bit), and that b) outrage over the possibility of a corporation’s abuse of power still spreads across all media so quickly. (We haven’t become completely complacent after all.)

Have a great Thursday, everyone. 🙂

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