MarketingInsideOut.com

Can good PR advice avert the demise of a corporation and the filing of federal fraud and conspiracy charges against the company’s top executives?  During his recent testimony, former Enron Corp. Chairman Ken Lay bemoaned his decision back in September 2001 to stick his head in the sand when the Wall Street Journal requested an interview for a series of articles focusing on the company’s bookkeeping practices.  “My policy has always been that it is better to talk to the press than not to,” Lay testified.  Ignoring his own advice, Lay listened to subordinates who felt the damage from not doing the interview would be minimal.  Lay now credits the articles that appeared a few weeks later with destroying confidence in the company, ultimately leading to its bankruptcy filing in December 2001.

While it’s impossible to speculate on the outcome had Ken come clean with WSJ, he would have been well advised to follow the example of Chrysler Corporation Chairman Lee Iacocca in the wake of criminal charges involving odometer tampering in the mid-1980s. The situation led to the indictment of two Chrysler executives for driving cars with their odometers disconnected and then selling them as new.  In some cases, the vehicles had been in minor accidents and repaired, then sold as new.  In a dramatic press conference held in Detroit, Iacocca called the practice of test-driving cars without telling people “dumb.”  And selling damaged vehicles “goes beyond dumb and all the way to stupid,” Iacocca lamented.  “Did we screw up,” Iacocca questioned.  “You bet we did…Simply stated, that’s unforgivable, and we have nobody but ourselves to blame.” 

Iacocca’s mea culpa was textbook crisis communications of “Tell it all.  Tell it fast.  Tell what you’re going to do about it.  Tell when it’s over.”  In addition to giving owners of affected cars new vehicles and extending warranty protection for other vehicle owners, Iacocca emphasized, “Our big concern is for our customers, the people who had enough faith in Chrysler to buy a vehicle from us. These charges and the press reports about them are causing some of those customers to question that faith, and we simply cannot tolerate that.”  Following Chrysler’s public apology, a survey found 67 percent of those contacted believed the company had adequately dealt with the issue.  As a result, neither vehicle sales nor stock prices suffered. 
Given that outcome, there was nothing “dumb” about Chrysler’s response to bad news.  If only the same could be said in the case of Enron and its indicted chairman.

If there’s one thing I know – it’s something.  They say the only absolutes are death and taxes but they’re wrong.  Our problems keep us up at night – absolutely.

And why is it that these hideous beasts lay in wait until we are comfy and cozy under the covers?  What makes us jerk awake in a cold sweat when we’re supposedly in the most comforting and comfortable place of our entire world.  The darkness that, earlier, lulled us into a calm and soothing slumber becomes the veil that hides the monsters from our view so that we are powerless to defend ourselves even if we are able to muster the courage.

And what are these monsters that creep toward our trembling and defenseless bodies as we toss and turn in an effort to break free from the night terrors?  That’s the truly amazing part.  If you experience a major catastrophe at the office and all fingers point to you – it comes as no surprise that you will receive a visit from the dark lord of the night.  He will terrorize and taunt you until your body is writhing and tortured and your soul is wishing for release – of any kind.  That’s expected.  But what about those nights when things have gone well at the office – why then do his minions choose to pay a visit?  How many of us have received ghoulish visits that are a result of a minor faux pas at the water cooler – Good God did Sally think I meant SHE was fat????  Oh Lord how can I go on when my coworkers all know that I’m an insensitive boob – aaaaaaarrrrrrrrggggggggg!!!!!  Yes, we are often under siege for issues that could, and have been, instantly sloughed off during daylight hours.  But at night there’s no sloughing.

Some of us take to alcohol as a means of escape.  But that plays right into their hands.  Stimulants in alcohol further weaken the body and leave us at the mercy of the heinous night visitors.  Others try prescription solutions.  Apparently those taking Ambien have been transformed into nightwalking zombies that are traversing the countryside endangering themselves and others.  Some are preparing huge banquets (we can’t be sure for whom) and eating the night away, while others still are chauffering their ghostly visitors around town.  Yet another potential solution shot to hell!  Where to turn? 

You thought I’d have the answer – well I don’t.  I do know, however, that misery loves company.  And I believe that this phenomenon is far more prevalent than we realize.  When we are there – alone – at night – we are the only person in the world.  And yet we’re not.  How many times have we joked with a co-worker “you were up at 2 – why didn’t you call me we could have hung out?” 

Our understanding of the power of this phenomenon has resulted in one of the cornerstones of our own business promise.  We ask our clients (and prospects) “what keeps you up at night” and then we focus on helping them wrestle their demons to the ground.  After all, when you get right down to it, what are any of us looking for in our business partnerships (or in any other phase of life) – some help at finding peace of mind.

So if we can help our clients wrestle their monsters we must have the answers – right?  Not exactly.  We have been very successful in helping our clients resolve many of their scariest business nightmares, but you’ll recall that this is usually when the more mundane goblins rush in to take their place – and odds are we can’t fix every last one of them.  Now you might think if the worst of the problems is gone how bad can it be.  Well, if you do you’re forgetting some of those sleepless “water cooler” nights.

I guess it boils down to this.  We’re not alone.  It’s something we all suffer at some point in time.  And it hurts every aspect of our life.  If we can focus our minds while under siege maybe we can beat this thing – together.  Maybe if we try to envision an army of fellow night sufferers hundreds of millions strong we can also picture a sort of “hands across America” to support us during our darkest hours.  I don’t know.  I just know I’d like the suffering to stop!  How about you?      

The local online advertising marketplace has been evolving quite rapidly in the last year and I was a bit surprised to read that it is expected to reach $5.8 billion in 2006. 

Spending on local online advertising was up 78% in 2005 according to a new report titled “What Local Web Sites Earn: 2006 Survey,” from Borrell Associates.  Reaching $4.8 billion in 2005, compared with $2.7 billion in 2004, the local online category is expected to increase 21% to $5.8 billion in 2006. Borrell defines “local online advertising” as “advertising placed by locally based businesses for locally focused online messages.”

Online revenues at newspaper websites were an estimated $2 billion in 2005, up from $1.19 billion in 2004, with real estate, help wanted and car ads accounting for 75 percent of 2005 online ad revenue. Newspaper sites were profitable last year, according to the report, but the average site lost market share within its designated market area; the average site controlled an estimated 14.8 market share last year, down from 18 percent in 2004. The search engines have begun stealing share in the local media, offering a new form of targeted advertising that is luring dollars from real estate, automotive, legal and other advertisers traditionally the mainstay revenue stream of the newspaper business. 

Local TV station websites generated $283 million, up from $119 million in 2004 – it is expected that those numbers will increase rapidly as online video takes off.

Borrell examined revenues at 2,266 local media properties, including the sites of 696 daily newspapers, 148 weeklies, 1,154 radio stations, 437 TV stations and 24 independent local sites.

Some 57.1 percent of all web users 18 years and older say the internet serves as the primary source of information about products or services they might want to buy, according to a survey by Burst Media of more than 3,700 web users.

TV commercials, however, apparently still make the most impression. Nearly half (49.8 percent) of respondents cited television as the most effective media to capture their attention, followed by the internet (22.3 percent), magazines (11.6 percent), newspapers (10.3 percent) and radio (5.9 percent).

None of this is surprising.  An integrated marketing approach makes a lot of sense, but the recycling of creative doesn’t.  Today,we were lamenting the fact that so much of the online advertising we see out there feels like it’s an afterthought or a force of one media’s concept into another. And a lot of it is just downright bad.  It’s almost as if it screams the fact that some creative team got an assignment –part of which they see as sexy and part as a “gotta do” weeds kind of thing.  As if someone said to them…”You get to create a :30 TV spot and OH…by the way you also have to create an online version.”

In my book, the recycling of creative executions across media is a wasted opportunity.  It may be the cheapest, easiest tack, but it doesn’t maximize the effectiveness of any medium.

The best campaigns take into account the differences in the media and still hold together as a cohesive, integrated approach.

From USA Today:

Marketers are working to give a healthier glow to many products perceived as not so good for you by increasingly nutrition-conscious consumers.

Soft-drink brand 7Up this week announced that its original 7Up is now “100% natural” — following a reformulation to eliminate an artificial preservative.

“Everything that remains in the can is from a natural source,” says Kelli Freeman, marketing vice president. The label does not apply to the diet and other varieties.

TV ads beginning May 8 will show 7Up cans as fruits or vegetables, being picked or pulled from the ground.

I’d bet that sugar cane isn’t one of the fruits or vegetables they highlight.  Get real.  It’s soda.  “All natural” and “good for you” are not the same thing!  It would be more believable to me if the message was “less bad for you than other sodas” or “something your Mom gives you when you have an upset stomach”.

The last week I’ve been up to my eyeballs in alligators (as my Mom would say) and have been struggling to keep up…and falling behind.  With blogging and voice mails and emails.  Between being on the road constantly and under hot deadlines, I was forced to deal with something only if it was at 4-alarm-stage.

So today I had a breather and went to the office early to catch up. Hesitantly I opened my email.  Normally I get hundreds a day, so I knew I was in for it.  But totally unprepared for the 2000+ emails in the queue.  Crap…I needed caffeine.  After getting a gallon size cup of high-octane coffee, I sat down again and dove in. 

Within moments I realized I’d been massively spammed. Almost a thousand times…by the auto responder on our email server.  Apparently my email box crossed the magic threshold of file size. 

So notice after notice was sent to me…every couple minutes during the past 24 hours.  My first response was “I wouldn’t be over if you didn’t send 1000+ of these stupid warning messages”.  Which isn’t rational given I have over 1.3 gig of space in my email box and the notices are only a few bytes, but nonetheless in my irrational, irritated state I spent the next few minutes trying to flag those stupid notices as spam so the spam filter would catch them.  Then I spent the rest of the morning dealing with all the email and files in my email box. 

The thing is, I realized that my email box is my most organized file system and is, in many ways, my lifeline.  Through folders and good organization, everything has a place and I can find anything in moments.  If it works…why mess up a good thing?

So on the agenda tomorrow– Quid Pro Quo — I think I’ll harass IT a bit.  I’m thinking of an email campaign via our list-serv (which is controlled by interactive staff not IT) –perhaps I’ll send them a thousand copies of the same message requesting more file space for my email account. 

This from special guest contributor Eric Burnsee from Dixie Chopper. 
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Growing up in an idyllic Chicago suburb in the 1950s and ’60s, it was second nature to embrace the experience of well-manicured lawns.

But those gloriously green bastions of suburbia were not our homage to the American Dream as much as they were the infields of our whiffleball parks and the end zones of our front-yard football fields.

As we pause to reflect on the arrival of April — National Lawn Care Month — we realize those lawns of those Wonder Years and Happy Days eras represented the confluence of social changes at work in postwar America. Not only was a neat, green lawn a symbol of the suburban social class but also a sign of conformity, diligence and family values.

On the melting pot that was our block back in the day, the lawns in front of our two-story georgian homes were as varied as they were pampered.

Next door, at the Tamaraz home, the sprinkler always seemed to be going, wetting our sidewalk and blacktop driveway that doubled as our whiffleball batter’s box as much and as often as the greenery on their side of the property line.

Across the street, the Botts ringed their yard with neatly trimmed hedges that we longed to usurp for a pseudo-ivy-covered outfield wall for our whiffleball park. But true to Mr. Bott’s stern nature, no baseball or football games were every played in those unfriendly confines — although I do remember we once found a handgun under one of his evergreens, a weapon stashed by a robber who held up a jewelry shop around the corner.

On the other side of us, the Mazzei family had the lushest lawn on the block, a layer of green that felt ever cool to the touch, even after the hottest of kiddom days. Fawn, their German Shepherd, liked to lie in the shade on our side of their garage, enjoying nature’s doublemint twins of cool air and cool grass.

Directly across the street the Balons paid the least attention to their lawn. The father worked late hours and the two teenage sons were more preoccupied with cars, boats and girls than lawnmowers. So we always knew whenever their yard work was in progress, ours would not be far behind. No, we weren’t keeping up with the Jones, just the Mazzeis and the Ahrs.

Ah, Mr. Ahr. In our neighborhood, he was the most obsessed with his lawn. Often we would look down the street and spot him on his hands and knees, crawling along, plucking dandelions or crabgrass out by the roots.

Americans still love a good lawn. And today, 40-50 years later, U.S. lawn care is a $40 billion industry and some 58 million home lawns could cover a lawn mass essentially the size of Florida. Some 46.5 million acres of grass under cultivation in the U.S. are more than any other single crop, including corn, wheat and tobacco.

Taking care of a lawn, of course, is hard work, and many homeowners have turned to professional cutters to groom their yard. And helping make the perfect lawn possible, whether by homeowner or commercial cutter, are technological advances in weed whackers, leaf blowers and zero-turn riding mowers.

Art Evans of Dixie Chopper didn’t invent the zero-turn mower as much as perfect it. But when he spotted one at the Indiana State Fair in the 1970s, he knew then and there how people would be mowing their grass in the future.

Well, that future is here as Americans strive to mow faster and better, preferring to spend their spare time on the golf course or at the fishing hole rather than sweating in their yard.

And because of mowers like the Dixie Chopper — which can cut up to 8.7 acres an hour with as much as a 50 horsepower engine and a 72-inch cut — homeowners are able to do just that.

Just don’t tell Mr. Ahr. I’d hate to have him think all that crawling around his front yard was for the birds.

Although Marilyn Monroe’s “candle burned out long ago,” her image lives on through multi-million dollar licensing agreements for everything from posters to my favorite tie featuring one of Andy Warhol’s Marilyn prints.  These agreements exist under state laws that recognize or grant the “right of publicity” to celebrities who are deceased.  The “right of publicity” is used by celebrities and their heirs to prevent their identities from being used for commercial purposes without first obtaining permission and paying a licensee fee for such use. California’s right of publicity statute extends this protection for a period of 50 years after the person’s death, while in New York, publicity rights of dead celebrities are not protected.  And therein lies the basis for a current courtroom drama worthy of the silver screen.  On one side, the wife of Marilyn Monroe’s former acting coach and her business partner CMG Worldwide Inc. argue the actress was a Californian entitling them to her licensing rights.  The other side, representing photographers who hold copyrighted photos of the film star, claims she was a New Yorker which does not recognize publicity rights of deceased celebs.

For decades, living celebrities have relied on right of publicity laws to collect monetary damages, injunctive relief, legal fees and punitive damages from unauthorized use of their “identities.”  Depending on the state, one’s “identity” may include an individual’s name, signature, likeness (including look-alikes), voice (including sound-alikes), and other distinctive indicia of a person’s identity.  Consider the late Johnny Carson who sued and won when a portable toilet manufacturer used “Here’s Johnny” and “The World’s Foremost Commodian” to describe its product. 

Professional singer and songwriter Tom Waits was awarded $2.6 million in damages for a radio commercial that used a “sound-alike” singer who deliberately imitated his voice while performing one of Waits’ songs.  A jury awarded Vanna White $400,000 when a commercial featured the image of a robot with a blonde wig, wearing a red glittered dress and turning letters in what appeared to be a futuristic set of “Wheel of Fortune”.  And last year, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger claimed an unauthorized “bobblehead” doll showing him in a suit with an assault weapon and bandolier of bullets violated his right of publicity under California law.

Advertisers and agencies are well aware of right to publicity issues and requirements for proper licensing agreements that need to be signed prior to production, regardless if a celebrity is living or deceased.  But should we need reminding, there will always be lots of “publicity” surrounding high profile cases like the ones involving Vanna, The Arnold or long deceased legends such as Marilyn Monroe.

This from Business 2.0:

For $424 a month – or one-sixth the cost of one of the firm’s human temps – Japanese companies can rent an electronic receptionist shaped like Hello Kitty.

Manufactured by Business Design Laboratory, also based in Nagoya, the 20-inch-tall Hello Kitty Robo can recognize as many as 10 faces, ask visitors to speak their names, and tell them when the person they have come to see is ready. With 20,000 stored conversation patterns, songs, and riddles, the robot is arguably more entertaining than many real attendants. Cheaper too.

Let’s hope this is one thing that doesn’t cross the cultural divide. 

…what were they thinking…

It was a gorgeous night.  One of those truly perfect evenings at the beginning of Spring where the air is warm, crisp and fresh.  As I sat on my deck watching the clouds clear to reveal a beautiful moon, I started thinking about the euphoric feeling I get each Spring — as my daffodils bloom; my tulips (at least those the rabbits haven’t mowed down) come up, the trees come back to life. 

There’s nothing like the green colors of Spring.  I love this time of year, when everything feels fresh and new.  There’s so much potential and so much yet to come.   It makes me feel like I think clearer and it definitely makes me more philosophical.

As I sat outside enjoying the night I starting thinking about a conversation I had earlier with my daughter who is going off to college next year.  She’s struggling with the big question:  what do I want to do when I grow up?  To her it’s both exciting and terrifying that there are so many options.  She’s heard so much advice from various factions like teachers, counselors and recruiters about high paying career options and things she needs to think about.  Tonight as we talked about it, my two cents was simple — “find something you love to do and focus on that, not on the money”. I tried to explain to her that she’s going to spend a lot of time working, and she’ll be happiest all around if she loves what she does first and foremost.  

When she asked me why I love my job, I told her that it’s because for me it’s like that feeling of Spring on an ongoing basis.  It’s fresh and new.  Every day is different.  Every day I get to learn new things.  Meet new people.  Create change.  There’s so much potential.  Occasionally there’s a gray day or a storm, but for the most part, it’s like Spring all year round.  Maybe I got lucky.  But yes, absolutely – I love what I do.  And I wish the same for my daughter.