In the summer of 2012, as we sat around our conference room one afternoon, we were jolted by an “aha” moment.  We realized that the coming of age of the newest generation, the iGen (or Z generation) is right now and that there would be another disruption similar, but different, from the one of the past decade. It was time to hustle and really scrutinize this generation, which turned 18 in 2012.

So we examined deeper…

iGen is a generation born with consumer-driven capitalism at its core and altruism at its heart. Never before has there been a generation so globally plugged in and so informed. We learnt that their patterns and behaviors are opposed to anything that has come before them and that they basically ignore messages from brands, unless those brands have earned admittance to their infinite touch points. It is simply in their DNA to listen to their trusted network, rather than controlled messages from brands.

We recognized that iGen-ers only care about information if it is relevant to them and, since the power of brand-engagement is in the hands of the consumer, they will serve as their own gatekeepers, awarding relevant information by sharing it with their trusted network of peers and burying irrelevant information so it will be invisible to their peers. This trend is already evident in early studies: 60% of iGen expects relevant advertisements and 46% prefer funny advertisements.

We noted that an acceptable bypass into iGen’s circle of trust is to leverage influencers that already have access to iGen’s touch points. These influencers can be anyone from individuals active on social media to just people with a lot of friends or it can also include the professionals in the communication industry. If a brand can ethically earn favor from influencers, then Brian Solis’ one-to-one-to-many process of communication is leveraged. iGen may not listen to brands, but iGen will listen to influencers they trust when they talk about brands.

But that trust easily disappears if a voice is perceived as not genuine. iGen-ers do not like to be duped and, if they sniff it out, a brand could find themselves in a full-on public relations crisis.

The result of that “aha” moment is a newly launched book, authored by veteran PR pro and president of our agency, Stefan Pollack, titled Disrupted, From Gen Y to iGen:  Communicating with the Next Generation.  It illuminates strategies and tactics on how brands can navigate this new consumer demographic and avoid pitfalls in doing so.

“Disrupted” is available now online including direct from the publisher at pacificcoastcreative.com, Amazon.com, IndieBound.org and in all major bookstores including Barnes and Noble and Books-A-Million.  To learn more about “Disrupted” and Stefan Pollack, visit the book’s website, www.disruptedbook.com.

It is a time to brace ourselves — and become very, very smart.

Phillip Roth’s famous book, The Human Stain, speaks about an irreconcilable mistake in judgment that left an irrevocable “human stain.” Last week there was a “corporate stain” that will surely prove to be an irrevocable judgment call on companies that, in their rush to distance themselves from any involvement in Bangladesh’s garment factory disaster, forgot that corporate reputations depend on consumers that buy their products and that the voice of consumers demanding a corporate social responsibility (CSR) from the companies whose products they buy, has become increasingly vociferous, and as such, it will be the consumer who decides whether they want to consume the product of a company that has left a “corporate stain.”

In other words, companies have come under scrutiny by the very consumer that buys their service or products and it is not easy to wipe a corporate reputation clean.

There were clothing brands that issued stark denials that they authorized work at those factories in the building — even when their labels, such as Benetton’s, were said to be found in the rubble. A few remembered that today’s world is, after all, transparent and that the consumer rules. These acknowledged their connections to the tragedy and promised compensation such as Britain’s Primark and Canada’s Loblaw Inc. But my sense is that even this was thinly veiled as a calculated way of minimizing damage.

With several deadly disasters and fires in Bangladesh’s $20 billion garment industry in the past six months, possibly the only way retailers and clothing brands can protect their reputations is to visibly and genuinely work to overhaul safety in Bangladesh’s garment factories. As costly as that may be to a company, it is a pittance when compared to the loss of consumers who care deeply enough not to buy, no matter how cheap the product.

Just consider the profits reaped to the foreign garment industry over the past decade from Bangladesh, where a minimum wage of about $38 a month has helped boost profits in a global business worth $1 trillion a year.

Spain’s Mango said it hadn’t bought clothing from those factories but acknowledged it had been in talks with one factory to produce a test batch of clothing. German clothing company KiK said it was “surprised, shocked and appalled” to learn its T-shirts and tops were found in the rubble. The company said it stopped doing business with the Bangladesh factories in 2008. It promised an investigation. Walmart said there was no authorized production of its clothing lines at the collapsed Rana Plaza building, but it was investigating whether there was unapproved subcontracting.

The Walt Disney Co. needs to be lauded. Apparently it pulled out of Bangladesh production altogether after last year’s fire at the Tazreen Fashions factory, where its branded clothing was found.

Any marketer knows that a global corporate reputation is carefully built over a long period of time, but can also be lost in a very short period of time — and not easily regained. Companies should not count on the consumer’s short memory.

A corporate stain is just that…

It is said that the tradition began in the working-class cafés of Naples, Italy almost 100 years ago… Apparently any person in need could come into the local café and ask if there was a “caffè sospeso” (suspended coffee) available, meaning a free a cup of coffee. It started with a neighbor or local, who were having a coffee at the local café and wanted to “pay forward” for a local needy person to have a cup of coffee.

Neighborly…

Suddenly, the same “suspended coffee” idea that started back in Naples, gained traction and has today been embraced by hundreds of cafés around the world. Locals don’t have to ‘prove’ anything to claim one. The scheme relies on the good faith of everyone involved.
It has been growing in popularity. You may have seen the “suspended coffee” meme going around on Facebook or other social media recently. According to Snopes.com, it is becoming a huge viral hit on various social networking sites as well.

It is a movement, a community effort that seems small, but neighborly. The idea of entering your local café in the morning on your way to work and buying someone else a cup of coffee is an act of generosity, of caring for someone else. If it were extended to include buying a cupcake or sandwich, (some places in Europe already do that) then imagine the impact the little personal “feel good” contribution would have, were millions to participate.

It may seem that this concept would only work in small local cafes. Not true. For sure there will be a lot of naysayers about the logistics of keeping track of coffee credits, having lots of down-on- their-luck people wandering into cafés and more. Still, the concept involves people helping people and therefore outdoes the benefits of simply writing a check to a charity for any food and beverage corporation.

It’s about neighbor helping neighbor – directly, and offering customers the opportunity of doing something on the spur of the moment and feel good about it. The rest? If it matters, it can be figured out. One UK café simply uses a chalkboard to track the suspended coffee credits. In the present marketplace climate, people want to do business with companies with which they can interact directly and that visibly care and have like values. It falls under corporate social responsibility (CSR). “Warm and fuzzy” fosters loyalty.

Amazing how the more things change, the more they stay the same. A tradition started 100 years ago, in what was then a small city in Italy, seems worth adopting and adapting to today’s world, and on a more massive scale.

It took a long ten months — from the time that Mayor Bloomberg proposed his plan to ban large sugary drinks of 32 oz. from restaurants, movie theaters and other establishments, ostensibly to curtail obesity, to NY’s State Supreme Court Justice Milton Tingling’s verdict, which came down yesterday invalidating the proposed law, calling it “arbitrary and capricious.”

What? We cannot do the simple math? In my blog of June 1, “…Size Matters,” I argued that if we could not buy a 32oz. soda, we could just get two 16 oz. ones, obesity be damned. Our choice. Not Mayor Bloomberg’s.

It is absolutely incredible that the proposed plan was taken seriously in the first place; incredible that it got so far as to have businesses such as Dunkin Donuts, hand out information cards to its customers in preparation of having to comply with the potential upcoming law; incredible that it wasted the time of lawmakers, judges, city clerks and, of course, Judge Tingling’s; and incredible that this nonsense might have become a law today.

Just imagine all that would have been accomplished in that time, had the focus been on what really would impact healthy eating. A law could have been proposed and implemented by now for public schools to get healthier lunch menus; for public education and community centers to dig deeper into needy neighborhoods that do not otherwise have access to health seminars and dietary information; for restaurants to list calorie counts of dishes they serve, no matter how upscale they may be; for movie theaters to do likewise with their snacks (if they don’t do so already); and for public health centers and clinics to re-double their efforts to promote healthy diets.

It’s a clear case of a misguided personal quest to leave a legacy of healthier New Yorkers. A personal quest at the cost of businesses’ profits, of sending a message to the obese community that cutting out large sodas is an easy answer to loosing weight and of mocking the real causes of obesity — health issues that go far deeper than soda.

It gets worse…It seems like he had all loose ends tied up to support his plan. He had the city’s mayor-controlled health board approve the ban last fall, improperly sidestepped the city council’s legislative authority, and had a new city study released the day before the law was to go into effect that showed that neighborhoods with the greatest obesity, also consumed the most sugary drinks.
Unfortunately, the city’s chief lawyer plans an appeal. More waste of time; much ado over nothing…

Somebody was asleep at the virtual wheel…

So Tesla finally did produce the vehicle logs that ostensibly contradict the New York Times’ reporter John Broder’s recent account of a test drive road trip he took, driving Tesla’s electronic car Model S, which resulted in a scathing negative review in that publication. But there was a lag of three days, which allowed for the rancorous back-and-forth to continue and escalate, pitting one of the nation’s most influential newspaper against one of the most successful entrepreneurs.

To begin with Tesla’s CEO Musk’s knee jerk response to the negative review was ill conceived. His blistering response in a blog post vociferously countered Broder’s account and said that data pulled from the Model S’s onboard computer would more clearly account for what really happened.

But no data was released to support that blog statement until three days later.

Apparently, for those who did not follow the public rants that erupted surrounding a bad review of the car, there are discrepancies in the nature of the trip as to how fully charged the car was at the outset, whether or not the car deviated from the planned route and took a detour and at what temperature the car was held – all directly responsible for the car’s performance.

This is clearly a case where data and PR intersect. One would think it critical for a communication team to create a scenario where success can happen, and have plans and precautions in place should there be a hiccup in the process — especially so when you have the Goliath of a newspaper covering the trip. As such, it would seem tantamount to success of any road trip to be able to follow it in real time, know where it is going at all times, keep aware of dashboard data in real time and act upon it. Minimally, the car was surely tracked via its GPS and at least that could have showed them any deviation from the agreed upon course, allowing the communication team to react as it happened.

What is puzzling is that Tesla’s communication team and engineers had several phone conversations with Broder throughout his trip. So how is it that they could not track the trip’s progress and counsel the driver of the vehicle in real time as to detours, charging and temperature gage, all directly impacting outcomes? And why was Musk not counseled as to his call with Broder last Friday, before the article appeared online, in which he offered regrets about the outcome of the test drive? Really? What regrets?

Or what about this one? According to Musk, “When I first heard about what could at best be described as irregularities in Broder’s behavior during the test drive, I called to apologize for any inconvenience that he may have suffered and sought to put my concerns to rest, hoping that he had simply made honest mistakes. That was not the case.” Apologized for any inconveniences?? Irregularities in Broder’s behavior not tractable in real time???

It would seem that this could have been easily course-corrected if someone was sharp at the virtual wheel. Opinions of what happened are flying, with even the NYT’s blog refuting every single point made by Tesla. Maybe the result will be a David and Goliath story, where the NY Times (Goliath) will not recant and where Musk’s (David) electronic data will not lie. With the difference being that the marketing disaster of Tesla’s own making is a misstep that may find “David” at the wrong end of the stick.

Hard to combat missteps…

Anyone who watched the Super Bowl ads of 2012, will surely remember Coke’s animated iconic polar bears who reacted to the action on the field throughout the full four hours or so of the game, coupled with a live feed during the game showing the bears watching. According to reports nine million people across various platforms checked in to see the polar bears.

The Polar Bowl was creative and forward thinking, but it was still about watching…

This time around Coke “wants you” to get involved in the narrative of their “Coke Chase” story — which is about “three teams of people – cowboys, showgirls and badlanders – who are lost in the desert and see the mirage of a glistening bottle of Coke — then vote in real time to decide who wins a battle for the Coke, and the result is revealed at the end of the game.”

But here is the kicker in the game – players are pitted against other players. They can also sabotage—in other words, vote down—the teams they oppose. It triggers a competitive spirit geared to propel engagement.

According to Coke executives, they want to “gamify the game” via a real-time television, web and social media campaign that taps consumers’ votes to determine the storyline of the spot. They hope that consumers are up for another game, while watching the Big Game.

Pio Schunker, SVP of integrated marketing at Coke said, “People aren’t going to necessarily interact with your product unless you tell a compelling story. This is the most engaging and compelling way in to talk about Coke as the ultimate thirst quencher.” A bit promotional I think, but on point with the interaction part.

It is clever. It is about cross-media storytelling and engaging players in a narrative. It is about extending the conversation through a host of platforms across Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr and Instagram, for which custom content has been crafted. Additionally a press conference with the losers has been recorded for YouTube. It’s a marked change from last year’s Polar Bowl that had a singular tactic for social-media channels.
By the looks of the game Coke conceived, it is likely that they will beat their numbers of last year. It is also a very cool way for Coke to maximize their estimated $11 million investment.
But more importantly, Coke may very well be responsible for permanently turning around expectations of the Super Bowl ads of 2014.

It’s what we would expect from a market leader.

Around this time of the year, surprises happen and I am not talking about surprise holiday gifts.

People become kinder to each other, more generous, show more care about the less privileged than they are and generally act in ways that they would never consider the whole year through.

What else happens, are lists…

Apparently, people have a thirst for knowing what are “the top anything” from the sublime to the ridiculous.  These can range from the top ten innovators, newsmakers, films, video games, toys and music albums, to trending photos, best and worst dressed, movie headliners, mind-altering medications and more.

Not too many lists though, are about memorable PR Moments…

And so, three years ago we started our own annual list of Defining PR Moments, but we take a different stance on lists…

For the third year in a row, we consider the top defining moments in PR not just for what they are – a moment in time or just a blip that made the news – rather for their implications, such as lessons learnt or the impact in our industry.

And so we picked Apple’s apology about their maps product, as a defining moment in PR because it showed that perfection is hard to maintain.  We considered the impact of pink slime, which caused a nightmarish public fear, but as it turned out, was fostered as such, by an overzealous chef.  And how about the demise of the print edition of Newsweek, as a defining moment, that venerable magazine that had the loyalty of the news-hungry public for decades? There also was Facebook’s IPO, which should have had investors salivating, but didn’t. How about Bloomberg’s edict that large-sugar-sweetened drinks helped New Yorkers get fat and turned this into policy?

And then there was the toppling of a sports icon, the doping scandal of Lance Armstrong; the sales fallout from the comments of Chick-Fil-A President, condemning gay marriage; and much to the surprise of many, the failure of SuperPac’s to produce outcomes despite obnoxious amounts of millions raised.

Surely KitchenAid’s self-inflicted twitter wounds reached epic proportions, producing jarring fears among brands as to how easy this really is….

And finally, the rise of visuals on the web became a game changer in our industry – dramatically transforming how users engage with information online.

There are, of course, many, many more PR defining moments, but these are ours — our choices.

Take a look…

Excerpt by Noemi Pollack from PRNewswire & Agility@Work’s crowdsourced e-book, The Practitioner’s Guide to Social Influencer Engagement

Nielsen reported recently that consumers trust “real friends” and “virtual strangers” over newspapers, TV, magazines or ads.(1) This trend, coupled with the increased value of third-party endorsements and positive word of mouth, demonstrates a fundamental need to earn trustworthy endorsements from influencers in today’s increasingly consumer-driven environment. The challenge for brands, however, is not just finding an influencer – it’s finding the right influencer. Measuring Influence

Influence is a commonly used word with a very broad definition. Without dissecting the etymology of the word, suffice to say it refers to the act of compelling someone (or a group of people) to a particular opinion or behavior. In other words, a successful influencer would be one who can incite others into converting, whether that means purchasing a product/service or agreeing with an idea.

Since influence is more than merely being heard, one must look beyond metrics such as audience size, friends/fans/followers, website visitations and impressions. There should certainly be a baseline expectation of a person’s network size, but that should not be the only metric. Influencers should be weighed more in the quality of interactions they have with their audience, the amount of responses they earn with their interactions and, perhaps most telling, the evidence of positive conversions. For example, looking at the number of Facebook friends is not enough. Do the friends interact and engage with the influencer? How many comments/likes does an influencer produce with each post? Is there evidence of conversations in which the influencer has swayed the opinions and/or behavior of audience members? This information can be found through an influencer’s blog, through Twitter mentions and any other platform on which he or she is active.

Qualifying the Influencer’s Audience

Determining whether or not a person is influential is not enough, alone. Your brand advocate could have sway over millions of people all over the globe, but if those people are not the right people for your brand, that influencer may as well be shouting in a vacuum as far as you are concerned. Age-old market research tactics can ensure that the right person is saying the right message to the right audience. Vetting a potential influencer’s audience need not be time-extensive and costly.

One can simply research his or her online network and view their profiles. What types of organizations do they like/follow? Do they respond in a positive way to brand messages similar to yours? Would they buy your product or be influenced by your ideas? The influencer’s offline audience can be researched as well. What organizations is the influencer involved with? Do their affiliations and offline activities support or conflict with your target audience? If you had the budget, would you pay to advertise to this influencer’s audience?

Aligning Personalities

If you are engaging an influencer to become a brand advocate, or even if you are paying them to be, be clear that on many levels you are relinquishing control of your brand to this person. Therefore, it is paramount that the influencer personality and the brand personality be aligned. If the influencer’s communication style, general personality or personal opinions greatly conflict with your brand, then you could have tremendous exposure and heightened risk of negative word of mouth.

In essence, influencers behave as brand spokespeople – but unlike real spokespeople, brands don’t have direct control over their message. So a brand should be comfortable with an influencer’s voice, style and public positioning.

In a Nutshell

When actively pursuing influencers, take the time to gauge their level of influence, as well as their target audience and public persona. When there is a perfect match, then brand advocacy is effective and far-reaching.

1. Nielsenwire. 2009. “Global Advertising: Consumers Trust Real Friends and Virtual Strangers the Most.“ Retrieved from http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/consumer/ global-advertising-consumers-trust-real-friends-and-virtual-strangers-the-most/

The shady individual who put up a faux press release on PRWeb about Google acquiring ICOA, the “neutral host” broadband wi-fi provider, for $400 million, got away with it long enough for several news organizations, now red-faced, to have picked up the fake news release and distributed it.  Also, long enough for a short-lived, but significant bump (a fivefold increase), in ICOA stock and for someone to pocket the profits before the stock plummeted again very quickly upon discovery.

In the wake of it all, ICOA said the story was a hoax, Google declined to comment, several high profile news publishers got egg on their faces, among them Associated Press, TechCrunch and The Washington Post — publications that ran the story and later had to issue retractions and PRWeb was forced to issue a mea culpa of sorts, an embarrassing apology after posting false news.

Curiously, PRWeb’s parent company, Vocus, called it “identity theft.”  I am not sure I get that, other than using this to declare innocence of any wrongdoing in posting this.  According to them, “Even with reasonable safeguards identity theft occurs, on occasion, across all of the major wire services. Maybe I am naïve, but it’s news to me…

It looks more like a financial crime than anything else.  In reviewing the release, there were clear signs of fraud within it, for not only did it lack details, it was pretty unbelievable that Google would purchase a penny-stock company with a total market cap of less than $1 million, for $400 million.  Somebody profited off bogus news, which was probably written in the first place by the person who had schemed to profit from it, and get away with it.  According to a Buzzfeed follow-up report, that somebody could have earned six digits’ worth of easy profits.

Incredulous how everybody could get it wrong.  Whatever happened to fact checking a story?

The PR industry needs to question as to who bears the responsibility for this – journalists or a service such as PRWeb?  To me it has always been journalists.  A PR service can offer the platform for posting releases, but it is the journalist in the end, who needs to vet the story.  After all, it has always been, and will always remain so, for them to check out – “from whose mouth the story comes.” In other words, the source…Their very credibility depends on it.

Two lessons can be learnt from this: not everything posted is an unvarnished truth and good journalism requires an investment of time.

What ever happened to the journalist’s nose for truth in news?

I think that some marketers have gone nuts. Piggybacking on Hurricane Sandy to sell something is akin to selling your grandmother.  What on earth were the marketing teams at the Gap, American Apparel, Urban Outfitters and Groupon thinking when they thought up ways to sell their wares during the storm?  It’s not only the companies that were dinged with a flurry of online outrage, but also the marketers who, by association, gave a greedy black eye to the category itself.

So, as all now know, what happened was that the Gap suggested via a tweet for “doing lots of Gap shopping at Gap.com,” while Urban Outfitters offered free shipping Monday morning, attempting to capitalize on the college students stuck inside all day. Groupon offered a daily deal to midtown Manhattanites for a dinner at a restaurant serving a surprise meal in complete darkness and American Apparel offered a Hurricane Sandy Sale.

Unconscionable…

Gap apologized quickly for its marketing tweet during the devastating storm, but not really. What they said was, that “what they really meant was” – etc.  Sometimes apologies are not enough. If it was greed that spurred them on to take advantage of a national disaster, they could have garnered far more visibility by putting on their corporate social responsibility hat and thinking through how to garner customers’ loyalty in a time of need. They could have offered to send free apparel for the displaced, the ones that lost homes, or were flooded out of homes, losing everything.  Maybe they could have set up a center for distribution of the clothes through their retail outlets after the storm or, minimally, offer warm clothing to children whose homes were burned down by fire within days after the storm.

Altruistic maybe, but socially responsible…

Groupon could have offered “best deals,” negotiated through restaurants that had power, to feed those that did not.  Urban Outfitters could have just kept quiet about their shipping ideas and American Apparel, well not much can be said for a company that thinks there is nothing wrong in holding a storm sale as the devastation unfolds.

It may be small potatoes in the scheme of things, but such poor judgment should be written up by the marketing textbooks as examples of what not to do.

Pepsi deserves kudos for “getting it” with its new Pepsi Next contest, in which the prize is a “25th” hour to help with specific home chores, rather than the usual prize money.  It hits at the heart of every worker’s plight today – finding time…

Pepsi’s Next contest has jumped on Corporate America’s tide for shifting employee perks from the office to the home. By all accounts, the effort of balancing work-life has reached a boiling point and something had to happen.

According to Anne Weisberg, a longtime human resources executive, “The workplace was built on the assumption that there was somebody at home dealing with the home front,” but she added that this was no longer the case and that, “we’re pushing things to the limit and something’s got to give.”

And, happily, it did give.  It took a working wife of course, to come up with a solution — in this case, the wife of Phil Libin, chief executive of Evernote, who was asked for a suggestion as to how to improve the lives of its employees and their families.  No surprise to anyone, her immediate answer – housecleaning, for it is the nemesis of all working folks who are in need, at the very minimum of a Pepsi “25^th hour in the day. In the case of Evernote, its 250 employees today —from receptionist to top executive —get their homes cleaned twice a month, free.

Smart recruitment tool, I would say.

Other companies have jumped on this with variations. Per an article in today’s global edition of the NYT, Stanford School of Medicine is piloting a project to provide doctors with housecleaning and in-home dinner delivery; Genentech offers take-home dinners and helps employees find last-minute baby sitters when a child is too sick to go to school; Facebook, employees can take home a free dinner or, if working late, their families can come in to eat with them. Deloitte, the consulting firm, employees can get a backup care worker if an aging parent or grandparent needs help.

One caveat in all this is whether or not there is a selfish corporate motive behind it.  One such consideration is that, now that work, aided by technologies, has invaded the home life, maybe it will free up employees to do more work at home.

But I prefer to take the altruistic path and think of it as part of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and, in this case, responsibility to a company’s own people. Whereas it is nice to have the upscale cafeteria meals, in-office massages and other services intended to keep employees happy and productive while at work, moving office perks to the home front addresses needs, not likes.

David Lewin, a compensation expert, said it best, “You might call it the bang for the non-buck.”

I trust that Pepsi’s prize, that single “25^th hour,” will go a long way in boosting customer loyalty…

Amidst all the moment-by-moment political news, polls and candidates’ latest remarks, statements, speeches, there appeared in the Chicago Tribune a vapid news tidbit that focused on a statement on the Allstate Blog that said, “obese Americans are hurting the fuel efficiency of vehicles, contributing to more than 1 billion gallons of fuel wasted each year.”

Apparently, the home and auto insurer teamed up with Cars.com to document the struggle between fuel efficiency and passenger weight.  Really? Why?

Maybe it was in light of the federal government pushing automakers for greater fuel efficiency and Allstate and Cars.com wanted to insert themselves into the mix and subsequent conversations.  They came up with a document that pointed out that between 1960 and 2002, 1 billion gallons of gasoline could be attributed to the weight gain of motorists in passenger vehicles. They cited a 2010 article by Consumer Reports for the extra gas needed. However, translated, that means that less than 1 percent of the total fuel used by passenger vehicles, annually.

Never mind that the government had stated that it expected automakers to achieve fuel efficiency through “the use of advanced technologies” and weight loss was not mentioned as a means to achieve that goal.

I can only guess that their statement that, “Americans keep gaining weight, and cars are losing it,” was only made to be clever or something, and ill-conceived at that. And it continued, “It’s a seesaw battle that’s making it difficult to realize the gains expected by a big push for lighter, more fuel-efficient cars.”  (They got this from a U.S. Energy Department document that reported that, an extra 100 pounds in your vehicle could reduce your miles per gallon by up to 2 percent.)

That the American population is getting more and more obese year by year is a sad fact that needs attention from the medical community.  But certainly not from an insurance company, that teamed up with an online car retailer, to pinpoint blame for fuel inefficiencies, on a growing 30% of the US population, rather than focus on automakers’ innovation deficiencies. Maybe it suited their “who-knows-what” agenda.

As to the Chicago Tribune, it must have been a slow news day. Otherwise what is the point of bringing this up as news?

Hey, it was a Monday…

The global edition of the NYT had a story yesterday on the latest PR stunt to allegedly support the nature-preservation efforts of Vladimir Putin.  This one had him flying, rather hang-gliding (motorized) in sync with flying cranes, geared at re-introducing Siberian cranes into the wild. Sounds fine until reported that the cranes had been a set up and were flown in for the “event.”  Previously he had been shown placing a satellite transmitter collar on what appeared to be a wild Siberian tiger, who in reality was heavily sedated as was the case with the wild polar bear in 2010. Maybe good photo ops for Putin, but the Russian public was not impressed.

Funny, but deceptive anyway…

Maybe Putin being Putin got away with it, but Nokia got caught when last week’s news reported that Nokia had demoed their latest technology – the new Lumia 920 smartphone with optical image stabilization (OIS) technology for shaky hands.  But in this transparent world the company got caught red-handed when sharp-eyed bloggers watching the ad caught the reflection in the window of the cameraman in a white van, using a professional camera to record the entire event. It turns out the video was not shot at all with the Lumia 920 by Nokia’s own admission, since the technology is in pre-production.  Moreover the company admitted to using misleading marketing materials for a new line of phones

Once a dominant force in the mobile phone market, it has been hit hard by competition, most notably Apple, Samsung and others.  But surely deception is the wrong road to take to regain market share.  What is most puzzling is why Nokia thought that they could get away with it.  Maybe 15 years ago they could, when neither bloggers nor the 24/7 social media conversations were around, but today? What were they thinking?  Did they cave in to shareholders demands? Was competition the driver? Was it a coincidence that Nokia’s introduction followed a move by Samsung in August to show off its own Windows 8 phone and that Apple’s upcoming introduction of its next iPhone is happening this week?

Apology accepted, but faking video and photos from a camera is not cool. Nokia got a well-deserved black eye for this one. The deception has dinged its credibility.

And besides Putin and Nokia there was another tidbit in the news that is apropos to deception. Apparently L’Oreal’s Lancôme USA subsidiary, markets their pricey anti-wrinkle cream product as “boosting the activity of genes and stimulating the production of youth proteins.”  Wait a minute, what’s wrong with that?  In a rare rebuke to a major cosmetics maker, the FDA says that if it affects the way the human body works, it would need to be classified as a drug, which would need FDA approval.

Shucks.

The dog days of summer coincide with dog day-type of news in August.  Just consider…

Ordinary Toilet Paper Gets Attention

Groupon Is Imploding

Showrooming Is The New Shopping

…And Piers Morgan Gets Stood Up

Ordinary Toilet Paper Gets Attention

Oh dear, the last vestige of privacy is about to be invaded. With a tag line advising, “Don’t rush. Look before you flush”, an entrepreneurial company Star Toilet Paper, recently started selling sheets of toilet paper to advertisers for couponing, messaging, etc. No wonder marketers are salivating about this new space, for it has a very captive audience indeed.  The message on the toilet paper cannot exactly be overlooked, but as to actual retention of the message, that is questionable, considering that there is no opportunity for a re-read once the paper is flushed.  According to the company, the business inspiration came from one of the likeliest of places – a founder sitting on a toilet at a University of Michigan library.

Yes, certainly captive, I would say.  In any case, it’s a “wait and see” as to its effectiveness. Fits right in there with the dog days…

Groupon Is Imploding

The anti-Groupon bandwagon is getting crowded. It is facing the wrath of Main Street.  Discounts are cutting into businesses to the point of breaking.  Fear of online customer’s complaints and bad reviews are pressing businesses to keep the Groupon deals going, whether profitable or not.  Surely retailers should consider the cost of customer acquisition before giving away the store and then getting into the fix they are in now. Payment doesn’t happen at the agreed-upon time. Disenchantment is rampant.  Transparency is missing.

Groupon members: please note that a “free, rather discounted, lunch” does not last in the long term.

Another dog-day piece of bad news…

Showrooming Is the New Shopping

Ever walked into a store, found the exact item that you wish to buy, fiddled around checking on your iPhone and then walked out only to buy it online for a better price? If so, you are part of the 45% of shoppers (according to new research from GroupM Next) that do so. But when offered a 5% online discount, this number jumps to 60% of shoppers and for a 20% discount, a whopping 87% disappear.  Aptly called “showrooming,” shopping at brick-and-mortar retailers will simply be divided into two separate steps:

1. Go look

2. Go purchase elsewhere

Oh well, it’s the dog days…

Piers Morgan Gets Stood Up

OOPS! This is really a NO-NO for any broadcast interview. Akin (the Congressman that coined the phrase “legitimate rape”) got some poor advice.  Better to be prepared with either a retracting statement or some substantive support of his coined phrase however absurd that might be than to be seen as “scared to face the music” in this case Piers. Hindsight, where was his PR team in scripting him and counseling Akin on what he can and cannot say before he said it?  But too late…the camera swooped down on the empty guest chair, prompting Piers to call him a “gutless little twerp.” The British are so good at finding just the right phrase…

The dog days of summer will soon be over.  Probably for the best…

It just so happened that the timing of the 2012 London Olympic Games collided with a socially disruptive era, one that has so changed from the 2008 Beijing games era, that different considerations for organizing the games should have been in place.  Sure, its publics probably range through four or five generations and all absorb their media from different platforms.  But surely the digital natives (born since 1994) as well as GenY and GenX , want their news in real time, as in NOW!  What percentage of them are Olympic enthusiasts? I would venture to guess the percentage is large enough to get noticed and addressed.

Considering that the London Games are the first in this mobile era, with people carrying around their tablets and smart phones that have access to Twitter, Facebook and other social media sites that instantly deliver news, the impatience of viewers with NBC’s tape delay coverage has been amplified. Tape-delays are pretty much evergreen for Olympics, but what worked four years ago, no longer does now.

The fact is that the Olympics is taking place across social media as much as it is in East London.

With an estimated 4.95 million shares, the 2012 Olympic opening ceremonies became the biggest social sharing activity on record for a sports or entertainment event.

So with their own hashtag on Twitter (hash)nbcfail, filled with a lot of crying, snarking and humor, complaints, commentary and yes, praises, these became amplified throughout the world.  But as with all else, it is the complaints that ring the loudest.  First they focused on NBC’s decision to tape delay the opening ceremony; then about the lack of bandwidth available at the games; more recently it is about airing the marquee swimming event won by American Ryan Lochte on tape delay in prime time.  One of those complainers, in fact, was CNN’s Piers Morgan: he tweeted his disdain Friday for NBC’s decision not to make the opening ceremony available live.

The hurried last minute decision taken by NBC to stream the events live online, did not mollify the uproar. Too late…  for it should have been considered in the plans before the opening.

It is clear that NBC, as a for-profit major corporation, considered the business end of this first. Can’t really fault them.  The price for exclusive coverage was beyond steep and prime time equals more viewers and that’s where the network makes the bulk of its advertising revenue.

But not being inclusive of the needs of the digital natives and the next two generations, also carries a price – the potential loss of loyalty from a couple of generations, not just for the network, but for its advertisers, as well.

No one can argue with the ratings: 40 million viewers for the opening ceremony, the most ever for one of those Olympic events.  Still, the good news is that NBC heard those critics and is doing something in response. As an example, the network advertised its live streaming of Sunday’s cycling race on the primetime broadcast.

It’s just that one cannot hold on to old media strategies in a new media world.

I wish that there were more 4^th of July’s… For on that day, every year, since 1776, and for one day only, we all become one – Americans that are proud to be part of a country that has always considered freedom of expression an inalienable right.  On this day, America’s birthday, it becomes emphatically un-American to have political differences dampen our national spirit.  Wish that it were to continue…

CEO of Starbucks, Howard Schultz, said it very eloquently, when he wrote in a full page letter in the New York Times, “America needs to win this election more than any party does.”  Indeed. Schultz invites Americans to put “citizenship before partisanship.” This is a call for Americans to express their voice in the political conversation.  How American is that?  Certainly carries more weight in celebrating America than apple pie and fireworks…

The Occupy Wall Street movement certainly gave a voice to the 99%ers. It has been a collective voice that became a disruptive force that galvanized attention.  The difference with Schultz’s proposition is that now it is a Corporate America entity that is leading the rallying call for Americans to have their collective say — 99%ers or otherwise.

Starbucks has put their action where their cry is, and started the tag #INDIVISIBLE to “collect and amplify” our voices. But Americans must grab this bait and care enough to participate.  And when we do, who would dare to argue with such a powerful collective voice?  It would demand more from our political leaders – more honesty and more of a transparent truth.

Remember the part in our constitution that states a government “by the people and for the people?” The constitution can state it, but we have to do it.  Apathy is downright un-American.

Imagine if other corporations followed Starbuck’s lead.  Occupy Wall Street may just have an unlikely competitor — Corporate America.

Last week I walked on Omaha beach, on the coast of Normandy, France and Memorial Day will never again be the same for me.

As I looked over a precipice at Omaha Beach, the specter of what took place on June 6, 1944 — 65 years ago this year, came alive.  An eerie silence filled the air and it seemed fitting.  For just a moment in time, in my mind’s eye, I felt that I was there, a witness of that day, on D-Day, and through it, I experienced the terror, heard the roar of the heavy bombardment of the Atlantic wall fortifications, felt the land tremble as the massive movement of the special armored vehicles moved forward, and watched in horror as a battle-hardened enemy persisted to fight for its life against the mightiest military force that had ever been gathered in history.

I could see the quiet approach of the paratroopers as they started their slow glide down to land, before their lives would change all together.  I became that very first soldier, Dawson who, upon stepping off the first amphibious carrier that landed on the sand dunes, was instantly struck down before reaching the beach.  I became the 1,465 young men who died within the first five minutes of the massive assault, never knowing the role they would play in history.

Earlier in the day, I had walked into a Nazi bunker, which jolted my very being. Its voluminous concrete and steel fortifications, proved indestructible, even for the powerful Allied Air Force.  It stands today, as it was then, the structure whole, only now it is surrounded by wild growing brush and weeds that threaten to camouflage it.  Nazi bunkers still dot a major portion of the Normandy coastline today, standing intact as symbols of a day that changed the world forever.

And, in the museum at Omaha Beach, there are countless newsreels of the invasion, voice recordings of General Eisenhower and Field Marshall Montgomery as they struggled with their decision, and personal photos of soldiers as they forged ahead into a seemingly insurmountable onslaught of enemy fire.

While the museum captures the history, the cemetery captures the overwhelming price that was paid.  As I walked through the stillness of the cemetery, a sudden ferocious wind swept over the tens of thousands of graves and I shuddered at the coldness of it all.

Memorial Day needs to be more than just family gatherings, picnics, weekend holidays, etc.

It needs to be just what it says – a day to remember and a day to be with those who had the valor and courage to give up their own future, so that others could have a future — in liberty.

What have we learnt from it all?

The simplicity of it is amazing, but the impact of it is astounding… In one day, Facebook’s new Organ Donor sign up option had 6,000 people enrolled, through 22 state registries, as opposed to less than 400 on any other normal day.

Ingenious, really…

The Facebook feature allows users to share their decision to be an organ donor on the website. More than 100,000 did sign up on the first day Facebook announced the option. The DMV has offered that option for years, but apparently the numbers had remained dismal, by comparison.

With this feature, Facebook has provided a bolt of hope to the more than 114,000 Americans who currently have their lives on hold while waiting for transplants of kidneys, livers, hearts and other organs. Although I am sure that Facebook never considered this program as falling under anything resembling a Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) program, it surely feels like it.

But not quite, and here’s why…

Most CSR programs are geared to applying a company’s core competencies to advance social change in a way that contributes to business results and gives a company a competitive advantage. Most such programs, offer public good but are, in essence, keyed up to mitigate the impact of a company’s activities on the environment, consumers, employees, communities, stakeholders and all other members of the public sphere. Most programs are either philanthropic in nature, as in donations for disaster relief or for the public good in general; support educational awareness campaigns, as in safety or health; or are sponsorships, as in cash or product giveaways, or employee volunteer time.

None of this applies to Facebook. Its Organ Donor program is on another CSR plane.

By providing a link on the site that connects organ donors to online donor registries, it has simply provided a “public good” by doing what it does best – connect – in this case, organ donors who would not have had a chance to come forth in such a public way or who had not thought of registering in the first place, with organizations that can offer hope to the 114,000 waiting…

But as with anything else, it always starts with one person’s mission and goal and in this case it was Facebook’s COO Sheryl Sandberg, who teamed up with an old friend Andrew Cameron, a transplant surgeon at Johns Hopkins Hospital, who alerted her to the dire need for organ donations. Sheryl, made a judgment call and decided to find a way “to fix it.”

Although only an available option in the U.S. and the United Kingdom, still, with its millions of users, Facebook has now turned into a powerful tool to save lives…

Bravo.

The problem with “pink slime” is that it is not all that pink and that it is not really all that slimy. Moreover, if you are an adult that is not a vegetarian or vegan, chances are that you have enjoyed your hamburgers for at least 30 years with the “whatchamecall it” in it.

But the bigger issue is how quickly the flood of unsubstantiated fear can spread. By now pink slime has become so engrained in how we speak about it, that most can probably not remember how the damned thing got started.

First coined by a federal microbiologist as “pink slime” a few years ago, (referring to the product known as lean, finely textured ground beef), the labeling hardly made a dent among consumers, that is, until Celebrity Chef Jamie Oliver, on the season premiere of his now-cancelled ‘Food Revolution’ TV program (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wshlnRWnf30), referred to “pink slime” on the broadcast platform and exacerbated the damage by stating that it contained E. coli and Salmonella that had been treated with ammonia.

Ick. Not a pretty picture. We now know that Oliver took gross liberties with the truth for emotional impact. It makes good TV entertainment and what’s more, remains memorable. But it also unleashed rampant consumer fear.

From that point on, ‘pink slime’ went viral and, amidst a chorus of condemnation, the “ick” factor kicked in and took over – with damaging results. Beef Products Inc. (BPI) became its victim. BPI saw demand for its ground beef products slashed and, as a consequence, slashed jobs.

Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad came to the Iowa-based company’s defense calling for a congressional investigation into how what he called “a smear campaign” against the meat product commonly called “pink slime” got started. He added. “If they get by with this, what other food products are they going to attack next?”

Edward Mills, associate professor of dairy and animal science at Penn State University, said it best, “People have become so separated from their food that the things that what we food scientists, and food processors, take as normal day-in, day-out activities, all of a sudden are shocking to people.”

Look, it cannot come as a shock even to the most sensitive foodies among us that most of our food, from cheese to packaged goods to meats, undergoes ‘processing’ and that preservative chemicals are part of it. Just look at how long American cheese stays fresh in the fridge in its wrappers, for example. That couldn’t just be a “normal kind of untreated” food. But it’s still in most household’s fridges.

It could simply have been that “what we don’t know doesn’t bother us.” Now we know and it continues to bother us…

The “ick” factor of pink slime hovers around in our consciousness. Even Wendy’s ran an ad across national newspapers saying, “We’ve never used pink slime and we never will.” What are they proud not to use, when “it” has been around for upwards of 30 years and tested as a safe product? Opportunistic, I would say…

The word itself is so slimy that it becomes repulsive and can impact judgment as to next action steps. The “ick” factor could catapult lack of trust in our food and Agricultural Department safety nets. It could also seep into our language and become a symbol for all that is not good as in a verb — “they pink slimed it” or an adverb –“the old car looks pink slimly.” You know what I mean…

Let’s keep some perspective on what could become everybody’s nightmarish reality — if left uncontrolled.

The newly minted “America Wants You” campaign is very reminiscent of WWII’s campaign “Uncle Sam Wants You,” — of some 70+ years ago. This time around it is a corporate call to arms – rather than a military one.

It is a call for a unified effort to rectify a catastrophic situation for the 800,000 veterans who are presently unemployed, 30 percent of them between the ages 18 to 34, a much higher per capita rate than the general population.  It is also a call for Corporate America to sit up and take note that this situation will be exacerbated, as the draw down from Afghanistan continues.

The situation is abysmal.  There is no question that our vets are owed and it’s not about “the other guy” doing something about it.  It’s not a partisan issue. It is an American issue, with everyone doing his/her part.

Happily there are several programs, both private and public, whether state or federal, that are taking shape to shake up Corporate America. But whereas some programs are moving forward quietly and diligently to tackle the issue, one in particular, the PR campaign “America Wants You,” is making more noise than others, largely because they have enlisted actor Chris O’Donnell of NCIS: Los Angeles and Batman fame.  In a video released this week, O’Donnell implores those who “sit in corner offices” to think about the 800,000 unemployed veterans first, when making hiring decisions.

A private sector initiative, this campaign is led by three retired private-sector executives from Los Angeles who have partnered with CareerBuilder and Southwestern Energy for the effort.  America Wants You, CEO John Pike, a veteran who is a former president of Paramount Network Television, says it is time for corporations to do their part.  The non-partisan organization apparently puts their money where their “mouth” is and took out a full-page advertisement in the Wall Street Journal to reach its target audience.

It will not be easy for Corporate America to step up to this challenge, one that is becoming more clamorous daily. For one thing, the transition from military to corporate life cannot possibly be an easy road for any vet.  For another, some of the youngest veterans simply have never been a part of the workforce, for many joined the military right out of high school with the hope that the military will offer training that might be needed in the workforce.  And for those who may still serve in the National Guard and Reserves, it might even be more difficult, for employers will be wary of hiring them, cautious that these could be deployed again at any given time.

Still, all these arguments fall short, when one considers the underlying issue, which needs to remain steadfast — we owe them.

Many programs advocating for veteran employment offer grants, private or public, as compensation for training or hiring a vet.  In some cases, a state even offers to pay the wages of an employed vet for six months as an incentive to the employer.  Federal programs offer tax credits or other benefits.

But it should not be about benefits.  It should be about “giving back” to those men and women who voluntarily put themselves in harm’s way to protect us.  It therefore becomes a moral obligation.

After all, it is the American way, and it needs to prevail.

Public Relations, although a century old as a discipline, and one in which businesses spend billions of dollars each year, has been, to date, a most misunderstood and often maligned profession, largely because the public at large is not clear on what public relations actually is, what practitioners actually do and who actually benefits from its services and how.

And that is why I delighted in the fact that the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) engendered a dialogue and debate about what is PR by launching a new campaign to re-define Public Relations last November.

In my blog dated November 22, titled “Re-Defining PR in the 21^st Century,” I commented on the timeliness of the re-definition campaign, considering that the last definition was written by PRSA back in 1982 and that, in the ensuing 30 years, a seismic evolution has taken place in the industry.  What was largely perceived at its start a century ago as a media relations-based discipline, has evolved to include responsibilities for a complex mix of online and offline stakeholders’ engagement, reputation management, corporate social responsibilities, thought leadership and digital marketing services, among a slew of other communication avenues.

Clearly the 30-year old definition that reads, “Public relations helps an organization and its publics adapt mutually to each other” sounds a bit lame today. To be fair, PRSA has made two attempts at defining public relations in the past 10 years.  But nothing happened past the willingness to try…

So the latest good news is that, after soliciting suggestions from the public, along with public relations professionals, academics and students on its website: prdefinition.prsa.org, using a crowd-sourcing model, followed by an evaluation of over 1,000 submissions along with online comments and blog posts, PRSA will announce a winner on February 27^th.  All get to vote for the three final definition choices when you Click here to cast your vote, now open from Feb. 13 through Feb. 26.

Whether aptly timed for Awards Season or the timeliness was just happenstance, PR professionals are just as eager to see what will be the final definitive definition as any awards program.

And the “nominations” are:

• Public relations is the management function of researching, communicating and collaborating with publics to build mutually beneficial relationships.
• Public relations is a strategic communication process that builds mutually beneficial relationships between organizations and their publics.
• Public relations is the strategic process of engagement between organizations and publics to achieve mutual understanding and realize goals.

What is missing here? Personally, I don’t get this “mutually beneficial relationship” line, which is found in two of the three finalists definition.  Nor do I get the third one with its “mutual understanding” part.  Nor am I too big a fan of leading a de facto definition with “management function of researching, etc.”  However, I do think that “strategic process of engagement between organizations and publics” has merit and is on target.

Look, defining an entire industry is no easy undertaking, especially when it’s one as wide-ranging and often imprecise as that of public relations.  But I would focus on the fact that we are counselors first and foremost — and that our profession is responsible for helping businesses navigate the many avenues of communication that can prove treacherous, protecting a company’s reputation, brands and assets from negative commentary or perceptions; for leading communication strategies that embrace new and expanded audiences; for evaluating economic factors that can impact a company’s business and executing plans to outthink the competition; and for staying ahead of the curve in this digital age.

Actually, it may take a paragraph…

Well, there goes the neighborhood. No, not actually the neighborhood, but maybe the brand identity, as we know it.

The actual news about Starbucks’s intention to serve alcohol – beer, wine and hard liquor, made the media rounds just a week ago, but it was out there well before that. The rumor mill of its launch had been trickling out in tidbits, ever since the chain first served alcohol in a “soft” trial run, back in October 2010 at a single Seattle store. It has been serving wine and beer in limited Oregon and Seattle stores for the last two months.

But now there are plans afoot that the Seattle-based company will sell beer and wine in as many as 25 locations by the end of this year, to include stores in Chicago, Atlanta and Southern California, among the selected locations.  It should prove good business.
The rationale behind this move is clear: U.S. Starbucks stores get 70% of business before 2 p.m. Clearly the company wants to maximize its real estate space and labor costs, after the early crowd thins out.

Apparently Starbucks executives have struggled for the last few years, trying to decide how to expand their brand. They finally found their answer: alcohol. According to Clarice Turner, senior vice president of U.S. operations, the company isn’t considering the concept for the whole chain. We’ll see… The good news is that at the stores that serve alcohol, there will also be fruit-and- cheese plate and focaccia with olive oil. Yumm…

Look, no one can fault them for wanting to add brand extensions. With 10,700 Starbucks cafes in the U.S. and about 6,200 internationally, building organically through brand extensions, makes sense. They are following suit with such other companies as the Dunkin’ Donuts chain and McDonald’s, that have introduced non-breakfast foods to attract people during slower times.

Although coffee and Starbucks have just about become synonymous, globally, I do have to admit that the real essence of the brand remains constant – the Starbucks experience – a lifestyle. Time will tell whether the rapid spread of the new concept will obliterate the brand as we know it –or morph into a new one..

The jury is still out…

It seems that the “formerly” meek actually “did inherit the earth” in 2011 – in part, of course.

It’s now old, but still current news that the “formerly” meek rose up and grabbed the political reins with varying successes in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and then spread to Yemen and certainly Syria, (which is in the thick of it right now), not to speak of the growling that has arisen in Russia.

But another kind of “formerly meek” moved right in here, at home, in the form of OWS and claimed to be the 99% group of America. It eventually made such a national din, that the movement escalated and spread virally. I guess it’s a numbers game by now. 99% is really overwhelming.

Getting consensus from a large cross section of the 99% does have some surprising problems. While the ever-escalating mainstream and online media interest and coverage was enthusiastically welcomed by the movement, the emerging Occupy Wall Street PR is not, according to the very person who played a role in igniting the initial protests, Adbusters Editor-in-Chief Kalle Lasn, who says that “the OWS doesn’t want PR — the term or concept is tarnishing its brand.”

Really? What brand? What message? There are so many of them, 99% being only one core economic message that has resonated as a “headline“ but is in need of more substantiation. It would seem a natural evolution for the next step of OWS to have a clear-cut purpose of “what happens next” or “where does it go from here” or “what does the end game look like?”

Two sites have emerged, initiated and produced by PR and advertising specialists; 1. a well-meaning attempt by Workhouse PR to editorialize the movement and compile OWS-related coverage and content (art, music, film, graphic design) on a specially created site, OWSPR.com, and 2. Occupy.com designed by David Sauvage, a freelance commercial director who worked on the crowdsourced TV ad for OWS, which is coming soon.

Lasn’s point of view that these sites have “lost a little of the purity of the movement and that this is “not what this movement is about” and “that the word PR demeans what human beings really do” — sounds altruistic, ivory tower-like academic and is totally detrimental to the movement’s root beginnings. A movement for the sake of itself is going to stay just – a movement.

The PR discipline is the best medium to amplify and defend the 99% message refrain and move it toward fulfilling its purpose. Keeping people engaged is a good thing and the sites are clearly meant as extensions of the protest. But the 99% have to want change to happen. Otherwise why bother?

Let 2012 be the year, when the profound changes initiated in 2011, solidify.

Happy New Year and Peace To All!

At a recent dinner party, the conversation at our table of eight, centered politely on the introductory question — “what do you do” — and went slowly around the table to each guest. When it was my turn and told that I am in public relations and marketing, my dinner partner to the left, a dentist, probed further as to what that really means and exactly what do I really do. By the time dessert came around, I had given him a detailed rundown of all the tools and strategies the we, PR professionals, employ to impact marketplace perceptions and changed behaviors. It didn’t make a dent. He was still at it when dessert came around and, in total defeat and exasperation, I made a lame excuse and left the table.

That scene is familiar enough to many of my colleagues, for it has repeated itself far more than not, over decades. It’s not that we cannot define our profession clearly enough, (although maybe, that too) but rather that a large swath of the public-at-large does not have a clue about what we do past that despised buzz word description — “spin doctors.” Still, we have to recognize that this has resonated with the public — and therefore stuck.

It is way overdue to “unstick it,” and the industry’s foremost association, the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) is leading this charge with its new campaign aptly named, Public Relations Defined. The effort is seeking to be inclusive and will solicit suggestions from the public along with public relations professionals, academics and students on its website: prdefinition.prsa.org, using a crowd-sourcing model.

The re-definition is timely enough considering that the last “official” definition of our industry was back in 1982, when PRSA defined it as “Public relations helps an organization and its publics adapt mutually to each other.” A bit gray, I think, but just consider, almost 30 years ago…

Clearly, individually and collectively, PR professionals have recognized the profound changes in the dynamics of communication in the 21st Century — worlds away from communication strategies employed in the 20th Century — and have re-defined it themselves, using new descriptors for new tactics, such as buzz marketing, social media, new media,digital marketing, earned media, etc.

Stuart Elliot said it best in his NY Times column, when commenting on PRSA’s new effort to re-define Public Relations, “the Internet and social media like blogs, Facebook and Twitter have transformed the relationship between the members of the public and those communicating with them. A process that for decades went one way — from the top down, usually as a monologue — now goes two ways, and is typically a conversation.”

PR professionals understand this, of course. In a world where consumers get engaged and enraged with corporate blunders (BP, prime example) sometimes even before their PR chiefs can unfurl their PR crisis plan, the rules of the game have changed, and therefore calls for a new definition.

And then again, it may not be about a definition at all.

Taken literally, PR is, and has always been, a service defined as relating to the public, whether for a corporation, an organization, an association, a charity or a government entity. The dynamic change is that now the public can relate back…

Hopefully, the outcome of the inclusive nature of the PRSA’s effort will produce a strong and resonant definition, one that will put an end to the misguided “spin” perception of PR.

Pianist Daniel Pollack, in rehearsal prior to concert

Not in the habit of turning our blog into something of a travelogue I, however, could not resist to comment on the country I am presently in — Kazakhstan, a country of both storied and anecdotal history.

Other than business news about oil, minerals and such, not much news about this country reaches outside Central Asian cultures, making our trip to this remote land — just a single mountain range away from Northern China and on the eastern side of the Himalayas, and with the steppes of Tibet just south of its borders — an exhaustive and fascinating adventure. This country even boasts the largest portion of the old historic (and romanticized by in movies) Silk Road, upon whose treacherous mountain paths fearless European traders bravely traveled, risking their lives to reap new riches from the Far East. Today’s Kazakhstan’s 15 million inhabitants, 60% Kazakhs, 30% Russians and 10% assorted ethnic cultures that include, in large part, Koreans, live side-by-side in a country the size of all of Western Europe or of the whole eastern half of the US.

But, even though little-known, that’s the stuff relegated to geography and history experts…

I, on the other hand, was fascinated by something else… Native Kazakhs, for the most part, don’t speak nor understand their native tongue, a Turkic-based language, Kazakh, but rather speak Russian, based on the Soviet rule of 70+ years. The Kazakh language is mostly relegated to the hinterlands since these regions were of little interest to the Soviets. For now, not much attempt is made to reinstate that language. On the other hand, the Russians attempt to learn Kazakh as a hedge for their future, based on their present minority status. And the Koreans here, have never spoken Korean, do not speak nor attempt to speak Kazakh, and view Russian as their native tongue.

Amid all this babble, the broadcast media reports in both languages, on different stations, of course, for different peoples, who are not seen as different at all in this country, but all as just Kazakhs.

Pollack trying out an old traditional instrument

I am here accompanying my concert pianist husband, Daniel Pollack, who was invited to perform the opening concert of a newly established American New Music Center in the former capital, Almaty, a city of 1.5 million. By the reaction of the public to an American pianist, I found yet another reason why that old “cliche” about music being a universal language holds true. It’s a language without words, but a language just the same. It’s a connectivity that embraces people on an emotional level, and through it, diffuses differences.

The Kazakhs held their own concert as part of the opening of the 5th Almaty International Piano Competition, (held every three years), which was a celebratory performance by proud-full youths performing on old instruments developed by their nomad ancestors, from the days of Gengis Khan and his vast Mongol Empire (that overran this vast area by 1300). These instruments have little to do with any traditional western instruments for their sounds replicate nature’s sounds, including — yes, galloping horses. The legend goes that the sounds of these instruments were meant to relate tales of the nomads’ everyday lives as they traveled the steppes of Central Asia. The energy of the youths’ ensemble of 50-60 performers, their relentless rhythmic force and drive, ended the concert in a roar.

The Kazakhs, who are as colorful as their history, are finding a way to retain the old, while adapting to the new. How great is that?

A great among the “Greatest Generation,” as Tom Brokaw coined the WW II generation, former CBS’ “60 Minutes,” Andy Rooney will be missed. His death, although expected at 92 and in poor health, has the sense that something important has passed, beyond the person. The WSJ capsuled it best saying, “Andy Rooney was America’s bemused uncle, spouting homespun wisdom weekly at the end of “60 Minutes,” a soupcon of topical relief after the news magazine’s harder-hitting segments.”

Often described as curmudgeonly, cantankerous, gruff, grouchy, irascible, he became, none-the less, a homespun philosopher that became America’s “everyman.” He touched a chord in America’s heart, across three-plus decades.

You could attribute this to the fact that Rooney entered television in its “heyday” when America was glued to the box, hungry for entertainment following the dark years of World War II. He started out as a writer for the likes of Arthur Godfrey, Victor Borge, Herb Shriner, Sam Levenson and Garry Moore – legends in TV history that sadly no longer resonant with today’s generation. Rooney’s early “everyman” essays made their debut in 1962, when then CBS News correspondent Harry Reasoner, first narrated a series of his essays.

But that’s the stuff that biographies are made up of… There’s something deeper here…

With his death, there is a passing of a certain style, one that has the courage to speak his mind, spoof at life, laugh at the way things are, accept that it is OK to be Scrooge-like, and take joy in offering crabby, but realistic, perspectives with no regard as to how it “rings” with the public. Take these examples: Rooney once proposed National Wastebasket Day in honor of its inventor, spoke about the incomprehensibility of road maps, wash-and-wear shirts “that you can wash but not wear,” the uselessness of keys and locks, and of the outsize cereal boxes that contained very little cereal. He observed that “there are more beauty parlors than there are beauties” and that “if dogs could talk, it would take a lot of the fun out of owning one.”

This “stuff” is usually relegated to comedians who take pleasure in shock value entertainment. But Rooney was no entertainer. He was on “60 Minutes” for goodness sake, arguably the most respected TV news program of all time. He simply had a connection with viewers, giving them another perspective on mundane everyday things. And his public nodded as he spoke — and sensed that he spoke to them –individually.

Even though his last “essay” was as recent as October 2, his style will most likely not happen again. It can’t, in a divided America with too many varying heartbeats, beating to different drummers, who will no longer “nod” in unison.