Separated at Birth

by Roger Pynn

There’s a fascinating generational discussion going on in our office about the line between personal and professional as it relates to social media. It boils down to whether you can have a private life in these show-all, see-all digital environments.

There’s consensus across the generations that people need to use their heads when tweeting, posting to Facebook and other communities … and there are boundless examples of people – mostly young – who don’t seem to get that. Irreverent language is everywhere and personal rants that put the speaker at odds with people they have to do business with seem commonplace.

One of our team tweets for business but jealously protects her space on Facebook as a personal digital neighborhood. “Friends” have to be real friends and while she says there’s nothing she posts to Facebook she wouldn’t want to share … she simply doesn’t want to share her personal life in the business neighborhood.

I, on the other hand, think my gray hair has taught me there’s no difference. I can’t escape the business world I live in – nor do I want to – and whether it is online or at the supermarket, what I say is going to be heard and I have to temper it or prepare for deal with the reactions.

We are not born into our business lives, nor were we separated from them at the birth of social media.

What you say is what you get.

Oh, to Be Young Again

by Dan Ward

Yesterday, my father received a letter that illustrates the importance of research in any direct marketing effort. 

The fine people at People to People, an educational exploration program founded by President Dwight Eisenhower, sent him this message:

“We are pleased to offer your son [me] a one-time-only opportunity to travel and study in England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales in the summer of 2010.  Join 5^th and 6^th grade students from the Orlando area …”

I would love to join the trip, but alas, I’m 38 years old and left elementary school when former People to People Honorary Chairman Ronald Reagan was in his first term in the Oval Office.

Unless my father has some serious ‘splainin’ to do with his wife, my guess is the direct mail list had at least one major flaw.

Now, I don’t mean to pick on People to People.  It is a fine organization with a more than 50-year-history as a leading educational travel provider. 

I chose to share this letter because 1) it’s funny; and 2) it’s a good lesson for those of us in the marketing communications field … do your research, know your audience, double check your work and choose reliable vendors.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go pack.  I’ve heard Wales can be lovely in summer.

The End of Free

by Roger Pynn

Has The Associated Press fired a shot across the bow of the SS Free? AP is everyone’s news pool … there when the 1400 papers that own it can’t be, covering everything from a cat down a drain in Oshkosh to wars, floods, inaugurations and state funerals.

Now The New York Times reports that AP Pres. Tom Curley says enough is enough … putting Google, Yahoo and all the other news aggregators out there on notice that they are going to put a stop to the unpaid re-use of its content.

The Times reported Curley as saying “If someone can build multibillion-dollar businesses out of keywords, we can build multihundred-million businesses out of headlines, and we’re going to do that.” The Times said Curley said the goal was not to have less use of the news articles, but to be paid for any use.

You have to wonder whether the goal of the AP (itself a nonprofit organization) goes beyond the aggregators and could severely limit blog references and other not-for-profit use of its material.

If AP is successful with its software approach to protecting its members valuable content, does it signal the dawn of an Internet age in which someone has to pay for everything … which no doubt means we all will?

A Handwritten Note

by Kim Taylor

We talk every day about new ways to incorporate social media into client strategies. So much is online … blogs, Twitter, Facebook, it’s easy to forget communication does exist off the Web … until yesterday.

Buried in the clutter of my mail was this piece:

Woof! Orlando

No, your eyes aren’t failing you.  That’s a handwritten postcard. 

I’ve never given much thought to bringing my dog to a chichi salon, but somehow I feel this meticulous handwriting-mixed-with-red-crayon shouldn’t be in vain.

Kokomo?

by Roger Pynn

I usually think that marketing types are a bit smarter than the average bear because it seems so many of the solutions they bring to their clients are simply common sense. Seth Godin’s Island Marketing post proves the point.

But it makes me wonder what evil lurks in the hearts of those who have thought for so long that they could throw customers away like they used to toss soda cans until it became environmentally insensitive and unfashionable.

Just as the Beach Boys’ fabled Kokomo never existed, neither has that little island where marketers ripped off the next naive native to come around the corner. The coconut telegraph has always worked. Today we call it the Internet. People talk, so use your head and do right by them so what they say makes you like what you see in the mirror.

Being Heard

by Roger Pynn

A frustrating conversation with my wife this morning led me to write this post.

She’s concerned about the direction of the Congress as it debates trying to restructure what amounts to about 15% of our national economy (also known as health care reform) and asked in frustration “but what can we do?”

“Try e-mailing your Congressman and Senator” I replied, and heard the immediate sigh that said “and how do I go about that?”

Thank God for the digital age.  Here, dear friends are two simple links that should be stored on every computer in the country: 

• 
  https://writerep.house.gov/writerep/welcome.shtml
  … where you’ll be able to write each member of the House of Representatives; and,
• 
  http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm
  … where you can attach yourself to all 100 members of the Senate.

It matters not which side of the debate you are on … this time or any time … but you are paying little staff munchkins on Capitol Hill who count each “for” and “against” e-mail they receive so pols driven by polls can decide what they really believe.

Join the debate.

Where are We?

by Roger Pynn

If you’ve ever gotten confused trying to remember which of your social network was the place you first saw or “heard” something, a white paper by Forrester’s Jeremiah Owyang predicts they will eventually be much more like one single network … that networks will follow users more than users will follow them.

Think of it like the ability to port your personal phone number from one wireless carrier to the other. You’ll have a single identity for which you are known in numerous online communities and you’ll participate in even more conversations. To those who sometimes feel overwhelmed by all this networking, hang on for the ride.

And to those who are already beginning to worry about the commercialization of these communities, hang on even tighter.

As Randall Beard wrote on MediaPost:

“future social web will make ‘portable’ the opinions, insights and knowledge of friends — which all research shows is much more trusted than any other information source–as consumers travel the Web and interact with brands, products and services.”

Although Beard also suggests that Owyang’s view of the future will include the ability to expose or hide personal information as you travel from network to network, there’s little doubt that consumer relationship management executives will demand greater technological support for tracking and monitoring consumer habits.

Where you go and what you say have never been so open to interpretation. And as if this weren’t enough, check out AT&T’s “familymap” product designed to “let you know where your kids are at any time.” For $9.99 a month you can locate up to two phones in your family plan with a gps tracking system.

Can’t you just see it now? The wife goes shopping and her husband calls to say “that store’s too darned expensive. Move on to something more moderate.” To which she will reply, “as soon as you leave that sports bar I’ll be glad to shop somewhere else.”

Solitary Confinement

by Dan Ward

Sunday morning rolled around, and my wife and I began preparations for a family trip to the beach. But 59-year-old Tom Watson was still in the lead going in to the final 18 at The Open Championship. What’s a sports fanatic with family obligations to do?

Simple, I thought. Set the DVR and worry about ol’ Tom later.

But then I realized times have changed from the days when I could tape a ball game and avoid learning the score in advance by simply warning my friends not to call. This time, I needed a plan.

- Avoid any news programming on the car radio … check.
- Keep eyes squarely on the road to avoid the interstate billboards broadcasting the latest news … check.
- Make sure the TV is set for the remainder of the day to The Food Network, apparently the last network left that doesn’t provide a news “crawl” … check.
- Don’t answer the phone, even if it’s my mother … check.
- Don’t log on to Facebook, where a “yay, Tom” or “sorry, Tom” message might be squeezed between the Mafia Wars posts … check.
- Keep the twittering with the birds, where it belongs … check.

My plan worked, and I watched Tom get destroyed by the vengeful golf gods around 11 p.m. But it certainly wasn’t easy.

We’ve chosen to inundate ourselves with information; always searching for the quickest way to know what everyone in our lives (or in the news) is doing right this very instant. But sometimes I think this quest for immediate knowledge has made tools like the DVR irrelevant. The DVR was supposed to let me watch my favorite programs, sporting events or the news at a time of my choosing, but the only way to actually make that happen is to separate myself completely from every form of communication.

Sometimes, any information is simply too much.

PR & The Tooth Fairy

by Roger Pynn

Overheard a fellow practitioner last night talking about a “pr solution” to a corporate crisis he’s anticipating. I told him to put a tooth under his pillow. He didn’t get it.

There’s no such thing as a public relations solution. Only management action will resolve a crisis.

Unfortunately, too many people in our business reinforce the Nixonian concept that you can “pr people.” It didn’t work for the Watergate scandal and it won’t work for a corporate crisis. Public relations isn’t a verb. In fact, public relations is an aging misnomer for the practice of strategic management communications counsel. It isn’t about what we say for our companies or clients. It is about what we urge and convince them to do.

Twitter: It’s Not about Relationships Anymore?

by Kim Taylor

When I joined Twitter more than a year ago, I was skeptical. Why would I want to tell everyone “What I was doing,” or better yet, why would I care what they were doing?

After slowly getting the hang of it, I realized it was a great way to build relationships … relationships with people you may not have had access to before. Even if those “relationships” came in the form of 140-character tweets, you still felt like you had some connection.

It’s not about numbers for me, I have a mere 636 followers—a small number relative to the millions some celebrities have acquired. Even smaller is the number of folks I follow. But within those 500+ people is a select group of twitterers whose every tweet I look forward to.

What I’m not looking forward to is for those people – who I’ve come to respect – to begin making money off of their following (me), with a new form of ‘sponsored tweeting’ by local Internet Marketing firm, IZEA.

Don’t get me wrong, I think IZEA’s paid blogging format has created tremendous opportunity for bloggers and companies alike. So, if it works for traditional blogs, why can’t it work for microblogs? Because I don’t read blogs to build relationships … that’s what Twitter’s for.

Follow me @klt_CandP, where my tweets won’t be sponsored by anyone but me.