Apple's Tech Tease

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Perhaps New York Times tech editor Damon Darlin's post on the Gadgetwise blog also deserved inclusion on the Times's MediaDecoder blog. It reported on the cryptic email his office and other tech journos received today from Apple's PR machine.

Keeping with the company's fabled adherence to communications secrecy, the note simply announced that Apple planned an "event" in San Francisco on September 9th. It featured the iconic iPod image of a dancer, white headphones and all, with a piece of the lyric "It's only rock 'n roll, but we like it."

That's all it took to catalyze massive speculation on what the world's most esteemed consumer electronics brand was up to. (Ahhh. If only it were this easy for most of our clients!)

Personally, I think the announcement has something to do with The Beatles' discography finally fining its way onto iTunes, but perhaps we'll see a new product or two. Then there's the prospect of Steve Jobs appearing on stage where he's been so sorely missed. What about Steve Jobs, Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr in tandem? Apple just has so many "mediable" assets with which to play.

I wonder how the company's PR department would fare working the Sanyo business?

Here are just a small handful of links to the speculation about 9/9/09 (versus 9/9/08) in SF:

• TechSpot - "Apple Confirm iPod-Related Event for September 9"
• MacDailyNews - "Apple to hold special media event on September 9: ‘It’s only rock and roll, but we like it’"
• Barron's Tech Trade Daily - "Apple Makes It Official: Music-Related Event September 9"
• ars technica - "Apple confirms September 9, 2009 "rock and roll" event"
• AppleInsider - "Apple confirms annual iPod event for September 9"
• CNET News "It's official: Apple event set for 09/09/09"
• Computerworld - "Expectations and the Apple Event"
• TUAW - Apple Confirms Sept. 9 Event
• ZDNet - "Apple confirms Sept. 9, 2009 'rock and roll' iPod event; new shuffle desperately needed"
  

Image above courtesy of CrunchGear

Words or Deeds?

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“To put it simply, we need to worry a lot less about how to communicate our actions and much more about what our actions communicate.”

This assessment of America's efforts to counter extremist Islamist ideology comes from Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (pictured above). He astutely notes that deeds, not words, have the greater capacity to sway hearts and minds:

"I would argue that most strategic communication problems are not communication problems at all,” he wrote. “They are policy and execution problems. Each time we fail to live up to our values or don’t follow up on a promise, we look more and more like the arrogant Americans the enemy claims we are."

Yet, as we examine the health care reform debate in this country, the right wing insurgency's use of inflammatory language has actually succeeded in influencing the court of public opinion.

The other evening, Bill Maher took the Democrats to task for their use of less-than-inspiring lexicon to advance this most vital piece of legislation. He derided them for their misguided expectations that milquetoast phrases like "single payer" or "public option" will serve as a rallying cry. They pale however in comparison to "death panels," "socialism" and "Nazism," which we all acknowledge have blunted the prospects of real healthcare reform in 2009.


Adm. Mullen asserts that language alone rings hallow. What's needed are tangible actions to drive the discourse. In the case of Iraq and Afghanistan, I imagine the documentation and dissemination of images of workers constructing new schools, roads, housing and hospitals might suffice for starters (as opposed to distributing leaflets, by-liners and fabricated media placements.) Restoring these nations' cultural heritages is another area ripe for exploration.

Domestically, the Republicans and those anti-American Blue Dogs advanced their POVs on healthcare by using both language and their own faux brand of action. Sadly, the combo of Luntz and LaRouche-inspired language with made-for-TV theater has made for a most effective and combustible communications strategy.

PR, Integrity and Yelp

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I just installed the mobile app of Yelp on my new Blackberry Tour. What's great about Yelp is the quantity of its crowd-sourced reviews, which, theoretically, allows for much greater accuracy about the subjects being scrutinizing. There's nothing like discovering a fab local restaurant based on the endorsement of hundreds of peers.

But what if those recommendations actually emanated from the restaurant itself, or by extension, the PR firm repping it? We've all heard stories of companies gaming Amazon's product reviews. And who can forget the once again beleaguered CEO of Whole Foods' pseudonymous attempts to pump his company's stock on Yahoo message boards. What a slime.

And then there are companies that, as a matter of course, mine the social media space to identify the biggest "influencers" in their product or service category, for the purposes of enlisting them to evangelize on behalf of the companies' products or services. Isn't the FTC looking into this?

My friend Max Kalehoff, one of the more insightful new/social media executives, and a proud Dad to boot, just joined SONY's DigiDads Project in which the company will allow him to tool with its toys, not unlike the way countless companies have long courted the more established Mommy bloggers. I'm counting on Max to tell it like it really is, but will the other DigiDads have the same ethical underpinnings?

Over the weekend, one of the more digitally plugged-in PR firms got caught gaming certain application reviews in the iPhone Store. Outed in a MobileCrunch piece titled "Cheating the App Store: PR firm has interns post positive reviews," Reverb Communications has a crisis of confidence on its hands. TechCrunch's mobile sister wrote:

"Yeah, that 5-star iTunes app review you saw for the once top-5 paid app Enigmo? It might not be written by a real user, but rather by Pangea Software’s PR firm. Reverb isn’t the first to try and game the user review process, but they are definitely one of the most blatant cases."

After my post from Thursday, in which I linked to a Politico piece on one Beltway PR firm's astroturfing efforts to derail healthcare reform, I received a nice note from PRSA's Joe DeRupo who reiterated how...

"...this practice violates principles set out in the PRSA Code of Ethics..."

Maybe we should all have on our desktops this new widget to expose astroturfing? (See above image.)

Here's Brian Solis's take.

Just Another Astroturfing Campaign

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While on family holiday this past week, escaping just ahead of an expected brush with Bob, I took notice of the latest revelation about Beltway-based Bonner & Associates. Actually, my buddy Geoff Livingston tipped me off via a tweet that linked to a Grist.org piece outing the "grassroots" specialist firm.

Before I go there, I'm reminded of a panel on which I sat some years back. It was pegged to the publication of the book PR! A Social History of Spin, which alone should have forewarned me against serving as the panel's sole PR practitioner. Seated next to me was the long-time chief of the Consumers Union, publisher of the venerable Consumer Reports.

Before the panel got underway, I approached the CU chief to introduce myself. As soon as I mentioned the name of my agency, she gave me a glinty look and made some snide comment. (I can't recall whether her hand recoiled when I extended mine.)

It seems that several years earlier, a DC operative for my firm disingenuously contacted Consumer Reports posing as a member of a "consumer organization" to gather info on a particular issue. The ruse was discovered at the magazine and our firm's fate was sealed.

As I contemplate the subterfuge with which Bonner & Associates is allegedly charged, i.e., posing as ethnic groups in districts of on-the-fence Congressmen to pressure them to withhold support for Pres. Obama's health care plan, I reluctantly acknowledge that this brand of issues advocacy is quite widespread in our industry. The Sierra Club uncovered this one and wrote U.S. AG Eric Holder:

“[O]ne of the most important ‘honest services’ provided by a representatives to his constituent is the service of considering the constituents’ true opinions and viewpoints when contemplating how to vote on a bill before Congress. This service cannot be rendered when the representative has been provided falsified or erroneous representations of those opinions or viewpoints.”

There are countless PR, PA and grassroots "constituency-building" boutiques in the Beltway (and elsewhere) that mobilize or invent "like-minded" or cleverly named groups to advocate for or against any number of issues. Grist writes:

"Bonner sells itself as a manager and builder of grassroots campaigns, saying it can “find and educate leaders from local organizations who share a legitimate stake in the issues of our clients.” In political circles, such firms are described as engaging in “astroturfing”—based on the view that the grassroots political communications they deliver for clients do not represent actual public opinion."

Rarely are the corporate interests that bankroll these campaigns revealed in the ruse. A former Bonner employee even admitted as much.

It's not that a private enterprise doesn't have the right to have its voice heard, nor should it be prevented from mobilizing groups that share its POV. It's doing so clandestinely without publicly revealing the financial engine fueling the effort that makes the practice so reprehensible.

Sure, the PR biz has taken its share of potshots from frustrated journalists who have an aversion to superfluous emails filling their inboxes. Yet, the practice of deception is a far greater danger to the legitimacy and vitality of the profession.

And don't think the PA operations of the large, global agencies are immune to this insidious brand of astroturfing. Just yesterday The Times ran a piece about an anti-climate change initiative cloaked behind not one, but two screens: the cleverly named Energy Citizens, and its backer the American Petroleum Institute.

Would the average citizen guess that ExxonMobil and the other big oil producers are the real forces behind the initiative? Energy Citizens certainly won't tell them.

Update (8/21): Ben Smith of Politico has more here.


Photo: Karen Warren/Houston Chronicle, via Associated Press

The Bad Pitch Wiki

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As the long-time, but recently retired editor of the Gawker-owned A-list blog Lifehacker, Gina Trapani has moved effortlessly in tech and social media's rarefied circles. In her editorial gatekeeper role, she also received more than a fair share of inane or misguided story pitches from lazy or vendor-reliant PR people.

Now that she's out of her LifeHacker role, but still with a personal platform to exude influence, Ms. Trapani (pictured) decided to get back at those purveyors of PR spam by publishing a wiki listing the domain names of the PR firms that she believes have done her wrong over the years.

Unlike her fellow scribe Chris Anderson of Wired and Long Tail and Free fame, who set the industry on fire by publishing his own list of PR miscreants, Ms. Trapani seeks to punish the employers of those wayward pitchers by publishing the firms' domains.

What's surprising to me is that some of the firms listed are considered some of the more forward-thinking and new media-sensitive ones in existence. (I'll refrain from naming them in this space.) And I'll leave the reporting on their transgressions up to the Bad Pitch boys.

Now I suppose the firms bear ultimate responsibility for those who de-elevate their and their clients' reputations in the eyes of journalists, but our industry - not unlike others, including the media business -- has its bad eggs. Should the whole firm be punished for the errors of a few? I think not. After all, the wiki could very easily end up listing every PR agency out there.

The bigger issue, as I stated in a recent post, often lies with the outside PR services that automate the process of media engagement -- to a fault. When a PR person can blast e-mail a pitch to scores of journalists at a time, based solely on title, invariably the recipients will get tee'd off by the nonsense that annoyingly fills their email boxes.

This perennial problem is the primary reason why I pushed to co-develop an application whereby journalists would be identified by their past coverage, not their titles, and users would only be able to send one pitch-at-a-time. Also, instead of a wiki, MatchPoint now gives the recipient a mechanism to rate the relevance and quality of the pitch. Consistently low-rated PR people will be banned from the system.

PR Horizons

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I can't tell whether this is the best of times or the worst of times for the PR industry. As the country supposedly inches its way out of recession, the unemployment figures across the board remain bleak.

Should we celebrate a slowing in the number of monthly jobless claims when so many of our colleagues are on the street or edgy?

Article after article proclaim that PR will prevail in the fight to gain hegemony over the social media marketing revolution. Yet, I had lunch with a couple of old colleagues this week who said their publicity-only shop is alive and well without any social media offering.

"We never come across clients who are interested in anything other than mainstream media coverage," one dismissively told me after hearing my tutorial on the PR value of Twitter.

It's clear that many industries still value (and pay handsomely) for ink and airtime -- perhaps above all else. They continue to use it as a performance measure even as its influence wanes in the face of audience degradation, media segmentation and consumers' migration to digital channels, mobile especially.

Many continue to pay lip service to other modes for building a positive branded presence in places where these new media consumers increasingly acquire and share information.

Now what if rank and file PR peeps get mired in a time warp and, as a result, find themselves in need of a career change. Perhaps they should consider one of the media growth industries like cable news commentary? Based on the inglorious reception one PR pro received when he subbed for MSNBC's Keith Olbermann, I think not. The Times's Frank Rich wrote:

"MSNBC assured its viewers that there were no conflicts of interest, but we must take that on faith, since we still don’t know which clients Wolffe represents as a senior strategist for his firm, Public Strategies, whose chief executive is the former Bush White House spin artist, Dan Bartlett."

How about a career in politics? After all, the government doesn't seem at risk of going out of business anytime soon. Consider the headlines generated from some PR types' British Parliamentary aspirations, think again. From PR Watch:

"British Spinners Queuing Up for Parliament."

Want to own a newspaper? When Philly PR man Brian Tierney bought the city's vaunted daily, he took a fair share of abuse. (Curiously, I didn't see ad man Jack Connors face the same derision when his name surfaced last week as one of the Boston Globe's suitors.)

Is the PR industry in such a sad reputational state that practitioners must carry its taint when pursuing new career options? The answer is probably not. I mean the CEO of the AARP started in PR, as did the co-president of HBO.

This PR pro believes that our industry's glass is half full, not half empty, and opportunities abound. To drink from it, however, practitioners must broaden their digital acumen by sharpening the new tools of the trade. This is where the jobs will be found. But it won't be easy. There's good money still to be had doing it the old-fashioned way.

Wrong Number

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A day doesn't go by without the financial services or pharmaceutical industry taking it on the chin. Both were summarily called to the carpet this week for their profligate behavior -- Wall Street for bonuses and big pharma re: drug cost givebacks.

Yet relative scant attention is given to the one industry whose transgressions may even more pervasively hit home for the American consumer. I'm talking of course about cell phone carriers. Could it be that their lobbyists in DC are more effective in thwarting any real examination of their anti-consumer behavior?

Several weeks ago, my favorite gadget guy David Pogue ranted on this anti-consumer theme in such a way that any user of these services, e.g., you and me, had to feel total outrage. Mr. Pogue wondered why the politicos were focusing on the Google-iPhone flap and not on the gouging of Americans with mobile fees that simply don't make sense. Pogue penned:

"Frankly, there are many other, much more whopping things that are broken, unfair and anticompetitive in the American cellphone industry."

He then proceeds to list them. He followed up by glomming on to one especially irksome practice by the mobile carriers.

"Over the past week, in The New York Times and on my blog, I’ve been ranting about one particularly blatant money-grab by American cellphone carriers: the mandatory 15-second voicemail instructions."

He encouraged his readers to stick their heads out the window and shout they're not going to take it anymore. His clever "Take Back the Beep" campaign actually incited the cell phone crowd to contact their greedy carriers, and it provided individual company email links for them to do so. His campaign call was clear:

"These messages are outrageous for two reasons. First, they waste your time. Good heavens: it’s 2009. WE KNOW WHAT TO DO AT THE BEEP.

Do we really need to be told to hang up when we’re finished!? Would anyone, ever, want to “send a numeric page?” Who still carries a pager, for heaven’s sake? Or what about “leave a callback number?” We can SEE the callback number right on our phones!

Second, we’re PAYING for these messages. These little 15-second waits add up–bigtime. If Verizon’s 70 million customers leave or check messages twice a weekday, Verizon rakes in about $620 million a year. That’s your money.

Putting David Pogue's noble campaign aside, the inspiration for this post was how one MAJOR cell phone service provider -- the one that's especially popular between DC and Boston -- reacted to his first rant. Yes, we're talking Verizon Wireless (VZW), and for the life of me, I couldn't figure out what their PR department was thinking.

Rather than engage Mr. Pogue directly with a point-by-point refutation, some numbnut inexplicably allowed (advised?) VZW CEO Lowell McAdam to send a bladdy-blah letter to...the publisher of The New York Times! Huh?

Could this have been the company's first course of action to set the record straight? To make matters worse, the letter somehow skirted Mr. Pogue's specific criticisms. It did manage to rattle off some positive industry facts, but again, none that directly addressed the rant. Here's the opening:

"Dear Mr. Sulzberger:

The wireless sector of the high-tech industry shines as one of the few bright spots in the nation’s economy. Competition has driven massive investment, continueous innovation by wireless companies and our many corporate and entrepreneurial partners, and lower consumers prices.

Despite this amazing American success story, a few vocal critics, including your paper, have leveled highly misleading charges at wireless companies."

Perhaps the company did try to contact Mr. Pogue, but felt unrequited? Or maybe the choice of recipient was an advertiser message, if you get my ring tone. Be that as it may, I suspect that VZW doesn't have adequate answers to Mr. Pogue's legitimate questions. The company thus chose to go to Pogue's boss's boss's boss, and I bet all they got was a busy signal (for which, hopefully, they were charged).

Apple Voice

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If one were to guess which of the world's most-watched corporations had the most command-and-control approach to its communications, invariably that Cupertino, CA company would rank right up there.

Apple Inc.'s PR is legendary, less for its embrace of the new tools of the trade -- and the transparency that comes with it -- and more for its top down, tightly-managed means for massaging the message.

Now I'm not saying this is such a bad thing. Who can argue with success? I just find it ironic that a company like Ford, founded in 1903 in Motor City, puts Silicon Valley-based Apple to shame when it comes to social media communications and openness.

Still, who's to say that command-and-contol and social media communications are mutually exclusive? I do believe that companies can engage the social graph, while retaining control over how their brands are portrayed in the public domain. It just requires a top-down cultural shift, and the inculcation/empowerment of all employees, not just the corporate communications department.

With all its product innovation and brand esteem, I just don't see much evidence that Apple has fully embraced this mindset. Maybe this is about to change?

In the last few weeks the company has taken it on the chin for its refusal to allow the Google Voice app onto its AT&T-networked iPhone, and more recently a flap over banning the Ninjaword dictionary's entry into the mostly PG-rated PDA's App Store. The Google Voice app flap prompted a maelstrom of malcontents...and an FTC investigation. The Times's David Pogue neatly summed up the brouhaha:

"In short, what Apple and AT&T have accomplished with their heavy-handed, Soviet information-control style is not to bury these useful apps. Instead, Apple/AT&T have elevated them to martyr status—and, in effect, thrown down a worldwide challenge to programmers everywhere. 'Get around THIS,' they’re saying."

Thsi week, the Ninjaword slapdown prompted Apple's Phil Schiller to craft a lengthy email to Ninjawords' creators outlining his position. His PR people publicized it. ContentNext's MocoNews reports:

"Schiller’s efforts show that Apple is starting to worry about the company’s perceptions when it comes to the App Store’s policies...Apple wants developers to believe differently and that their actions are not without reason—at least most of the time. (Note: In case you are questioning whether this was truly a publicity stunt—for the benefit of journalists, developers or federal investigators—Apple PR did indeed send me a link to Schiller’s comments this morning..."

So why an email and not a blog post? Both would inevitably surface in the court of public opinion, so perhaps Apple's PR corps thought this (private/public) approach would have shorter media legs?

But wait. Did Apple even have another option? I couldn't find the official Apple Inc. blog or Twitter feed.

The Media Cloud and Reputation

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I've long had a theory regarding reputation, and in particular, how one's public persona is captured, reflected and shaped by the news media over time.

It goes like this: the higher one ascends, the greater the capacity for him or her to descend. Conversely, the bigger the fall, the stronger the rebound. ("Everyone loves a comeback" applies to the latter. Schadenfreude, the former.)

There are countless examples of spectacular public falls from grace that over time have given rise to new heights of exaltation. Prominent examples range from politics (Richard Nixon, Newt Gingrich) to entertainment (Britney Spears, Robert Downey, Michael Jackson) to fashion (Kate Moss) to business (Ford, Apple...yes, even Apple was on the brink) to sports (Michael Vick?).

To truly understand the forces that drive the vicissitudes of reputation is a holy grail for PR professionals. After all, if one could influence the time/distance between these peeks and troughs, let alone their heights and depths, that person would be in great demand. (I've often considered applying for one of those journalism research grants to try to get my arms around this equation.)

It was with this in mind that I took notice of the story in today's New York Times "Arts" section, of all places, that described a project of Harvard Law School's Berkman Center for Internet & Society. Ethan Zuckerman and his colleagues have developed Media Cloud, "a system that tracks hundreds of newspapers and thousands of Web sites and blogs, and archives the information in a searchable form." Aha, I thought. There now exists a means to analyze the dynamics of reputation...and influence.

"Who has the power to place an idea on the national agenda is another question that [Harvard Law Professor] Mr. Benkler said Media Cloud could help answer. For instance, how is the conversation about the recession and the financial crash shaped? Using some of the database’s more specialized tools, Mr. Benkler investigated who first floated the idea for a temporary takeover of the financial system by the government, as was done in Sweden in the 1990s."

The ability to search, scrape and analyze vast amounts of time-stamped media data opens up myriad possibilities for those charged with managing reputations and influencing public opinion. The days of a metrics-driven approach to reputation management are not far off. I can't wait to tool with it.

Digitally Queued Up

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David Carr's flashback today to Talk magazine's over-the-top launch party a decade ago reminded me of just how far the media literati and fashion glitterati have come since then.

Reflecting back, Daily Beast's Tina Brown wryly noted, "It seems like that happened in the 18th century."

Even the fashionistas have gotten hip to the new media/marketing modality. Case in point: The Barney's Warehouse Sale.

There was a time when that famous New York designer clothing sale captivated the collective imaginations of any New Yorker aspiring to achieve sartorial splendor. Much of the once-yearly event's allure grew through the tightly lidded mystery of when it would take place, let alone its boffo 50-75% discounts off the most-desired fashion labels.

Typically, one learned of the Warehouse Sale through a single advertisement in The New York Times...on the very first day of the sale.

Like today's iPhone (pictured at left), PS3 or Halo debuts, people queued up at the warehouse's discreet entrance (photo) midway down 17th Street (pictured) between Seventh and Eighth Aves at the crack of dawn. By the time the doors opened at 8am, the line snaked down 17th Street, around and up Seventh Avenue. (That New York Times ad sure had an uncanny way of motivating the well-heeled crowd.)

Several years ago, I found myself stuck in L.A. during the New York sale. I was spectating my #2 son's sailing regatta from the Santa Monica pier alongside a grizzled fisherman and his portable radio. Suddenly, I heard it: "Barney's famous warehouse sale starts today" -- two miles away in a hanger at the Santa Monica Airport! I stashed my binoculars and high-tailed it down to the airport.

Racked.com just reported on the upgraded L.A. sale and the addition of San Francisco to the mix. And to keep with the times, the clothier's marketing team popped out a YouTube video to promote the three sales (albeit with just 485 views thus far). You have to give them credit for adding some blogs and YouTube to the media mix. And, yes, I bet The New York Times will still be deployed to drive foot traffic.