StevenSilvers.com

You realize that Twitter is to PR what men’s room graffiti is to advertising, right?

Like most Americans, I get hit with some 5,000 marketing messages daily.  Most I don’t notice. There’s no way I could.  You'd need more than four hours a day even if you spent on average only three seconds considering every ad, logoed item and pitch.  (And they said PR bloggers can’t do math.)

Yet the other day I spent a few seconds reading an email alerting me that I’m being followed by a guy who says, “I Help Individuals to Improve Their Immune System, Wellbeing & Fitness And To Build Wealth Online From Home.”

As I hit the delete button it occurred to me that this Twitter thing is pretty amazing.

With all the competition for eyeballs and eardrums, Twitter manages to push ads and publicity right into people’s face. I gave a valuable sliver of my limited attention to a promo just because he clicked on my follow button.

Does this hyper-intrusiveness mean Twitter will be around forever? Hardly.

It happened with AOL and other Internet phenoms.  Twitter will eventually ripen, rot and fall off the tree from the weight of its own success. Teens already don’t use it, and the “Occupy Wall Street” protesters were using Vibe, a more private short-message service.

Today only eight percent of Americans use Twitter. This isn't many. It’s less than the number of Americans who think the Earth revolves around the sun. (Ten percent, but I’ve known the truth for weeks.)

Overlay the Twitter-ers with the Earth-firsters, minus the number of Tweets that are useless or incoherent -- and you have a phenomenal but narrowly-used Internet novelty destined for the history books.

You can’t argue with PR blogger math.
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Five ways to establish social media credibility

Guest post by Hoa Cong

Most corporations are looking to social media as a vibrant platform to increase sales and profits. However, you can't just open a Facebook account or blog and expect people to come flocking in. You have to actually connect with your customer base and create relationships.

Here are five critical elements that can make or break your social media campaign:

1. Choose your platforms wisely. Social media extends far beyond Facebook. Find out where your customers are on the internet and go there. If you sell to creative types, set up a blog where users can contribute content. For sports types, try an interactive game. The possibilities are endless, and a company that fails to do its homework is destined for failure.
    
2. Speak your customers' language. Every group has its own language and acronyms. To market to them, you must also speak this language, especially in social media environments. The best way to learn to do this is to read the blogs, Facebook pages and other sites that are created by your clients and customers. When you use -- note: not overuse -- the correct language, you gain instant credibility.
    
3. Keep a cohesive message. The fastest way to lose people is to have too many messages across online platforms. Remember that your customers use multiple social media venues themselves, as well as traditional media. Integrate your message across all so your customers see you as the focused company you are.
    
4. Be active in your chosen forums. Your blog, Facebook page or other platforms are not simply advertisements to lure in customers. Social media is interactive by nature, and you'll lose credibility if you're not active in posting, giveaways and two-way communication. People can sniff out fakes, and it will cost you.
    
5. Let your customers give input. People who engage in social media expect to be able to interact with you, but also to be heard. Campaigns where customers can submit ideas for new products, advertising, or slogans can bring considerable traffic and give your customers a sense of participation in your product. When they feel like part of your group, they are much more likely to recommend and use your products.

For the today's companies, the only thing worse than not engaging in social media is to do it poorly. As the guidelines suggest, a cohesive message delivered in a truly interactive environment will bring out the most value of your online campaign.

Hoa is a representative for Capterra, an extensive online catalog of more than 300 business software directories.
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Simply put: The difference between brand and reputation

I get this question often: What's the difference between a company's brand and its reputation?  Aren't they just different words that public relations and ad people use to say the same thing?

Nope. Closely related, but very different.

A brand is a company's promise to the people and institutions most important to its success in the marketplace of products, services and ideas. It is the (usually) carefully constructed embodiment of what the company wants its stakeholders and their influencers to believe to be true.

A company's reputation, on the other hand, belongs to those stakeholders and influencers. It is their collective perception based on what they in fact believe to be true about the company: its integrity and credibility, its alignment with their own values, its historic and future ability to deliver on the brand promise. 

Whether a company's reputation is justified or not, the stakeholders own it. Smart companies own up to it when it's damaged by screw-ups and controversy, real or perceived.

Properly managed as a bona fide strategic asset, a strong corporate reputation multiplies every dollar spent.  It strengthens the brand like steroids on steroids. It creates goodwill that helps the company navigate through bad market conditions, complex issues and crises.

It helps consumers answer the "why buy" question by answering the "why trust" question. 

Reputation is why most of today's good companies have a market cap of 30 to 70 percent more than their book value. 

Brand is how the company talks to the world. Reputation is how the world hears the company.  

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Newsweek: Spinning outrage to stay alive

Struggling Newsweek Magazine has created quite a controversy with its “Queen of Rage” headline and wild-eyed cover photo of Michele Bachman.

That’s the point.

Not politics. It's not news that Newsweek and sister blog The Daily Beast are run by liberals.  But this in itself makes no profit. What keeps editor-in-chief Tina Brown up at night is not defeating Michele Bachman or destroying conservative women. Her problem is how to sell enough advertising next week to keep her ever-thinning rice-paper rag from finally sinking into oblivion.

In the Internet era, Newsweek’s strategy is to earn commercial relevance not by covering news, but by becoming news. And they’ll do that with magazine covers that create outrage.  Or what passes for outrage in a gamed society where other people and institutions manufacture outrage so they can get in the news, too.

That’s why the magazine ran a fake photo of a 50-year-old Botoxed Princess Diana walking alongside of with Kate Middleton. Next week Newsweek might have a cover shot of John McCain French-kissing a snake. Or Michael Jackson’s ghost hovering over a little kid’s bed. President Obama falling off a cliff. Maybe a pregnant Boy Scout.

Whatever gets people talking about what people are talking about. That’s how you leverage today’s churning grist mill of Internet-driven news, infotainment, social media, talk radio and opinion TV.

Even when everyone knows their chain is being deliberately yanked.
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Also read:  Helpful publicity hint: Create outrage to your outrage over some outrage. Repeat as necessary.

Next big idea: Change “calories” to “kalories” to make the food sound more ominous

Despite hopes and assumptions of public health activists, research shows that including calorie counts on restaurant menus doesn’t deter Americans from ordering cheeseburgers, pizza and other high-calorie comforts.

This week’s best email scam: Are you not dead yet?

"Please, if you are really alive, you are advice to quickly get back to this bank to let us know if you are alive."

Another well-written collectors item from the ubiquitous Miss Joy Carr.
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Barclays Bank Plc.
Scotland Branch,
21 Cowgate Kirkintilloche,
Glasglow, Scotland G66 1HW
Website: www.barclaysbank.co.uk
E-mail: (barclaysbnkscotland@administrativos.com )

ATTENTION: ARE YOU AWARE OF THIS?

Are you dead or alive? The reason for this question is that we received an email from one Mr. Henry Kyle. He has claimed to be a very good friend of yours, Mr. Henry Kyle has brought to the notice of this Bank that you are, dead and that you have given him a Letter Of Authorization signed by your personal attorney before your death to enable him receive your fund, which is pending in our Bank as your next of kin.

Mr. Kyle in his email referred the Management of this Bank to the below site:
http://edition.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/africa/12/25/benin.crash/index.html

He stated that your unfortunate death on the 25 of December 2003 was on the CNN news. According to him, after the unfortunate plane crash, which claimed your live and that of your entire family, you were among those that was rushed to an emergency hospital, whereby you died few days later and gave him the Authorization Letter before your death to enable him claim your fund, which has been pending for long in this bank. Mr. Kyle added that why he has taken this long to claim the fund is because he has been on a business trip since after your death.
Although, we have responded to Mr. Henry Kyle, but in our response we told him that we have to confirm if you are really dead to avoid any kind of money laundry from him, and also told him that your fund valued at the total sum of (15,000,000.00GBP) only; has been approved in your favor, and that we will start the transfer of the fund to him into the account he has provided us with, but only after we confirm if you are really dead or not. In addition, we have asked him to call back after 5 Bank working days to enable us carry out our investigations thoroughly by confirm if you are really dead.

Washington Mutual Bank
2075 S. Victoria Ave
Ventura, CA 93003
800 788-7000
Acct. name: Mr. Henry Kyle.
Acct Number: 1951204345
Swift Code & Routing Number: withheld for security reasons.

Please, if you are really alive, you are advice to quickly get back to this bank on: (barclaysbnkscotland@administrativos.com) to let us know if you are alive.

Thanks for your co-operation.

Miss Joy Carr
Head, Transfer Department.
Barclays Bank, Scotland Branch.

Smokin' message strategy

A press release from Greenway Medical Marijuana Doctors in San Francisco takes the high road in educating consumers about its value-added product line:

"Many patients are unaware that cannabis enhances their lives as well as controls the symptoms of their illnesses. Taken properly, cannabis helps them focus, plus increases their productivity, creativity, and awareness. Patients often find that their social interactions are more meaningful with cannabis: it makes people pleasant and adds to one's emotional intelligence.”
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Toyota and Tiger: Brands never really get fixed

Pundits and news media are debating whether Toyota or Tiger Woods will bounce back more quickly from their respective scandals.

But it’s wrong to think a celebrity brand returns to where it was before the stuff hit the fan. There’s no repairing a brand image that has been demolished by bad behavior. There’s only repositioning a brand to succeed in spite of it.

Toyota and Tiger will never be the personas they were before.  That’s not to say they won’t again dominate their markets.  They might.  But they’ll do so on different terms, from a new starting line.  Consumers and the institutions that influence them will align their affinity in context to what went down and how it impacted them.  They may feel totally jaded or think the whole thing is overblown.  But they’ll definitely consider it. 

The 24-7 news cycle and the Internet’s indefinite shelf life means that scandal will be part of the Toyota and Tiger consciousness for a very long time.   Even if there were no more nasty headlines to come – don’t bet on it -- it could be a generation before the smoke clears.

For high-profile brands embroiled in controversies of their own making, it’s an important distinction:  Even the best-spun apologies and damage control aren’t the end of the matter. They’re the beginning.
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GBSM has rare opening for senior associate

My firm, GBSM Inc., is looking for a new senior associate to join our very select strategic consulting, communications and public affairs team. 

You’ll need at least six years experience with a proven background in behavioral-focused integrated communications and community-based social marketing.  Read the entire job description here.

Send your resume, cover letter and few samples of your best work to Raleigh Decker.  We look forward to meeting you.
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What Tiger Woods and other scandals really tell us about crisis management

PR and media types over-analyze the Tiger Woods mess.  There are only a couple of lessons here.  But they’re big ones.

Here’s the first: The threat of discovery doesn’t stop some people from behaving badly.

Tiger’s melt-down isn't the failure of a crisis plan. There wasn’t one. None of Tiger Inc.'s image handlers prepared memos outlining what to do if it came out that Mr. Woods enjoyed extramarital affairs like some people collect snow globes.  Damage control strategies started after the truth.  Not before.

Today’s Internet-driven reality TV culture means we’re following scandals more than ever.  We’re very familiar with the “PR angle” of every story.  This has created a belief that PR is the end result of itself.  For example: Say a professional sports star gets caught illegally playing partybingo online. The public debate over how the athelete responds to being found out will quickly become as big a headline as the issue of whether what he or she was doing online had any undue influence.

We assume that image is a universally valued currency to be saved or squandered.  But this confuses how we rationalize self-destructive behavior by prominent people.

Take for example a recent Harvard Business Review article on responding to scandals.  In it two researchers argue that Chinese executives who added melamine to milk sold in the U.S. might have acted differently had they only anticipated people's emotional reaction people to media coverage about dead infants.

The world doesn’t work that way.  Businessmen who poison food to increase profits are criminals.  And criminals are psychopaths that by definition don’t care what happens to others. They’re bad people, not bad public relations planners.

True story.  Many years ago I was in my hotel room watching the local news when suddenly the TV showed a mug shot of my client.  The government official at the center of our at-risk youth campaign had been arrested for soliciting a teenage prostitute. 

We had nothing prepared for this.  What we did have, however, was an appreciation of how things would get worse if people thought we were treating the scandal as primarily a PR problem to be resolved with spin and posturing.  That got us through it.

In the same way, Tiger’s self-destruction also reminds us of the second lesson: That effective crisis planning is having the ability to respond to situations nobody sees coming. 

In the real world, that has to include people in charge being caught doing very bad things.

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