Logos team blog posts

The Red Herring of Social Media

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A big red fish

While many of us feel comfortable with Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising, something like Pay Per Post (PPP) and Pay Per Vote blogging would probably make us feel quite uncomfortable and could disturb our sense of social media authenticity. Most of us have a blogroll we trust and turn to for wisdom on a regular basis. Could we still trust blog posts if Pay Per Post blogging could potentially corrupt social media?

Because blogs and social media web sites generate a lot of traffic, adopting social media tools has become a magic pill for increasing online rankings and amping up revenues.

But is adopting social media tools a magic pill or a red herring? And is a company that seeks lucrative deals in the black market of social media jeopardizing its reputation and creating mistrust among its stakeholders? Read more

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The Times, They Are A-Changing…

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Nixon JFK DebateThe 1960 televised debate between Vice President Richard M. Nixon and Senator John F. Kennedy was a turning point. It forever changed politics. The power of the visual image to emphasize sizzle over steak was initially a surprise to political scientists. Kennedy’s win, attributable to his superior performance in the debate, wasn’t supposed to happen.

And TV also changed the way Americans experienced the world. Suddenly, TV was the medium of social cohesion.

Cronkite JFK is DeadWe watched as Walter Cronkite wiped a tear and announced to a stunned nation that President Kennedy had died.

Moon LandingCronkite VietnamWe watched as Cronkite provided live commentary on the moon landing. And we watched as he pronounced the war in Vietnam unwinable. Vietnam became the first “living room war,” playing out on our TVs.

I believe that history will look back at the 2008 election and declare that it too represents a turning point. Read more

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When Blogs and Journalism Collide

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Network_smallThe New York Times reported yesterday that a blogger, editor and writer, Joshua Micah Marshall from the Talking Points Memo, has been named the recipient of the 2007 George Polk Award for Legal Reporting. The award honors his reporting of the firings of eight United States attorneys, and, according to the announcement, his “tenancious investigative reporting sparked interest by the traditional news media and led to the resignation of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.” Quoted in the article, Marshal says, “I think of us as journalists; the medium we work in is blogging.”

The NYTimes article illustrates a few key trends:

  1. Further democratization of news. This is the “first Internet-only news operation to receive the Polk.” With today’s online media, journalism is further democratized, and people are reading, listening, sharing and following the news, no matter where it’s originating.
  2. No barriers. Internet-only news sites have the relative freedom of time and space to write continuing stories that build as the research and investigation builds, not just stories that start and end in one edition.
  3. We’re all in this together. This type of reporting combines three elements, pulling them together into one big picture: original reporting, reports from other news sites, and reports from readers. More on this in a minute.
  4. Influence goes both ways. And finally, blogs and online-only news sites are increasingly influencing the reporting of mainstream media publications. (See Brodeur’s survey summary from January 2008 on the influence of blogs on journalists.)

More on point 3: this style of journalism has been dubbed “link journalism” by blogger Scott Karp of the Publishing 2.0 blog, defined as “linking to other reporting on the web to enhance, complement, source, or add more context to a journalist’s original reporting.”

Karp’s discussion stems from the NYTimes ethics article on John McCain last week. JigSaw (via Jeff Jarvis at BuzzMachine) highlights how this kind of journalism makes reporting better, even for mainstream publications (and maybe especially when they get things wrong). In the context of a discussion that focused more on the reports and tips from readers aspect, Jarvis had previously described something like this as “networked journalism.”

This idea of networked journalism or link journalism goes beyond the “citizen journalist” phrase used to describe early bloggers, an idea that still puts the burden of production on a single individual or small group of individuals. Now, the new in news is as likely to come from the audience/readers of those blogs as from the bloggers themselves.

Photo credit: network by dsevilla

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The Sticky Wicket – It’s getting sticky in here

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Cricket Batsman

Any cricket fans out there? I just got a crash course in the game this week and all because I read the book, Made to Stick, and found its contents virally adhesive …but I’ll get to that in a minute.

First, I’ll take this opportunity to inaugurate a regular segment of our blog called the “Sticky Wicket,” where we’ll offer little tidbits of crisis management counsel.

Tidbit No. 1. Always see the opportunity in crisis. It’s a batter’s game. Those of you who follow cricket will appreciate that companies (and individuals) facing down a crisis are forced to bat on a sticky wicket, much like cricketeers after a thunderstorm. What is a sticky wicket? In general parlance, it means a difficult and unpredictable situation. But it’s also cricket-speak for a wet, challenging playing field — ground that is mushy in places and hard and crusty in others. To quote the Wikipedia, batting under those conditions “… is awkward and sometimes hazardous, as the ball will spin and seam and there will be variable bounce.” Indeed, when a crisis looms, the real-life reputational match could prove not only difficult and embarrassing but season-ending. Or it could provide an unmatched opportunity for a strategic, steely-nerved batter to shine under adverse conditions and redirect his team’s fortunes.

We always counsel our clients to keep this second possibility in clear focus. For a real-life application of the theory, consider Jet Blue (for the record, not one of our clients) and its video apology. Although the apology is not without flaws or critics, the airline’s use of social media was a groundbreaking response to crisis generally appreciated by its customers and the public at large. It helped to put Team JetBlue back into the game.

Here’s another reason I like the cricket framework: the sports pundits say that the biggest difference between cricket and baseball is that baseball is a pitcher’s game (i.e., the pitcher takes center stage and is challenged by a series of batters), and cricket is a batter’s game (i.e., the batter becomes the focal point of the challenge as he deftly takes on a series of pitchers). Like cricket, crisis management is a batter’s game.

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Aura v. Argument: Lessons from the Presidential Election Campaign

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New Yorker photo 2/11-18
In this week’s New Yorker Hendrik Hertzberg sums up the reasons that Senator Hillary Clinton’s policy arguments aren’t impeding the momentum that is building for her Democratic Party rival, Senator Barack Obama. Hertzberg notes:

An argument is no match for an aura.

I have been thinking about Hertzberg’s insight this week, and noting both how aura v. argument was predictive in recent presidential elections, and how it holds important lessons beyond politics, for corporations and other complex organizations.

Politics and Framing

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Something in the Media Air

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Love is in the Airone-sky-lightness-of-being.jpgThere have been a number of developments in the media sphere this past week, some more high profile than others. What the following three do have in common is that mainstream media and social media are converging in ever increasing ways.

1. Yahoo! is feeling no love for Microsoft’s unsolicited takeover bid, and Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. stepped forward to see if they could become the white knight to save Yahoo! In addition to the usual sources, I’ve been following the coverage over at All Things Digital. I particularly like the running coverage of the internal communications surrounding the deal, which is always a precarious balance during times like this. (And also illustrates that “internal communications” is increasingly an oxymoron.)

As a side note, I’m including this item for the week even though there’s been some debate whether Yahoo! is a media company, or something else. But that’s another discussion for another day…

2. For several years, we’ve heard that anyone and everyone can be a journalist. Now, we’re hearing that from journalists, which is a game-changing proposition. CNN launched a new, all user-generated news site called iReport.com this week. While CNN had been using user-generated submissions for a while (also under the iReport name), they only use items on CNN that have been selected and verified by an editor. The new site is all user-generated, all the time (with some minimal oversight for inappropriate content):

“Welcome to a brand new beta site for uncensored, user-powered news. CNN built the tools, you take it from there. All the stories here are user-generated and instant: CNN does not vet or verify their authenticity or accuracy before they post. The ones with the “On CNN” stamp have been vetted and used in CNN news coverage.”

As reported on Mediaweek.com, there are two competing angles to this development. On the one hand, using the CNN brand with unfiltered news risks damaging the credibility of the parent brand, which is “The Most Trusted Name in News,” (at least according to their tag line). On the other hand, as Jim Walton, president of CNN Worldwide, says in the article, “It starts with the audience…. Audiences are more and more comfortable participating in news. It’s a natural extension for us.” The question to be seen is if the balance between credibility and creativity will be possible.

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Mainstreaming Corporate Responsibility

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Three years ago, when The Economist first published a special report on corporate responsibility, the magazine took a highly skeptical view, asking whether, to justify its activities, a company must do anything more than simply earn a profit?[i]

Not surprising, perhaps, that The Economist would echo the orthodox arguments of Milton Friedman, the economist who famously wrote in 1970 that the only “social responsibility of business is to increase its profits,” and that corporate social responsibility is a “fundamentally subversive doctrine in a free society.” [ii]

I was intrigued when the British magazine took up corporate responsibility again last month. It seems The Economist has had a change of heart.

The Economist’s 2008 Special Report acknowledges that corporate responsibility is now seen as mainstream by leading companies and concludes that it is worthwhile to single out corporate social responsibility “if it helps businesses look outwards . . . and think imaginatively about risks and opportunities.” [iii]

Why such a conversion in the space of three years? One reason may be the backlash generated by its 2005 Report, which was widely criticized by corporate responsibility practitioners and, reportedly, by members of The Economist’s own editorial staff.

It is more likely that The Economist is simply acknowledging business realities it can no longer ignore. Read more

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Self-Inflicted Harm: From Today’s Headlines (2/6/08)

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Two stories in today’s (Feb. 6) New York Times compel me to blog.

Each reinforces our recent posts about self-inflicted harm, but each also provides its own teachable moment.

1. Wachovia Bank
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Yesterday we blogged about the tendency of companies and their leaders to ignore a problem that is otherwise evident.

Another principle of crisis management is that companies can be forgiven if people have been hurt: killed, injured, insulted cheated, etc. But companies can’t be forgiven, and won’t be forgiven, if they’re seen not to care that people have been hurt.

Today’s Times, in a front business page story, reports that Wachovia Bank, which last year said it was unaware that fraudulent telemarketers were using the bank’s accounts to steal millions from unsuspecting victims, not only knew but had been put on notice about the fraud. Wachovia is the fourth-largest bank in the US.

The Times notes that newly-released documents in a lawsuit show that high-ranking employees at the bank frequently warned colleagues about telemarketing frauds routed through the accounts. Other banks and federal agencies also notified the bank, but it continued to provide banking services to the companies that helped to steal $400 million, the Times reports.

YIKES!!!! and DOUBLE YIKES!!!

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Crisis Mis-Steps: Lessons from Société Générale

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socgen.gifOne of the recurring themes of crisis management is that most harm in a crisis is self-inflicted, either in the first instance or because of a late or weak response, or both.

A second theme is that an effective response is often delayed by predictable mis-steps. Logos Institute has catalogued ten missteps that seem to be the common denominators of mis-handled crises. These ten missteps constitute predictable patterns that can be identified early and overcome, if only you know what to look for. One of these missteps is to ignore a problem that is otherwise evident.

A third theme is that these missteps are often caused or intensified by lack of humility among decision-makers.

These three themes were brought into sharp focus in today’s (Feb. 5, 2008) New York Times, whose business section has a detailed account of the missed warning signs at Société Générale, the French bank where a rogue trader cost the bank more than $7 billion.

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Worth Reading: Why Should the Boss Listen to You? by James E. Lukaszewski

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Why Should the Boss Listen to You?: The Seven Disciplines of the Trusted Strategic Advisor, by James E. Lukaszewski, Jossey-Bass.

why_should_the_boss_listen_to_you_cover_art.JPGHow do you make a difference? How do you obtain and exercise influence inside your own organization? How can you become a trusted advisor, either in your own shop or to your clients?

Master counselor James E. Lukaszewski has written a remarkable guide to gaining the proverbial seat at the table, and then making good use of that seat. Why Should the Boss Listen to You is a thorough, candid, and highly usable guide to the personal attributes that are necessary to influence leaders and organizations. There is no silver bullet. Rather, having influence requires intentional investment of time and energy, and the ability to appreciate the perspectives of those you advise. Says Lukaszewski, “To begin having influence requires a personal strategy of accomplishment, commitment, and personal incremental progress that helps set you apart from the wannabes, the dreamers, and the self-servers.”

Full-disclosure: Jim Lukaszewski is a good friend. We’ve taught together, done professional workshops together, and contributed writing to each other’s projects. We share clients, and often refer business to each other. I blurbed this book. But not just because we’re friends. Rather, because this is an important book, and it can help internal and external advisors become even more effective.

The book is in two parts. The first covers the realities of advising top executives, and includes chapters on how leaders think and operate, what leaders expect, and how to achieve real impact within an organization. The second covers Lukaszewski’s seven disciplines that collectively allow one to become a trusted advisor.

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