Dino Baskovic Can’t Lose

It's only Tuesday and already it feels like Friday.

For starters, my company released its annual sales figures this morning.  A step in the right direction amidst a global recession.  And while it's never "polite" to praise the PR team, tonight I'm breaking with tradition.  Go team.

On tap for tomorrow: a call with Europe, training, brainstorming and probably more follow-up from today's announcement.  My intranet vendor will monopolize most of my morning on Thursday, not that I mind a bit.  Remind me to return those Wii titles to Blockbuster that evening, because I am old school and still rent from a brick-and-mortar, and they are not kidding about late fees this time.

As for Friday, I am eager to talk to InterCom, a respected group of communication professionals based in Kalamazoo, Michigan.  My "Cosmic Conversations" presentation will cover the role of social media in organizational and corporate communications:

The rapid growth of social media has not only altered the way that people consume news and data, but has reshaped the way professional communicators message to publics in an ever-evolving information landscape, where the lines of traditional "mainstream" media and the digital world continue to intersect. 

Dino Baskovic, manager of social media and online public relations for Amway Corporation, will share his insights on modern approaches to social media based on his experience with creating blogging platforms and interactive engagement strategies for many companies and organizations.  This presentation takes a "cosmic" view of Web 2.0-driven communications and will include best practices and lessons learned from real-world case studies past, present and future.

Join us on March 12th!

I will post my presentation onto SlideShare shortly thereafter, but not before a brief stop at Bell's Brewery, a favorite Ka'zoo stopover.  Based on the reviews from Yelp, Urbanspoon and Foursquare, their beer is nothing short of stellar.  And if you haven't heard of the three fan sites I just mentioned, then brown bag it to InterCom or download my preso this Friday and see this whole "cosmic" thing for yourself.

Mashable's Pete Sizemore summed up the the Kevin Smith and Southwest Airlines snafu quite well:

Southwest’s use of social media in addressing the situation could be said to be commendable.

It appears that some Southwest employee eyeing Echofon caught the tweet and immediately recognized his handle.  Even if he wasn't an avid fan of the View Askewniverse, said staffer undoubtedly saw the 1.6-million-plus followers and Verified Account seal and didn't hesitate to wake the customer relations veep outta bed.  The blog post went up faster that you can say "snootchie bootchies!" and I doubt most large airlines would be so nimble given the same circumstances.

The story has survived several news cycles with observers falling into the "die Southwest!" or "try a treadmill Smith!" camps.  No need for me to weigh in either way, though I must call out this: Silent Bob simply can't silence this story just because he wants to:

DONE with this. @SouthwestAir blogs, so I blog: http://silentbobspeaks.com/?p=393 G'night, folks. Let's talk about anything else tomorrow.

This story will end when it wants to, not just because he is suddenly tired of it.  Sorry, but that's jut now how life works.  Think of that the next time you are so fearless with a flip phone, Bluntman.

I've had mixed emotions about this whole Toyota mess. Part of me jeered along with the rest of the blue-collar, red-blooded compatriots I grew up with in the Rust Belt that watched the reputation of our beloved American cars turn a not-so-lovely shade of patina from decades of poor decision-making. It's a part of me I'm not necessarily proud of and my world view is far more matured these days. Admittedly, I found myself momentarily pointing and laughing. "Ha ha, Toyota, feel that media heat. Hear that consumer rage. Taste that big government boot. Kiss that five-star favorability good-bye..."

Of course, part of me was compassionate. I feel for the affected families. From a business standpoint, you can't excuse such errors in judgment. There is no justification for silencing, stalling, covering up. But whether we like it or not, these things happen. Cracks form, things slip through them. Companies are people, too. Humans. Prone to human error. A $2 billion error notwithstanding litigation. Maybe Toyota sat on this far too long, maybe they didn't. It really doesn't matter. The good people behind a great company that build and market some of the world's best cars will pay the price for years to come.

It is times of corporate crisis like these that I hope that competent PR people are behind the scenes. Not just parading presidents around the morning network news, mea culpa mea culpa mea maxima culpa. But credible, dedicated professionals that will go to mattresses to restore faith in their organization's name and reputation. PR pros that, when duty calls, leave their personal lives behind to become the unsung backroom heroes that won't rest until they can call mission accomplished.

I wasn't kidding when I said "years." Faulty brakes isn't a "sticky situation" that can be brushed aside after a few nights of bad late night comedy. No, this will take winning back the trust of owners and buyers, regulators, even dealers. Knowing at least one person pulling long hours for Toyota PR these last few weeks, I truly believe the automaker is on the road to recovery.

"Moving forward." It's been Toyota's slogan for some time. There is new meaning to that now. Like my own past perceptions, Americans have evolved -- and given the global economy, evolution means survival. Toyota will survive this and be a stronger company. The company is crash-coursing lessons their "American" competitors long learned the hard way. This will become fodder for PR textbooks for generations to come. Toyota will grow smarter and move forward. So too will the industry, and so will America.

Cupertino can't get a break from Greenpeace ever since the controversial NGO won a Webby in 2007 for taking a bite out of Apple's environmental record.

Back in July, Greenpeace ranked Apple lower versus Samsung and Nokia (though higher than Nintendo and Microsoft) in its quarterly "Guide to Greener Electronics" for levels of certain toxic chemicals in MacBooks and other Apple products:

Apple's score remains at 4.7 [out of 10] points but it drops one position in this edition of the ranking to 11th place. All Apple products are now free of PVC and BFRs with the exception of PVC-free power cords which are in the process of being certified. But Apple fails to score top marks on this criterion because it uses unreasonably high threshold limits for BFRs and PVC in products that are allegedly PVC-/BFR-free. The company needs to be commended for running a bold advertising campaign highlighting the green credentials of its MacBooks. Apple still needs to commit to phasing out additional substances with timelines, improve its policy on chemicals and its reporting on chemicals management.

CNET News reported that Apple updated its "green" site on Thursday with new information on corporate recycling, greener packaging and even how Mac OS X works with the CPU to save energy between keystrokes.  How Greenpeace will respond is anybody's guess.  Though, one has to wonder: how much longer is Apple PR going to kowtow to these guys?

When light bulbs flicker
Corporate social responsibility, be it charitable works or going green, is no longer a novelty.  These days, CSR is expected.  The dividends are immeasureable in many respects but pay handsomely in others, as companies line up to paint themselves green, blue, pink and red (like Apple does).  Today's consumer wants to know that their purchases will find cures and build schools.  Eco-conscious consumers want carbon neutral, organic, renewable, sustainable.  Oh, and they are willing to pay for it.

But how much homage is Apple willing to pay Greenpeace?  Is Apple afraid of not living up to its promise of being a green company, one that is EPEAT certified six ways from Saturday?  Does Apple fear that it will alienate its core customers if the company doesn't concede to Greenpeace's every finding?  For that matter, is Apple allowing itself to be bullied or just afraid to press back?  And who died and made Greenpeace God?

Perhaps this is classic "no-win PR," a concept I'll address in a future post. Like any company, Apple vigorously defends its reputation and has the numbers to back it up:

• 18th out of the 25 "Most Reputable Companies in the United States" in the Reputation Institute's "2009 Global Reputation Pulse Study";
• second in Cision's "2009 Corporate Media Reputation Index" of U.S. companies; and
• 14th in Harris Interactive's most recent "Annual RQ" summary report.

Averaging the rankings of those three scorecards, essentially the Moody's, Standard & Poor's and Fitch of a company's public image, can be fuzzy math at best, as there is no accepted industry standard.  Still as they say, Apple appears to rank well in the PR department.  Even adding these scores doesn't quite give an accurate depiction of Apple's (or any company's) environmental track record.  In this department, Greenpeace sets the standard, perhaps better than the EPA.  Though I must ask: who governs Greenpeace's market research?  Are their stats impeccable or just reasonably good?  And why did Greenpeace so brazenly take Apple to task like it did in the first place?  I smell an agenda...

Garderning or boxing gloves?
Apple continues to play this hand carefully, but I think it can do better.  Being in PR for 15 years is no lifetime, but I've counseled my share of  clients with targets painted on their backs.  You gotta know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em -- and when diplomacy falls off the table, know when to fight. 

Kudos to Apple's new green site.  Well written and designed, it steers clear of the self-congratulatory tone set by most CSR sites and utters ne'er a peep about Greenpeace, as did Apple's old green site.  And if that has Greenpeace seeing "red," then too bad.  With all due respect to Greenpeace, try picking on real targets instead of easy ones for a change.

It was with great pleasure that I picked this piece off my feed reader a few weeks ago.  And I didn't need a Ph.D. in brain science or rocket surgery to read it.

"Gobbledygook" was a popular word with the late E. Zoe McCathrin, my first PR prof back at Kent State.  If you believe in Wikipedia,

[the term] was coined by former U. S. Representative Maury Maverick, then working for the Smaller War Plants Corporation, in a 30 March 1944 memo banning "gobbledygook language." It was a reaction to his frustration with the "convoluted language of bureaucrats." He made up the word as an onomatopoeic imitation of a turkey's gobble.

Zoe loathed technical jargon, such as with the topic of the above reference Times article, and warned me against using it with the press and other audiences.  I've passed this advice along to my own students and clients in the past, as well as offering Steve Krug's Don't Make Me Think* as a prime example of how (not) to write technical content.  And I can't tell you how many "best-in-class" press releases hit the wires that still must scrape Dack.com's infamous Web Economy Bullshit Generator.

I hadn't thought much about gobbledygook in years, hoping to have left it behind with the dot-com bubble.  Finding a suitable alternative for the term hasn't been easy, mind you: mularkey, bogosity, codswallop and poppycock are so Depression Era.  Baloney** always wins over.  And just as I'm about to spread yellow mustard on white bread, I get an email from a close colleague earlier this week suggesting I read a quasi-cognascenti's take on "direct customer engagement and influencer-leveraging relations."

Oh, boy.  Better brush off the bogometer.

To my colleague's admittance, the post is riddled with more Web 2.0 technobabble than even I can stand.  Even the title is daunting: "Social Media Smackdown Brewing between Twitterville, Tribalization, Groundswell, Appvertising, and Cause Marketing."  Appvertising?  Appvertising? C'mon, dude, you just made that up.

I don't mean to trash the post.  There are nuggets of wisdom in there for marketers better trying to understand social media.  The comparison between "tribalists, social colonialists and groundswell theorists" just might make for good fightin' words fodder.  Of course, it's hard to take anything off the blog remotely seriously after reading the masthead:

Leveraging the dynamic/symbiotic stability among enterprises, social tribes, and nomads between troughs and peaks in business cycles.

Pardon me while I guffaw.  That means "heartily roar with laughter" for those playing at home.  And how does the author "help teams realize their program’s strategic objectives? Through:"

Optimized Targeting, Tribal-Colonial Relationship Development; Integrated Brand Marketing Partnerships; Market-Media-Internet-Website Metrics and Analytics; Listening and Engagement Research; Social Media Strategy; Content Management; User Experience; Traffic Engineering; SEO; Continuous Process Improvement; Business Analysis and Planning; Project Management; Online Community Direction; Videography; Online Post-Production

Translation: "Hey, Google, please-please-please index me!"

Okay, I've suckerpunched this poor guy enough, and I don't even know him.  In his defense, he produces a decent video series on social media and makes valid points throughout, which is more than I can say about my own blog.  But can we ease up on the self-inflicted SEO, already?  Kinda makes it hard to hold intelligent discussions with other marketers and clients that simply need to make sense of the space.  The gobbledygook's gotta go.

"Omit needless words," says Krug.  I agree.  So did my late PR prof, "Sarto," Mies van der Rohe and Joss Stone if you really break it down.

* Now available on the Kindle.

** Thanks, Rob.

No comment.  None needed:

Kudos to Wondergem PR and West Michigan PRSA for putting this together.  Moreso to Grand Rapids media for being candid on camera.

Opening drive.  First and 10 at the 35. 

Hewlett-Packard PR takes the snap and goes into motion:

The New York Times Bits Blog opens up the line:

Andreessen should add some entrepreneurial thinking to HP's board. http://bit.ly/N5Xhz ^VG

HP peddles right, then left, then right again:

RT @nytimesbits: Andreessen should add some entrepreneurial thinking to HP's board. http://bit.ly/N5Xhz ^VG

Bits Blog blitzes for the sack:

Odd to be retweeted by @hpnews on a news release from HP.

HP drops back and throws long:

@nytimesbits we liked your commentary, hence the retweet...thx!

Pass is incomplete.

Short deck on PR social media basics from Jason Kintzler, CEO and founder of PitchEngine:

Somewhat self-serving, but nonetheless a pretty lil' primer.  If you still don't get why the traditional model is dead after this deck, then quit PR.