secrecy is not your friend.

No one can tell their friends about the amazing, completely secret thing that you’re working on.

Even if it doesn’t materialize, an ambitious and transparent failure is better than continued, unremarkable anonymity.

(All advice is given on the assumption that you aren’t actually full of shit. Infinium Labs, transparency will not save you.)

weaponized transparency.

When I think of the future of PR, at least part of what comes to mind deals with every individual in the company being a potential representative for what they do. Information is becoming more personal, and frankly, most interested parties would rather speak to the person responsible for the subject at hand, than speak to the person responsible for speaking to interested parties.

I'm looking forward to seeing a company use transparency as a weapon, both to encourage the best from employees, and to improve image and increase engagement.

Jumping on the bandwagon of the moment, I think the easiest way to do this would be to put the entire company on Twitter. Keep a company directory of accounts (personal or individual business accounts) with people following the rest of their group/department, and the people they are connected to on the ORG chart. The big positions would get followed by everyone, and follow, at the very least, all managers and directors, but preferably the entire company. Projects and divisions would have pre-determined hashtags.

The directory would be made public, available to people outside the company. And employees would be encouraged to use the system to communicate tasks, difficulties, scheduling, ideas, questions, concepts, irritations, etc. I recently compared Twitter to telepathy - imagine knowing what the guy in the next cube is worried about, without delay. Imagine knowing that your staff is all having the same issue, at different times. Imagine knowing what your organization is thinking.

Moreover, a certain (positive) panoptic effect kicks in. People who know they are being watched police their own behaviour. I can't imagine a company that uses public tweets as a major element of internal communications going Enron. I can't imagine anyone who is aware they are representing themselves, and their company, knowingly acting like an ass.

People suck less when they know they can be held accountable for their actions. This is the real essence of transparency - knowing that you can be, and will be, held accountable for what you do. This is the magic. Accountability makes people think before they act. Accountable people try to be great, at least more often than people who feel invisible.

I haven't yet mentioned the benefit of directed, asynchronous communication in a group of people who interact mostly between tasks. Or the benefit of a clear view of communications as it happens withing a group, that you can go back and observe. Or the value of watching your employee ecosystem, and changing strategy based on the patterns that emerge. Or the opportunity that random ideas emerging from the group represents. Or...

From a PR standpoint, this is the best nightmare ever. This much accountability, on an individual level, means that everyone has to be educated on the responsibility they now bear. Everyone needs to be trained in how to conduct themselves appropriately, within reasonable guidelines. The culture needs to change, to reflect a dedication to this level of transparency.

But companies would become more real. More trusted. When the truth is visible in tiny component parts, when the sub-units of meaning and message are visible to be interacted with and dissected, companies become, perceptually, what they are in reality: collections of people, with a common purpose. Given the amount of work that is done 'humanizing' companies, or emphasizing the role of caring individuals in the process, it's clear this is a priority. Fighting against the anonymity of people is going to be the most important part of the next type of company establishing itself as vital.

Put bluntly, the future has a sign on the door that reads 'No Cogs Allowed', and demands that every individual be unique and valuable, and be treated that way.

This is not the type of business that anyone is used to, or prepared for. But it's the kind of business that would best reflect the changes in society. Each individual being a point of contact, directly engaging with the public, is the way things are going to be. For now, and for a bit longer, we can relegate that role to a specific few. That won't be the case forever. Engaging interested individuals is going to be part of everyone's job description soon enough. PR, and other communications roles, are going to be about education, strategy, and facilitation. Which, if you're doing them right, they already should be.

I could not be more excited about the potential of working for a company where EVERYONE has to think about how their actions will look to the public. Because most of us should already be thinking about that, and too few of us are.

just say no to ghostwriting.

Ghostwriting blogs came up today at Dave Fleet's Podcamp Toronto talk on Ethics in Social Media, and I've been thinking about it all day.

I disagree with ghostwriting in general, but I understand why it happens.  I disagree with ghostwriting in social media especially, because social media requires authenticity and trust to overcome the disparity in authority it faces, when compared to traditional media outlets.

That was a generalization, but I think it's a fair point.  I get my news from print media, and from bloggers.  I trust the Globe and Mail because it's the Globe and Mail.  If I trust information I get from your blog, it's usually because I trust the person I've seen writing and sharing that information with me and every other reader.  That trust is developed over time, and I think it's got more to do with the value of social media as a news source than speed does.

To clarify, I have no problem with hiring freelance writers, or bringing on unpaid guest writers, to pen entries for any blog, as long as it's made clear in some way that this is happening, or may happen.  If your blog has a note on the about page that says 'entries on (blog name) are often the result of a collaboration between myself and a ghostwriter', I might not like it, but I won't be able to justify getting mad about it later on.

My core issue with ghostwriting in general is it's not really justifiable.  If the value of your outlet or blog is the brand, it shouldn't matter who is writing, as long as it's associated with the brand.  If this is the case, there's no argument for misleading readers as to who the author is.  If, conversely, the value of your blog is the personality creating it, there's no justification (at all) for misleading your readership about what content is coming from that personality.

There's some overlap here, but the point stands even if we're talking about a 'Personal Brand'.  If the emphasis is on brand, someone else publishing with your approval (under their own name) should still carry weight.  If the emphasis is on personal, then you are obligated to do it yourself, to whatever extent works for you.

In the session mentioned above, someone pointed out that Barack Obama doesn't write his own speeches.  I (and several others) countered by pointing out that the guy who writes Obama's speeches gets profiled in the New York Times for doing so.  If credit goes where it is due, (or at least doesn't go to someone undeserving) there's nothing to get mad about.

how i will drive myself mad.

I was recently invited into the beta for Daytum, a personal data tracking site that you can read the interesting history of here.  (It's the progeny of the Feltron Annual Reports, and if you're a design geek like myself, knowing that the same guy is one of the Daytum co-creators just made you click the link and read the slideshow.)

I was trying to figure out which things about myself I should be recording, and the very last thing that came to mind was tracking what brands I use, and how often.  Clearly, this owes a massive (and total) debt to the Brand Timeline idea created by Dear Jane Sample.

The concept (and rules) are as follows.  Every branded object / service that I interact with on a meaningful level gets noted.  Each object / service only gets noted once per day, otherwise apple would get a mark every time I checked my phone, which is enlightening, but not in the way I'm aiming for.  If I mentally associate a brand with a larger parent brand, that's where the mark goes, such as giving google the nod when using blogger.  If something fades into the background, it doesn't get noted.  I know my furniture is from Ikea, but once I bought it, it's seems more like it's part of my room than it does an Ikea product.

I'm totally aware these rules are somewhat arbitrary, but I need to set certain minimum requirements to keep the workload from this plausible.

I'm hoping that 1) this doesn't drive me completely insane, and 2) I can be consistent enough to develop some interesting information regarding which brands I use constantly versus irregularly, and how much of my mental 'brandscape' they make up.

That said, I do still need to work a day job and lead some kind of life, so I can guarantee it won't be 100% accurate.

You can see my Daytum page here.  It is likely utterly boring to everyone except myself.

journalism is the harbinger (or, say goodbye to sleep).

One of the attempted fixes the newsmedia has tried to bolster profits and smooth the transition online, is to basically to work journalists to death.  On top of the many, many facets of the actual job, the research, the interviews, the investigations and the writing, some journalists are expected to maintain a blog, create smaller pieces for websites, and generally add another separate job's workload to their day.

This is going to happen to all of us.

In a society where social media is well and truly mainstream, where transparency is a given, and where each individual within a company is seen as a potential representative, lots of people are going to find a social media element added to their duties.  Posting on a corporate blog, or updated a company focused next-generation equivalent of a twitter account, or flickr, or facebook page, is going to become a standard part of everyone's workday.  There will be a point where a lack of 'humanizing content' on behalf of a company or representative will seem as odd as meeting someone who refuses to use contractions.

The issue is, maintaining a meaningful social media presence is a lot of work.  Many of us are busy enough that we don't really know how to fit everything into a work day already.  I'm lucky enough to have a job where my use of social media on the job is accepted (and quickly becoming industry standard).

We should all get ready for the double shift.  It's coming.  And for the people who wouldn't be doing it anyways, it's going to be uncomfortable.

transparency as product.

Wired is doing something very interesting with Storyboard, a beginning to end blogging of an upcoming peice on Charlie Kaufman (the dude who wrote Adaptation, among other screenplays).  In doing this, they are increasing reader involvement with the peice, advertising the upcoming issue containing the peice, and creating a new revenue stream from the article itself (advertising on the blog).  This is both creative and innovative.  And I wonder how well developed it could be in other creative media.

For example, imagine if an established band decided to liveblog the recording process, etc, of an upcoming record.  They could post half finished lyrics, snippets of vocal and instrumental tracks, videos of rehearsals and discussions, explanations of the process, etc.  While the money generated by advertising wouldn't be absurd, it would serve as a great introduction to the record.  For certain bands with a large enough following, people (read: Me) would be willing to pay some small monthly amount to get a password and login to access the page.  You could include it in the physical copies of a release, offering the feed for the next upcoming record.  Throw it in a greatest hits package, for example.

Print media isn't dead.  Music isn't dead.  But we have to change what we're selling, and how we're marketing it.  That said, I'll admit the idea wouldn't work outside of an established magazine, an article on an established personality, with an established audience.  But figuring out how to transfer old media success to new media success seems like an important step in figuring out how to create new media success stories from whole cloth.  Transparency as product might be a part of that future.

fake follow = fail feed.

Reading PSFK today I saw a post about Fake Follow, a feature on FriendFeed that makes me supremely uneasy.

What amuses me, is that this is getting positive feedback so soon after the 'PR is evil' meme showed up.

Social media is supposed to run on a principle of honesty, I'm so often told. We're supposed to connect on a personal level, even if it's mediated. Sharing, caring, etc. Fake Follow is more or less designed to create the impression of a connection, without the upkeep that a true connection would require.

This is sad, because the amount of effort necessary to maintain a single connection online is comparably negligible, when you take a look at relationships that exist in meatspace.

Social media is about relationships. If you get angry when outsiders step in, and either attempt to game the system, or to interfere without an understanding of how those relationships work, you should be fairly disgusted with the idea of something like Fake Follow. If you want the connection, you should be willing to listen to what that person has to say. Transparency, in things like this, is only reasonable.

Otherwise, you're campaigning for the fake web. You're asking for the least desirable, most charicatured aspects of the media industry to take precedence over the concepts behind social networking.

This may be the reason FriendFeed, which I hear so much about, has such minimal penetration in comparison with the hype. The people this would appeal to most are the people who are the notable pundits who love FriendFeed so much - the people who aren't actually participating in social media anymore.

a small note from personal experience.

I meet /  know a lot of people more or less my age who are facing a crisis of identity - i.e., they want to find themselves.

For some reason, this usually manifests itself in wanting to go on an exotic vacation, or move to another country where you don't know anyone, for a little while.

I'm of two minds on this.  My recent, short, wonderful vacation has resulted in my being notably more driven, and having greater focus on how to achieve the things I want.  More or less, being in Jamaica gave me enough distance to evaluate my life without my usual bias.

But I think this was based on my having some clue what I wanted, and being fairly certain who I was.  I'm not sure I would have gotten any closer to a positive outcome if I hadn't known those things.

Where you are is part of who you are.  So, going somewhere else to decide who you are will probably result in, at best, a temporary definition that doesn't fit as well when you get back to real life.

As a round-about way of tying in to the stated purpose of this blog, you don't define a brand by changing everything first, and figuring out what it means second.  Figuring out what a company is, is the same as figuring out who you are - you should do the hard thinking and honest answers part before you get to the radical changes.

Otherwise people will just assume you're trying anything that keeps the hard questions at bay.

social media relations (practice)

Social Media Relations is, first and foremost, not about you, or your brand, or what you have decided is cool, or what you offer. It’s about learning from, and fostering relationships with, communities that already have an interest in your product. It’s about connecting with communities that already have an interest in what you do, and using that interest to build a kind of partnership.

SMR reps in online communities would exist as a resource. They would offer ‘insider’ information to the interested, clear up misconceptions, and generally only speak when spoken to. They offer support when acceptable, but do not attempt to take control.

Most important, they observe, learn, and explain. Observe how each community works. Learn what they think. Explain to brands and corporations what the people they should be focusing on think, want, and how they interact with the product in question. This is mutually beneficial, and gives a utility to a role that would otherwise be too easily subverted into an attempt at control.

This isn’t about sponsorship. It’s an idea based around the idea that adding value to a community is worth more than owning the community. It’s about allowing the people who are most engaged, who matter most, to interact with an offshoot of a brand they care for. This means providing information, and content, that they can interact with and remix. I’m not talking about crowd sourcing – this isn’t an attempt to farm out content creation to generate authenticity. The only benefit that the brand should want out of this is a happy, engaged community, and the opportunity to understand the core consumer base.

Not owning or sponsoring these communities is key, because the second money enters the equation, brands start to silence criticism and dissent. That only has two outcomes; either the community is destroyed, or the brand throws away opportunities to learn and innovate. Dealing positively with criticism is proof that you ACTUALLY value your consumers, instead of just valuing the free PR, and the brand evangelism. It’s essential that it isn’t your garden, or the temptation to wall it off will be overwhelming.

Bounce ideas of your community. Run concept sketches by them. Don’t give them decision-making power (that feels, and is, gimmicky), but use the resource they provide to make better decisions yourself. Link them from the official site, but only if they want that.

This isn’t about preaching to the converted. It’s about welcoming them into the fold without trying to change them. It’s about elevating the status of the converted in terms of the brand / consumer relationship.

And it should be happening on every platform that has an engaged community that cares about what you offer. Because you shouldn’t care about anything more than understanding who you are dealing with, and who you are creating for.

This post is a continuation of Social Media Relations (Rationale)

social media relations (rationale)

I’ve mentioned recently that public relations is an industry in flux. PR is in large part based on the dominance of the current media paradigm, and the core strategies are nearly completely top-down in focus. We (the royal we) don’t have a standard for approaching social media, and online communities. It shows.

While systems like the Facebook beacon are interesting, they are also inherently invasive, and create notable discomfort within a community. This is because, at core, we don’t have a model for participation in these communities. Instead, we have systems for exploitation, and colonization.

The average participant in an online community, whether it be a message board, virtual world, chat room or social network, is able to spot the difference between a participant and an interloper. The problem is, media still have it in their head that influence is created by brute force. This is one of the first mistakes I discussed on this blog – signal as noise – the way everyone with a message thinks getting louder is the key to being heard.

Social media is built on participation by equals, and the promise of meritocracy. The standard plan thus far has been to use real-world money and influence to buy a position that a user would have to earn, or could not attain, in a virtual world. Our problem is that we either take too much of a role in these communities, and attempt to shape them, or take too little of a role, for fear of causing a revolt. There has to be a middle ground, building on the tradition of information facilitation, and building relationships.

I’ve described public relations as getting someone you trust to tell you something we’d like you to hear. This is traditionally done by building media interest, and piggybacking on that inherent trust – a newspaper has built in credibility, and built in trust – to ensure that the information you receive has been vetted by professionals. The issue is that people are increasingly aware that professionals are not all that difficult to influence.

The difference between what I see, and what I’m suggesting is the separation between colonization and diplomacy. Take second life for an example – IBM, American Apparel, etc. talked to Linden, built custom store fronts that offered little to no utility, and basically received the online version of anti-gentrification response. This was inarguably an invasion – regardless of brand messages or reputation, this was the real world saying ‘You’ve created a new market, we don’t understand it, but we want it.’

The opposite approach, in my mind, is the Second Life Sketches that Warren Ellis writes for Reuters. This was something that isn’t about Ellis, or Reuters. It was about SL, and examining what made it special, and what made it worthwhile. It creates, I’d argue, a positive relationship between SL and Reuters. It’s not a one sided attempt to capitalize on what people do in world, everyone benefits.

Diplomacy is about envoys, understanding, and (despite modern real world happenings) shouldn’t involve strong-arming anyone. Brand or Personality envoys should be clearly identified, at be at a level that doesn’t give them special benefit over regular participants in an online community. This is the one thing Facebook has done beautifully with Fan Pages – an opt in system that offers brands a place to connect that is separate, and less full featured, than a personal profile. Brands are not part of the Community. The Community is paramount.

If brands want inroads into a community, I’d suggest they approach from this angle. Have people tasked to work in online communities, clearly labeled as representatives of the brand, and clearly identified as real people. No special treatment, no arguing, no misinformation. Just offer facts, links to useful information, and when suitable, special offers, benefits, etc.

Sponsorship is all well and good, and creates positive associations. But I’d imagine better ones come together when influencers are left to their own devices, and representatives come in when they can offer something useful. (Swag, information, access to that which is normally not available)

The most important advice I can offer is that, in an online community, it’s never about the brands involved, never about the sponsor, never about the platform. It’s about the community. If you can’t provide value to that community, you are an interloper. Your actions will be deemed disruptive, and the community will associate that action with the people and things you represent.

This post is continued in Social Media Relations (Practice)

public relations and the future.

A month and a half ago, someone asked me what I do on this website. I gave him an answer that was accurate, but felt insufficient. Something to the tune of 'I blog about media and strategy, focusing on the stuff that interests me - trends, change, etc', but less articulate.

At this point in my life, PR is what I do. I love parts of it - the writing, discovering a good angle, building relationships and creating strategy. There are parts of it I don't love - the reputation the industry has in some circles, and the grind aspect to some of it. But the only thing that worries me about Public Relations is that it doesn't seem to have much of a plan for the future, and I don't want to end up in another music industry.

PR is heavily reliant on old media. TV, Newspapers, Magazines, Radio. Each and every one of these is in the midst of some kind of decline, weather in earnings, in relevance, or in audience. And most of them have less than no plan for what comes next. TV is still scrambling to understand that it doesn't matter how or where people watch you shows, just that they get watched (advertising strategy should be shaped by viewing patterns, not the other way around). Newspapers are ignoring the one advantage they have (respect for their status) and are hacking away at journalists and fact checkers, and trying to emulate blogging in an attempt to stay relevant. Magazines still have validity, but haven't really defined a new space for themselves - they've just avoided the need to panic quite as totally thus far. Radio is more important as a means of connecting an iPod to a car stereo than it is as a medium. Internet radio is well on it's way to being killed, and that's coming from someone who's hopeful.

All of this means, more or less, that PR needs a redefined role. It isn't just about industry attention or media coverage, but those have been the major doorways to public attention and ubiquity for a long time.

The short version of my point? Most PR firms don't have a solid strategy for social media. This isn't shocking, it's been shown time and again that most advertising firms, and most marketing firms don't either. The difference is, PR is ABOUT social media, in a very inherent way. An advertiser wants you to see things, and develop an interest in them. PR wants your friend to want you to care about the thing they care about at the moment. It's different routes to the same place - PR has the benefit of trust (whether warranted or not) in media outlets.

Old media outlets are losing ground to individuals and new media very quickly.

The core of what I do on brokengent is look at this approaching problem, although I definitely didn't think of it that way when I started. I had no aspirations of being in PR at the time, but I happily stumbled into it. If PR has a future, it's in learning how to deal with social media, as a facilitator, but not as an irritant.

Bloggers hate PR intrusion, usually. I can see why, as much as I dislike the fact. Part of it comes to the same reason people hate Marketers and Ad People. Sometimes we have to represent something that isn't (at least on the surface) what people want. It's easy to generate interest and buzz for something that is desired. At those points, PR is one of the best businesses in the world, because all you do is explain, discuss, and nurture. If someone cares, you give them more information to care about, more context. I love this, PR as a form of cultural curation. It only works with trust.

It's more complicated than I'm making it seem. Sometimes the wrong person is spoken to about the wrong product, and efforts come across as selfish and lazy. Sometimes efforts are selfish and lazy, based more on a desire to get to as many as fast as possible, rather than helping to build relationships. But personal experience tells me that individuals, especially online, don't really trust the PR person, for any longer than it takes to get the new toy or experience before the regular public.

The problem comes when the pressure from up top, as found in old media orgs, no longer keeps an uneasy truce between both sides. The problem is that not being trusted as a starting point is instant fail in social media in online communities.

I recently updated my little 'about' blurb with the following: 'everyone has a voice, so you need strategy that can anticipate any number of contradictory stakeholders, while maintaining a consistent message and meaning across media.'

PR, as an industry, needs to learn how to be a valuable member in online communities, consistently. We need to serve both clients, and the population. We need to do it in a way consistent with the meaning and values of each community. Anyone who can't or won't do both is going to have a hard time in the coming years, and this applies to Advertising and Marketing as well. PR, more than related industries, is reliant on the current media iteration. And we need to start planning for when it shifts.

So, this is what we do here. Hope that clears things up.

persona management: wal-mart.

Wal-Mart, to put it bluntly, has an image problem. Sure, they offer great selection, and prices that are difficult to match. But they also exemplify the sheer force that a dominant business model can exert over all related industry. Wal-Mart knows that people think of it as an evil, faceless corporation.

And, because the standard solution to a corporate issue is whatever the big trend was 10 months ago, they have turned to blogging. They've even made the big step, and moved to a more transparent model, because 'The lesson seemed clear: Create an authentic blog or do not create a blog at all.'

Authenticity, in practice, means persona management. But no one wants to admit that, because the whole point is making the enterprise seem guileless.

While Wal-Mart has made the important distinction that some actual transparency has a positive effect on the overall image, what's embarrassing is that the IHT has bought in whole-heartedly. This isn't a daring stunt, or a reversal of corporate policy. This is the same thing as buying a bunch of rainforest and declaring it a reserve, while clear-cutting in B.C.

It looks like a job half done, from my perspective. A better, more curated experiment, would have the bloggers ('authentically', but generally nicely) comment on issues in the Wal-Mart store, and business model. Certain issues could be hilighted, and then the company could take into account employee/blogger input, and make actual changes to the way the business works.

Obviously, the greater model couldn't be changed. And some of the alterations would, of course, be nothing more than lip service. But it would fight allegations of empty talk, and would more or less guarantee a spread of awards and cover stories about Wal-Mart moving beyond market dominance, and now creating a shared culture between the business and the people who make it great, both inside and outside the store.

The glowing coverage, however, is an excellent example of why persona management, or artificial (curated) transparency is a good plan. Social media is unavoidable, if you want a meaningful media strategy. And artfully curated work is substantially more beloved than 'thinly veiled extensions of Wal-Mart's public-relations department'.

Both links are to the International Herald Tribute story mentioned above. This post directly dovetails the artificial persona and transparency: revisited.

the artifical persona and transparency: revisited

One of my major themes, at the start of this blog, was the importance of persona as a medium, both in day-to-day life, and on a broader scale. What is interesting is, completely independent of this, I have ended up working in Public Relations. I am in the persona business, and I feel I have to explain how I can reconcile that, with the earlier ideas of artificial persona that dominated my writing here.

Persona is both the first, and most vital medium we have to express ourselves, our ideologies, and our agendas. It’s also the first medium we learn to manipulate, although many do not see it this way. Persona Management is a skill we all develop to varying degrees. We keep emotions, or opinions, to ourselves. We carefully monitor our expression, actions, tone, and words to make sure we convey only certain information.

In this sense, all persona is artificial.

My commentary on artificial persona, however, was the idea of pushing beyond this, and creating a public persona that was more carefully managed than an actual identity. Monitoring all output, all traceable action, and making all decisions that relate to public information based on maintaining that desired persona. The purpose of this was as a response to the state of privacy in our modern world. Everything is public, and nothing is private, assuming a suitable lack of anonymity.

This approach requires subjugating ‘actual’ identity for ‘projected’ persona, and therefore is entirely unacceptable to the average person. Some would argue that there are examples of fully artificial persona in the celebrity community, and I would have to agree this isn’t out of the realm of possibility. But by and large, all a famous person is doing is the standard practice of projecting a ‘best-of-self’ persona, and ignoring / downplaying negative aspects of one’s identity.

Transparency, in some ways, if the opposite of artificiality. It demands making all information available, in an attempt to earn goodwill – an ‘open’ identity means that negative aspects observed are more likely to be forgiven. The issue here, is that no sane person would want to be completely transparent. Instead we deal with the illusion of transparency, and the hope that it will keep people from digging much deeper.

My current theory is persona management. It’s a selective mix of transparency and artificiality, while operating on what my inner English Major demands I call a thesis. Core truth must be preserved, otherwise the effect will ‘feel’ off. The key to artificiality is that it be a perfect simulacra – this is next to impossible in real life. People notice the cracks. So, the logical choice is to be open about some of the cracks, those that are integral to believability, and to operate on a less transparent basis when those flaws overwhelm the thesis. The core idea behind artificial persona was the creation of a consistent message and whole, one that was reflected by all elements. The creation of that with the inclusion of beneficial truths AND beneficial but true flaws, creates a more believable image.

That believable, positive persona is what matters, and what most communication is an attempt to create. The right field theory on how to do that is, to me, priceless. That, in a nutshell, is why I’m rambling on about it.

Click for other posts on Artificiality, Persona, and Transparency.

compartmentalization as failure.

Until recently, I was a strong advocate of compartmentalization in most communication. Having a separate team work on each of many fronts does, in principle, result in a finished product that has been reviewed by several teams, each one with specific expertise in the area they are responsible for.

I think the new media landscape, especially for corporate communications / PR / advertising / marketing, makes compartmentalization a dangerous, and arguably foolish option.

I’m hereby advocating a completely integrated communication system, one team, involving experience in internal communications, marketing, advertising, and public relations. I think, in the very near future, the amount of crossover necessary to do any of these things well, will make each role complementary, at the least.

Compartmentalization only makes sense if there are multiple, separate aspects to an operation. Communication no longer works that way, thanks in a large part to the massive internet community that is watching for anything suspicious or sinister. Even with the best oversight, multiple companies means multiple messages. Even assuming you manage to create a brief so comprehensive that the actual content is consistent, you will still get McLuhaned.

McLuhaned – When consistent ideas and messaging come across as not-at-all consistent, do to a difference in medium. (A corollary of ‘The Medium is the Message’)

The previous assumption is based on my observation that PR, Marketing, and Advertising each have a different vernacular, with different conventions. They are each functionally a medium, independent of which media they are disseminated through.

Beyond this, internal and external communication need to be in sync. The new reality is that regardless of how many NDA’s you force on your workers, things WILL get leaked, emails WILL get addressed to the wrong people, and the internal and the external WILL get compared. If they don’t line up, you lose trust on every front. Obviously, that’s unacceptable.

I’m hereby claiming this as Crowley’s first rule of modern communication – All that when compared, portrays an entity in a negative light, will eventually be compared. The way the internet works is to guarantee that someone is always watching. Be ready to work with that.

I guess the core point is that transparency is mandatory. And even a transparent company will eventually look as though it’s hiding something if communication is compartmentalized, as (mentioned before) compartmentalization breeds inconsistencies.

Speaking of transparency, I suppose I should finish what I started with ‘Crowley’s first rule’.

I’m Jon Crowley. Nice to meet you.

on boundaries of content.

It's become fairly accepted of late that advertising has started to require the creation of compelling content, rather than just an image of a compelling product with some vaguely interesting copy. The public-as-consumers has begun to demand a reason to pay attention to advertising, both consciously and unconsciously. This is the whole point of the viral explosion, that is someone can create content to interesting it's self-distributing, it doesn't matter if it's a commercial. My favourite example is the deep love my mother has for the recent Tim Horton's spot which features an old man and his son discussing family and hockey while watching the grandson play, all over a hot double double. My mother actually stops conversations, and silences the family to watch this. (I spent 30 minutes scouring youtube, no luck. Sorry.)

So, advertising is supposed to be compelling content. This is painfully obvious, and yet, people still seem to be screwing it up. Which is how we end up here...

Long story short, a band is found to have been created by an advertising firm (Saatchi & Saatchi) specifically for use as a promotions platform. Part of me likes this idea, that someone looks at the commodification of music and goes 'well, better than having to argue with a real band about compensation'. This could have worked, but the same damn mistake that Sony made over the Christmas season with an attempted viral campaign. There are enough people, with enough time, on the internet to find out whether or not anything in popular culture is genuine, or authentic, or an attempt to get them to buy something crappy. I don't know if the hair products being promoted by phony bands are any good. I actually WANT a PSP for myself. But if those responsible for advertising the product are so desperate for positive associations that they create fake people or artists to draw attention to them, it makes sense to assume they suck.

The thing that kills me is this. The music is question was good enough to be played repeatedly on the radio. It caught interest, developed a reasonable enough following to crack that massive barrier. All of this indicates, to me, that if those in charge had been clear about the fact this was a promotional tool, and been very transparent about it, it could have been very successful. Hell, that damn Snakes on a Plane song got radio play, and it was very blatantly about a movie. The difference is, there was no attempt to dupe anyone into thinking it was a coincidental work of art.

Adbusters demographic aside, the issue isn't that consumers hate anything phony. If they did, advertising would not exist, and no advertising related character would ever become popular. It is more or less totally acceptable for something to be completely fake, as long as there is no pretense of reality about the thing itself. What people hate is being told something is genuine, when it is not. They either a) see right through the attempted deception and resent the campaign and product, or b) find out later that they were deceived, feel stupid, and REALLY resent the campaign and product.

Baudrillard was wrong about many things, but he was right about this; if a simulation is PERFECT, then it is effectively reality. What are the chances of a band put together by an ad agency being that perfect? And why risk it when, in all likelihood, a quality product that is openly a promotional tool could reach a more interested, and self-propagating audience through distribution online, in audio, video, podcast, etc. formats.

I understand the rationale behind the move here, but at the same time, it's a little embarrassing that in a world where so much is spent on advertising, no one considered that with quality content, it doesn't really matter to a large segment of consumers if the purpose is also to sell something. There's no inherent need for adverts to be invasive, or annoying. Therefore there's no real reason to be ashamed that the content produced is an ad. My mother is fully aware that the charming elderly asian man is an actor hired to sell her coffee. She doesn't care, because when he says 'Gimme my picture back' it makes her laugh and smile all the same.

transparency and post-transparency.

Talking with Angus recently has led me to think a fair amount on transparency and the importance of it to creating a connection with consumers. This led to, last night at a Starbucks, me scribbling rapidly about the possible clash of branding and transparency in terms of making meaning. To put it bluntly, the chances of anyone or anything being both radically open, and creating and staying on an iconic message, are negligible (assuming that the message isn't mostly one of transparency and 'human-ness'). What this led me to thinking about was an idea of post transparency thinking, and the mixing of a curated message with a more natural one.

It is a both a good thing, and a bad thing, that I read a disgusting amount of magazines. Good because I managed to read the article that exposed me to the core of these ideas, and bad because it took 45 minutes of searching to remember that it had been in GOOD, and not Wired, or Monocle, or Maisonneuve (all of which I recommend wholeheartedly).

"Green is the Colour of Money", an article on corporate greenwashing, makes mention of the Clif Bar company, and one interesting facet of it's operations. The entire delivery fleet runs on biodiesel, and the company has 'a very strong sustainability program'. It also doesn't advertise this at all, except to mention on the packaging that the bars are about 70% organic in ingredients. This is interesting, and I think it goes beyond the fact that the company doesn't advertise, as far as I can tell.

This could be seen as a simple choice that the company live or die on the merits of the product, which is something easy to respect. But it is also a powerful choice given the nature of information access, at the current moment in time. While the article later mentions that the wrappers are not recyclable, this doesn't come across as much of a criticism, although it would if the company was pushing a strong 'green' image. However, it's 2007, and Google exists. Articles like this one being written, consumers blogging and posting on message boards, information like this gets out there, and people search for it. If transparency is about making it simple for consumers to see what you are doing, and therefore assume that you aren't hiding anything, than this is post-transparency; operating on the assumption that the consumer can find out what you do, and instead of simply not addressing your failings, utilise the power of not addressing your successes.

The end result is that you are lauded all the more for enviable facets to your business, and forgiven for little flaws like Clif Bar's non-recyclable wrapper, because, well, it's not like you were bragging about it. Moreover, if people have to look for information (and you can assume they will, if they care) they are at least somewhat more likely to assume it is true than if they are getting it spoonfed to them by the corporation in question.

By understanding that the information, if it exists, will be available, the only question becomes how to generate the interest necessary to turn a post-transparency approach into goodwill, good press, and hopefully good sales. The obvious choice here is to create a superior product, or at the very least one that speaks for itself. Most of us have already reached the point of understanding the brand is more important than any individual offering. Telling people they should love and respect the brand is the first step towards backlash. Letting them find out why themselves, after they have decided to love the product, seems like a fast route to overwhelmingly positive word of mouth, beyond the fact that it offers you a little forgiveness for any initiatives or approaches that aren't 100% of what the consumer might expect.

The other option that seems of the same school, is the ever-present-in-the-back-of-my-mind artificialism, which I should really get around to explaining clearly. I will, whenever I figure out a clear way to explain it. For a quick, cryptic attempt: artificialism is the point when a demand for transparency meets an adherence to branding. Constructing an entire system of information in the goal of creating a singular perception, divorced at least somewhat from reality. However, I'm currently of the mind this would only work on a personal level, as something that requires near-perfection in execution is rarely something that would scale.