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.

memo to trent reznor.

NIN has released a new record online. Ghosts I-IV.

Trent Reznor has done everything right. Free sample, ability to listen, increasing price scale based on how much you are willing to pay, with a physical product thrown in to justify each increasing price point. All of it an excellent deal. All of it profoundly attractive, in a really well designed web package.

But I've been trying to give him my money for 30 minutes, and I can't. I'm actually trying really hard to give him my money, $10, in return for some undoubtedly great music now, and what I expect will be an attractive package later. This will be, to be clear, the first physical CD I buy in about three years. If I can get the page to load. Which I can't.

When it comes down to it, every business model of music is in direct competition with piracy. And now I'm sitting here, actively trying to pay for music, and I can't.

I'm not looking to see if there's a torrent of Ghosts available. Mostly because I actually want the physical product. But I have to admit, I've got my credit card on my lap, and I'm still tempted.

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.

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engagement as facilitation.

While working on the last 2 posts, and considering how to generate engagement, I realised that my core point wasn't the focus on issues, per se, but rather creating a tool to facilitate action. This is a pretty simple rule for whether or not something will generate engagement in a user base, so I thought it should be made explicit.

Content, or Information, or even Distraction don't guarantee engagement, and if they do, they can only do so for the short term. People talk about the value of Facebook as a 'social graph'm but I find I can only explain the value to non-users as a means of keeping in touch with people I would otherwise lose track of. Facebook is filled with information, and things to do, but the engagement comes from it's use to facilitate events, or friendships, or contact.

Wikipedia works the same way. It's not naturally engaging to the majority of users - we show up, get the information we want, maybe click a link or two, and move on. But to those who see Wikipedia as a way to facilitate explaining their expertise, and sharing it with others, it becomes an addiction. These superusers are the ones who keep the project alive.

I use Tumblr because it facilitates sharing short bursts of information with my friends. There are other ways I can do that, but Tumblr also facilitates interaction with the information my friends post. It gives me a dead easy way to take someone else's content, respond to / remix it, and repost it on my own account. This is then shared with anyone following my account.

This is obvious, and should be fairly intuitive. You can't just offer something, you have to offer a means to action, to actually engage users. So, there's the short version of how I need to consider any changes to anything in my life - what action am I facilitating, and what am I trying to shore up with nothing but content?

redefining a personal experience (OYP)

I've been spending a lot of my spare time considering how to update a conference that has meant a lot to me over the years, basically an attempt to make politics, and faith (specifically Christian faith) more relevant to 14-21 year olds in Ontario. As a raging atheist, the Christian part is a hard sell for me, excepting the core values (golden rule, etc) that I think most people can agree are good ideas, at least when removed from the confines of a faith system. So I've been focusing on how to make politics interesting enough for youth to want to join a model parliament with religious components.

We have a socially aware and active youth base, but they aren't interested in politics in isolation. The point that keeps popping up in my head is that youth care about issues - you can see them proving it in Nathan Phillips Square every couple of months - and a political outreach program for youth, even a model one, has to be issue based to tap into that. The current model we use is based on getting cabinet ministers to write legislation on various issues they care about, debate it, amend it, and surround that time with structured social activities, fundraising, and spiritual reflection. (note: I think this is great, and that is backed up with me spending 9 years involved in an organisation partially based on a religious tradition I actually have disdain for).

I think the solution is to take the entire experience issue based. If the core issue for a session is, say, Darfur, as an example, then have everything focus on that. Draft legislation relating to banning trade with nations who condone genocide, or reinforcing Canada's lagging UN Peacekeeping commitment. Have the charity (we usually have one local, and one international) be directly related. Have workshops that educate kids on the issues before debating legislation. Screen a documentary or two. Make the religious component, bible verse, etc, complement the theme, and deal with the core moral violations that make it something that needs to be challenged. Create a framework for people to get involved when they get home. Make that issue live beyond the weekend - go as far as to organise meetups, a letter writing campaign, anything to create actual results from the effort.

The problem isn't that kids don't care about politics, it's that they've gotten used to actually doing things, rather than talking about them.

This is likely going to be one in a series, as I figure this out. I realise it's not overly accessible, but I hope it will become clearer as I come closer to a final product.

new media and the oscars.

I watched the majority of the Oscars this year, although I had assumed I wouldn't.

I'm neither strongly for or against the awards show, I just didn't see a point. The formatting of the Oscars seems more or less irrelevant, given the way I curate my online media consumption.

Standard (old) Model: Watch the red carpet, discuss / mock interesting choices, ignore bland ones. Watch the intro, laugh / discuss good jokes, ignore bland ones. Watch the performances, usually well executed but somewhat boring. Watch the presenters, half-paying attention to the pre-presentation patter, and half checking to see if they flub a line or mispronounce a name. Watch the Winners, ignoring the bland (often technical) awards, and agree / disagree with the marquee award winners.

Debatable Model: Read / Compulsively refresh 2-5 different liveblogs of the event on your laptop while watching, so as to achieve the maximum amount of witty commentary / recap possible. (Does anyone actually do this?)

New Model: Ignore the Oscars broadcast. Wake up, and go to your RSS reader. You now have a breakdown of Winners, Snubs, Reactions, Bad Outfits, Good Outfits, Great Jokes, Flubs, and the Performances deemed relevant. With this comes youtube videos of anything notable (therefore, time/location shifting, replay, etc), smarmy commentary, little bits of supporting info you wouldn't have known otherwise, etc. This is basically a distilled version of the standard watching experience, and you can feel free to ignore what doesn't interest you. You will learn everything you would from the show that you cared to, and in around a quarter of the time.

More importantly, the parts that most people enjoy are readily available in online coverage. The context, critique, jokes, etc, take the place of the unending montages that no one cares about, the technical awards (which, I'm sorry, do not matter to wider, not intensely dedicated to film crowd), and the thank you speeches.

Funnily, watching the Oscars made my RSS list a lot faster to sort through this morning, as most of the information had already been absorbed. But, it should be noted that I didn't finish watching the broadcast, because I got bored at around 10, brought my laptop to the TV, and then left at 11.

The standard counterarguments about 'knowing first' or 'shared experience' only partially apply. The interesting thing to me is that watching the Oscars has become an entirely dispensable part of the Academy Awards Experience.

adbusters, authenticity, and the inherent insult.

Kalle Lasn thinks everyone is a moron.

Reading his most recent editorial, where he states "Suddenly, people are waking up in droves from the dreamland of corporate cool. We’re realizing that ever since we were little babies crawling around the TV sets in our living rooms, we’ve been lied to, propagandized, and told incessantly, day after day, that we can find happiness through consumption. That’s why, like rats in a Skinner box, we’ve kept on pressing that BUY button – millions of us marching in lockstep, all dreaming the same consumerist dream." it becomes clear that he thinks we're all morons. Lasn, and the entire ethos behind Adbusters, buys into the idea that 'authenticity' is something that the chosen few counterculture warriors can understand and identify, and that the rest of us are so worn down by advertising that we cannot possibly understand it.

If you've been reading for a minute, you know that I think the concept of authenticity, as it applies to consumerism, is really code for 'continues-to-represent-consumer-identity-over-time'. The same concept can be applied to music, as bands 'sell out' when they stop being a signifier for the kind of identity that the fan wants to project.

I would submit that the assumption that authenticity is like taste, and only a certain, dashing, revolutionary few can locate it, is a bigger endorsement of the capitalist mindset than anything else. Adbusters advocates consumer action, a lifestyle, and more or less a uniform (blackspot sneakers, a no blood for oil pin, and a keffiyeh) in it's fan base. And it tells you to do this because it is supposed to suggest you are better than other people. This is the core of the suggestion that everyone else (who isn't buying the magazine) is being duped.

The idea that consumers don't realize the separation between the corporately created and the 'authentic' offends me. Because it's the companies that lose touch with consumer needs that fail, and it's the ones that identify a niche and change with it that succeed. But anyone who assumes that the consumer, that the society is composed of mindless sheep should, and will eventually fail hard.

But Kalle Lasn thinks that everyone who doesn't agree with his interpretation of capitalist culture is an idiot. And people keep looking to him for ideas on how to kill this dominant culture that only tricks the unlucky morons who don't see the truth available to his chosen few.

commodification of street art.

Now firmly entrenched as the graffiti artist most lauded by the fine arts crowd, Banksy raises an interesting point. While I can understand the rising auction prices of his work, all rooted in the street art he made his name with, I'm more interested in the speed with which his rise in stature has connected directly with changing attitudes towards his (still illegal) graf pieces.

At least two times that I know of, Banksy's work has been removed from it's original home (a public object) and auctioned off for notable amounts of money. This in and of itself doesn't bother me. My issue is with the forced commodification of something that Banksy's own work seems to classify as a means of fighting back for a chunk of public space. When that weapon can get cut or chiseled free, and then becomes a commercial object despite the wishes of the creator, that becomes something of a problem for me.

The same thing happened recently with Murakami taking a tagged Murakami billboard, and adding it to his collection.

I'm not saying I'm surprised, or that I don't understand the motivations, but at the same time, this seems reprehensible to me. The value in these pieces, in my opinion, is as a public good. Graffiti serves the commons, whether as inspiration, decoration, or call to arms. I have no issue with a graf artist working for corporate interests, but I have a problem with a public good being turned into a private one for profit.

In short, this is turning graf into what I considered it the antithesis of - advertising - is as much as it takes a public good (space, graf) and turns it into a private one (ads, auction fodder).

The thing is, objectively, there is little difference in this, than in getting an artist to paint on a branded pair of shoes, or bag. So I suppose this was inevitable, although it seems doomed to strip the whole enterprise of meaning.