The Spin Cycle, 5/13

A round-up of recent happenings in the world of PR, marketing, and other things I find interesting.

The Yelpification of Foursquare: Foursquare just may become relevant again -- was it ever truly relevant? -- with its new Explore feature, which gives users personalized recommendations for restaurants and other venues. I've never used explore but I am a heavy user of Foursquare, though it reaps me few benefits. I've redeemed a handful of check-in specials, and we've used it effectively at work to hype events. Foursquare users who cross-post their check-ins to Facebook, Twitter, and, God forbid, LinkedIn probably do the service no favors by friends and followers who find these status updates annoying.

RIM's lame flashmob: The maker of the Blackberry tries to employ another fading relic of the digital age to get some attention and poke a stick at Apple: a flash mob, and a lousy one at that. Really, a flashmob? People are still doing those? It raises the question, what if someone attempts a PR stunt in the forest and no one notices except for PR bloggers? It's always so cute when someone updates their Facebook status with a Blackberry, like people who still use AOL email addresses.

Is Facebook 2012 the same as AOL 2001?: Speaking of the Internet graveyard, my friend and former colleague Dave Copeland wonders if the Facebook juggernaut is headed for the same kind of fall as America Online, which once stood astride the digital world like a colossus. Certainly Facebook can't take its success for granted. It's a service that millions use but, in my experience, few actually love. In that way, it's the Microsoft of social networking, another rather foreboding comparison. One key difference between AOL and Facebook is that while the former tried to offer users a unique way of experiencing the Internet and the web, those are open systems to which numerous competitors, regional and national, offered access. Facebook offers features that, as of now, haven't been replicated all in one place, and is closed to nonmembers. If you want to be part of Facebook, you have to be part of Facebook.

The Chronicle of Higher Education Stands By Its Woman, Until it Doesn't: Higher education's leading trade publication finds itself in a crisis-control mode after ditching a conservative blogger who take a broadside at black studies. I don't offer any comment as to whether the publication was in the right or in the wrong. That would pose a severe conflict of interest for me and my employer. I will say that it is always fascinating to see the tables turned on a news outlet, which is used to asking the questions, not answering them.

Out of the rubble

Netflix appears to have bounced back from last year's blunders, with membership and stock value rising again. You'll recall that Netflix's problems constituted what I regard as a true PR crisis, in which an organization response to a problem -- particularly its communications strategy -- makes things worse.

What conclusions can we draw from Netflix's bumbling and its subsequent revival? I think there are three important lessons:

1. When dealing with a crisis or unpopular decisions, communication is important -- but only honest, open, and transparent communication is effective. This is the lesson that people and organizations must learn and re-learn again and again. Netflix didn't dump chemicals into the ocean, or poison someone's drinking water, or give children cancer. It raised prices and separated its streaming and DVD-by-mail services. It angered customers, but few businesses can survive for long without making an unpopular decision, whether it is raising prices, cutting service, or even eliminating jobs. When an organization takes these kinds of steps, it is the duty of leadership to explain its actions as candidly as possible, without spin, which is where Netflix went wrong.

2. Understand your brand and what people expect of it. Netflix made a bad situation worse when it went on to announce it was rebranding its DVD service "Qwikster" and requiring people to subscribe to both services separately. Netflix built its brand on convenience. It spared people the hassle of having to drive to their local video store, hope it had the movie they wanted, and then wait in line to be served by some grumpy high school kid. Netflix didn't develop a cool new technology -- its service relied on the U.S. mail, for Pete's sake. So the worst thing it could have done was to make its new service as inconvenient as possible, which is what it did.

3. The quality of your product and service trumps everything -- most of the time. Netflix has quietly recovered no doubt people still want what the company sells: a decent selection of movies and TV shows that can be viewed whenever you want, virtually anywhere you want. As long as Netflix can provide that, and do it well, it should be fine, so long as its CEO keeps his big mouth shut.

You'll notice that this lesson carries a qualifier. Companies that have earned their customers trust can survive a crisis, but it's not guaranteed. Remember lesson number 1. How you respond to that crisis is important, and it gets more important the more severe the crisis turns out to be. Remember Chi-Chi's? The restuarant chain was already struggling when one of its Pittsburgh-area locations was hit by a hepatitis A outbreak, but the restuarant's poor response to the crisis was the nail in the coffin. Other restaurants and stores -- Jack in the Box, Sheetz -- survived similar crises, and even prospered in their wake, because they followed lesson number 1.

This being a blog about PR, by a PR guy, you won't be surprised to find that I think that's probably the most important lesson of all.

It's a clip show

I'm using an influx of new followers to my Twitter feed, which includes a link to this blog, as an excuse to do a recap of the most-read posts from Spin This in 2011, with a little added commentary to make it all worth your while. Here goes:

1. Matt Lauer, meanie

This was not only the most popular post of 2011, but has gotten the most hits since I started this blog in July 2010. I'll admit to walking back a bit the argument I made in this post that my fellow PR practitioners spend too much time worrying about the perception of the public relations industry. It sparked a healthy conversation with Frank Strong, PR in Pink, and Gini Dietrich about the consequences of negative stereotypes of our field, and how we should go about combating them. My prescription -- that we should simply let our good work speak for itself -- was a bit naive; if that was all that was required to maintain a good reputation for a person, organization, industry, etc., than no one would have any need for our expertise in the first place. The bottom line is that our clients and employers do need us, not just as communicators but as strategic advisors, to help them make sound decisions, and they won't trust us to do so if they see us as nothing but spin artists.

2. Brand Journalism 101

In this post, I talked about the opportunities that digital communications tools provide those of us in marketing and PR to tell our stories directly to our target audiences, bypassing the news media and other traditional filters. It's about giving your audience value: information that is useful to them but that also advances your organization's strategic goals. Some people call it content curation. Whatever you call it, it's the reason why there's never been a better time to be in public relations.

3. Stop this man before he speaks again

Just when it appeared that Netflix CEO Reed Hastings couldn't do any more damage to this once vaunted brand, he gave an interview in October to the New York Times Magazine in which he seemed to blame his company's customers for the debacle that was Qwikster. Previously I had discussed the difference between a genuine crisis and a PR crisis, and noted that Netflix had both on its hands, thanks to its CEO's verbal diarrhea.

4. Print is still fit for news

We're not dead yet, says the traditional news media, given a media use survey that found affluent audiences -- the ones that are often most coveted by marketeers -- still get most of their news from TV and print, and prefer to read magazines in print rather than online. The bottom line for professional communicators: Know your audience, know their preferences, and don't forget the old tricks even as you master new ones.

5. It's the message, stupid

This post was of particular to interest to my Pittsburgh readers, but is of relevance to everyone. I dissected the public relations battle between hospital giant UPMC and insurance giant Highmark. I concluded that despite a preponderance of negative publicity, UPMC was coming out ahead because it was consistent in its message that it had a plan that would allow Highmark subscribers to continue to have access to UPMC physicians. The lesson here is that the messages conveyed by media coverage may be more important than the tone of that coverage.

Well, that's likely it for 2011. Have a Happy New Year, and thanks for all your support. Let's do it again next year.

Stop this man before he speaks again

Recently I discussed how most of the time when people refer to a "PR crisis" they simply are referring to an actual crisis, in which an organization has failed in its basic mission and no amount of spin will save the day.

Then there's Netflix. If a genuine PR crisis is one in which an organization's response to its problems actually make the problems worse, than congratulations, Netflix, you have a real PR crisis on your hands. Case in point, your CEO just won't shut up:

Last month, when announcing Qwikster, you apologized for the way Netflix handled its price hikes, writing, “In hindsight I slid into arrogance based upon past success.” But wasn’t introducing Qwikster the way you did the most arrogant move of all?

No, I think it was just a mistake in underestimating the depth of emotional attachment to Netflix. (link)

Really? People were angry and turned your company into a laughingstock because they were too emotionally invested in it? Please. They were angry because a company built on convenience was now going to require them to maintain two separate accounts, with two separate billings, in order to pay more money to get, at best, the exact same level of service. And to boot, you picked a name that screamed "Failed Internet Start-up, Circa 1999."

If Netflix CEO Reed Hastings really believes the problem was his customers "emotional attachment to Netflix," then it could be a long time before this company -- and its plummeting stock -- hit rock bottom.

Damnit Jim, I'm a PR guy, not a magician

This Financial Times blog post about Blackberry's service disruption leads me to create a definition for the term "public relations crisis": any screw-up that you can't talk your way out of. How many times have I said it? You can't communicate your way out of a situation you behaved your way into. (Actually, my boss said it, and she tells me she's quoting Pat Jackson.) In my own words, the best public relations is a well-run organization, which means that even the most skilled PR practicioner can't rescue an organization from its own bad decisions.

That's not to undervalue the role of crisis management and crisis communication. It certainly is possible to make a bad situation worse by communicating poorly. (I'm looking at you, Netflix.) No one would have cared that BP had an arrogant and condescending CEO if they hadn't dumped a ton of oil in the Gulf of Mexico. Which isn't to say that every crisis is an organization's fault -- take, for example, the famous case of the poisoning of Tylenol, considered a textbook example of effective crisis management. It's not what parent company Johnson & Johnson said that is remembered; it's what they did -- removing Tylenol from the shelves in the interest of public safety, regardless of the cause or scope of the problem.

This doesn't argue against giving public relations its coveted and elusive "seat at the table." In fact, it's evidence that an organization's senior leadership needs to include public relations staff, whose proper role is to reconcile the interests of the organization with the interests of its various publics. In short, to prod the organization to do right when its instincts tell it to do wrong.

Odds and ends and Arcade Fire

Mashable looks at the next check-in craze, and as a follow-up to yesterday's Johnson & Johnson post, here's a breakdown of the company's response to the Tylenol scare of the 1980s.

Finally, my friend Dave Copeland, teaching a college PR class in the fall, sends along this nugget about Arcade Fire that deserves a closer look. Seems some of the band's hard-core fans are irked over Arcade Fire's aggressive marketing tactics and sudden commercial success. Frankly, I've never understand why some people don't want the artists they love to succeed. All that matters is the integrity of the product, and the band seems to have taken care of that, at least for now, by owning their own music.

Besides, it seems to me that it's never been easier to stick to your roots and still enjoy a measure of commercial success as a recording artist. Call it the long-tail effect if you want, but it has less to do with the Internet's on-demand inventory than with the democratization of marketing. Relatively few people know how to go about purchasing commercial time on television, or how to effectively target a press release distribution, or how to put on a press junket. But a lot more people know how to put together a good Facebook page, or use Twitter to drive you to their web site, or create a clever YouTube video that ends up in one of those annoying email forwards from your dad.

On the other hand, having Amazon sell your CD for $3.99 can't hurt.

Another chapter

Johnson & Johnson's response to the cyanide poisoning of Tylenol in the 1980s remains a textbook case in good crisis management, but it appears that J & J isn't doing so well this time around, according to this article in the Chicago Tribune.

Burn baby burn

Jet Blue finally made a statement about its take-this-job-and-shove-it flight attendant. I haven't been paying as much attention to this story as everyone else in the universe, so honestly I hadn't noticed that the airline had been silent. But come on guys, this is PR 101. I once attended a presentation on crisis communications by an FBI spokesman. A news story is like a fire, he said, and information is its oxygen. If you feed it carefully, you can keep it under control and make sure it does you no harm. But if you do nothing, and someone else adds fuel to the fire, who knows what it will burn down.

In matters unrelated to flight attendants who escape out the emergency exit with brews in hand, here's an interesting look at how UNC Charlotte is making good use of Foursquare.