Sizing Us And Them: A Lesson In Transparency

In 1972, prolific British dramatist David Campton wrote a seemingly simple one act play called Us And Them. If you've never heard of Campton, think of him as a playwright much like Arthur Miller, except leaning more toward the absurd. His play, Us And Them, begins innocently enough with two groups of wanderers looking for a place to settle. And once they each find a plot of land stage left and stage right, both groups...

Being Transparent: Sometimes It's Stupid

It has been months, but people are still talking about it. Last year, Spirit Airlines floated the idea of charging a "passenger usage fee" to cover the costs associated with buying a ticket. Specifically, it would charge a $5 to $10 fee if you booked a flight anywhere other than a Spirit Airlines ticket desk. This year, Spirit Airlines was considering the opposite. The new fee idea charges passengers for getting help...

Selling Cars: Transparency Helps, Except Toyota

"Stores that fully merchandise their inventory stand out from their competitors, connect with shoppers, and position themselves to win more than their fair share of the deals." — Michael Page, vice president of advertising products, Cars.comThe assessment by Page comes out of an in-depth analysis of Internet merchandising on online shopping behavior presented by Cars.com at the National Automobile Dealers Association...

Misunderstanding Intent: Communication Today

There is a fascinating post over at The Notorious R.O.B. that discusses some initial reservations with Todd Carpenter becoming the social media manager for the National Association of REALTORS. In the post, Rob Hahn describes those early reservations as associated with what he believed would be an impending shift from open communication to message control. For the controversy over the MLS data and Google, I highly recommend...

Revealing Inconsistencies: Timothy Geithner

U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner demonstrated why message consistency is important. Speaking at the Council on Foreign Relations, he said the U.S. is "open" to a call for a new global currency to replace the U.S. dollar."We’re actually quite open to that suggestion — you should see it as rather evolutionary rather building on the current architecture rather than moving us to global monetary union," Geithner...

Allowing Anonymous: Communicators Divided

Ragan recently released the results of a poll that asked a series of questions regarding anonymous comments. More than 1,000 communicators responded. Highlights: How Organizations View Anonymous Comments• 46 percent of their organizations do not allow anonymous comments.• 46 percent of their organizations do not allow comments of any kind.• 14 percent of their organizations do allow anonymous comments.Highlights: How...

Tightening Reigns: Drug Advertising Gets Tougher

On the same day that Merck & Co. agreed to pay a $58 million settlement over the marketing of the painkiller Vioxx, Reps. John Dingell and Bart Stupak called on several drug companies to voluntarily curb advertisements targeting consumers."To date, we have not received adequate assurances that the leading pharmaceutical companies share our commitment to providing consumers with accurate information about drug therapies,"...

Canceling Campaigns: Pfizer Says It’s Your Fault

After more than $258 million spent in advertising, the long-running advertising campaign that primarily employed Dr. Robert Jarvik as spokesperson for Lipitor, according to The New York Times today. Pfizer announced yesterday that it would cancel the advertisements featuring Dr. Jarvick. Pfizer offered up a release that primarily focuses on a 3-paragraph statement from Ian Read, president of worldwide pharmaceutical...

Rowing Nowhere: Celebrity Endorsements

Advertising for the Pfizer cholesterol drug Lipitor continues to draw scrutiny from everyone, especially one of its more recent advertisements. The ad features Dr. Robert Jarvick, inventor of the artificial heart, rowing his way to better health with Lipitor. Except, he doesn’t really row."He's about as much an outdoorsman as Woody Allen," longtime collaborator Dr. O. H. Frazier of the Texas Heart Institute told The...

Self-Regulating The Net: FTC

The Federal Trade Commission released five proposed principles and guidelines for self-regulation in the behavioral advertising industry, which includes the tracking of consumer activities online (searches, page visits, viewed content, etc.). While the FTC has been looking at privacy issues related to the Web for more than a decade, it was expected that the high visibility of privacy issues recently created, in part,...

Approaching Journalism: Tips For Bloggers

While listening to a panel discussion called “Being Opinionated in America” from the University of Berkeley that featured Maureen Dowd and Thomas L. Friedman (available for free download at iTunes), I noted that Friedman was particularly transparent in his approach to writing foreign affairs columns for The New York Times. Five Points Gleaned From Thomas L. Friedman• Writes fact-based commentaries that are reasonably...

Being Left Behind: The U.S. Online

The United States may have created the Internet but Chinese youth are catching up and will outpace American youth online, according to a study released by the IAC, which is an interactive conglomerate operating more than 60 diversified brands in sectors being transformed by the Internet, and JWT, the largest advertising agency brand in the United States and the fourth-largest full-service network in the world.Currently,...

Deepening Conversations: New Media

Social media sometimes appears to be an inch deep and a mile wide. At least that is the way it looks to some because social media, or new media, is still in its infancy. As a result, it’s often easier to build an extension to the wafer thin model than dig deeper, proving or disproving what is being considered today.Regardless of the sessions attended or exhibitors met at BlogWorld & New Media Expo, this point became...

Saying Tomato: Whole Foods Market, Inc.

Whole Foods Market, Inc. (Whole Foods) has completed its investigation into CEO John Mackey’s online financial message board postings related to Whole Foods and Wild Oats Market (Wild Oats). The fiasco began months ago after it was revealed that Mackey posted disparaging remarks about Wild Oats on Yahoo financial boards using the anonymous name “Rahodeb.” He did this for years, stopping several months prior to the...

Playing Politics: Everyone Under The Sun

While most political coverage has shifted to the bathroom habits and hypocrisy of Sen. Larry Craig (reality check: no amount of spin can save this), there is a largely unreported political story taking place that may be more concerning to some and much more far reaching in considering topics such as transparency.In May, director Oliver Stone, filmmaker behind “JFK” and “Born on the Fourth of July” has produced a television...

Targeting Jobs: Daniel Lyons

Originally, I was going to pass on The New York Times outing Daniel Lyons, a senior editor at Forbes magazine, as the infamous fake Steve Jobs blogger. It was already covered ad nauseum and, with John Mackey still in focus, I wondered how many anonymous blogger stories might be too many.But then, The Buzz Bin highlighted Todd Vanhooser’s comments that cut right to the chase. They clip some of the very best quotes from Lyons during an interview with Sam Whitmore, circa 2005. Back then, Lyons had all but admitted to a bit of a...

Accepting Leadership: ERE Network

If there is one “most important” lesson to be learned from an ERE Network dispute that became a public dispute, it is that those who begin to assume leadership roles, even within social media, must be willing to embrace the responsibilities of leadership no matter how unpleasant they may seem.Neither David Manaster nor Karen Mattonen, the two most public parties who have participated in this dispute, perceive themselves...

Publicizing Bans: ERE Network

Although I've always liked David Manaster, CEO of Electronic Recruiting Exchange (ERE) Network, which is the largest active community of recruiting professionals online, he recently published something on his blog that left me confused. There seems to be little communication logic behind publishing the banishment of a member from his organization."To date, I've avoided posting about this decision because I didn't want...

Protecting Consumers: King County

Some people misunderstood me when I suggested local governments might have better things to do than require quick service restaurants like Burger King, McDonald's, and Wendy's to post calorie counts on their menu boards.The King County Board of Health can be counted among them. Although the New York City case hasn’t had its day in court, new labeling requirements in King County, Washington, now call for all chain...

Telling No Truths: Whole Foods Market, Inc.

"I sincerely apologize to all Whole Foods Market stakeholders for my error in judgment in anonymously participating on online financial message boards,” says co-founder, Chairman and CEO John Mackey, Whole Foods Market, Inc. “I am very sorry and I ask our stakeholders to please forgive me."With the lead up to his apology and the very limited number of people he apologized to, I’m not sure this was the best decision,...