Adding Development Experience

One hundred hard hat tours later and we're still not tired of urban development. Lofts. Condos. Retail centers. Office buildings. Mixed-use masterplans. Having offices in one of the fastest growing cities in the United States has always been a boon for working for the best.

Our communication experience for the area's most significant urban developments, ranging Boca Park and East Village, has spilled over into work with architects, contractors, and developers nationwide. You can catch a few samplings of our urban development work at Copywrite, Ink.

For account experience in other industries, download our select account experience lists. Our next pdf portfolio page, which will focus on residential development, will be released on or before Sept. 25.

Getting Web Design Right

"In the future, smart studios, advertisers and marketers will set up a team that's about the concept first. They'll nail a concept and they'll understand how technology has really changed fundamentally the way people are interacting with television, with film, with music, with social interaction. It's a very exciting time for designers, because it's a whole new set of areas to communicate and to think about the two-way dialogue." - Susan Easton, founder, New York City-based Easton Design, offering her take on the future of Web design to Communication Arts.

Designing A Free Future

We didn't post on 9/11 yesterday, perhaps it is because we remember it all too well. Five years ago, we developed and implemented a crisis communication plan for the Southern Nevada Hotel Concierge Association (SNHCA) within a half hour as the crisis began to unfold.

To assist these dedicated professionals in their struggle to answer thousands of questions and help people find alternative transportation home from Las Vegas, we transformed our commercial writing services company into a fax broadcast news center, collecting information from news sources, internal airport contacts, and transportation sources. Then, every fifteen minutes on the first day, every hour on subsequent days, we would send a blast fax to about 30 hotel concierge desks throughout the city.

While the system seemed archaic, it proved very effective. Not all concierges had access to a television or computer so we had to adapt. Since all of them had a fax machine, it was the most logical form of media distribution.

The consolidated information, for weeks, became their alternative breaking news source. We had information many major networks did not have, mostly out of necessity. We had to think beyond covering the crisis and focus on finding solutions for visitors. From the concierge desks, the blast faxes filtered up to hotel management.

In the weeks and months that followed, for our company, 9/11 had a tremendous impact. We lost a few clients, irritated by our decision to be part of the solution (first with the fax broadcasts and then with a Liberty Las Vegas campaign, which was backed by Mayor Oscar Goodman and designed to stimulate the local economy) rather than catering to commercial deadlines. We had to abandon an online literary project, called GroundZero, because its brand became symbolic for New York. And, it marked the beginning of the end for Key News * Las Vegas, a publication we managed for the SNHCA after several advertisers cancelled their contracts. (It took a few years, but we did successfully salvage the publication and sold it.)

So all in all, I don't talk about it much, especially because as much as we were involved, the impact seemed to me somewhat insignificant when compared to other stories I came across as a business person and as a journalist. I made that decision weeks after the tragedy when I was interviewing someone from Aon and 9/11 came up. She mentioned she lost her office ... along with 20 some co-workers.

Instead, while we'll never forget, we prefer to focus on the future. And that is what I would like to leave you with today.

The McCormick Tribune Freedom Museum is the first Web site in the U.S. that is dedicated exclusively to the topic of freedom and the First Amendment. Its doors opened in April 2006.

Communication Arts magazine wrote it up best: Not only does it (The Freedom Museum) do a great job of defining the role that the First Amendment plays in the basic freedoms of Americans, it does it in a way that makes the historical content palatable to teenagers (its primary audience). I guess I'm young at heart. I loved it anyway.

Sometimes, in the face of tragedy, it's worthwhile to consider the benefits. Freedom, not security, is both the cause and the reward. And when it comes to freedom, the First Amendment is always a great place to start. God bless.

Sacrificing The First Celebrity

So the team behind the lonelygirl15 YouTube mystery has come forward, claiming that lonelygirl15 is part of their “show” and thanking their fans effusively for tuning in to “the birth of a new art form.”

New? Not really.

In 1938, H. G. Wells led thousands to believe that an interplanetary conflict had started with invading Martians spreading wide death and destruction in New Jersey and New York. The broadcast disrupted households, interrupted religious services, created traffic jams, clogged communications systems, and, in one Newark neighborhood, prompted more than twenty families to rush out of their houses with wet handkerchiefs and towels over their faces to flee from what they believed was to be a gas raid.

Naturally, Orson Wells did provide ample announcements during the broadcast that emphasized the story was fictional. But in 1990, pop artists Milli Vanilli, who virtually had a similar effect on the public, did not warn the public.

It was during a live performance at the Lake Compounce theme park in Connecticut that their song "Girl You Know It's True" jammed and began to skip, repeating the line "Girl, you know it's-" over and over. Later, it was confirmed to reporters on Nov. 15, 1990 that Morvan and Pilatus did not sing on the records, causing a class action lawsuit that resulted in a multi-million dollar refund for anyone who wanted to return the record for any reason.

Just a few years earlier, in 1988, the public had chastised front-running presidential candidate Gary Hart for having an extramarital affair. Hart dared the press to "Follow me around. I don't care. I'm serious. If anybody wants to put a tail on me, go ahead. They'll be very bored." Unfortunately for him, two reporters from the Miami Herald took up his challenge and observed an attractive young woman coming out of Hart's Washington, D.C., townhouse on the evening of May 2. By the end of the New Hampshire primary, it was clear that Gary Hart's White House hopes were over.

Orson Wells. Milli Vanilli. Gary Hart. While all three were ridiculed for the outcomes, all three also softened public expectations, opening the doors for the others to do virtually the same thing without any public backlash.

Ashlee Simpson received widespread derision, but survived, using a pre-recorded vocal track for a performance on Saturday Night Live in 2004. Bill Clinton was impeached, but largely survived his relationship with Monica Lewinsky, a young female White House intern. And countless radio shows and movies have borrowed Wells' concept to create faux reality entertainment without any impact whatsoever.

Lonelygirl15 is nothing much more than the first 'vlogger' caught presenting fiction as fact, opening the doors wide open for similar Web programming in the future, where storytelling is sometimes difficult to discern from the real thing in what sometimes seems like a 'War of the Words' not 'War of the Worlds.'

Ironically, Loneygirl15 will not be the one who really benefits. I think documentary filmmaker Brian Flemming is right. The lonelygirl15 phenomenon has "jumped the shark."

Personally, whether the public will be softened to faux reality Web shows after ceremonially sacrificing their first 'Web celebrity' or not —open, honest, and candid communication remains the best policy for entertainers, marketing gurus, politicians, corporate executives, and anyone else who wants to survive longer than the fifteen minutes of hype. And that's advice you can take to the bank.

Adding Broadcast Experience

After returning from a successful strategic communication development session in Chico, Calif., we took a few minutes this weekend to release Copywrite, Ink.'s third pdf portfolio page at copywriteink.com. The Broadcast page presents a glimpse into our direct and indirect work with broadcasters that include ABC, FOX, and PBS.

From assisting in the development of startup networks and providing local support services to major broadcasters to working on cross-over promotions for shows like American Idol (with Madame Tussaud's) and Extreme Makeover Home Edition (with Acme Home Elevator), we have a unique understanding of the industry from the inside out. Such knowledge also proves useful when we script (and sometimes produce) radio and television commercials for a variety of clients.

For account experience in other industries, download our select account experience lists. Our next pdf portfolio page, featuring property development experience, will be released on or before Sept. 18.

Trending Toward Entertainment

There are hundreds of comments critiquing Katie Couric and her debut on Tuesday as a “CBS Evening News” anchor and the first woman to solo anchor for a major broadcast network newscast. Whether you think she seemed to struggle to keep a lid on her trademark perkiness or not, public relations professionals should take note.

National news, much like local news, has been and continues to trend toward interactive entertainment. From asking viewers to send in potential Couric sign-off lines to including a new regular feature called "Free Speech," a segment of opinion and commentary from a wide range of Americans, it's clear that the network has a new formula in mind for the future of news.

As Greg Kandra, CBS editor, wrote on one of several CBS blog strings: "Katie intends for this blog to be a dialogue, not a monologue. Don't be bashful. Most postings will have a comment section, so feel free to post and comment and tell us what you really think."

Why? News commentary and controversy have become the norm and CBS is struggling to emerge with something fresh for television by borrowing something old from radio: active participation. It's an interesting concept that means public relations professionals should prep clients as if they are attending a public forum as well as a media interview.

For the public, as the trend solidifies, it means even more difficulty in discerning fact from opinion, especially as more and more reporters seem eager to polarize what once was their common ground to find the truth. In today's world, the only common ground seems to be that criticism delivered Olberman-style means stealing tomorrow's headlines and public interest or that presenting to extremely polar opposite guests always makes for interesting, if nonsensical, controversy.

Nowadays, the truth is often, not always, somewhere in the ever-expanding middle. Personally, I hope the public knows it.