Killing With No Comment: Interference, Inc.

After several days of offering "no comment" about its part in the Cartoon Network's Boston bomb scare, Interference, Inc. has replaced its entire Web presence with with a single statement.

"We at Interference, Inc. regret that our efforts on behalf of our client contributed to the disruption in Boston yesterday and certainly apologize to anyone who endured any hardship as a result. Nothing undertaken by our firm was in any way intended to cause anxiety, fear or discomfort to anyone. We are working with Turner Broadcasting and appropriate law enforcement and municipal authorities to provide information as requested and take other appropriate actions."

From a crisis communication standpoint, the company might be dead. Dead for what it did not say; dead for what was said.

Sure, right now, there are ample bloggers out there attempting to defend the “Aqua Teen Hunger Force" mooninite character (as if the delinquent animated figures need defending), but for as much as CEO Sam Ewen of Interference, Inc. thought he knew guerilla marketing, he knows nothing about crisis communication to manage the mishandling of Turner Broadcasting's campaign. When bad news happens, the messenger is the message and Ewen is nowhere in sight.

It was different in 2001. Internetnews.com interviewed Ewen back then, with Ryan Naraine asking him questions like "What's the trick to make sure it's appealing and not annoying?"

"If you put the effort into the campaign, it isn't obtrusive at all," said Ewen. "Of course, there is good and bad marketing. The goal is not just to be there but to be there at the right time and in the right place."

Unfortunately for Ewen, some six years later, Boston turned out to be the wrong time and the wrong place, with the mooninite infiltration becoming one of the best examples of bad marketing out there. It caused panic, wasted resources, and sent Turner Broadcasting scrambling to prove it is a responsible company despite the scare (they've been handling it well enough).

Where Interference, Inc. is going wrong today is that it continues to allow Peter Berdovsky and Sean Stevens, the two freelancers arrested, to act as its unofficial spokespeople, one of whom mused that what he really wanted to talk about was "haircuts of the 1970's."

Assistant Attorney General John Grossman, on the other hand, wanted to talk about something else. "It's clear the intent was to get attention by causing fear and unrest that there was a bomb in that location," he said.

You don't have to read between the lines to know that "intent" will mean the difference between a prison sentence and freedom for the two men, and quite possibly some employees at Interference, Inc. Since Interference, Inc. won't talk, its best message yesterday, also spun by Berdovsky, was that "they were up there for three weeks and no one noticed."

In other words, no one noticed. In other words, until Boston became sensitized because of an unrelated bomb scare, the marketing was nothing more than a waste of money. Of course, that pales in comparison to the money that will be wasted by Turner Broadcasting to make things right. I suspect Interference, Inc. will be footing some of the bill too.

To me, the real crime here is that Turner Broadcasting was sold a bad bill of goods when a much more effective campaign could have been created. Sure, the company didn't have to buy into the idea (so it too is the master of its own destiny), but nonetheless, Interference, Inc. abused what would have otherwise been a worthwhile tactic.

Getting back to what people like Seth Godin and Jay Levinson wrote about ten years ago, the real idea behind guerilla marketing was "helping small businesses break out of the helpless rut of leaving advertising to the big guys."

Today, it hass turned into something else. Big companies now employ it because they're getting a lower rate of return on traditional advertising dollars. (Hey, maybe it's the ad message and not the method. You think?) But in this case, I can think of dozens of things that might have worked just as well without the panic factor.

Considering it owns the network and controls the promotion time, Cartoon Network could have launched its mooninite invasion campaign on television, reinforced with direct mail (miniature mooninites, maybe, assuming they didn't tick), Internet marketing pop up banners, and a few cool billboards with big ones from the mother ship or whatever they use to get around. Sure, I'm only playing at a 5-second solution and not developing a real campaign here, but at least it doesn't terrify when it isn't being ignored. At least it's a sliver of thinking instead of hype, pomp, and ineffectiveness.

Not thinking, you see, is what will likely kill the Interference, Inc. folks even more than Boston authorities want to. They didn't think when they launched the otherwise forgettable campaign. They didn't think when they offered no comment. They didn't think when they took their site down and replaced it with a generic apology to no one from no one. And they certainly aren't thinking by allowing a freelancer—a wannabe comic—to be their primary spokesperson.

Oh well. There is a lot of that going on in the communication business lately. Lots of ideas; not much thinking. I call it communication suicide by "blank." For Interference, Inc. the "blank" is no comment.

Creating Panic In Boston: Cartoon Network

The Cartoon Network learned the hard way yesterday that guerilla marketing is fine unless it looks like guerilla warfare. That was the outcome of its marketing campaign as federal, state and local police swarmed around Boston, Somerville, and Cambridge as reports poured in of suspicious devices, closing roads, tunnels and bridges for hours.

In total, 38 battery-operated ads featuring a character called a mooninite flipping the bird for an upcoming TV show “Aqua Teen Hunger Force" were located, turned off, and detonated in some cases. At least 10 caused bomb scares.

“It’s outrageous, reckless and totally irresponsible,” Boston City Councilor Michael Flaherty said, after demanding Turner Broadcasting, the owner of Cartoon Network, reimburse the city of Boston for costs associated with public safety. “What a waste of resources.”

Turner Broadcasting was quick to respond with regret that the devices were mistakenly thought to pose any danger. It also said, in a statement, that the devices have been placed in 10 cities for two to three weeks in Boston, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Atlanta, Seattle, Portland, Austin, San Francisco, and Philadelphia. Turner is working with local and federal law enforcement in each city to ensure the devices are removed.

The marketing company responsible for the campaign, Interference Inc., said it would need until Thursday before it could issue a comment. Thursday?

Its Website, which bills it as a nationwide guerilla and alternative marketing agency from "idiation" through tactile implementation and staffing, was down this morning.

Unless I'm mistaken, back in 1999 Interference, Inc. was responsible for The Mining Company's name change to About.com, placing the name on park benches, at train stops, and spray painting it on sidewalks. Most communities consider the company's stunts vandalism, but Sam Ewen always felt that the neat thing about his version of guerilla marketing is that the media can buy into it and the campaign becomes the story. Ah yes, crazy publicity stunts. Har, har. Mission accomplished... sort of.

This time, with the whole world watching, two team members were arrested: Peter Berdovsky, 27, of Arlington, and Sean Stevens, 28, of Charlestown, one on a felony charge of placing a hoax device and one charge of disorderly conduct, state Attorney General Martha Coakley said.

Don't get me wrong. There's nothing wrong with guerilla marketing and publicity stunts, except maybe that guerilla marketing stunts become passe after awhile, leaving agencies to seek ever more creative, intrusive, and destructive means to get their non-messages out.

Non-messages? Yep. Publicity stunts are generally reserved for those who have no message, kind of like “Aqua Teen Hunger Force," another Cartoon Network show that continues to glamorize delinquent behavior and target 8-year-old kids under the guise of cartoons made for adults. The risk is always the same. The more extreme the stunt, the greater the risk that your message will drive up negative impressions.

This time, it seems, Interference Inc., Cartoon Network, and Turner Broadcasting have hit the jackpot in brand damage. Even Gov. Deval Patrick summed: "It's a hoax, and it's not funny." To which, all I can think to add is that "it's a living case study in guerilla marketing gone wrong."

I'm waiting to hear what Interference Inc. has to say beyond the obvious. The obvious being: for all our crazy antics, we have no idea how to do crisis communication. We need at least 24 to 48 hours to craft a statement, which seems to be much longer than it took to put the devices up in the first place.

Kicking Dead Dogs: Tom Murphy

One of the definitions that Tom Murphy assigned to his catch phrase "kicking dead dogs" is the continual wave of posts that declare something as dead. I first stumbled across the phrase when I was curious to see what other communication experts might be saying about the concept that the "press release" is dead.

Well, first I would like to clarify that kicking dead dogs is certainly not limited to posts. It wasn't that long ago that Wired Magazine declared newspapers dead. Before that, of course, radio was declared dead with the advent of television. And more recently, blogs were declared dead by John Pretto, who, not surprisingly, is the president of Mr. Podcast, Inc.

Anyway, after awhile, it does make one wonder just what the heck isn't dead. The answer, very simply, is: nothing is dead.

Of course, I already knew this because Bruce Spotleson, publisher of In Business Las Vegas and a self-described "old newspaper" man, is a frequent guest speaker in my Writing for Public Relations class. He has an uncanny way of stating the obvious: no new media has ever replaced another media.

Spot on. Nothing is dead, no matter how much some people might declare it is, press releases included (though I still hate that public relations folks insist on calling a "news release" a press release). What I also find interesting is the number of public relations and communication professionals who are defending the "news release." Most of them, no ill will intended, are speaking passionately enough about press, er, news releases that they are looking at things emotionally instead of objectively.

Shel Holtz is a stand-up guy, for example; he's been in the communication business since the 1970's and I've attended a function or two where he has spoken (we're both accredited business communicators and all). Anyway, Holtz normally defends the concept of a social media release, but backtracked a few days ago by giving Jeremy Pepper's idea some praise:

“What people don't get—especially non-PR people—is that, oh, the majority of PR is done at the local level, where people don't care about blogs or RSS. The local level is done with a press release—sometimes sent over the wire, often not sent over the wire—and done with one-on-one contact," said Pepper.

Murphy jumped on board and says it is the audience that matters "That's why a press release is useful — yes, I know they can be spam — yes I know they can be badly written — but they provide information in a common format that, in most cases, provide the same types of information."

I have to chuckle a bit, not at anyone in particular, but in general. While some public relations professionals are indeed calling for the death of press, er, news releases in favor of social media releases, who really wants this silly issue to become polarized. Is that where public relations is heading? Are we either "for them" or "against them?"

Not here, thank goodness. Maybe we see it all differently. We already know where new media fits in with the old. It's not that hard to figure out.

Here's the bottom line: The social media release concept is a long overdue format to send information to bloggers and social media outlets. The news release still is equally useful (even on the national scale) because, yes, newspapers, magazines, radio stations, television stations, etc. continue to evolve, and have yet to be proven dead.

Come to think of it, I know a couple of companies that still have employee communication bulletin boards too, and use them quite effectively. So what? Big deal if public relations folks have another tool. So what if some ad guys like to be cliche and call everything dead? Since when do communication professionals care about that?

The truth is the only problem with public relations practitioners having another tool is that too many of them are not good enough with the ones they have right now. A news release that is poorly written? Why? A news release that is spam? Why?

If you are a public relations practitioner (like the ones Tom Murphy is talking about) who is sending out poorly written spam as opposed to well-written relevant news releases that are only sent to journalists who might actually want them, then please spare the rest of the world and stick to news releases. Trust me. It won't take long before bloggers will be as unforgiving as editors, tossing those e-mails, letters, statements, and pricey media kits into the trash.

In fact, I just received a news release yesterday. It contained "news" about nothing that I write about or have written about, anywhere, for any magazine or blog. It was poorly written, typos and all. It wasn't even news, really, by any definition. It was spam, pure and simple. Well, it gave spam a bad name. You get the point.

All this leads me back to Murphy's second definition for "kicking dead dogs," which is: why people talk about the same thing over and over and over again. That's easy.

It takes 80 impressions before readers remember good information and another 640 impressions to erase any bad bits of information they read 80 times. Great stuff, by the way, Murphy. Enjoyed your new digs, grumpy and all.

Fighting On New Fronts: iPhone

When two companies decide to wage a trademark battle, interesting things always happen. People choose sides. Smaller skirmishes ensue. Loose alliances are forged between unlikely players.

USA Today reports Verizon, probably because Cingular got the Apple iPhone deal, tossed in its hat with Jim Gerace, vice president of corporate communications, saying, in one breath, “We have nothing bad to say about the Apple iPhone. We just couldn’t reach a deal that was mutually beneficial.”

In Gerace's next breath, he says the demands were “steep,” including revenue share from service fees, distribution rights and much more. “They would have been stepping in between us and our customers to the point where we would have almost had to take a back seat … on hardware and service support,” he said.

Gee, so much for not having anything bad to say. His message was almost written by Cisco, which also claims the biggest stumbling block between the Cisco/Apple trademark negotiation was about sharing technology. Ho hum, you don't have to be a Fortune 500 executive to know that Apple does not like to be open about its innovations.

Some people don't like that, but whatever. Frankly, if it did share everything, I'm not so sure that there would be an Apple around to shake up the market like it does. So, I don't blame them. (Besides, they tried sharing once, if you recall, and it failed miserably).

Although Cisco has since backtracked on that idea that all this was about wanting Apple technology, it was part of the equation. Moneyweb published an early quote from Mark Chandler, Cisco's general counsel, saying "Fundamentally we wanted an open approach. We hoped our products could interoperate in the future."

Was that the deal breaker? If so, then Cisco knew the deal was going to fail all along because I really don't believe such a media relations savvy company would be so naive that it would think Apple is going to jump to interoperate with Cisco. For the reason I already stated above, it would be "silly."

Even sillier is the misnomer being floated by some analysts (those applying for Cisco fan status, I imagine) is that Apple is doing all this for the publicity. Yeah, right.

Apple has never been a company to think that all publicity is good publicity. Given that the iPhone launch was one of the most anticipated tech announcements of the decade, I hardly think Apple needed a Cisco lawsuit to jazz things up.

But, of course, that didn't stop someone at ThinkEquity Partners LLC from dreaming up this non-reality: "As this trademark infringement case escalates, we are taking the stance that 'any publicity is good publicity.'" Oh well, it's an easy way to get your name in the paper, I suppose. File under not thinking in New York.

You see, Apple and Cisco have always understood that there is a fundamental difference public relations and publicity. Neither have been big on employing the latter because it carries more risk and is generally reserved for companies without name ID or brand value.

In fact, the resulting lawsuit has drawn attention to some subjects neither company wanted to talk about: Cisco's recent violation of an open source license (which it has since thanked everyone for, er, pointing out the oversight) and Apple's iPhone mark up (which prompted some sideline banter that Apple has yet to set a final price). Darn publicity. You cannot control it. I doubt either wants it.

Specifically, the license violation made Cisco look not so good about sharing, which was the case it wants to make about Apple. And the profit margin of an iPhone made Apple look a little less "taken advantage of" by Cisco hoping to cash in on the trademark.

Hmmmm. I think Technewsworld called it right like I did when they said this one has "the potential to turn very ugly." Why any company, Verizon included, would want to comment on this is beyond my comprehension.

The bottom line is that Cisco kind of holds the higher ground, but I'm unconvinced it can keep it, especially as other companies come forward to challenge Cisco's hold on the trademark (which benefits one of Apple's arguments that the the term iPhone should be shared because other companies have been using it for years). Besides, as I said before, the public seems to want Apple to have the name.

So what is this really about? More and more, it looks to me as if this is nothing more than a high stakes game of "you're not playing fair so I'm going to sue you, nana nana boo boo." And in this game, there will be no winners, but a whole lot of losers.

But then again, it might seem obvious to me to because as a journalist student in the 1980's, I learned everything I needed to know about law (as a non-attorney) while writing my very first article for The Sagebrush. To the ire of the University of Nevada, Reno (UNR), I asked what some consider my very first "dangerous" question: "Could UNR find itself caught in a liability suit for injuries related to adminstration-approved events run by private organizations such as fraternities?"

I found my answer by calling every attorney in Reno until one of them gave me the answer. His answer was "yes" (to the chagrin of the UNR). Simply put, however, he also told me, novice that I was in the ways of business at the time, that anybody could sue anybody for anything. He then went on to explain that he could, in that instance, build a strong case against either side.

"Whether or not the plaintiff would win the case would be up to the courts to decide," he said.

This was also my first real lesson in the power of reporting and the importance of public relations. The lesson learned for public relations came from how easy it was to ask questions from the coordinator of campus standards and receive answers that lent well to the story, but did not lend well for her.

My intent was not to harm her (we were friends for heaven's sake). But as I said, I was pretty naive at the time. The fact is, the damage done to her by what was a "good story" became one of the reasons I leaned toward corporate communication and public relations as opposed to reporting. These people needed help, I concluded.

Of course, that's not to say I'm afraid to call a duck a duck either. And the iPhone lawsuit is exactly that. It's a duck. Or, more appropriately, if you are a company thinking of taking sides, you better duck. The publicity is not worth it.

Spinning The Spin: Spin Thicket

What's not to love about Spin Thicket? They do what I sometimes do here, but with much fewer words — usually about one sentence to highlight the most memorable public relations mistakes of the day and then a link to the point of origin. Not surprisingly, there are always an abundance of mistakes to pick from.

More than 20 (and counting) are highlighted today (and every day): everything and anything from Donald Trump and Paris Hilton to Domino's Pizza and YouTube. If you are smart (or at least have common sense), you'll always strive to be the comment cited and never the subject. People who think they know spin — celebrities and politicians — appear often. But more and more companies, it seems, want to give those who think they know a run for the money.

In sum, Spin Thicket is one of several great places to go when you want to see "what not to do." They're often spot on when it comes to what's wrong with spin when all there is spin and no substance. Is all publicity good publicity? Hardly.

Selling Sausage: Marc Gobe

Marc Gobe likes to be called a “conceptual provocateur,” which he defines as "a mind that never rests, that never stops seeking ways to look at things from a new and totally different point of view." He has a lot of interesting ideas that come from his stream-of-consciousness approach, but the one I read in Communication Arts, yesterday, is baloney.

That is what happens sometimes: instead of finding stream-of-consciousness inspiration, we end up selling baloney.

Gobe writes that the designer is the mirror image of the consumer, calling it a revolutionary idea, but mostly, it seems, it's revolutionary because he claims it is his idea. He says that designers are the consumers, understand visual communication better than anyone, and basically, if the researchers would step out of the way, then designers could reach down deep and pull out innovation to jazz up those brands. (Not surprisingly, his design firm, he says, fully endorses this approach. Eh hem, it would be a shocker if it did not.)

Sure, everybody in the industry "feels" this way from time to time: free the creatives from the shackles of research, give them unlimited access to the consumer, and add more weight their opinion, because, after all, they are consumers too. But just because we "feel" this way, doesn't make it so.

Case in point. How many professional organization meetings have we attended when one person floats an event idea, a bad one, but inevitability, someone else on the board says "Ooooo, that's a good idea ... I would go to that" despite the fact that it flies in the face of everything the organization knows to be true from its own member research. The logic: board members are members too. When the event flops, everybody stands around scratching their heads wondering what happened.

What happened? Simple. They fell into the trap that board members are the mirror image of members, despite the fact that there are fundamental differences between them. Board members and members are different audiences because one is engaged while the other is optionally engaged. In business, we often remind clients that no one is more interested in their product than they are. In other words, once you're engaged, you're automatically different than the target audience.

The same holds true for designers and other commercial creatives. Sure, some will find brilliance by becoming emotionally engaged by their own perspective and ego similar to artists like Paul Guanguin. But like all great philosophical approaches to art, design, and even business, there is another direction that's given less attention but has a superior effect. Staying with artists as the analogy, it would be the path taken by Michelango.

Michelango understood that if you destroy the ego and view the world as a third-party observer, looking not for that not-so-elusive emotional jazz, but for the truth, inspiration will flow through unencumbered and touch a greater audience. Right. Take yourself out of the equation and you'll end up with better design. Likewise, you'll end up with better communication that achieves the only real result: changing behavior.

Besides, when designers are given the shot to be the consumer, something else happens. Not all, but most fail. For evidence, look at the abundance of overproduced Flash-heavy agency and design Websites out there and you'll see what I mean. Their self-promotional work has more consumer appeal to their competitors than it does to the businesses they hope to win over.

Denis Du Bois with P5 Group Inc. in Seattle made the case nicely. He didn't have an article in Communication Arts like Gobe did, but he did send in a letter critiquing that designers are becoming too addicted to Flash. While I'm not a fan of the P5 Group Inc. Web site (that's okay, I'm not a fan of mine yet either), I am a fan of this thinking: "When our only tool is a hammer (Flash), every problem looks like a nail." Now only if he would concede that budget has nothing to do with whether or not you can make great communication, we might be friends.

Anyway, here, I'll give Du Bois what he asked for that Communication Arts didn't deliver and also illustrate my argument against Gobe's notion that all designers should be counted as the ultimate consumers (nor do all of them have intuitive superiority). ScuderiaO2 produces an simple, probably cost-effective design Web site that seems to appeal much better to its business target audience than most agnecies without any Flash whatsoever. Smart.

In conclusion, let me clarify a few things so there is no confusion: Flash is cool and works for a lot of products and companies (just not all products and all companies); Gobe has floated some great ideas before (but he's not as innovative as he thinks by feeding designer egos this time around); and Du Bois seems like a nice guy with some smart ideas (though I hope he abandons the "it's all about the budget" excuse). And ScuderiaO2, well, I'm still learning about them ... there seems to be a lot to be liked ... they seem like the kind of folks we would like to work with. But then again, we like everybody. Grin.