Communicating Disparity: Reuters On Wall Street

There is an interesting communication insight that emerges after reading Reuters collection of public opinions on the recent market drop.

Wall Street workers said:
• People are in misery. You can see it, you can feel it.
• It's at the level of 1929, I'm sure.
• It's mind-blowing. There is no place to hide.

Non-Wall Street workers said:
• Look at this -- it's jam-packed with people and they don't look too stressed.
• If the market dropped 25 percent like it did in '87, I'd be worried, but a 400 point drop isn't that much.
• Today, anyway, the money that the Fed put into the markets seems to have straightened things out.

Communication can be decidedly different depending on vantage point. It's something to keep in mind when deciding whether to run with a campaign based on insider or outsider perspectives. Here's an idea: stick to the truth and manage from a point of authenticity, never minding what either group says. It's your message as long as you manage it.

Uttering New Identity: Utterli

Utterz is dead. Long live Utterli.

Mashable called it an impression of Prince. And another member, Jason, who is bullish on the cross-posting service, says he’s utterly confused. Jason doesn’t seem to be alone. Confused is what most people seem to be.

According to their blog, Utterz has “outgrown” its identity, but Mashable offered a more plausible explanation. After conducting some market research, they learned that many people, especially females, did not like the name Utterz.

That might make sense to folks like Sheryl Altschuler, president of A-Strategies Marketing Consultants, who subscribes to the idea that the “the customer is in control from here on out …”

This is also one of several places where I depart from the construct that the “customer is in control” of the identity and the brand. In fact, this thinking might be precisely the reason that Utterli has taken some people aback. What customers are they talking about? By some accounts, including their own, Utterli seems to be relying on input from some people who aren’t customers at all. And, the identity change is barely half and half.

They killed Bessie, but insist members can still “utter” and can continue to use meaningful references to “utterers” and “utts.” They put up the new logo, but any marketing and instructional videos will have to change; it will be a long time before all the directories and databases can be updated; and the new name will forever remind people of what it once was, perhaps using it when feeling sentimental much like they did after trying New Coke.

(I don’t even want to talk about the mark, a generic identity that looks something like a cross between a lemon-lime soda logo and a Partridge Family partridge, other than to say it's utterly unmemorable compared to the cow that pops up all over Flickr and elsewhere.)

Of course, even if everyone liked the new name, you have to wonder about the execution. Social media companies have a nasty tendency to spring change on their communities, which is the opposite of being responsive or responsible. Some customers, women included, are even wondering why they weren't asked and a few are considering a petition to change it back.

While it is too early to say in this case, the social media contract that proposes that the customers are in control, might have led Utterli, formally Utterz, astray. No, customers do not control the brand or the message. No one controls it.

“If you don’t manage the message, the message will manage you.”

Of course, none of this is to say that I don’t hope for their best outcome. I’ve met some of the folks behind Utterli, formally Utterz, and believe they were probably convinced it was the right thing to do. It's still a shame though. The name change keeps drowning out the more important message — they’ve enhanced some services.

Who did? Utterli, formally Utterz.

Communicating Politics: Has The Bar Dropped?

It’s a good thing I watched the John Adams miniseries this summer because I might otherwise believe it when many news outlets call the 2008 elections the dirtiest, ugliest, and meanest in history.

Somehow, for me, being reminded that Jefferson vilified his longtime friend and colleague Adams in 1800 or that Jefferson himself was later vilified by his political opponents, helps keep things in perspective. Joseph Ellis, in his book The Revolutionary Generation called this rivalry unequalled in terms of “shrill accusatory rhetoric, flamboyant displays of ideological intransigence, intense personal rivalries and hyperbolic claims of imminent catastrophe.”

Although, when you think about it, Ellis really could be writing about 2008, with the only notable difference being that many poorly executed ideas like Obama Waffles or the now debunked claims by the DailyKos that Sarah Palin faked her pregnancy are often beyond either campaign team’s control.

Much more manageable are the messages being put into play by both campaigns. Obama’s claim that McCain votes 88 percent of the time with President Bush is disingenuous at best, given that the reality is Obama and McCain voted together nearly as much. And, I’ve already commented on the McCain team’s silly Obama is like Paris Hilton comparison ad. Both were wrong. Both were ineffective. Both backfired.

The excuse? Everywhere I look, “they’ve” lowered the bar “first” seems to be the prevailing mantra. Yet, nothing could be further from reality. Somebody, eventually, has to be the better person and not expect voters to ferret out the truth on their own, just as I’ve been advising closer to home. As expected, the nasty national tactics have been spilling over into local and state races.

“The Nevada Democratic Party is showing an analogous moral bankruptcy in its effort to oust state Sens. Joe Heck and Bob Beers because it must believe the end — returning the upper house to the Democrats for the first time in 18 years — justifies the execrable means.” — Jon Ralston, Las Vegas Sun

Ralston is referring to a smear campaign being promoted by the Nevada State Democratic Party to help lift up their candidate who professes not to know who is behind the campaign (um, the same people financing her). yet, she is more than happy to benefit from it. You can find one example of the fictitious campaign claims on another local blogger’s site. You can find the truth here or here.

Since the campaign was launched, several communicators have asked me what do you do when the opposition intends to spend $1 million on a mountain of lies? Don’t you hit back?

Sometimes you want to, but that’s no answer. Reactionary communication is not very effective communication. So as much as the media loves to cover such conflict, there is only one remedy for political campaign lies, in my opinion. It requires more and more truth. And that is what Sen. Beers is doing.

Now, only if national campaigners would learn, because they have set the bar lower and some local campaigners seem to have set the bar even lower than that. Enough so, that I’ve already told most of my friends that I’m not making any national election decisions until after the debates and asked some not to subscribe to or promote sound bites from either side until it can be verified as fact.

Otherwise, we risk making liars of ourselves, even if it seems justified by the audacious notion that the sun will not rise on Nov. 5 if the other candidate is elected. On the contrary, the sun will rise.

The sun will rise on Nov. 5 just as it did on July 4, 1826, after two longtime adversaries realized that for all their wanted differences, the rest of the world perceived them to be largely the same. And “Thomas Jefferson survives.”

Blaming Sexes: Bad Research Habits

Researchers at the University of Toronto recently compared the stress levels and physical health problems of men and women working in one of three situations: for a lone male supervisor, a lone female supervisor, or for both a male and female supervisor. The report concluded:

• Women working for female bosses reported more psychological distress and physical symptoms than women working for a male boss.
• Women reporting to a mixed-gender pair reported more symptoms than their peers who worked for a single male boss.
• Men who worked for a single supervisor, regardless of the supervisor's gender, had similar levels of distress.
• Men who worked for a mixed-gender pair had fewer symptoms than those working for a lone male supervisor.

My speculation differs. It seems to me that psychological distress and physical symptoms are more likely caused by poor coping skills; ineffective management and leadership skills; or choice of research.

Teaching Social Media: The Friday After BlogWorld

It will be interesting to see what impact, if any, BlogWorldExpo on Sept. 20-21 will have on my Social Media for Communication Strategy class, sponsored by the University of Nevada, Las Vegas and Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce, on Friday, Sept 26.

Much like last year, it will likely depend on the speakers. After all, social media sometimes comes across as being an inch deep and a mile wide even though it really is a mile deep within the context of strategic communication.

Right on. The long tail of social media need not wag the company dog.

When put in the right context, the value of social media for the public and private sector is easy enough to understand. When it is not, I cannot blame decision makers for being skeptical about the satire that is all too often presented as fact. Applied without the Kool Aid, social media tends to look more like this ...

Five Critical Facts About Social Media That Businesses Need To Know.

• Social media reaches more people and shapes more opinion than all other paid and unpaid media combined.

• The online population represents 90 percent of all adults, with online demographics in lock step with offline demographics by age, gender, ethnicity, income, and education.

• Active participation is not an accurate measure because content consumers outnumber content creators in the United States by 4-to-1.

• While there seem to be many rules in social media, the only one that seems to stand the test of time is authenticity, which makes sense because that concept in communication predates social media.

• Social media analytics are always interesting, useful, and insightful. Yet, none of them means anything.

Five Critical Trends That Are Shaping Social Media Today.

• Social media is trending toward mobility at an exponential rate, especially as Apple continues to push mobile technology forward.

• The bar on quality original content will continue to be raised as entertainment producers and magazine publishers turn their attention online with the hope of salvaging advertising revenue.

• The modern concept between citizen journalism and professional journalism will continue to evaporate, with some citizen journalists employing social media as their entry into the profession.

• Companies will come to terms with social media, but will continue to struggle with the difference between being responsive and intrusive.

• Tactics to expand online reach will eventually be redefined to include a mix of organic traffic, long tail search terms, and message-specific ads on sites that already capture organic traffic and key word searches.

In other words, I suppose any impact to my class will be directly tied to how deep BlogWorldExpo speakers can delve into such topics.

If these speakers do, I’ll anticipate some pretty heady questions. And if they do not (and I’ll know because I’ll be there), then the deepest questions on the Friday after will likely be “what is social media?” and "what if a someone disagrees with me?"

Sharing 100 Rules: So You Can Write Your Own

Did you ever wonder if the people who write 10 rules about anything ever bother to read the 10 rules about everything else?

1. Ten Commandments for Facebook.
2. Ten Rules of Twitter.
3. Ten Rules for Profitable Blog Startups.
4. Ten Great Netiquette Rules for Social Networking.
5. Ten Rules for Driving Traffic Using Forums.
6. Ten Rules of Internet Marketing.
7. Ten Rules of Web Site Design.
8. Ten Rules for Designing Social Networks.
9. Ten Rules for Responsible Blogging.
10. Ten Rules of Good Blog Writing.