Frustrating Employees: American Airlines

It only took an hour for American Airlines to find and terminate Mr. X, a UX user experience architect working for the company, after he responded to a Web site critique offered up by Dustin Curtis, a designer who creates user interfaces and experiences.

"The problem with the design of AA.com, however, lies less in our competency (or lack thereof, as you pointed out in your post) and more with the culture and processes employed here at American Airlines." — Mr. X

In reading through more than 150 comments left on Curtis' post, I couldn't help but wonder about the confusion. Some people said the firing was warranted. Others said it was another example of the company's incompetence. Some said that it was somehow Curtis' fault. Very few seemed to find the truth. What's that?

Two wrongs don't make a right, they make a mess.

1. We can remove Curtis from the equation. He didn't do anything wrong in offering a public pitch. In a world where many people with experience and expertise can become a content publisher, companies and their employees have to expect and accept both praise and criticism. The only question: How will the company choose to respond or react to the communication?

If any company operating in the 21st century hasn't answered this question by now, they are inviting, even encouraging, crisis.

2. It is always unfortunate when someone is terminated over carelessness because they care. However, Mr. X clearly violated one of the most basic ethical tenants. Aside from American Airlines' non-disclosure agreement, it is generally understood that communicators protect confidential information and, at the same time, comply with all legal requirements for the disclosure of information affecting the welfare of others.

If Mr. X truly cared about the company, his response to Curtis would have been better sent to his supervisor to affect change.

3. Appreciating that there may be other grounds for termination that we may be not aware of, American Airlines demonstrates they clearly have an international communication problem. When employees feel more comfortable confiding about their experience to external sources of information over internal channels because they feel powerless to be the catalyst for positive change, then that is a problem. And now, it's a public problem with a greater consequence than any breach of non-disclosure.

American Airlines has to know it has flaws in its communication strategy given that everyone else does. A warning might have been enough.

Companies need to develop clear and concise response guidelines.

Without a more comprehensive understanding of American Airlines internal communication components, there isn't much we can do. However, it does seem clear that they need to develop clear and concise online response guidelines. Here are a few:

• Define who will respond and under what circumstances.
• Respond in a timely manner when the topic is still hot.
• Read the greater body of ongoing work to ensure you understand it.
• Recognize who the person, people, or media might be before you respond.
• Remain positive, reasoned, and focus on clarifications (unless your brand is satirical).
• Stay focused on the topic if you hope to maintain credibility, authenticity, and transparency.
• Recognize that engagement is a limited commitment, which may require a follow-up response.

Imagine how even a handful of points might have made a difference at American Airlines. Mr. X would have been allowed to respond as himself or known to forward any notes along to a supervisor. The authorized representative could have responded, possibly generating goodwill for American Airlines. Or maybe not, since the original post was obviously a public pitch.

The psychology of criticism and the art of the pause.

There isn't a tremendous body of worthwhile research revolving around the study of criticism and how people respond to it. Most people simply respond to it badly. Generally, it is because they tend to react as opposed to respond, which is why media relations training has a tendency to focus on the trappings of pointed questions.

Professionally, I try to teach people to accept criticism, provided it isn't cynicism. As I've proposed before, critics strive to be open, objective, and offer suggestions for improvement or make an effort to understand various points of view. Cynics are generally closed, biased, and reject that any merit exists or tend to promote their point of view while dismissing the validity of any other.

As a general rule of thumb, people are almost always better served by pausing anytime they feel an immediate emotional response to any particular comment. The pause allows us to process the information and ascertain intent.

Teachers, for example, are paid to provide constructive criticism. Managers are charged with evaluating performance. And the best reporters always ask tough questions to find the truth. Some bloggers too, employ criticism as a means of driving conversations forward.

In all of these cases, the intent is grounded in compassion for education, employee, public welfare, or special interest. We ought not to shy away from it, but embrace it. You don't have to accept every idea as valid, but critics often lend a few gems.

Unifying Topics: In An Era Of Infinite Choices

The most blatant mistake being made by public relations and communication professionals focusing on the increasingly crowded space of social media is employing a methodology that can be best described as the last remnant of mass media.

The tactics are as simple as delivering a product, service, or brand message to as many people as possible as many times as possible. The outcomes are sales calls, junk mail, media pitch lists, and spam. The objective is to stand out in the onslaught of useless communication. The measurement of success is confined to playing a game of eroding percentages.

Ten years ago, a 10 percent response rate was the mark of success. Last year, a two precent response rate is the new high water mark. And more recently, some organizations have told me they'll take one percent any day of the week. The fix remains the same. Buy a bigger list to offset the diminishing return. Except...

Mass Media Has Given Way To Infinite Choice

Social media empowered consumers to trade in mass communication in favor of infinite choices. The consequence of this transition was profound, but not in the way most people think.

Mass media, which was largely ushered in by Baby Boomers in the 1950s, has had a much shorter life cycle than objective journalism, which was largely the advent of Walter Lippman attempting to professionalize journalists in the 1920s. As a footnote, it might be important to mention mass communication has a longer life cycle, taking form in the late 1800s.

Although most people conclude the Internet is a new medium within the greater context of mass media (including myself on occasion), it is more appropriately defined as an environment that has accelerated the adoption of infinite choice much faster than cable and satellite television.

Infinite choices are profound in that they move consumer thinking to the era that predates mass media, objective journalism, and mass communication not because of limited accessibility but through a means of self-selected exposure.

For example, if a consumer is faced with a choice of more than 10,000 local and national news outlets, they might pick three or five or ten (depending on their information tolerances). The impact increases the competition exponentially, forces specialization, and fragments audiences to such a degree that the entire mass media model crashes.

The tragedy is that despite knowing this, organizations are attempting to plant various mass media models in an environment of infinite choices. The result is increasing the number of their competitors to include not only direct competitors but every company on the Internet vying for fans (people cannot and will not friend 100,000 product pages), forcing them to amplify their message, and increase the risk of consumer brand fatigue.

Infinite Choice Requires A Better Model Than Mass Media

While there have been many early attempts to develop infinite choice tactics, most of them are nothing more than an attempt to modify the mass media model. Ergo: influencer targeting is nothing more than replacing one objective journalist with people who are more malleable (Edleman) and crowd sourcing is nothing more than an attempt to convince consumers en masse that they are stakeholders much in the same way vanity poetry press scams made poets out of everyone (Jarvis).

Neither construct breaks away from a mass media model. Neither is sustainable nor scalable as consumers have a finite amount of time. The same can be said for equally flawed models that include leveraging employees or elevating individual quasi-brand celebrities. All of it, not surprisingly, is mass media without the benefit of objectivity.

While not all of it can be solved within the confines of a single post, we do know that organizations operating within an environment of infinite choices have to remove degrees of separation between their products, services, and brands and the consumers they hope to reach. By removing degrees of separation, I do not mean leveraging employees and product fans to monetarily or emotionally blackmail family and friends to peddle products as some sort of multi-level marketing scheme without the benefit of revenue.

What I mean is that organizations have to develop points of communication that consumers can selectively connect to beyond the buzz of 'buy our product,' as illustrated by the top model in the illustration. (You can find a larger image of the Topic Unification Model right here.) Companies developing social media programs have to provide content that gives various publics different reasons to connect.

For example, if we apply the Topic Unification Model to fashion, a fashion designer not only has to talk about the product, but also about industry trends, points of inspiration, the fashion industry as a whole, and so on and so forth. Doing so allows different publics to find self-selected value from the online communication provided, and allows each designer to customize their topical context so that it reinforces the preferred company brand.

Individuals have been very effective applying this as a strategy of sorts (consciously and subconsciously). They attract friends, followers, and readers because those consumers connect with them as parents, photographers, communicators, political viewpoints, type of drinks they prefer, and so on and so forth. These conversations and connections have almost nothing to do with their professions.

Unfortunately, their success in selling personality like this sometimes leads to the mistaken belief that personality can supplant organizational communication. In reality, organizational communication still requires some semblance of an organization. Consumers don't just want to know what Jane Doe thinks about a complaint (despite how empathetic Jane Doe might be). They want to know what the organization will do about it.

To that end, organizations hoping to integrate social media are better served by broadening their communication from a narrowly defined product (can of soda) into a communication model that includes any number of topics that are much more interesting.

While the communication still needs to be managed within a context (soda marketers don't need to offer opinions about toilet tissue makers), broadening the scope of communication to a select number of related topics opens up connections with consumers who might not care about a specific product today. It also provides a better contrast among competitors, ensuring people will become engaged when they are interested as opposed to when it is convenient for a marketing accountability report.

Retiring A Deck: Social Media For Strategic Communication

Since my first presentation on social media in 2005, it didn't take long to appreciate that the entire communication field is a moving target. So I've made it a point to periodically retire the decks I've used at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas in order to avoid having to teach the same class twice.

Integrating Social Media

View more presentations from Richard Becker.

This version of Social Media For Strategic Communication evolved into 100 slides as the backdrop of a 3-hour open conversation. It was followed with a 3-hour live session, which allowed more flexibility in pinpointing specific applications.

Highlights From A Near Dead Deck

• Slides 1-10: Social Media. Every social media class begins with a working definition of social media, even if the participants are familiar with the term. I prefer the simplest definitions, which makes it easier to understand the complexities of what happens within this environment.

• Slides 11-14: Demographics. This year, more than any other, it seemed important to dispel the myth that Gen Y owns the Internet. The fastest-growing segment of the U.S. population consists of people over the age of 50. Another conversation point that has evolved this year is understanding that while everyone is on the net, not every demographic participates in every network.

• Slides 15-41: Media History. While many participants are surprised how much time I spend on the historic context of media, I've always considered it important to dispel the myth that such a change in communication in new. It's not. The only thing new is the medium and the accelerating speed of adoption.

• Slides 42-47: Declining Media. Some people might consider it stating the obvious, but the rapid uptake of communication on the Internet and decline of traditional distribution models remains a relevant part of the conversation. The additional communication point that has surfaced this year is how increased amounts of information will likely lead to a resurgence of objective content sources.

• Slides 48-64: Applying Tactics. Since almost every class includes people with varied exposure, I do dedicate some time to sharing practical knowledge beyond the conceptual models. This section also included four very different accounts, which allowed me to illustrate how social media is largely situational to each organization.

• Slides 65-73: Social Networks. With the addition of the live session, I didn't include new content within this section, which was originally created in spring. It's important to note that the numbers have changed considerably. BlogCatalog has added 40,000 members since the original slide was created.

• Slides 74-81: Content And Discovery Again, with the ability to offer live session examples, I spent less time on this section, preferring to underscore that the social media environment allows tremendous flexibility in sharing content from the ability to condense our portfolio into a Flickr presentation (and iPhone presentation) to the success story of Does It Blend.

• Slides 82-100: Changing The World While the slides were essentially lifted from our Shaping Public Opinion presentation earlier in the year, walking participants through a Bloggers Unite campaign proves extremely useful in illustrating that communication is fluid and how to better integrate crowd-sourcing (participation input) while providing guidelines that still allow for some sense of a managed communication plan.

What Might The Next Deck Look Like?

Since every deck I develop is tailored to meet the objectives of specific audiences, there might be any number of solutions for 2010. However, it seems increasingly obvious that presentations with case studies and panels, while still important, will be breaking away toward conceptual modeling that spans multiple disciplines and multiple destinations.

I'll be sharing one of those conceptual models tomorrow as an extension of last week's Rushing The Net: Public Relations post. The model illustrates why so many companies are developing limited connections that revolve almost exclusively around their products while the online environment is much more valuable as a means to eliminate degrees of separation.

Other topics I'm especially interested in pursuing in the near future include the loss of content objectiveness in the media, the advent of portable content experiences as they apply to radio, the application of our measurement model on a specific campaign (we're waiting on numbers), and next year's pendulum swing that will place a greater emphasis on expertise over popularity.

The latter will include a comprehensive research study we commissioned with a deliverable on or around SXSW, pending my increased travel schedule that is shaping up to include London, San Francisco, and Washington D.C., among others.

Fighting For Preemies: Bloggers Unite

"A bear and a hare have been to the fair. But not the hippopotamus." — Sandra Boynton, But Not the Hippopotamus

Every morning, well before sunrise, I would place Boynton's book next to my cell phone so I wouldn't forget it. It didn't really matter if some of the other Boynton books we kept might have read more upbeat. The story seemed to fit.

As other babies were being born to wide-eyed parents and heading home to be bundled in blankets, doted over by grandparents, and set free to start their adventures, our daughter had taken a detour. Every day was a fight for life inside the Summerlin NICU.

No one really knows why there weren't any warning signs on the first morning. My wife had simply noted that our daughter's kicking, which had started earlier than expected, had suddenly tapered off. Initially, the sudden change was almost dismissed, given that we hadn't even entered a kick counting stage of pregnancy. Instinct over intellect proved to be wiser.

It only took a few hours in the hospital to discover the truth. Our daughter was dying, and even the specialist who had been called in seemed uncertain as to why while listening to the amplified throb of her heartbeat, steady and strong, except every ten minutes or so when it would slow and drift quietly under the hastened pace of the hospital.

"When that happens, make a noise or do something to excite her. We can't let her drift off before your doctor arrives."

The task seemed easy enough, especially after surrendering to the gravity of the situation. Telling my son, after noticing the entire day had drifted away to indecision, when I picked him up from summer camp to take him to his grandparents so I could make it back, was more difficult. The excitement of having a sister in three months was all he could talk about.

"Well, I need to tell you something," I said during the car ride. "Your mom might have the baby today and there is a problem..."

She might not come home from the hospital for awhile. She might not come home at all. "She will," he said with certainty.

She wouldn't come home for three long months. As I was running up to the doors of the hospital, my cell phone buzzed with the news. Our doctor had arrived and they were prepping my wife for an emergency Caesarean. There was barely enough time to scrub.

Our daughter was born 2 pounds, 13 inches, at just under 28 weeks. Just a few days earlier, the survival rate would have been reduced to a coin toss. The odds are a bit better today, but there are no promises. If there were, they wouldn't change the location of the incubators to prevent visiting parents from becoming attached to neighboring early newborns. Too much can go wrong. Too much does go wrong.

For parents, having premature babies is best described as being like a Ferris wheel. Some days you leave the NICU with the anticipation they will be released in a matter of a few days. That can all change in a day. Or in an hour. Or in seconds, sometimes while you're sitting bedside (incubator-side) reading a story so they can become familiar with the sound of your voice. And you learn to step aside for the nurses.

And you learn to have patience in adversity, when real courage might mean standing firm as opposed to flying off to parts unknown. And you learn that every treatment carries a potentially permanent consequence. And you learn that tolerance for transparency carries a certain quota because people do not generally want to know the truth. They mostly want to know that everything will be all right so they can marvel at the resolve or maybe faith.

Over the course of the next three months, our daughter almost died or almost had permanent damage while undergoing 28 medication administrations; on and off respiratory support, ranging from ventilators and high air flow nasal cannulas; and 48 different medical procedures, ranging from phototherapy and blood transfusions to upper GIs and a lumbar puncture. She overcame two organism infections and five staph infections, with the worst of it being an infection that had adhered to her ankles and required surgery.

At the end of Boynton's book, the hippopotamus eventually is asked to join the other animals in their fun activities and adventures. Even after being discharged, there would be prolonged procedures, medications, and side effects. And even when the worst seems to be over, it's never really over. And yet, we're blessed.

"A bear and a hare have been to the fair. But not the hippopotamus." — Sandra Boynton, But Not the Hippopotamus

At the end of the detour — made amidst a gubernatorial primary, business expansion, and non-profit obligations — you come to realize the experiences we have are not a byproduct of the environment in which you reside or merely timing of events or even the perception of other people. Good or bad, experiences are what you make of them, wherever you are or whatever you're doing.

Of course, we can influence all those other things to some degree. And that is what I might ask you to consider today.

While the why behind the cause of our daughter's premature birth will never be solved because we did everything right, many preterm births can be prevented with prenatal care. It's important because every step you take can help reduce preterm birth, which accounts for more than one million of 13 million stories that don't end like our daughter's story or the analogy I made with Boynton's book.

Education will provide a means to solve part of the growing challenge. The rest comes from generosity and vision, as the numbers above only reflect a success rate of infants born preterm including 36 weeks. For babies like my daughter and those under 26 weeks, the success rate relies almost exclusively on medial research funded by people like us and you through the March of Dimes.

For those who already have helped, thank you. We're grateful, because it made a difference.

Projecting Sales: Retailers Look To Black Friday

If consumer confidence is any indication of what retailers might anticipate this year, beginning with Black Friday, then the best they can hope for is: the fear of a worsening economy may have had a greater impact last year than living in one will have this year.

Most forecasts suggest a small gain in retail sales over last year. And most consider the smallest gain good news, despite consumer confidence indicators there is some validity to the concept that they will be more cautious.

Consumer Confidence Highlights From comScore

• About 75 percent of consumers across all income levels are more afraid of the economic future than ever before.
• 46 percent of over $100k households/65 percent of under $50k households are spending less on non-essentials.
• 42 percent of all consumers across all income levels are overwhelmingly concerned about unemployment/job security.
• Fear of unemployment/job security increased in October all among 100k households and under 450k households.
• 56 percent of all consumers think that unemployment will not begin to improve in 2010.
• 32 percent of all consumers across all income levels are concerned about rising prices, with 100k households also concerned about the devaluation of real estate and financial assets.

Five Tips For Retailers Attempting To Leverage Online Shopping

• Retailers hoping to drive incremental sales in physical retail locations need to develop reasons for consumers to add their store to their shopping route. Sales are not enough; consumers are shopping for an experience as much as they are bargains. For example, a book store that already has an online component can win with physical events like key book signings.

• Retailers that are already advertising across multiple channels this holiday season (digital and traditional) need to align their advertising messages so that one tactic naturally leads into the next. For example, digital advertising might include in-store discounts or promotions and in-store sales might drive return visits online, with a clear indication of why it adds value.

• Retailers mostly know which digital marketing tactics (search, display, email, etc.) are driving traffic to their sites, but most are struggling to convert visitation into sales. There tends to be an over-reliance on general conversation with little call to specific action. Unlike physical stores where customer service agents can answer questions and direct sales, online stores rely almost exclusively on a browse-and-buy shopper. Retailers with a mechanism to engage customers online tend to have more success with demand fulfillment.

• Retailers seem to think they are able to find their demographic online and distinguish which will visit a site, but they are struggling to determine where category buyers are online within that demographic. While it would be challenging to initiate consumer engagement online one week out from the start of holiday shopping, social media programs that engage consumers could readily provide retail outlets with a better understanding of browsers vs. advocates vs. buyers.

• Search spend investments during the holidays is difficult to validate because the reality is that search spend investments are almost a defensive marketing tactic. During non-holiday seasons, it is easier to validate. During a holiday season, it succeeds mostly at protecting against competitors in the pursuit of diverting would-be customers.

Overall, all of the most common questions being posed by retailers pinpoint the real challenge this season. In general, they are all succeeding in increasing site visitation, but most are not converting those visits into sales. Simply put, there are more people buying online but those people are spending less and making fewer transactions and fewer dollars per transaction.

It is not a surprise, as the majority of online marketers seem better quipped to entertain consumers online than selling products or driving physical traffic. So how do you change behavior when the U.S. jobless rate has climbed to 10.2 percent (and the boarder measure has risen to 17.2 percent)?

With 55 percent of consumers saying that they have less money this year than previous years, it is critical for retailers to provide engaging incentives to buyers. According to the comScore report, the most common ideas are to offer free shipping, provide layaway options, and increasing their use of social media. However, where retailers may falter is in how they employ social media — blasting holiday discounts across Facebook and Twitter are unlikely to differentiate their stores.

Any successful social media model will likely be those that engage consumers much like in-store personnel might, directing consumers to their self-defined interests. Isn't that what we always knew about advertising? It works to get people in the door, but someone or something else has to close a sale that delivers value to the lives of the consumer.

Changing Behavior: Consumer Confidence

In coming out of what it defines as the Great Recession of 2008/2009, The Futures Company is setting its sights on a dramatic shift in consumer conscience and confidence beginning to take hold in 2010.

Specifically, The Futures Company sees consumers moving beyond the heightened sense of anxiety and economizing frugality that convinced them (and their employers) to operate from a sense of self-preservation and scarcity. However, in the new post-recession world, The Futures Company does not see consumers returning to an era of accumulation and indulgence. Instead, they make the case for an evolutionary step forward in thinking.

A Darwinian Gale Has Reshaped Consumer Thinking

In its recently published white paper, The Futures Company articulates attempts to identify the crucial characteristics of the marketplace to come, one that will be shaped by a new consumer confidence that would have a direct impact on how marketers, advertisers, public relations practitioners, and social media professionals might proceed. These characteristics include...

• Responsibility. Consumers will be much more responsible when making purchasing decisions, giving more consideration for what they purchase before they purchase it.

• Vigilance. Consumers will be much more watchful about their exposure and position, with every aspect of their spending being questioned and placing increased pressure on communicators to ally with their concerns.

• Resourceful. Consumers will be more resourceful, with an emphasis on the management and conservation of resources that they consider most important to them.

• Prioritization. Consumers will be much more likely to prioritize their purchasing decisions in the marketplace. While this won't change their aspirations, they will think of purchasing decisions as trade offs.

• Network Oriented. With increasing regularity, consumers will forge personal networks of support that they consider essential in a world of uncertainty. The net result will shift the pre-gale presumption of global convergence toward a post-gale world of local "exceptionalism."

Preliminary Conclusions About A Darwinian Gale

There is certainly some basis for the conclusions drawn by The Futures Company. In particular, they are right that marketers have grown too comfortable in an era of indulgence, where they knew what consumers wanted and delivered it to them with an excitement and intensity that compelled people to buy, even if it meant overextending their credit to do so.

They are right that the marketplace is in transition, but some of their glimpses into the future might be slightly offset by other trends that seemed to be dismissed. While there is no doubt consumers will invest considerably more time in defining value, there is an equally likely chance that this definition of value will be based on perception as opposed to reality.

While the current trend certainly suggests a shift toward populist behavior, due largely to an increased reliance on the Internet, we anticipate a pendulum swing back toward the center in regard to popularity defining value over objective thinkers defining value. It almost has to occur as communication continues to increase exponentially and public relations sets its sights on social media, leading to an increased infusion of biased communication in an effort to gain a perception of being valuable.

Much like yellow journalism ushered in objective journalism before many media outlets gave up on the concept in order to cater to stories that affirmed the beliefs of their readers and viewers, someone — either media or other parties — will have to become trusted advisers without individual or organizational agendas.

The other weakness in the white paper is the concept of moving away from globalization without considering the new geography of the Web. While local markets are an increasingly important part of the marketing equation, the white paper seems to de-emphasize the importance of the Internet's ability to create entirely new environments. People aren't only from their geographical locations but also from new destinations like online communities and certain social networks that do not recognize geography as a defining trait among members.

We also found a significant challenge in this world view. Given that consumers have learned that the work is riskier than they once believed, the construct still shows consumer thinking to be based largely on a fear mindset, which in itself has negative consequences, especially as the blame for an air of indulgence is being placed on the mantle of a free market system.

If you can get past some of these challenges, there are glimmers of realities to be optimistic about. The best of which stems from the concept that there is indeed an increased opportunity for companies, and communicators, to turn resourcefulness and innovation into tangible benefits that add real value to the world, which enhances optimism and consumer confidence (much like Steve Jobs did despite the 2001 recession). It is the most accurate assessment in the entire paper.

And from that perspective alone, A Darwin Gale might be worth checking out. Just keep in mind, as the authors freely admit, the future is not fixed.