Talking Too Much: Chevron

On Monday, Chevron Corporation (NYSE:CVX) launched a new ad campaign entitled “We Agree,” which seeks to establish solidarity with people around the world on key energy issues. It also describes the actions the company takes in producing energy responsibly and in supporting the communities where it operates.

The campaign can best be likened to throwing a family of mongooses—all sporting T-shirts that say "some of my best friends are snakes"—into a cobra pit. I don't know exactly what would happen, but chances are those little guys on either side wouldn't stand around and sing Kumbaya.

And yet, this is the thinking behind Chevron's new campaign, except its T-shirts read "It's time oil companies get behind the development of renewable energy" as an extension of its longer running campaign Will You Join Us.

It also comes at a time when Chevron is embattled with an Ecuadorian lawsuit. Sure, the lawsuit recently lost some credibility as raw footage might suggest collusion to inflate the extent of the Amazon rainforest pollution (that the company may or may not be partly responsible for), but telling the truth requires the right timing. And regardless of where you stand on energy issues, this was not the right time.

Sometimes The Truth Is Reliant On Timing.

Big corporations make easy targets. Oil companies are especially soft. It's difficult for them to hold any defensive position when they produce a product that — despite demand for it — has been singled out as one of the most harmful to the environment.

"We hear what people say about oil companies – that they should develop renewables, support communities, create jobs and protect the environment – and the fact is, we agree,” said Rhonda Zygocki, vice president of policy, government and public affairs at Chevron. “This campaign demonstrates our values as a company and the greater value we provide in meeting the world’s demand for energy. There is a lot of common ground on energy issues if we take the time to find it.”

Zygocki is right. Most oil companies want to embrace renewable energy. It is on the drawing board for any company that hopes to have sustainability. In 2007, Chevron was among the first to admit 10 percent of Americans “hate us and our industry and there’s nothing we can do to change their minds." Since the Gulf Coast oil spill, which involved another oil company campaigning for green, that hate has grown exponentially.

Naturally, Chevron didn't launch the campaign to attempt to clean up ill feelings over the Gulf as some people initially speculated. That wasn't (even though it should have been) a consideration. This campaign hopes to minimize some of the damage caused by the film Crude and the Ecuadorian lawsuit, which is still being played out to determine who might be the biggest villains.

This is also why the timing of the campaign launch couldn't be worse. The situation for Chevron in Ecuador might have improved as new information is being brought to light but the verdict is still out. So instead of coming across as more green or responsible, the only thing the company has succeeded in doing is drawing even more attention to the ugliness of the case.

Chevron Earns Push Back Before The Campaign Is Launched.

Almost immediately, the release sent out by Chevron was parodied. And some publications, unfortunately, ran with this news release, which is tied to this spoof Website. It seems fact-checking is optional these days.

It also wasn't the only parody release. I received a second release yesterday morning, also a spoof, quoting a frothy mad CEO as vowing to take revenge on the "environmental groups" that hijacked their new campaign. While I didn't bother to verify who sent the mock release, I suspect it also belongs to the Yes Men.

I've written about them before. The media generally likes them, except when the media gets punked. The giveaway in the one I received was that it was published under the guise of a shareholder message. I don't own investments in Chevron. I've also read plenty of real shareholder statements.

You Do Have More Than Two Choices.

Barry Silverstein, writing for the brandchannel, tried to sum it up with his lead-in. "When your brand's industry has a major PR problem, you either hide your head in the sand, or get out there and make a statement," he wrote.

And therein lies most of the problems with marketing and public relations today. There aren't two choices. There are a million choices. And the reason Chevron picked one of the worst choices is exactly why its industry has a public relations problem.

They talk too much. They talk so much, I am almost convinced they never listen. There is only one way the oil companies can regain some lost ground. They have to stop telling stories and start having dialogues. Specifically, they must start having dialogues with people who don't like them. And then, those people, will be the ones who tell the stories.

Recovering Cautiously: Consumers Test The Waters

As some companies are slowly thawing pay freezes and even considering the addition of new employees, the Retail Industry Leaders Association (RILA) says retail sales climbed higher in September. This is the third consecutive month, with slight increases spread across nearly all segments.

The uptick is slight, with an increase of 0.6 percent over August sales and 7.3 percent over September 2009. Retail sales (excluding auto sales) were up 0.4 percent over the previous month and 5.4 percent over August 2009. The largest increase over August came from electronics and appliance retailers. Sales increased by 1.5 percent.

Why Electronics And Appliances Continue To Rise.

Unlike clothing stores, which bolstered their sales in August with back-to-school shoppers (and dropped in September), electronics represents an industry where innovation continues to propel the industry forward. In the last few months, technological improvements seem to capture all the attention.

Appliances aren't much different. However, in addition to innovations that promise to be more environmentally friendly, energy conscious, and cause less wear on clothing, the industry and retailers have worked hard on marketing rebates, one-time sales, and extended credit (where customers don't have to pay interest for six or twelve months). These approaches tend to bolster immediate sales without devaluing products.

Consumer Awareness Reveals Which Companies Do Better.

When you look across various industries at market performance, the top performing companies have one thing in common. They appear to be listening to consumers and either evolving the product to add value (innovation) or better communicating what they offer (credibility).

Companies that rely on discounts without added value or expertise will continue to struggle. Even while announcing modestly promising news, RILA was cautious. The economy has been sluggish for the past three years, with many businesses holding off hiring until new rules and regulations are fully understood.

"Every aspect of the economy, particularly those industries reliant on consumer spending, remains challenged by the fact that nearly 15 million Americans are unemployed and millions more are underemployed," said RILA President Sandy Kennedy. "Without a meaningful improvement in the job market, retail sales gains will be sluggish and hard won."

Again, for marketers, those hard won sales seem to be tied to innovations and better services. If you cannot offer a more innovative product, then demonstrating that you care about the consumer (market knowledge) can go a long way. Simply put, beyond innovations, customers are wondering who they can trust.

Breaking Rules: Fresh Content Project

Social media was an exceptional step forward because it helped many communication-related industries start thinking out of their increasingly diminished boxes. However, there is an irony at work in that now; many of the recently freed communicators, public relations pros, and agency folks are now working double time to find a new box to climb into.

Right. With almost too many choices at their fingertips, all the previous specialists are finding out that their specialties don't work so well. So almost all of them have set out to break their old rules (only to make up new rules so they can say they are specialists again). These five posts, for the most part, pin down why many of the new rules are just as bad as the old ones.

Best Fresh Content In Review, Week of October 4

• Paper Beats Digital For Emotion.
If you think direct mail doesn't work in the digital age, there is a study highlighted by Roger Dooley that might change your mind. Physical media leaves a “deeper footprint” in the brain. However, that is not to say that print is always perfect, Dooley cautions. "Digital ads can do things that print ads can’t match, like this Halo ad from Unicast." In other words, digital has the potential to make a multiple-sensory impact. So can print, with enough imagination. Suffice to say how you use a medium might matter in maximizing its potential.

• Going Direct With PR.
With trust in mass media at an all-time low, more public relations firms are considering direct-to-public tactics and strategies. However, unless public relations can execute these efforts right, the risks might outweigh the rewards. And a good part of what needs to be considered before you forward is becoming (or finding) a credible source. Valeria Maltoni includes several more worthwhile tips in her post, but the most critical of all, in my opinion, is recognizing that individual credibility underscores trust.

• Shaping Networks.
More and more people are beginning to see the obvious. The freedom of the social networks, online and off, isn't always scalable. (In nature, all ecosystems move toward order, don't you know.) Ike Pigott shares some past experiences that demonstrate how this has always been case, which means (even online) networks beyond a certain point must have an internal structure and rules. Sure, you can create a network without any rules, but the rub will always be that people who populate it will make them on their own.

• Content Curation: A Required Skill For Digital-Era Communicators
Shel Holtz wrote an interesting perspective on the increased need for public relations professionals to become content curators for their companies. He's right. Personally, I think they ought to have been taking care of this long before the digital age (and I don't mean simply cutting out clippings from the paper). Curation requires much more thought. It means finding the most valued information, organizing it, and — something not everyone does once they have it — drawing connections and conclusions. There is more to it than that. The rest can be found on Holtz's blog.

• 10 Sure-Fire Ways To Alienate Your Brand’s Most Devoted Advocates
Now that Social Media Explorer has several authors, it also added some new names to the Fresh Content Project. One of them is standup comedian Jordan Cooper. While the presentation is purposely twisted, he does an excellent job describing some sure-fire ways to lose an audience, including laying down rules of engagement, passing out ultimatums, attacking people who covered you over SEO, and so on. Truly, if you turn all of it on its head, you have the foundation of creating a real network. Of course, some people will still insist destroying them is more worthwhile.

Making Choices: Psychology Marketing Aims At Students

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has launched a $2 million initiative to help food behavior scientists find new ways to use psychology to fight childhood obesity and improve school lunches. Ironically, the initiative doesn't necessarily rely on providing healthy meals to students as much as it aims to market healthier foods to children.

For example, the initiative might have cafeteria workers hide chocolate milk behind plain milk, increasing the speed and convenience of the balanced meal choice, hiding ice cream so it cannot be seen, and placing fruit in pretty baskets to improve its appeal. These ideas, of course, are remarkably similar to common sense, assuming the bad choices are available too.

Why Not Eliminate Less Healthy Choices?

According to USDA researcher Joanne Guthrie, changing the menu is not enough, reported the Associated Press. The concern is that when children are not making the menu choices, they leave food uneaten and it is discarded in the trash.

Jenn Savedge, author of green parenting books and blogs, concurs. She writes that bans on soda and junk food have backfired in some places. Some students have abandoned school meal programs that try to force feed healthy choices.

Why The Psychology Marketing Is Smart And Stupid.

The Cornell Center for Behavioral Economics has dozens of convincing studies that these tactics work. Suggesting fruit, they say, will increase consumption by as much as 70 percent. Closing the lid on the ice cream will decrease ice cream orders from 30 percent to 14 percent. Introducing a salad bar will increase salad choices by 21 percent.

The work being done at Cornell Center for Behavioral Economics represents everything that is right about this direction. Some of it is very smart. However, there is plenty of stupid in the mix too.

Many school systems are defeating any progress inside the lunch room because of what they do outside of the lunch room. Educators in some areas are rewarding children with candy and snacks for test performance. Many school programs — ranging from sports to computer labs — peddle candy bars and donuts to raise money. And, at my son's school, they do all that and offer smoothies every Wednesday. They are expensive, generating cash for the school and the private business making them.

In other words, there are enough unhealthy choices being dangled at the kids (and their parents for any parent who has felt obligated to buy up the remaining box of unsold candy) that any improvements in the school program may not be enough. Besides, in many cases, the only reason limiting menu choices failed is because they aimed those limitations at the wrong students.

Daily Choices Aren't The Problem As Much As School Decisions.

Telling high school students that the pizza now has whole grain crust (which even I would probably pass on) after indoctrinating them into an unhealthy lunch program for nine to twelve years should be expectedly met with resistance. The time to make dramatic changes to school lunch programs begins in elementary school, when children haven't had the experience of choosing burgers and fries or a hotdog and tater tots.

In addition to implementing better choices for the wrong students, many public schools continue to have operational problems. Children aren't only eating unhealthy foods, they are eating those foods in an unhealthy way.

“Most of the time it takes the students forever to get their lunch,” Steven Cauthron, a 15-year-old sophmore, told The Augusta Chronicle. “By the time everyone gets through the lunch line they will have 10 minutes at the most to eat their lunch. Most of the time the students usually only have about five minutes to eat their lunch because there are so many students getting a lunch.”

One of the reasons I've become critical of some modern government agencies is the increasing ability to find ways to spend money to fix problems that they helped create. Government created the school lunch problem to increase revenue (e.g., awarding contracts to fast food conglomerates several years ago) and are now funding the solution, which also means the bad food they order will go to waste.

Meanwhile, private schools don't appear to have the same problem. Many of them contract catering companies that make food choices that are healthy and taste good. In fact, earlier this year, one of these schools in Washington D.C. was featured in an article. They make meals from scratch. The kids eat them. Everybody is happy, without pretty fruit baskets.

If Ever There Was An Opportunity For Crowd-Sourcing.

When it comes to school lunch programs, there is no one-size-fits-all solution. However, the key isn't testing in high school as much as it is to introduce healthy foods in elementary school and give up on adding incentives that run counter to healthy eating habits. Kids that age are just as happy with a silly eraser as they are with gummy bears.

In high school, rather than invest $2 million in marketing gimmicks that do not instill brand loyalty (healthy foods, being a brand of sorts), the better bet is to ask the one group of people who haven't been asked — high school students. Much like Cauthron pinpointed one of the problems with his school lunch program, high school students could provide solutions.

In other words, the time to give people a choice isn't when the food is being served up, but before the food is ever prepared. The more participation students have on the front end, the more likely they will be to eat the food, assuming the school districts in charge give students more time to eat right and take sweets away as educational incentives or fundraisers.

If the people making these decisions only understood that "impulse marketing" does not create "brand loyalty" then maybe these problems would already be solved. A healthy lifestyle is not an impulse purchase. It's a way of life, which requires a personal decision. Kids need to know why it's a good decision.

Clear enough? Good, because I'd like my $2 million now. Thank you.

Setting Objectives: The Answer Isn't Always Sales

One of the most daunting prospects for many public relations professionals is measurement. And, for those also working in social media, the measurement issue remains a mystery. (Given how much several of us have written about it, who knows why.)

Don't misunderstand me. Most people are starting to get measurement. It's relatively easy to understand. But where students and some professionals seem to struggle is in setting indirect objectives that mean much more than frequency and reach. In fact, it's indirect objectives that are generally more sustainable and more likely to become deeply entrenched in our psyche.

Setting indirect objectives with public relations and marketing concepts.

Again, when people talk about objectives, especially marketers, they always fall back on sales. But sales do not have to be the objective (even if sales will eventually show up as an outcome). You can change public perception and preference instead.

A recent study by HNTB Corporation underscores this point. According to its findings, almost 9 in 10 (87 percent) Americans who have access to public transportation take advantage of it. Almost 7 in 10 (69 percent) Americans feel there are many times when public transit is a better option than driving. And nearly half (49 percent) think local, state and federal governments don't invest enough money on it (of course, this desire drops dramatically when asked who will pay for it).

How did this happen? Was it because a mass transit company promoted itself with cheap fares? Was it because public transportation gurus tweeted about the bus every day on Twitter? Was it because the researchers only interviewed people who don't own cars? Was it because someone produced a slick ad campaign to make riding the bus cool? Very likely, it was none of the above.

The appeal of public transportation is part of a shift in public perception.

• One in four people believe public transportation reduces traffic congestion.
• One in four people believe public transportation saves individuals money.
• One in seven people believe public transportation benefits the environment.

While I expected these numbers to be higher (given how often people say they use public transportation), the outcome is apparent.

You don't have to push market to generate revenue. Sometimes you only have to change the perception of the public. If more people believed in, preferred, and used public transportation, then demand would increase, regardless of any other factor. As demand increases, so will revenue. Unless, of course, you operate with poor service.

Enforcing Rules: The Crowd-Sourced Community

For the last several years, when I've taught social media at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, I've warned students away from getting caught up in the duality of the field. In some ways, it's not just the field. Duality is the way people are hardwired.

Just as we have two eyes and two feet, duality is part of life. — Carlos Santana

Ike Pigott mentioned it yesterday, using Hemispheres by Rush as an analogy. But another story that piqued my interest was one by Geoff Livingston, writing for Mashable.

His topic about crowd-sourcing lands within the spectrum of duality. Much like bands, social networks and online communities exist because of crowds. However, crowds are attracted to uniqueness. You have to balance the effort, in being yourself while delivering up what people want.

Livingston penned a solid post, and I encourage you to read it there. The segment I wanted to touch on today is community management, especially rule enforcement (which is his forth point). It's a compelling argument for social media, because it tends to cut against the grain. Community-centric behavior needs to be enforced, he says. Let the community run wild, most say.

Everything you ever needed to know about social media is already written by Dr. Seuss.

Seriously. Dr. Seuss covered most social media topics well before social media was even a glimmer in someone's eye. And when it comes to managing communities, he included a warning story of sorts within Thidwick, The Big-Hearted Moose.

Thidwick, being the big-hearted moose that he was, allowed a Bingle Bug to climb on his antlers and enjoy the ride. The Bingle Bug was appreciative and grateful on the front end. But then, over time, he started inviting folks to the party. Namely, he invited a Tree-Spider, a Zinn-a-zu bird (and his wife), a woodpecker, a family of squirrels, a bobcat, a turtle, a fox, some mice, 62 bees, and even a bear. All of them made their home on Thidwick's antlers.

That became rather uncomfortable for the big-hearted moose. And it posed an even bigger problem when Thidwick needed to cross the river. The crowd promptly voted him down, even though that meant Thidwick would not be able to reach the moose-moss on the other side of Lake Winna-Bango.

Fortunately for Thidwick, at a critical juncture in the story (after being chased by hunters), he sheds his antlers as all moose do about once a year and that was that. He was able to join his friends. The ill-mannered guests, on the other hand, were not so lucky. They ended up on the hunting lodge wall, horns and all.

Now, of course, most people operating in social media cannot afford to simply dump their communities like Thidwick did. You have to find a better way than that (although several blogs, communities, and networks have closed their doors when things went out of control).

And that is where community management comes in to play. The day you have to start enforcing rules is the day you know that you already let things get out of control. For Thidwick, that point was exemplified as the woodpecker drilled holes in his horns. It was already too late.

Community enforcement begins with guidance.

The problem that some social media programs have is, much like Thidwick, they allow the crowd to grow without any thought whatsoever (other than elation that they are attracting people at a steady clip and cheering social media numbers). And by the time problems start to appear, little cracks in the community, it's already too late.

Since I first starting working with social media, I have had the ugly task of quelling several network conflicts, including a few that were outright rebellions. It wasn't very difficult for me to set things right, but it was for various owners. In every case, the cause was a neglected community. Almost overnight, or so it seemed, they had attracted a crowd — but the wrong crowd.

That is also why, as Livingston pointed out in his post, Pepsi Refresh had to adjust and enforce its rules address fraudulent voting. That is why Digg dumped several features needed to create a sense of community, but also made it super easy to game the system with reciprocal voting. And it is also why none of the Twitter influence algorithms work.

Ergo, if you want to develop a Christian network, attracting an abundance of atheists might not be such a good idea (or vice versa). However, a few, assuming they maintain decorum, could keep things challenging enough to avoid bubble syndrome. And that's my point. Community management is about being proactive in the shaping from the ground up and forever. It requires balance.

Even Thidwick, whom we are supposed to sympathize with (given the story is a lesson for guest behavior), was partly to blame for his predicament. He assumed that the more he catered to his guests (and the more guests there were) somehow equated to having a bigger heart. He was wrong. Sometimes having a bigger heart means enforcement, but all too often enforcement also means that the manager neglected a problem that already existed.

Guidance before problems start is already the remedy. And the same holds true in inner office disputes too. While there is the occasional bad apple hire, most inner office issues are the result of a community operating without proper guidance. Ergo, had Thidwick drew the line with the Bingle Bug and Tree-Spider, the story would have had a happier ending for everyone.