Archive for the ‘community relations’ Category

In Ontario, new mayors and councillors are settling in for a four-year term that began last night.

Here in Ottawa, Mayor Jim Watson was sworn in, along with the 24 city councillors, 10 of whom were new to council. That’s a big turnover in municipal politics, where incumbents are generally thought to have a great advantage in election races.

The ceremony was marked by a couple of interesting symbolic actions. First, instead of City Hall, the ceremony was held at the Shenkman Arts Centre, a new city-owned arts facility in Ottawa’s suburban east end. And second, rather than a wine and puff pastry reception, Watson ‘called a friend at Tim Horton’, and the ceremony featured donated coffee, cookies and donuts from the company. Apparently that saved taxpayers $25,000. Yay, I guess.

Eric Darwin of the truly excellent West Side Action blog attended the swearing-in ceremony. One paragraph way down in his post about the ceremony really caught my attention(emphasis mine):

While chatting with a new councillor and a few other residents, someone pointed out I wrote the West Side Action blog. The conversation then turned to the blog, recent posts, the value of the micro-reporting on neighborhood affairs … and I noticed the councillor had drifted away, no longer centre of attention. Conclusion: Councillors, start a blog today, blog daily, if you don’t write it yourself get a staffer to do so, and write in plain English and not bureaucratese. Get someone who can spell better than me.

Compare this with some similar advice given to Carleton University by David Reevely, the “Greater Ottawa” blogger (also truly excellent, by the way) at the Ottawa Citizen yesterday(again, emphasis mine):

People want to talk to people, not to Carleton as a corporate entity. There are no people [on Carleton's new community engagement site]. It’s just an empty room. Maybe Katherine Graham could blog. Just her — no committee approving the posts and making sure they all align with Carleton’s strategic plan and have enough Latinate words in them. Just be a human being talking about work she’s proud of.

Sensing a theme here, folks? Is it a sign of a collective failure that 10 years after Pyra Labs launched Blogger, this advice still has to be given? And attention Rob Ford: it’s not free, but it’s pretty close, and I’m sure we’d all be entertained.

Most people here know I’m a music lover. And this time of year, I start thinking of one of my favorite seasonal songs, a fairly obscure tune called “Winter Song” by a British folk-rock group called Lindisfarne.

I love Christmas music, but as an atheist, I always feel like just a bit uncomfortable singing about the Lord and Christ being born and the like.

But “Winter Song?” I can totally get behind it. The lyrics (hope you don’t mind, Lindisfarne):

When winter’s shadowy fingers First pursue you down the street
And your boots no longer lie About the cold around your feet
Do you spare a thought for summer whose passage is complete?
Whose memories lie in ruins And whose ruins lie in heat ?
When winter comes howling in

When the wind is singing strangely Blowing music through your head
And your rain splattered windows Make you decide to stay in bed
Do you spare a thought for the homeless tramp who wishes he was dead?
Or do you pull the bed-clothes higher Dream of summertime instead?
When winter comes howling in

The creeping cold has fingers That caress without permission
And mystic crystal snowdrops Only aggravate the condition
Do you spare one thought for the gypsy with no secure position?
Who’s turned and spurned by village and town At the magistrate’s decision?
When winter comes howling in

When the turkey’s in the oven And the Christmas presents are bought
And Santa’s in his module He’s an American astronaut
Do you spare one thought for Jesus, who had nothing but his thoughts?
Who got busted just for talking And befriending the wrong sorts?

When winter comes howling in (twice)

Here’s how they performed it in 1984 in Newcastle:

So here’s the selfish (somewhat) part. “All in a Day,” our local CBC Radio afternoon show is soliciting donations for an organization called the Causeway Work Centre. Causeway does great work, giving people with mental health issues or other difficulties opportunities to do work that’s tailored to their ability. That gives them everything that work gives us all — skills, money, fulfilment, dignity… They change lives, for the better. Every day.

And the person who donates the most gets to get the amazing Sarah Harmer or Rolf Klausener do a cover song of their choice. Now, some people will try to get them to do something out of character — Black Sabbath, or Mel Tormé, or something. But I really want to hear their take on this song. And I’m willing to ask for your help to do it — and risk humiliation.

If I get this, I promise to record my own cover video version of the song and put it up on the site. But ONLY if I get this.

If you click on this link and donate, then tell All in a Day that you’ve done it, I have a chance of hearing this song covered. And most importantly, you help a worthy organization. Help a brother out, willya?

I recently had a conversation with a friend who’s working in a role more focused on outreach than he’s used to. He called me to ask about webinars. “Are they social media?” I started to think about that and delivered a fairly equivocal answer — yeah, webinars can be, but they aren’t necessarily, depends on the interaction, blah de blah de blah.

But then I had a little epiphany. Something — a tactic — isn’t “social media.” The STRATEGY is social media. The tactic is just the action of the strategy.

It’s not the webinar that is or isn’t social. It’s the thinking behind it. If the thinking is: “we will deliver information to you and you will listen,” the tactics aren’t social. If the thinking is, “we want to tell you what we’re doing, and then we want you to tell us what you think, then we’ll react…” the tactics are social.

Of course, where does this insight end? It ends at the listener. Because if the RECIPIENT of this messaging wants to take it and run with it, he or she will, and your strategy be damned.

Look at what just happened with Air Canada and the wheelchair incident. Air Canada likely believed that its dealings with the family of Tanner Bawn were private. If you’re not aware, just Google “Tanner Bawn” and “wheelchair.” But their belief was not shared by the family, who were well-versed in the social media world and already had followers and friends online. And Air Canada appear to have been totally insulated from the firestorm of criticism that was growing online.

So what did I learn from my friend’s question? I learned to extend one of my favorite sayings from Terry Fallis — “a tactic is not a strategy” to “it’s not the tactic that’s social — it’s the strategy.”

I rarely feel at ease at big dinners like the United Way Community Builder Awards. It’s occasions like those that make me feel like a kid in a room with grownups. As I said to Kris Joseph recently, “Isn’t it amusing how we actually never left junior high school?” In any case, when someone offers you a free ticket to a dinner, it’s hard to say no. So I didn’t.

And to be honest, I felt like a fish out of water most of the night. I was at a table with some folks from uOttawa (none of whom I’d worked with during my time there) and eventually Alex and his girlfriend Amy. Alex was a reporter for Ottawa Construction News there to get shots of the PCL Construction table next to us.

MC Anne Beaudry was super duper — and I say that having MC’d a few things in my time. Dinner was good in the way that hotel event dinners are. It’s hard to make and serve 900 dinners at once. There were some wacky stunt double guys who did dangerous things before dinner; then a trio from the NAC Orchestra played while we clattered our forks and chatted and I felt bad for ignoring them.

And there were lots of awards. To individuals like Ottawa’s Police Chief (who likely had other things on his mind), and to a VP of Scotiabank. And to organizations like the Youth Services Bureau and Health Canada.

But there were two points at which I really got INTO the evening. The first was when the United Way Ottawa Ambassador of the Year was revealed. Natalie Gervais is a young woman who has spoke countless times to share her story of drug addiction and recovery. She was helped, thanks to Project STEP. Now she’s passing it on.

And then at the end of the night, CEO Michael Allen spoke. He talked about what turns out to be a new brand for the United Way. That resonated with me and I felt my ears prick up. Not because it was a brand and because I’m a flack. But because of what he said BEFORE he talked about the brand.

He talked about the United Way’s binary perception — by donors as only a fundraiser, or by agencies as only a funder. And he talked about the United Way as now more than ever being in the business  of engagement. He pointed to three new categories the United Way’s awards would be grouped under:

• Give
• Speak up
• Take action.

Here’s part of what he said: Michael Allen at the United Way Community Builders Awards. I couldn’t support what he said more strongly. And it was worth the discomfort to hear it firsthand.

__________________________

PS: I wasn’t the only social media type at the dinner:

• Sue “Suzemuse” Murphy wrote about taking back the term community – changing it from buzzword to a more powerful word.
• Andrea from the Fishbowl was reminded of how powerful one person can be in a community.

Others were tweeting away during and after the event.

I’m really excited to announce that the new podcast PR and Other Deadly Sins is LIVE.

Mark Blevis is someone that I have a tremendous amount of respect for, as well as someone I like a lot. So it’s a kick to think that we’ll be doing this as often as we can. How often that is, we’ll figure out as we go. But for now, it’s just a thrill to get the first one out there.

Grab it at the new site PR and Other Deadly Sins. As always, thanks to Tom Hofstatter for holding my galumphing WordPress hands throughout the process.

There are certain stories that you can guarantee will get covered each year. Each February in Canada, RSP season brings stories about the lack of preparedness for retirement we Canadians are demonstrating. Each Canada Day, the Dominion Institute releases a poll that shows we Canadians don’t know our own history very well.

Every time Apple releases a new product you’ll see stories about the lineups and pictures of Steve Jobs in his turtleneck and jeans.

And at the end of March, Ontario media cover the Sunshine List. Not to be confused with the Sunshine GIRL (an exercise in a different sort of transparency), the Sunshine list was the result of a law passed in the mid-1990s by the provincial government . Pretty simple as laws go: anyone on the public payroll in the province — provincial public servants, employees of universities, colleges, towns, cities, hospitals — who makes over $100,000 gets put on the list and the employers are responsible for making the  list public by the end of March.

Back then, the Mike Harris government was in power in Ontario, and they loved the idea of populism, being in solidarity with the “little guy”, Joe Sixpack. So this sort of vague public shaming — providing a list of people who you could tsk tsk or wag a finger at — worked for them, quite nicely.

So every year, talk-radio hosts fulminate, columnists critique (Christina Blizzard: “There are 63,761 people on the provincial list this year. That’s up 10,000 over last year…April Fool’s? I guess the joke’s on us.”) and journalists write about how the ranks of the $100K earners area swelling. This Brantford Expositor editorial notes:

Five years ago, The Expositor published a local “Sunshine List” with 78 names. The list published in Saturday’s Expositor has grown to 349 names.

Here’s what I say. The Sunshine list has some serious flaws. First, $100K in 1995 is not the same as $100K today. In fact, just on inflation, it’s more like $133K. Assuming pay raises followed Canada’s inflation rate, someone making $77K in 1995 would be above $100K today just from cost-of-living. And freaking out because the list grows every year makes as much sense as freaking out because prices go up every year; that is to say, none.

Second, it doesn’t expose “fat cats” – there are all sorts of people who are normal working people who end up on this list. Police officers, firemen, bus drivers, nurses — they’re all there, mostly because they’ve worked enough overtime to hit the magic number.

Third, it doesn’t measure VALUE. The top public servant on the list is the head of Ontario Power Generation, who makes $2.5 million, apparently. What does that number tell us? Damned if I know. It’s a lot of money. Is it well spent? Does he make more than others in similar jobs? Does he outperform his compatriots?

Fourth, it reinforces our sometimes-perverse attitudes toward public-sector compensation. We pay our Prime Minister about $300,000 to run a G8 country. We pay the president of the Bruyere Continuing Care Centre $30,000 more than the PM to run an organization with 753 beds and 1,000 employees. The minimum salary for an NHL player is $450K. Formula 1 Driver Kimi Raikonnen made $45,000,000 last year (US!). Nortel‘s CEO made more than seven times as much as the PM last year.

So until we compensate people more in line with the VALUE they add to society, I humbly suggest that we kill the Sunshine list. As an exercise in effective communication about  compensation and the contribution to society, it is an utter failure.

Photo credit: Dru! on Flickr, creative-commons licensed.

I’ve got a bit on the tumultuous visit of Ann Coulter to the University of Ottawa in episode #538 of For Immediate Release. You can check it out on the site or subscribe using iTunes. I’m not gonna make you listen to the whole thing (but you should) — I’m at the 42 minute mark, so you can fast forward if you want.

UPDATE: Here’s the audio of my comment only. But you should really listen to the whole podcast.

If you’re in PR you should already know about Shel Holtz and Neville Hobson‘s podcast. They’ve been producing a minimum of two hours of great content per week on the main podcast for about the last five years. Add to that FIR Live and the many interviews they toss into the feed, and they are examples for all of us.

Speaking of which — we (being Mark Blevis and I) are THIS CLOSE to releasing the first episode of our new podcast, PR and Other Deadly Sins. Soon, soon.

Sometimes your breath can simply be taken away by the stupidity of a business’s actions.

This was the case for me when I first read that a subsidiary company of Loblaws had filed a statement of claim against the owner of a van which collided with one of its trucks — and against the driver of that van.

Here are some of the details and back story, thanks to sources including Wikipedia’s “Boys in Red” article:

• January 12, 2008: an extended passenger van carrying the Bathurst high school boys’ basketball team was driving back to Bathurst, New Brunswick after playing a game in Moncton. Just after midnight on the 12th, the driver, coach Wayne Lord, lost control of the vehicle in freezing rain and snow and veered into the path of a tractor-trailer owned by Atlantic Wholesalers, a subsidiary of Loblaws. Loblaws is a $30-billion company with nearly 140,000 employees.
• Seven members of the team were killed, as well as Lord’s wife, who also taught at Bathurst High School.
• The accident (collision, says Tom of What the Lemur) made national news, and people around Atlantic Canada were especially moved by the tragedy. For example, one memorial group established on Facebook attracted nearly 9,000 members
• Following the collision, 15-passenger vans were taken out of service in Nova Scotia, and there were multiple investigations into the accident by the RCMP, Transport Canada (pdf of report) and by the province of New Brunswick.
• The investigations didn’t find a single overwhelming cause for the accident; however, the van had worn brakes and tires, while the driver was tired and weather conditions were poor. The RCMP did not lay criminal charges.
• Some of the parents of those killed in the accident have continued to work for changes in policies and processes to make children safer, most prominently through the Van Angels web site.
• On December 22, 2009, Atlantic Wholesalers and Loblaws filed a statement of claim against Lord and the company which owned the van. They were pursuing about $41,000 in damages to their truck, environmental remediation, as well as costs and legal fees.
• The pending lawsuit was picked up by the media, starting with a radio report on Friday, January 9 — the second anniversary of the collision accident.
• The outrage in media response was immediate, and I would wager that the response to Loblaws itself was equally loud and negative.
• After a brief period of not responding to calls for comment, Loblaws withdrew the suit the same day the media attention hit, and issued a statement from the company’s president:

“We thoroughly apologize for the alarm and concern caused by the statement of claim. While it is normal legal practice to look for reimbursement from the parties deemed to be at fault , this decision was clearly made without consideration of the specifics of this accident. We would also like to thank all our customers that voiced their concern regarding our decision, allowing us to reconsider our actions.”

• Now, according to CBC online, Loblaws is engaged in some damage control in New Brunswick, calling the mayor of Bathurst and seeking advice on what action the company could take to demonstrate its contrition.

796 mostly anti-Loblaw comments on this CBC story

I don’t think Loblaws is an inherently evil company. And I don’t doubt that seeking reimbursement for damages is normal legal practice, as the company’s statement says. But there were serious miscalculations here. First, whoever made the decision to file the statement of claim likely thought more about process than about the human aspects of the tragedy. He or she or they forgot the human impact of this accident, which should have outweighed the damages.

The timing was beyond unfortunate. To do this so close to the anniversary of the accident was asking for trouble. But if you weren’t thinking of this as a human tragedy, you wouldn’t think of that.

The most serious miscalculation, was the inclusion of the van driver as an individual in the suit. I’d wager that a claim only against the company might have gone with far less, if any criticism. But when you file suit against a man who lost his wife and seven members of his basketball team in an accident, you can’t help but look like an insensitive bull, even if you’re ‘really’ filing suit against his insurance company.

It’s hard to think about the human factors when you’re part of a huge organization. But as Loblaws has learned, you ignore them at your peril.

Fail image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/chrisgriffith/ / CC BY 2.0

I was driving between meetings yesterday and turned on CBC Radio’s “All in a Day.” Host Alan Neal was speaking with a young woman named Alyse Schachter, who is part of a VERY cool competition.

Alyse came up with an idea called “Snacks in Packs” — a way to ensure that children who get food and support during the week from school breakfast and lunch programs, etc., get to take a backpack full of nutritious snacks home with them over the weekend.

The idea’s a great one, and she is a great evangelist for it.

But the competition is what has impressed the heck out of me.

The Aviva Community Fund, which is part of Aviva Canada, a division of an international insurance company, is running a competition to allocate $500,000 to support projects that will make a positive change in their community.

They’ve taken corporate giving and found a way to crowdsource it. In a way not too far off Dell’s Ideastorm or My Starbucks Idea, they have encouraged people to:

1. Submit their ideas for making positive change
2. Encourage others to support their ideas
3. If you’re a browser, look for ideas you can support and vote them up.

They’ve received more than 1000 ideas from across the country, and now there are 25 semifinalists, based on vote popularity, including Alyse Schacter’s idea. Those semifinalists are going to be judged by a VERY diverse panel, including Ben Mulroney, Mike “Pinball” Clemons, and MAC Cosmetics entrepreneur Julie Toskan-Casale.

And they’ve built a full-on social media platform for this, using Facebook, Vimeo, Twitter, and Youtube to support the project as well as their own site. Credit is due to folks at Fleishman-Hillard and at Idea Couture for the strategy and execution.

It’s a great job of making what could be a stuffy, closed-door philanthropic process an open, exciting, and buzzworthy one.

Ciao,
Bob.

Got pointed to this article today (although I can’t remember by who), and was struck by it probably because I’m sensitive to community issues right now, having just gone through a zoning fight of my own.

But for Sandra Cassidy of Toronto suburb Ajax to give an interview and pose for a photo in the nation’s largest metropolitan daily like this one is remarkable.

Let me summarize the story for those of you who don’t want to click through and read it:

Sandra Cassidy lives in a new subdivision, and a bus goes past her house about every 30 minutes. She feels that this is an impingement on the enjoyment of her house. After all, she “paid a lot of money to have the only custom-built home in a very special subdivision,” she told the Star.

Furthermore, Ms. Cassidy says, her husband Wayne is an architectural technologist who designed the subdivision and has clout with local politicians who know him through business and charity events. “Not to sound like I’m bragging or anything but we have more (influence) than the average person,”she says.

She notes that “I’m sure there are a few elderly people who want it” but everyone in the area has at least two cars, says the mother of four grown children who have left home.” She feels the bus is always empty going past her house, on a “dangerous corner,” and says “We can’t open our windows because of the smell and noise.” The regional transit authority tells the reporter, however, that bus route 222 is a “good performer.” And the reporter found a young family that use the bus to reduce their carbon footprint, and a woman with a bad hip who wouldn’t dare walk half a kilometer in the winter to catch the bus.

Having worked around journalists long enough, I suspect that the Star reporter was so turned off by this woman that she decided to bury her with her own words. Listen to this lede: “Every weekday morning Sandra Cassidy wakes up to the sound of the bus carrying her neighbours to work and school.”

There’s a message in there: Sandra Cassidy doesn’t work. And by the end of the story, when you’ve heard about her custom home and her influential husband and how the bus ruins the view of Lake Ontario she paid an extra 100,000 bucks for, the message is set that she is a stunningly elitist snob with a world-view that extends no further than her manicured lawn.

I suspect Ms. Cassidy has not done media training, and I doubt she realized what was happening during the interview. But she’s likely learning that lesson now, from the dozens of comments. Or she’s passing them all off as little people whining.

It’s an interesting case study in community relations on an individual level. Being a long way away from Ms. Cassidy’s neighbourhood, I have no idea if her perception of empty buses negotiating dangerous corners is accurate. But if, as I suspect, her efforts to change the route fail, I would suggest that this story and her attitude will have been the cause.

If you ever need a lesson in how not to do community advocacy, you can use this one.

UPDATED: According to this Toronto Star story, the Cassidys lost their fight with Durham Regional Transit. You can check out the amount correspondence that this generated in this agenda and minutes from Durham’s regional government.

Ciao,
Bob.