"Excited" "new" "Canadians"

It seems like just a year or so ago that Netflix found itself in the New York Times apologizing for hiring actors to pretend to be excited about the company entering the Canadian market. And didn’t the US Federal Emergency Management agency have to apologize for pretending that its own employees were journalists, when it faked a news conference? Oh yeah, they did!

But hey, those guys are amateurs. They are certainly not “Canada’s home for hard news and straight talk”, a network that is “unwavering in their commitment to uncover the real stories impacting the lives of everyday working people and their families“.

So when Sun News wants to cover a citizenship ceremony, what ends up happening? The minister’s office sends down the orders to put together a ceremony at the Sun studios (not where Elvis and Jerry Lee hung out, sadly), and when they have trouble putting together enough warm bodies to make the ceremony look legit… the ceremony gets faked, with public servants posing as new Canadians. Here’s the video, in all its cringeworthy glory. Keep in mind as you watch it, that six of these people are not “new Canadians.” They are federal employees.

I’m guessing the two small people on the end aren’t the public servants. They appear to be children, although in this topsy-turvy world who can tell? Here’s the story as reported in the Globe and Mail, obtained through Access to Information requests by the Canadian Press.

The story’s money quote:

When a bureaucrat sent Sun News a list of possible citizenship ceremonies to cover in Ontario, a network employee suggested another scenario. “Let’s do it. We can fake the Oath,” reads an email from a sunmedia.ca email address, the name blacked out of the document.

I suppose I should draw the lessons, although I can’t imagine I have to:

• Journalists shouldn’t create pseudo events or cover them as real events.
• Public servants should have more integrity.
• Hard news and straight talk don’t mix well with “Fake the Oath.”

Let’s all be a bit better than this.

UPDATE:

The political appointee Candice Malcom appeared on Sun News today to apologize for the event. Sun News host Pat Bolland claimed that they knew nothing of the fakery. For what it’s worth, I never would have suggested the strategy followed in the wake of this muffup. Here’s the video:

UPDATE 2: Sun News Network’s David Akin weighs in with his take on the event.

This is an outgrowth of my position of Book Reviews Editor for the wonderful podcast For Immediate  Release, created by Shel Holtz and Neville Hobson.

In a quick 30 minutes, we’ll have a chat with an author and a call-in so that you can ask the author questions.

Our first guest on the FIR Book Club will be Christopher Barger, author of the new book “The Social Media Strategist.”

Join us on Blog Talk Radio on the 27th.

And two other book-related notes:

1. If you have a book you would like to hear reviewed — or if you’d like to do a review yourself! — get in touch and tell me about the title.
2. If you’re interested in being a guest reviewer, let me know what book you’re thinking about. In the past, we’ve had folks like Shel and the mellifluous Donna Papacosta do reviews. More voices are better.
3. If you’re a book publicist or an author of a book that is related to public relations, social media, communications, marketing — get in touch with me. I’d like to hear about your book and perhaps review it.

It’s a little surprising (maybe not very surprising, actually) that I don’t hear very often from authors or publishing companies asking me to review books. Try me.

Aubrey’s Meats is over 100 years old, and located in the Byward Market, one of Ottawa’s oldest areas. This may be one of its problems, actually. The Market, as it’s known to us Ottawans, is usually packed with a combination of tourists in search of the right tchotchke to take home to a coworker or maiden aunt and young revelers heading to The Heart and Crown or the Chateau Lafayette to get their drink on. If I’m gonna buy some steaks or a nice roast for the grill I’m not going to head to the Market.

But I digress. Aubrey’s Meats, according to its own “About” page, found itself in a serious bit of difficulty recently. The death of its owner and his declining health meant employees were running the shop. And not too well.

…in December 2010, Catherine Davis, the store’s bookkeeper, was made ad-hoc manager of Aubrey’s. When she took over, certain employees had run our store, between rent to the city and money owed to the suppliers, into a debt in excess of $300,000. Though it didn’t appear so, Aubrey’s was a sinking ship that some might not have tried to save. Out of a respect for Brian and his work, and an undying faith in this store’s potential, Catherine set about to keep Aubrey’s afloat.

So they were in trouble. Like some on a sinking ship, they grasped at anything that looked like it might help them float. And what they grabbed were Groupon and Kahoot.

They embarked on a number of different offers. One offered $200 in value for $89. They sold over 1000 of those. They offered others at $55 for $175 worth of meat. They sold thousands of those.

HANDLE WITH CARE

The hammer started to fall for the people running Aubrey’s when they realized that they couldn’t fulfil all the orders placed. So they limited it to redeeming $50 worth of meat at a time. Now they’ve suspended all redemptions until May 1.

What went wrong here? I think it should be obvious. The cash crunch they found themselves in made them decide to try this for an immediate cash infusion (even though they only get a portion of the revenue — according to the butcher who is the spokesperson for Aubrey’s right now, each $55 coupon resulted in $24 in revenue to Aubrey’s). But they didn’t look even one step down the road to figure out what to do if they SUCCEEDED with the offers. I feel for Aubrey’s employees. It sounds like they’re in a tight spot. But they’ve done themselves no favours by pursuing this strategy.

The companies which marketed their deals? I’d wager that they’re in no way suffering the way Aubrey’s is.

This isn’t a new story. Others, including my buddy Anne Weiskopf, have written about some of the challenges of managing daily deal sites for small businesses. Don’t just dive in. Think about the risks AND the potential benefits. If you’re new to doing that sort of thing, get advice. And if you’re considering a daily coupon site, you need to not only ask what will happen if your offer goes nowhere, you need to  think VERY carefully about what the implications of SUCCESS will be. Dying of popularity is not any better than dying of neglect. 

___

UPDATE, January 23: Three of the four companies which issued coupons for Aubrey’s meats are refunding those coupons, according to CBC Ottawa. Those are: Team Buy, DealFind and Groupon. CBC is reporting that Ottawa-based company Kahoot told its customers:

“We have been made aware of these unfortunate circumstances regarding Aubrey’s. Unfortunately we are unable to refund vouchers outside of seven days after purchase. If interested in a refund, we suggest going directly to Aubrey’s as they are now liable for their commitment to honour all vouchers sold.”

I wonder if Kahoot has thought about the several thousand people who bought through them rather than another of the coupon sites, and how likely they are to return to Kahoot to purchase.

UPDATE, JANUARY 24: I’ve asked Kahoot a couple of questions:

1. Can you provide the statement sent to customers who purchased Kahoot deals for Aubrey’s?
2. Is Kahoot concerned that its decision to not refund coupons will cost it brand loyalty when compared to the decisions of Teambuy, DealFind and Groupon to refund the coupons?

I’m hoping for a reply more substantive than this one from them:

“Hi Michael: longtime listener, first-time caller.

First off, I pay Senator Mike Duffy’s opinions on Twitter all the attention that someone who had a wonderful career as a journalist and then became a tiresome (dare I say banal) partisan patronage hack full of sound and fury, and signifying nothing, exactly the attention they deserve.

That being said, let’s take a look at what the banal drivel-purveying medium of Twitter has done. I’ll try to pick out Canadian examples.

The famous Tweeted photo of US Air 1549, breaking the news of the "Miracle on the Hudson"

It’s allowed journalists like Kady O’Malley to provide live updates on important committee hearings by live-tweeting, and journalists like Glen McGregor to do the same at important criminal trials.

It’s allowed Best Buy Canada to help customers with service issues better.

It’s become the goto site for breaking news. I constantly hear about things, from the earthquake in China, death of Michael Jackson to Jack Layton taking leave from the leadership of the NDP on Twitter significantly in advance of the mainstream media.

It’s become a business driver — Dell Computers, for example, created a single account to publicize its clearance specials. It’s generating millions per year from that account.

So for those who choose to use Twitter, and thanks to tools such as URL shorteners and hashtags, it can be a powerful — and occasionally even eloquent — communications tool. For those who choose to deride it (of course, without actually experiencing it), you won’t be missed.

Have a nice day. And if you want to learn about it, I’m teaching an intro to social media course at Algonquin College starting on Tuesday. See you there?”

Christopher Barger

This is a new idea that I’ve been working on with Shel Holtz and Neville Hobson, the hosts of For Immediate Release (if I may say, the pre-eminent PR and social media podcast out there.) Since last year, I’ve been doing book reviews for FIR, and really enjoying the opportunity to get into some great (and maybe not so great) books on PR and social media.

So now we’re taking the book review idea a step further, and poor Christopher is our guinea pig.

Christopher is the author of the hot-off-the-presses book “The Social Media Strategist” from McGraw-Hill Ryerson.

According to the McGraw-Hill site:

Conquer the unique challenges of driving social media success within a large company

From the social media director who built successful programs at both GM and IBM, The Social Media Strategist provides the tools you need to meet all the challenges of building a social media strategy in a large company, which include corporate culture, legal barriers, and the kind of bureaucratic resistance that that are unique to large organizations.

The Social Media Strategist explains how to get legal departments to say “yes” to social media programs; get employees engaged without exposing the organization to risk; build “buzz” that parallels business goals; and avoid the internal turf wars that can doom new initiatives.

I am starting to read the book now, and will have an audio book review up sometime soon.

And on January 27, we’ll do the first FIR Book Club with Christopher as our inaugural guest, using the services of Blog Talk Radio.

In a fast-paced 30 minutes, we’ll talk a little about his book, and then give listeners — that’s you! —  the opportunity to talk with Christopher and me about his book. Listeners can call in or they can participate in a chatroom on the BTR site.

Keep watching this space and the FIR site for more promos and information as we get closer to the 27th.

The 5Ws:

WHAT: FIR Book Club #1
WHO: Christopher Barger, author of The Social Media Strategist, with Bob LeDrew, FIR book review editor
WHEN: 2:00-2:30 pm Eastern time, January 27, 2012
WHERE: Blog Talk Radio
WHY: For lively chat with a leading social media thinker

I was curious, but couldn’t find very much information at all on the CBC site. In fact, here’s everything they’ve got about it at this point:

CBC has taken a few significant steps at examining what we do. The most recent examination was a six-hour radio series called Spin Cycles.

So I contacted their media relations people, and in no time flat was offered an interview with the drama’s creator, Gregory J. Sinclair.

Here’s the interview, essentially unedited. I was pleased to hear that the program will not just be a half-hour radio play, but that elements of the fictional universe the characters inhabit will find themselves on YouTube, Twitter, and other social media tools, in an attempt to integrate the reality of the show into everyday reality. That promises to be interesting. And you’ll hear that if the show is picked up, Sinclair hopes to involve the audience (flacks like us and others alike) in shaping the content via social media. That’s cool too.

But I do wish CBC would begin to do things like social media outreach. Would it have been so hard for them to contact Inside PR, PR in Canada, or bloggers like me?

I am of the opinion that Mark Blevis is on to something when he talks about someone aggregating all the best of, top 10, etc. lists that people create, so you can save time and read the “best of the best of” and save time.  But it won’t be me.

So I guess that leaves looking forward, mostly.

What am I looking forward to in 2012?

First anniversary cake -- what will the fifth anniversary bring?

• In 2011, I found myself in the “smorgasbord” period of my life. I saw an even better description of this this morning, when Stuart Bruce in the UK describes himself as having “‘gone plural’ and decided to pursue a portfolio career.” I love the idea of a “portfolio career” as a descriptor of what he’s doing, and of what I’m doing — PR & social media consulting + podcasting (hopefully as a part-time sources of income) + part-time teaching at Algonquin College + private training + handling membership services for OCFF + doing promotion and media relations for musicians I love. Sounds more professional than smorgasbord (unless you’re Scandinavian, maybe). In 2012, I want to get a better handle on managing every part of this “portfolio career.”
• As I have for the last five years, I am looking forward to more house concerts. When I first got bladder cancer (and turned 40) five years ago, I went through a bit of a struggle to figure out ways of pursuing what made me feel fulfilled and happy. At the top of that list was music. Thus was born BobCat House Concerts, with the support and patience of my partner Cathy. We are going to celebrate five years of those concerts, which bring amazing musicians to our house to perform for us and our guests, in February. It has been wonderful to expose people to the musicians that I love, and to have become friends with so many talented people. I have to single out our friendship with David Ross MacDonald, which has become really important to us. It helps that he’s a musical treasure. But even if he never wrote another song, I’d still want him in my corner.
• And that initial splash into the “music industry” has led to a recently-ended term of service on the board of the Ottawa Folk Festival, to working with OCFF, and to the plans I currently have underway to launch a new “commercial” concert series in Ottawa.
• I’m looking forward to inaugurating the FIR Book Club this coming January. It’s been a real pleasure reviewing books for the For Immediate Release podcast (and hopefully the authors would agree), and I’m hoping this new “talk-radio” call-in with authors of interesting PR and social media books will be lively and entertaining and informative.
• I’m looking forward to finding out if a podcast about Stephen King can actually make its owner a little money. I suspect that the “nichiness” of my podcast the Kingcast may make it an attractive enough target for people seeking to find and reach Stephen King and horror fans that they’ll be willing to pay for it. Time will tell.
• I’m looking forward to continuing my conversations with friends and podcasting partners Mark Blevis on PR and other Deadly Sins and with Joe Boughner and Susan Murphy on The Contrarians. Sometimes you don’t know what you think about something until you write about it. Or talk about it.
• I want to spend a little more time on fiction writing. I’ve spasmodically worked on fiction projects. But I’ve got finishitis. So I want to FINISH some fiction and see if anyone other than me thinks it’s any good.

Andrea del Sarto (subject of Robert Browning's poem)

A man’s reach should exceed his grasp, or what’s a heaven for?

Algonquin College social media class (may not be exactly as shown)

After some time working on the staff side of Algonquin, I’m returning there as a part-time prof in the Social Media Certificate program. The program offers people an elementary education in social media. And I get to do the introduction to social media course.

While Joe will be teaching online, I’ll be sweating it out in the classroom. I suppose it’s fitting that the younger of us will be teaching online, while the … not so younger… of us will be doing it old-school.

Some might think an introductory course is not the most exciting. But I disagree — I think that the introductory course is the place where people should be coming in with questions and perceptions that challenge the status quo. I’m looking forward to providing a basis for the rest of their courses and to maybe even having some of my sacred cows given a bit of a going over too!

It’s been a while since I’ve taught on a regular basis, but doing training and guest lectures has kept me fairly sharp. If you want to subject yourself to me blathering on… Do so at your own risk. Hope to see you in class.

So watching the assassination of a friend’s character in 24 hours has been a sobering experience.

Anthony Marco is someone I’ve met through PAB. I consider him a friend in the social-media sense of the word. We might not speak for months at a time. More likely, we might trade an e-mail, a tweet, or I might leave a comment on one of his several podcasts. Anthony is a dynamic speaker, he’s a great writer and a superb podcaster.

And he’s also the NDP’s candidate for the riding of Ontario PC party leader Tim Hudak.

And since yesterday, he’s been the subject of a story in the Toronto Sun, and now the smearing of the Liberal Party’s war room. The source of the outrage in the Sun story? Anthony said, in a podcast, that he was an atheist, that he thought churches were great examples of brand loyalty, and that he sometimes considered religion equivalent to a hobby. The comment thread at the Sun story quickly degenerated to juvenile and insulting personal comments.

Now the Liberal party, led by its prominent war-room blogger Warren Kinsella, has decided to paint Anthony as a “kook”, a “lunatic”, and to insinuate that he is somehow anti-Semitic and/or sympathetic to Nazism. By referring to one (I’m waiting to find out which one)  of his more than 300 podcast episodes at LoveHateThings.

Since I haven’t the time to listen to all 332 episodes, I can’t determine whether the quotes are accurate, or whether the context would have something to say about them. So I’m not going to try (at this point) to defend them, beyond saying I’ll wait until I know what the actual content tells me.

What I will say is this. I know enough about Anthony Marco to know a misrepresentation when I see one. And if this is how the game of politics is played, I pity our country. If political parties are willing to listen to hundreds of hours of audio to search out something to smear a fundamentally good man, to paint him as an anti-Semite, then I now see one reason for our country’s political disengagement.

Someone once said that you don’t want to see two things being made: sausages, and laws. I would now add political victories to that list. This is ugly, and infuriating, and nauseating, and sleazy. And it makes me wonder just how many other good, worthy people have lost elections because of this sort of nonsense. Sad, isn’t it?

UPDATE: I appear to have been banned from Warren Kinsella’s website. Mr. Kinsella posted a reply to me that read “Then beat it.” I replied with “Cogent.” He deleted that reply in the moderation queue. I then replied again, assuming that it was a mistake. The second reply was deleted, and he then added significantly to his comment. You can find the thread here. I suppose I should start emptying my closets. God knows what skeletons Mr. Kinsella will find there.

In any case, just to be sure that SOMEONE gets to read my reply to his comment, I’ll post it here.

Warren, I’m not sure what your issue is here. When it started, you said that this candidate  was deserving of censure because he was in some way denigrating those who “fought Nazis.” However, the direct quote suggests nothing of the sort. It argues that trying to change the mind of those who hold Nazi-like beliefs is futile. I agree. I’m not going to waste time trying to convince a lunatic that his Holocaust-denial beliefs are mistaken. Might as well tell Michelle Bachman that the HPV vaccine is safe. Now, you’re accusing this candidate of a “paean to Mein Kampf.” Again, I see nothing of the sort in the expanded quoted text. In fact, I read it as an argument against book-burning. As the organizer of an event called Censored Out Loud here in Ottawa, I tend to disagree with book burning. Even when the book is the product of a homicidal maniac. I would argue in order to understand such human monsters as Adolf Hitler, we need to read and comprehend their writings. When you wrote “Web of Hate”, an excellent and courageous book, did you read neo-Nazi literature? Perhaps even Mein Kampf? Does your reading it imply an endorsement? Of course not. We owe it to ourselves as a society to understand those we oppose. Even the loathsome. I’m disappointed that you would put your political ambitions above a commitment to honesty and fairness. 

You know why? Because we cheapen ourselves. We do things that we shouldn’t, and we suffer the consequences.

Case. In. Point.

In California, water is a big deal. The water 18 million people in southern California use to drink, wash, and take care of their sewage arrives in their houses via a 240-mile pipeline all the way from the Colorado River. So I’d figure that the topic of water there is discussed a bit more than it is here in my city of Ottawa, where a mighty river brings all the water we need to our figurative doorstep.

The Los Angeles Times ran a story yesterday about one of the authorities which manage the water supply for 2 million folks living south of LA, the Central Basin Municipal Water District.  The CBMWD apparently signed a $12,000/month contract with a consulting firm to write and place stories about them on a news site called “News Hawks Review.”  The documents around this were obtained by the Times:

Central Basin News Site Agreements

The selling point? That this would be indexed by Google News as a news outlet. Well, that door’s slammed shut — as of this morning, Google News has de-indexed News Hawks Review. In discussions with the LA Times, Coghlan claimed to have no editorial role with the News Hawks site. However, he was a frequent contributor to the site and was listed as a “reporter” with an affiliated “newshx.com” e-mail address.

Before I start opining, a caveat. I attempted yesterday to contact News Hawks Review, Coghlan (the company seems to not have a web site, which is curious for someone working in social media), and the CBMWD for comment and to ensure that the LA Times coverage was not inaccurate. None of those people responded to phone calls or emails. So if I’m extrapolating from incorrect information, be aware that I tried to verify the facts as reported.

There are two issues here, to my mind. The first is that what was done is, in my opinion, unethical. This was an attempt to create a simulacrum of news coverage without disclosing the financial interests.

I asked PRSA for a comment about this, and here’s what Prof. Deborah Silverman, the chair of their Ethics Board, told me by email:

“This practice is contrary to the Public Relations Society of America’s Code of Ethics, which espouses honesty and accuracy in communication, the free flow of information, and disclosure of information. The Central Basin Municipal Water District’s use of a communications firm to create “news” disguised as media coverage is a serious breach of ethical standards, and the district is operating in a manner that does little to aid the public’s decision-making process.” I’m sad to say that I also e-mailed my professional association, the International Association of Business Communicators, and nobody responded.

Did CBMWD know their communications person or people were engaged in unethical behaviour? Did they endorse it? I don’t know.

Second, this is a ridiculously ineffective use of thousands of dollars. What is the measure of success here? What opinion was changed by these innocuous stories? A youtube video accompanying the story has a whopping 101 views:

Meanwhile the documents posted by the LA Times show the communications folks for CBMWD referring to this as a “unique and innovative utilization of an internet news service to distribute actual news.”

If we as PR professionals can do no better than to use the tools at our disposal in unethical and deceptive and ineffective ways, then why SHOULD the C-suite listen to us? And if the boss thinks this is what we do, why would he or she think of us as anything other than unethical shills?

UPDATE: Thanks to the PRbuilder blog, I discovered two things. First, Ragan’s PR Daily covered this issue, and second, that the LA PRSA chapter has sent a letter to the Times calling this an “egregious breach.” I don’t think the letter’s been published in the Times yet, but the Ragan story has it.