Recently, The Economist took heat for a Gulf Coast oil spill cover that featured an isolated President Obama standing at [...]]]>

Everyone can be a photo editor in this age of inexpensive digital cameras and a variety of tools available for altering photographs. In the newsroom, however, some photo editing can do more harm than good.

Recently, The Economist took heat for a Gulf Coast oil spill cover that featured an isolated President Obama standing at the coast’s edge with an oil rig in the background. The magazine altered the source photograph to remove a local elected official standing next to the president. As you can see in a side-by-side comparison by NYTimes.com, the original image and the altered cover tell very different stories. In response to NYTimes.com claims of unethical photo editing, Emma Duncan, deputy editor of The Economist, said:

I asked for Ms. Randolph to be removed because I wanted readers to focus on Mr. Obama, not because I wanted to make him look isolated. That wasn’t the point of the story. “The damage beyond the spill” referred to on the cover, and examined in the cover leader, was the damage not to Mr. Obama, but to business in America.

Well, whether The Economist editorial staff intended to or not, the now-public photo alterations have undermined their cover’s message and impacted the credibility of future cover images as well.

Unfortunately, BP has created its own credibility problem by altering photos, as if their recent PR missteps were not enough. Treehugger.com, one of the most widely-read environmental blogs, reported that a recent BP photo of the company’s oil spill crisis command center in Houston had been altered to add radar images to blank monitor screens. The image appeared prominently on the company’s website. In an article about BP’s altered photo drama, Washington Post energy reporter Steve Mufson’s lead paragraph read:

Apparently BP is no more adept at doctoring photos than it is at plugging deep-sea oil leaks.

Ouch.

Update (7.22.10): more photos doctored by BP continue to come to light, as reported by the Washington Post.

While photos may have to be tweaked or fixed in photo editing programs like Adobe Photoshop before production, communicators and designers should be careful that their image changes don’t alter the original, intended message of the photograph. That’s where The Economist and BP ran into trouble.

Every photograph should tell a story. When sharing enhanced images with the public and the media, transparency is key. Organizations must make sure that story behind the photograph and the story presented in the photograph actually match. Any inconsistencies raises red flags from the media, and the resulting coverage can hurt organizations’ reputations and offer the public an unfocused view of the message they originally intended to convey.

How many people?  Let’s recap now that one week has gone by since Old Spice [...]]]>

Bravo, Old Spice.  Bravo.  Your viral ad campaign featuring Isaiah Mustafa is one of the most brilliant social media-based advertising campaigns that I’ve ever seen. It is certain to become a case study in how to effectively reach huge numbers of people.

How many people?  Let’s recap now that one week has gone by since Old Spice started posting videos on July 12.  I calculated the total number of views the campaign had received by adding the “Views” figure displayed publicly for each video to find the sum for all of the videos in the effort.  As of 6:45 PM EST on Monday, July 19th, videos categorized under Old Spice’s “Responses” playlist had received a staggering 36,229,190 views.

Let’s put those numbers in perspective.  36,229,190 views since the campaign started on July 12th is:

• 517,559 views a day, 21,564 views an hour, 359 views a minute, or about 6 views per second for a solid week.
• 85 times the number of views of Sarah Palin’s YouTube videos; 8,320,523 more views than John McCain’s YouTube videos; and only slightly less than 25 percent of the total number of views of Barack Obama’s videos.  As a note of clarification, we’re talking about views of the videos themselves.  YouTube refers to this number as “Total Upload Views.”
• If we figure the videos average about 30 seconds each, it totals 301,909 hours, 12,579 days, or 34 years and change of viewing.

Like I said, staggering.

How on earth did Old Spice pull this off?  Crystal Borde, in her post on how this campaign might seed ideas for advocacy videos, makes the excellent point that Old Spice took care to target influential accounts on Twitter.  But on a bigger picture scale, Old Spice recognized the value of integrating their traditional and online campaigns to maximize impact.

In Crystal’s post, she linked to the ReadWriteWeb post on how the videos were made.  That article links to this blog post by Mark Borden, who interviewed Wieden+Kennedy’s Iain Tait for Fast Company.  The entire interview provides a great analysis of the project,  but this response in particular stuck out to me:

One of the unique things taking place in the studio is we have a team of social media people, we have the Old Spice community manager, we have a social media strategist, a couple of technical people, and a producer. And we’ve built an application that scans the Internet looking for mentions and allows us to look at the influence of those people and also what they’ve said. They’re working in collaboration with the creative team that are there to pick out the messages that: 1. Have creative opportunity to produce amazing content; or 2. Have the ability to then embed themselves in an interesting or virally-relevant community.

It’s not just picking people with huge followings, it’s a really interesting combination.

Here we see the true spirit of integration that made this campaign the overwhelming success that it is.  Social media experts, creative experts, technical experts and producers were all working together to make a product in real-time that supported the overall goals of their client, and stayed true to Old Spice’s brand and message.  What’s more, the team put strategic thinking into their online outreach decisions – just as you would for any traditional outreach campaign – to ensure that their efforts would impact as many people as possible.  They took a long-established brand and a relatively new advertising campaign and adapted it to make it compatable with an emerging medium. All while staying true to Old Spice’s overall marketing and communications goals.  It is worth noting that this was a campaign that was taken very seriously, and involved substantial investment of time and resources.  While not as expensive as say, a Super Bowl spot, it demanded time commitments from a broad team, extensive strategic planning and investment in the medium.

Old Spice and Wieden+Kennedy, again, bravo.  You’ve set a pristine example for communicators everywhere on how online efforts can inform, support and enhance traditional outreach strategies – and vice versa.

Yup, he’s talking to the ABC’s “Good Morning, America” host George Stephanopoulos – though I doubt we’ll be seeing President Obama shirtless at a [...]]]>

I hope you’ve seen on TV or someone has forwarded you the “new, great-smelling” Old Spice “manmercials” featuring Isaiah Mustafa. Recently, the ad campaign has taken a more personal tactic.

Yup, he’s talking to the ABC’s “Good Morning, America” host George Stephanopoulos – though I doubt we’ll be seeing President Obama shirtless at a White House press conference. In the second phase of this Wieden+Kennedy-created ad campaign, the Old Spice man spoke via online video to more than 200 people, including LATimes.com’s Adam Tschorn, who just blogged about it and actress Alyssa Milano who tweeted about it.

By creating these personalized online videos directed at users interacting with Old Spice in the media, on YouTube or via Twitter, the campaign quickly and inexpensively expanded its reach and exposure. The videos are getting lots of buzz — especially the wedding proposal one — and are shared throughout the Internet and in social networking communities.  This is creating opportunities for additional coverage for Old Spice in earned media hits.

Wouldn’t this be a great social cause tactic to get the attention of policymakers in Washington, D.C. and in your own communities? All you would need is a interesting set-up, a message, a spokesperson, a list of influencers and a digital video camera. It could be the 21st century version of sending a open letter to Congress, instead your letter would be watched, instead of just read, and easily passed along.

ReadWriteWeb blog posted a behind-the-scenes look at how the videos were developed, but here are some of strategies inspired by Old Spice’s manly towel-clad spokesperson to keep in mind when you replicate this approach in your own advocacy campaigns.

1. Keep it simple. This communicators’ mantra applies to all of the work we do, but its power is beautifully illustrated in this video campaign. Old Spice kept the spokesperson and set-up virtually the same for all of the video shout outs; only the message changed. Simplicity will be key in keeping costs low and brand recognition high.
2. Target the right people. Wieden+Kennedy did their homework and identified people with either large followings or people with unusual requests that were already engaging with the campaign. Instead of picking on random people, they created video responses to those who would expand their campaign’s exposure by sharing the video with their followers or create earned media opportunities in non-ad trade media that rarely exists for ad campaigns outside of the Super Bowl. Free online exposure can be the bread and butter for advocacy campaigns on a budget. These personalized video messages could be the vehicle, if you select the right targets who have the ears (or Blackberrys) of the right audiences.
3. Maintain your tone and purpose. Personalized video responses were kept brief — under a minute in length — and maintained the ad campaign’s tone. Also, the video responses never lost their focus to reaffirm the ad campaign message (manly men use Old Spice) and reinforce the new brand for the product.
4. Don’t take yourself to seriously. Okay – Isaiah Mustafa is selling men’s deodorant and not a critical social issue, but humor can still take you a long way even when talking about serious topics. While videos about important causes are passed around the Internet, your e-mail in-box, Twitterfeed or Facebook page are probably mostly filled with humorous videos. If you can find the balance of irreverence and persuasively getting your message across, you could have a viral phenomenon on your online video channel.

While he may be “a ridiculously handsome man,” Isaiah Mustafa has proven that an effective communication strategy and tactic doesn’t need a lot of money or resources. It relies on an imaginative, creative idea. While the campaign has ended, I’ll let you have a moment with Old Spice to say farewell before you start filming your own targeted videos and encourage new audiences to pass your message along.

Unlike most college students, I tend to shy away from many social media networks. Facebook is my go-to in order to stay in touch with my friends, and I rarely use anything else. I do have a Twitter account, but I have never [...]]]>

This guest post is written by Shelby Benkert, an intern at Vanguard Communications.

Unlike most college students, I tend to shy away from many social media networks. Facebook is my go-to in order to stay in touch with my friends, and I rarely use anything else. I do have a Twitter account, but I have never tweeted. I’ve logged on only a handful of times just to check the profiles of the celebrities I am “following.” With the vast selection of social networking tools, I find myself reluctant to enter into a world where you are constantly connected. After reading an article about Foursquare usage written for Mediaite.com, I realize that my hesitation comes from the fact that I simply don’t want people knowing every aspect of my life.

From Flickr User Trucknroll

As a self-proclaimed “Facebook stalker,” I pride myself on being able to gather any and all information about someone just by viewing their profile. With features like “wall-to-walls,” tagged pictures, photo and wall comments, status updates, and the ever popular “Like” button, Facebook has become, now more than ever, a means of gathering information about someone. In five minutes you can find out somebody’s current location, schools they’ve attended, their place of work, and group of friends. Dig some more and you’ll know about their romantic relationships (both past and present), where they spent their spring break four years ago, and about their Cocker Spaniel named Sallie. And surprisingly, all this information is available about somebody you may not even be “friends” with.

While I think Foursquare co-founder Dennis Crowley has come up with an innovative idea, Foursquare and other social networking sites must be used cautiously. Foursquare has expanded past where to go on a Saturday night to include which Starbucks you get your coffee at on a Monday morning, and where your weekly meeting is held on Wednesday afternoons. Indeed, see past InSites posts from Brandi Horton and Chris Connelly looking at the applications of Foursquare for advocacy work.  All this “checking-in” has lead me to ask the question, how much information is too much? And furthermore, how safe are you being when constantly updating your information?

Communicators should be aware of the privacy settings that exist on such social networks to understand what information people are, and are not, making available to the public.  What’s more, privacy concerns extend to organizational profiles as well as personal settings. We must learn how to use privacy settings appropriately in order to control what information we share on behalf of ourselves and our clients. The consequences of not using privacy settings appropriately are wide ranging. They can be as small as somebody learning how old you really are – or as big as being fired by a client for revealing sensitive information.

So, how do we keep these negative consequences from happening? Here are a few tips to keep you safe and avoid the thin line between staying connected and over-sharing information:

• Check your privacy settings – Make sure that your profile isn’t open for everyone to view and that the information you put up can only be seen by your “friends.”  If you work with a client on a social networking site, determine what privacy settings they will need in advance to meet their goals, serve their audiences, and deliver their messages.
• Be picky when it comes to choosing your friends – Have a plan for how you will deal with friend requests.   The ideal profile is one where you know all of your friends, that way you are not giving out information to people who you don’t know.  Personally, make sure you don’t just accept anyone who sends you a friend request.  For clients, make an advance decision on how you’ll deal with requests from supporters – there are times where you may not want to be associated with certain accounts, and you’ll want to know how to deal with this when the issue arises.
• Be careful with what information you put on your profile – Social networking sites save all your activities. Before putting something on a profile, make sure it is something you won’t mind others seeing today, tomorrow, or 15 years from now. Also keep in mind, employers also look at profiles.
• Limit your location-based status activity – When talking about where you are and where you’re going, be sure to avoid giving too much detail. You never know when a random friend request has fallen through the cracks, so don’t allow people the ability to trace your every move. This could lead to dangerous situations. You’d rather be safe than sorry!  What’s more, make sure location-based updates make sense for a client before activating these features on networks like Twitter or Google.  If you don’t have a need for a location-based feature, there isn’t a reason to use it.

The Gulf Oil spill has been an enormous journalistic challenge. A sprawling story, much of it occurring literally out of [...]]]>

On Wednesday, the Associated Press (AP) announced the appointment of former Jerusalem bureau chief Steve Gutkin as their new “Oil Spill Editor.” According to a memo sent to AP staff and released to the Poynter Institute:

The Gulf Oil spill has been an enormous journalistic challenge. A sprawling story, much of it occurring literally out of sight beneath the water. Every day AP journalists in every format have risen to the story and kept us well ahead. It is now clear this story will be with us, and with the people of the Gulf Coast, for a good long time to come.

So we are taking steps to set up for this long haul. The first is the appointment today of an Oil Spill Editor to supervise the coverage and to keep us thinking of new and creative ways to cover this continuing and continually important story.

What does this say to communicators about how the news media is approaching the growing disaster in the Gulf?  Well,  if you’re pitching reporters about energy and/or environmental issues, you may need to take a number.

AP’s announcement illustrates that news outlets are expecting the oil spill coverage to continue for a very long time. Creating a dedicated editorial position to oversee content demonstrates their belief that the story will become bigger and more complicated as time goes on. Their decision also indicates that outlets are seeing such interest in the story from readers, viewers and listeners that they will invest in creating new roles and expanding coverage to meet that demand.

Satellite image of the Gulf Coast oil spill taken by NASA Goddard Space Flight Center on May 24, 2010, the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) on NASA’s Terra satellite captured this false-color, high-resolution view of the very tip of the Mississippi River Delta. Ribbons and patches of oil are silver against the light blue color of the adjacent water. Vegetation is red.

Woody Guthrie: Working Class Balladeer

July 2010 Woody Guthrie Working Class Balladeer

“I am out to sing songs that will prove to you that this is your world and that if it has hit you pretty hard and knocked you for a dozen loops, no matter what color, what size you are, how you are built, [...]]]>

Woody Guthrie: Working Class Balladeer

July 2010
Woody Guthrie
Working Class Balladeer

“I am out to sing songs that will prove to you that this is your world and that if it has hit you pretty hard and knocked you for a dozen loops, no matter what color, what size you are, how you are built, I am out to sing the songs that make you take pride in yourself and in your work.”― Woody Guthrie

Woodrow Wilson “Woody” Guthrie was born in Okemah, Okla., on July 14, 1912. With a love of singing and music instilled in him by his parents, Guthrie took to the road in 1931 after an oil boom — and following bust — left his family and hometown in financial ruin.

After departing for California in search of work to provide for his wife and three children, Guthrie landed a job hosting a radio show on KFVD radio in Los Angeles in 1937. Singing traditional music alongside some originals as part of his hosting duties, Guthrie quickly developed a devoted following among the thousands of relocated migrants living in California who counted on him to remind them of their shared past and experiences. While on the air, he used his radio program as an outlet for social commentary and criticism on behalf of the migrant workers that were struggling in desperate poverty. Guthrie established himself as a champion of fairness and justice, taking on corruption in all forms and advocating for union organizers fighting for the working class. In this role, he was among the first musicians to use his platform as an entertainer to become an advocate for social justice.

As a migrant himself, Guthrie identified strongly with the homeless and disenfranchised, sentiments that he ensconced in songs such as “I Ain’t Got No Home,” “Talking Dust Bowl Blues” and “Hard Traveling” — all of which sought to give a voice to the voiceless. After his affinity for the road led him to leave Los Angeles, he continued to travel and record while maintaining an affinity for social commentary. During World War II, his passionate objections to fascism led him to serve in both the Merchant Marine and the Army. While in the service, Guthrie wrote numerous anti-Hitler, pro-war songs such as “All You Fascists Are Bound to Lose” and “Talking Merchant Marine” to help boost the morale of his fellow troops. He was ultimately targeted by the anti-Communist Red Scare in the aftermath of World War II, but remained an outspoken advocate for free speech and workers’ rights until his death in 1967.

Although he rarely won awards for his music in his lifetime, Guthrie was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1998 and honored with the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2000.

Newly released documents reveal BP’s standard crisis response strategy to be “accentuate the positive, downplay the negative, tell everybody they’re sorry, they’re gonna fix it, they’re gonna do [...]]]>

As if BP’s crisis response mistakes mentioned in a recent post weren’t enough, apparently their public relations disasters continue as more oil pumps into the saturated Gulf Coast.

Newly released documents reveal BP’s standard crisis response strategy to be “accentuate the positive, downplay the negative, tell everybody they’re sorry, they’re gonna fix it, they’re gonna do better, and not to worry.” Well, it is good that they developed a crisis communication plan, but it misses a key element—flexibility.

From Flickr User Geoff Livingston

Effective “damage control,” BP’s highest priority, means that your plan should include situation analysis development so your crisis response strategies, messages and tactics are relevant and resonate with your audiences. While taking into account the current news cycle is important when responding to crisis, it should be a part of your situation analysis and not your whole assessment.

And one more blunder of note—apparently BP has hired a private security company to block media from reporting from impacted beaches or interviewing people involved with the clean-up. This exchange between a local reporter and a security guard caught on video is the last thing a PR team would want posted online. These damage control tactics represent short-term thinking and are not helping your cause, BP.

Here’s a new communication strategy free-of-charge—provide full disclosure, access and transparency to the media.

Let them see and document it all: the oil spill containment process, polluted marshes and beaches, oil-covered animals, BP employees helping in the clean-up effort, local fishermen collecting oil from the Gulf. Answer all of their questions and make it clear that BP has nothing to hide or leave unanswered.

By doing so, you let the media tell the full story to the public—and your shareholders—and allow the public to draw its own conclusions and be your judge and jury, instead of relying on aggravated reporters to paint the picture.

June 2010 Celia Cruz Diva for Democracy

“Celia was an absolute pillar as a human being and one of the most unselfish humanitarians I have ever met and am sure I will ever have known.” – Marc Anthony

Internationally renowned as the “Queen of Salsa,” Celia Cruz was born in Cuba in the [...]]]>

Celia Cruz: Diva for Democracy

June 2010
Celia Cruz
Diva for Democracy

“Celia was an absolute pillar as a human being and one of the most unselfish humanitarians I have ever met and am sure I will ever have known.” – Marc Anthony

Internationally renowned as the “Queen of Salsa,” Celia Cruz was born in Cuba in the 1920s. Her lifelong devotion to education was instilled in her by her father, who had hoped she would become a teacher. Cruz, however, dropped out of the national teaching college as her musical talents became increasingly undeniable, instead attending the Havana National Conservancy of Music. After joining the Cuban big band La Sonoran Matancera in 1950, Cruz departed for extensive tours of North and Central America, taking her to Mexico in 1959 when Fidel Castro assumed power. Rather than return to Cuba, Cruz and her band sought asylum in the United States – leading the new Castro regime to bar her from ever returning home. Cruz became an outspoken critic of Castro, and an American citizen in 1961, going on to become one of the top selling salsa artists of all time. Releasing more than 70 albums, three GRAMMY® awards and four Latin GRAMMY® awards, Cruz rooted her music firmly in Cuban styles. With her success, Cruz became a Cuban icon – a representation of what was possible without the limitations of an oppressive regime – and used this status to give back to the Hispanic community. In 2002, Cruz and her husband founded the Celia Cruz Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to raising funds for underprivileged students seeking to study music, while also supporting the fight against cancer.