“Booby Mom” was Both Shocking and Awesome: Can Provocative Content Improve Print’s Prospects?

Did I have a problem with now-infamous boobsucking TIME cover? Not at all, but I was somewhat surprised by the brouhaha that surrounded the image of the “booby Mom” whose 3-year old was photographed standing on a chair suckling her boobies.  Does that sound so pornographic or rude? You’d think so based on the throngs of readers (and media outlets) who commented on the controversial cover, considering it pornographic. Really people? I was a lot more troubled by what was going inside TIME Magazine and the article about attachment parenting than the cover. Truly troubled.

But back to the image… “Booby Mom” has spawned an avalanche of coverage and launched much discussion, not just about “attachment parenting,” the actual subject of the TIME cover story, but about the ways in which magazines (like all print media), have taken massive hard-copy readership hits can use thoughtful, provocative content and social-media relationships with readers to boost revenues. A TIME spokeswoman told the New York Times that the cover helped that issue become the magazine’s best-seller so far this year and doubled the subscription rates for that week. Says a lot about the so-called disgust about a breastfeeding mom on the cover, right?

Anyone who’s been paying attention knows that since around 2003-2004 newspaper and magazine circulation numbers have plunged as a result of the internet revolution. This got me thinking, as someone who pitches stories to media outlets for a living, about how print media can use provocation and button-pushing to help bolster their other ongoing efforts to slow the slide. Of course, a lot of the time provocative content gets shelved on the recommendation of the bean-counters who are afraid of offending anyone who might possibly buy a copy of the paper, or better yet, a subscription.

Let’s Face it, Bare Skin Sells… Is That So Bad?

And yet it is the most controversial messages that generate the most visceral reaction. Let’s face it, they are the messages that lead to water-cooler talk, arguments and coveted mindshare of brands.  If you’re old enough you’ll probably remember Demi Moore’s naked and very pregnant Vanity Fair cover in 1991.  The “decency police” went berserk denouncing the cover as obscene and generally gross. But like TIME’s “Booby Mom” cover, the Demi Moore cover is one of Vanity Fair’s best-remembered  and most imitated ad nauseam by celebrity women with a bun in the oven.

And then there was the The New Yorker, whose editorial staff must have been sweating (and likely second-guessing themselves) on the eve of the publication’s 2008 cover lampooning Fox News’ take on Barack and Michelle Obama’s onstage “fist bump” as a “terrorist fist jab,” bracing for the storm of criticism that followed.  That happens in lots of industries:  fear of offense and of reduced revenue discouraging unconventional or “risky” views.

Fear is contagious and all too soon there is nobody left who is willing to voice an idea that could be seen as too “out there.”

I’ve seen this with numerous clients I’ve dealt with throughout my career. It’s understandable, especially in the tetchy economic climate we’ve been living in for the past several years. And, when necessary, it’s been my role to poke, prod and nudge a nervous client to take a risk that ends up paying off. As someone whose business is to improve clients’ business, I know it’s important to encourage “outside the box” ideas because that’s where innovation comes from. When we push ourselves beyond our comfort zones we often end up succeeding way beyond our own expectations.

So kudos to TIME Magazine. Kudos to the “booby Mom” Jamie Grumet. And kudos to the other half of TIME readers who could stomach a 3-year-old nursing from his mother’s breast.

Of course, if we didn’t have that brouhaha in the first place, maybe I wouldn’t have written this piece to begin with. And that’s exactly my point.

Slow-Jamming Prez Is Height Of Cool

The following article by Vanessa Horwell, Chief Visibility Officer of ThinkInk, originally appeared on Marketing Daily on 05/03/2012.

The first American president to appear on television was Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Speaking at the opening of the 1939 World’s Fair in New York City, he declared the event “open to all mankind.” But for all Roosevelt’s TV-friendly oratory, it wasn’t until 1960 with the election of John F. Kennedy, historians argue, that television fully matured. Used with expert precision, Kennedy became our first “TV president.”

The same technological evolution can be seen with former president Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. Clinton may have been the first president to send an email, but it is Barack Obama, with his social media-savvy Facebook, Twitter and YouTube accounts, that have allowed him to take top honors as the nation’s first “multimedia president.”

Too Cool for School? Not This Prez

It’s that media/tech-savvy distinction that allows Obama to connect with young voters –- better than even the saxophone-playing-Clinton once did. Obama’s presidential “cool” allows him license to use Kennedy’s favorite communications medium in new ways too. On April 24, Obama was the guest-in-chief on “Late Night with Jimmy Fallon” — where he joined the host in a bit called “Slow-Jam the News,” where current events are put to a relaxed R&B beat.

But humor was only part of Obama’s continuing call to cool. His presence was a superb lesson in public relations.

Obama took the opportunity to connect with Fallon’s college-aged and 20-something viewers to address an issue that is central to their futures -– student loans and mounting debt. The five-minute opener (with nearly 5 million YouTube views when I wrote this post) featured a smiling and hand-waving president who morphed into mocking seriousness. With a bluesy backbeat, the chief jammer began:

“On July 1st of this year the interest rates on Stafford student loans — the same loans that many of you use to help pay for college — are set to double,” he said. …“What we said [to congress] is simple. Now is not the time to make school more expensive for our young people.”

The camera returned to a smile-suppressing Fallon, where he delivered the follow-up line in a raspy, deep voice. “Ooooh yeah. You should listen to the president.”

Public Relations 101: Stay On Message

With performances like that, who needs costly political ads or even stump speeches? Obama chose the student loan topic deliberately. Hours before the live taping, Republican presidential challenger Mitt Romney began backpedaling when it came to his opinions on the “student loan crisis,” first tacitly endorsing the July 1 deadline and then breaking with Republican colleagues to support the president’s call to keep student loan interest rates in check.

Perhaps the Romney campaign would like to blame it on the leap year.

On February 29, at a campaign stop in Ohio, Romney answered a question from a law student that illuminated his position regarding student loans and the need for market forces — not public handouts — to determine the fair cost of financial aid.

“The right course for America is for businesses and universities and colleges to compete, and for us to make sure that we provide loans to the extent we possibly can at an interest rate that doesn’t have the taxpayers having to subsidize people who want to go to school,” he said.

That’s an opinion that speaks to the Republican base. But throw in his campaign advisor Eric Fehrnstrom’s Etch a Sketch comment about being able to rewrite political narratives once the general election gets underway and you’re left with a politician edging toward a John Kerry-style flip-flopper.

We still have a long horse race ahead in the game of presidential politics. But Obama’s smooth, humorous and televised quasi-Romney dig will continue to serve him well. Not only does the president rely on a host of media outlets to disseminate his message, he’s skilled at shifting his tone throughout events.

Obama understands that shifting tone is different than shifting message. We’ll have to wait and see if Romney has been properly schooled and if Obama can remember his own lessons come fall.

But for now, I’ll still agree with the Roots rapper Black Thought, who at the end of President Obama’s slow jam session called him the “POTUS (President of the United States) with the mostest.”

Indeed.

The following article by Vanessa Horwell, Chief Visibility Officer of ThinkInk, originally appeared on Marketing Daily on 05/03/2012.

Daily Deal Dilemma: Does Groupon Need a Refund, a Reboot, a Stern Reprimand or Just a Little Maturing?

The answer depends on whom you ask. If you ask Groupon CEO Andrew Mason, 31, he’s likely to say the latter.

But before we get to Mason, let’s recap.

Back in February 2012, I wrote about how Groupon, the daily deals “Mecca” was launching a PR blitz to help rewrite its then recently soiled reputation after a slew of communication missteps:  a fumbled Super Bowl ad and a case of fuzzy earnings math just prior to its November 2011 IPO.  It revamped its website and added the public relations might of Paul Taaffe, the former chairman and CEO of Hill & Knowlton. (For history buffs, that’s the 85-year-old Manhattan-headquartered PR agency once known for its support of Big Tobacco and its infamous “A Frank Statement to Cigarette Smokers,” 1954 newspaper ad, that claimed the “statistics purporting to link cigarette smoking with [lung cancer] could apply with equal force to any one of many other aspects of modern life.”  Gotta love this industry!)

In that earlier post I puffed on about the tough job that Taaffe had ahead of him, referring to the journey as a “rocky road” while going on to say that, “taming the daily deal beast just doesn’t seem like a job anyone should embrace,” and that “public relations leaders can only craft a message so far. Too much spin and a message – and a company – can spin out of control. Let’s see what happens next.”

And (nearly) spin out of control it has.

Earlier this month it was reported that the Securities and Exchange Commission had begun a preliminary investigation into Groupon’s questionable financial accounting practices after the company announced that it was revising its 2011Q4 earnings, cutting it by $14.3 million to $492.2 million from $506.5 million. The announcement left many Groupon naysayers crying, “I told you so,” while investors are jumping ship in search of…. better deals.

Fast forward a few weeks since the troubling news and Groupon’s stock slide continues. On Thursday April 26, 2012, Groupon’s stock price was nearing bargain-basement levels, trading at $12.06 a share, after its $20 a share opening in November and its 52-week high of $31.44. The reason for the downward revision? Groupon hadn’t set enough money aside for customer refunds.

So in light of all this communications turmoil, one would expect that Paul Taaffe and his team would be out in full force defense and crisis mitigation mode.  To date, however, Taaffe’s strongest defense was when he told reporters: “Every three months Groupon is a different company.”

Somehow I don’t think that’s what investors wanted to hear.

But to give credit where it’s due, Groupon CEO Andrew Mason at an informal town hall meeting on Wednesday admitted his company no longer has “any margin for error,” adding that Groupon is “still this toddler in a grown man’s body in many ways.” In helping the company grow up, the company has announced plans to bring on board additional senior management, and according to a recent Wall Street Journal article, at least two new board members – all designed to show that the company can mature, mature quickly and rebuild investor confidence.

As a public relations professional, one of the most important pieces of advice I can give is telling clients to be up front about their actions and intentions and if there’s no substance behind a marketing campaign, then there’s no point selling the message.

Frank town hall meetings that get section-front coverage in the Wall Street Journal (check out Marketplace in the print edition) is probably not enough to quell all investor fears. But as Groupon closes out another challenging month and is only two and a half weeks away from its next quarterly earnings report, it’s nice to see a maturing response.

Perhaps then – and in an ironic way – Paul Taaffe was on to something after all. Just maybe, Groupon is beginning to change. And just maybe this change is here to stay and the company will not be something different three months from now.

We’ll have to wait and see.

Open Mouth, Insert Foot, Close Mouth-Mitt… PR Lessons Learned From a Crumbled Cookie?

Pop icon and singer Britney Spears’ second album may have been called “Oops!…I Did It Again” but it seems the 12 year-old phrase is getting a new lease of life in Republican hopeful Mitt Romney’s continuing saga of campaign trail gaffes.

Yes, oops he did it again! But at least his latest remark helps underscore some base public relations principals and makes for good blog post fodder.  Thank you Mr Romney.

The latest tongue-tie comes out of the Bethel Park community, a southern suburb of Pittsburgh, where at a recent a campaign rally/picnic, Romney hinted that the event’s sub-par cookies were coming from a 7-Eleven chain bakery. His humorous, though mildly condescending tone suggested local bakers bake better, more “authentic tasting cookies.”

Anyone following the story (which went viral as CookieGate) knows that Romney’s comments were a not-so-subtle nod to Republican Party basics: espousing the vitality and vibrancy of small business.

But that’s not how the cookie crumbled for “open-mouth-insert-foot-close-mouth-Mitt.” His jibe to the quality of 7-Eleven baked goods backfired in several ways:

1)      The offending cookies were made by a 57-year-old local bakery, which had been hired for the event.

2)      7-Eleven is not a bakery, a remark that has again sparked concern that Romney is out of touch with everyday Americans, who, while they make struggle through the lyrics of the Star Spangled Banner, know exactly what their “local” 7-Eleven offers.

For Romney, this latest gaffe, like his Etch A Sketch comment a month ago, can’t easily be shaken off.

It also reinforces that effective public relations isn’t just about writing press releases – far from it. In fact we are constantly reminding clients that press release generation is in some ways, the least critical part of what we do. Managing a client’s message – in print, online, in person on Twitter and Facebook, and everywhere else their name and their brand are promoted.

Hindsight is, after all, 20/20, but isn’t it possible that a particularly on-the-ball communications whiz could have anticipated that their boss would try to inspire the small town business spark knowing that cookies would be served at the event? And if so, Romney could have turned that info into his advantage instead of spoiled dough.

By now, “CookieGate,” a week old and it’s entirely possible the Romney campaign will find humor after al. 7-Eleven’s PR team has already done that while the bakery is cashing in on its Internet notoriety by offering a “CookieGate” special: buy a dozen, get a half-dozen free.

Kudos….eerrrr…..cookies to them!

Considering that Romney gaffes are nearing bakers dozen regularity, it’s likely he’ll have plenty of time to improve his PR game before the big PR game heats up this fall.  And then we can talk about how the cookie crumbled.

Ink and Paper: So Long and Farewell

If you’re of a certain age, born anytime during the age of television and right up until the early 1990s, then it’s likely you’ll remember the iconic educational commercials: kiddies’ faces would light up at the sight of their first encyclopedia collection and parents who would be seen, usually at a kitchen table, considering and calculating the financial investment – which for many, was no small undertaking. Nevertheless, the multi-volume collections stood proud on bookshelves in living rooms and home libraries across the globe. In an age before the Internet, the information superhighway was paved with ink and paper, not gigabytes and downloads.

As a public relations professional who has mailed, faxed and emailed her fair share of press releases and press kits (yes I’m that old) to journalists and clients, I was a bit saddened – but not surprised – by the news that Encyclopedia Britannica, a 244-year-old institution of somewhat portable knowledge would cease production of its print edition. The company, which releases updates every two years, announced that 2010’s 32-volume set was its last, already about two years out of date.

In the Case of Hard Copies vs. Hard Drives Where Do You Stand?

While Britannica publisher Jorge Cauz tried to soften the nostalgic blow to print fans, rightly pointing out the need to fully adapt to the digital age and that print sales of Britannica’s encyclopedia were less than 1 percent of the company’s total sales, my sadness isn’t based on nostalgia alone.

Rather, the printed end of Britannica is but another sign that the ink and paper world many of us grew up in continues to weaken. While some lament the emotional connections rooted with older paper products – it’s musty, humidity-induced smell, it’s aged, crinkled look, that, like the lines on an elderly person’s face, suggest wisdom as much as years, the print world’s shuttering raises very real concerns over data storage and information preservation, and what people in the broadly defined information industry (including Public Relations) should do about it and how we should advise our clients.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not suggesting the first thing we do is advise clients to invest in off-property climate-controlled storage facilities with copies of all their work. Nor am I suggesting a return to the stone tablet and chisel. I’m suggesting that before we all embrace the paperless office connected with our laptops and iPads and smartphones (and any other digital devices that are coming down the pipeline, we should recognize some of that traditional medium’s advantages over digital. And in some instances, there’s still nothing better than a paper back up.  It may be cumbersome, it may feel antiquated, but it’s tangible – you can touch it, smell it, hold it.  Combined, ink and paper can do a number on almost all of your senses.

Paper’s greatest strength, perhaps, is its ability to degrade slowly. If untouched and kept in a cool, low humidity location that prevents the formation of paper-eating microbial life, the written pages of history can last hundreds of years. And while it wasn’t paper, but rather a mix of parchment and papyrus, the Dead Sea Scrolls, discovered from 1947 to 1956, survived in that undisturbed state in caves for more than 2,000 years. I’d give you the odds of my laptop’s hard drive lasting that long, but it’d be impossible. Why? Without near-constant backups, and simply retrieving digitally stored data, the magnetic material that encodes the data will fail. What’s more, digital data needs to be kept in a format that future devices will be able to read and translate into useful information. For the most part all that’s required for a paper “translator” is a human brain and a pair of eyes. Last time I checked there’s a nearly 7 billion stockpile of those resources lying around.

To be sure, at a certain level, print material suffers similar shortcomings as digital. Imagine for instance, that in the distant future, there’s no written translation for English. That means that even if the data is stored properly, there’s no one left who can decipher it – no matter how many billions of brains or eyes are trained on the problem.

But paper also has contemporary benefits when it comes to the environment – and a businesses budget. While today’s gadget makers love to taught the environmentally-friendly and cost-effective nature of digital data storage, the fact remains that paper, made from trees, is considered a renewable resource and can be further recycled. Digital, however, requires a significant amount of raw materials, its parts are often hard to reuse, data recovery, if possible at all, can be costly, and digital’s energy demands are continuous. For businesses, that means even more cost.

While the truly paperless office is probably decades or more away, and data shows the global print industry still grew 1 percent in 2010 and likely will continue growing at a 1 to 1.5 percent rate through 2016 – even without Britannica’s help – it’s a good idea to remind ourselves and our clients that the print medium isn’t necessarily the dinosaur it’s portrayed to be.

In 2,000 years, it’s probable that at least something of the original 244-year printed history of the Encyclopedia Britannica will survive. Maybe a vintage copy of Britannica’s final edition will be read on its 2,000^th birthday in the year 4010? As for what will exist of it’s now all-digital content, remains to be seen. In fact, print out this blog post today, put it somewhere safe and read it to yourself in the future as a 2012 “I told you so.”

To our clients and everyone else: happy reading and happier data storage – in whichever analog or digital format you prefer.

Mobilizing and Monetizing The Lobby Experience

The following article by Vanessa Horwell, Chief Visibility Officer of ThinkInk, originally appeared on Hotel Executive.

Jackpot!

That’s the exclamation (not to mention double entendre) that’s likely doing cartwheels inside the heads of corporate higher ups and casino/hotel bookkeepers that are busy tallying their property’s profits. It’s a joy especially potent considering that a large portion of the green in their piggy banks stems from those very same gaming additions.

It may seem obvious to any Las Vegas traveler who’s ever stepped foot in the MGM Grand, The Bellagio, or Mandalay Bay, but it’s important to remember that at sometime, at some point, hotel designers reached this no-brainer conclusion: Instead of building casinos and hotels as separate structures, why not build them as single entities? Better still, why not pair the hotel and casino branding? That way, room rates, the mainstay for a hotel’s revenue, can be partnered with an entirely new income stream: gambling money. Everybody knows tourists are coming to cities like Las Vegas to try their hand (and luck) at the one-armed bandit. Why not give hotel guests what they want right in the lobby, and monetize the experience?

A simple idea, for sure, but it’s the aesthetic and business success at the root of the world-famous Las Vegas strip. And when it comes to creating revenue opportunities in common spaces, the burgeoning world of mobile, digital signage and location-aware technologies could learn a thing or two. Like the resort-casino model, mobile’s next frontier – or certainly a frontier as it relates to hotels, is the lobby. It’s a potential revenue, entertainment and loyalty source so significant that hoteliers who choose to mobilize their lobbies should be shouting “jackpot” too.

Mobile’s Winning Combination: Engage, Entertain, Enjoy

Of all the places mobile technology has reached, (through smartphones or tablets) it’s surprising that the hotel lobby has yet to be tapped – even less so than the hotel room, which is beginning, finally, to find its digital footing.

And as an “always on” technology, with penetration rates exceeding 95% for standard phones and upward of 64% for smartphones (in the 25-34 age group within the United States), a central and social meeting place like a hotel lobby is the ideal location to further engage guests throughout the booking and hotel stay process. But also through that same technology, sow the seed for future visits through the technology’s entertainment value allowing guests to download games or video content and continue the mobile hotel marketing experience well beyond the lobby’s main entrance, furthering the customer connection.

In fact, some 82% of business travelers polled in a 2011 Travelport survey said that they expect every hotel room they visit to be WiFi accessible by 2016, no, ifs, ands or buts. Travelport also found that already 56% of business travelers search and book their stays via their mobile device. Google, too, has reached similar conclusions, finding that nearly 60% of personal travelers have looked for travel-related information through their phone or tablet. In other words, travelers of both sets, expect hotels services and amenities to go where they’re already leading.

Hotel Lobby 1.0 versus Hotel Lobby 2.0

Think about a hotel’s loyalty and ROI possibilities and imagine the following scenario. A customer walks into a hotel lobby exhausted from their late-night travels and delayed flight. The last thing on their mind is having to put on that obligatory smile for the front desk and begin the check-in process.

It goes something like this: a hotel guest fishes for their credit card in a cluttered wallet, obtains a magnetic card room key, learns about check-out times, the continental breakfast, and collects a smattering of printed material –some of which might be out of date – and all of it, decidedly so last century in terms of paper and ink technology. Then there’s the added hotel expense of having to pay employees to staff on what can be graveyard shifts. None of this is a recipe for revenue or loyalty success.

Now consider this. A mobile lobby has the potential to radically change this scenario. Imagine instead a tech-centric experience where that same travel-weary customer walks in. But this time, instead of the traditional static entranceway, the guest is surrounded by a collection of interactive digital “smart” signs. Using Bluetooth technology that detects a phone’s proximity to the sign, (and for privacy reasons, not the guest’s exact location) the sign immediately sends the guest’s phone a timely relevant message about their stay. Upon a guest’s opt-in response, the sign can begin sending the guest coupons to the hotel’s restaurant or bar, upgrade packages, or it can even send the phone an augmented reality map of directions to the guest’s room, the fitness center or the pool. Need to find what’s around town? No worries there either as the digital sign-phone partnership all but does away with the need for the concierge. And no need for pen and paper in this scenario either.

And with companies like Orbitz, (which launched its Orbitz-Hotels app for iPad last summer), and Priceline, (that added a “Tonight-Only Deals” to its iPad app in October), estimating upward of 60% to 65% of mobile users book their trips the same day of their stay, finding new ways to engage the traveler both before and after their trip has never been more important. Even if a trip is booked within 24-hours of a stay, that doesn’t mean the proverbial wheels start turning long before that.

The Future (Is Almost) Here: Hotels Mobilizing their Mobile Effort

Little by little hotel chains and technology solution providers are starting to get digital sign’s mobile message. And like the hotel-casino model, they are starting to cash in. In spring 2011 Canada-based iSIGN Media, a provider of location-aware mobile advertising partnered with RTown Communications, also of Canada, to yield the perfect duo: iSIGN supplied the “smart” software and RTown, a digital media marketer, supplied the digital signs within hotel properties. Distributed through a system of some 27,000 hotel rooms in 346 locations throughout Canada, the network effectively delivers a host of branded content, special offers, coupons, discounts, loyalty program messages and other rich-media offerings of guests’ choosing. And by opening up a digital signage network to outside advertising, hotels can accept ads from companies looking to sell to travelers. In addition to delivering real-time content via in-room TV, hotels took the added step of delivering their content via digital signage in hotel commerce areas and even outdoors.

In a related digital move, Wyndham Hotel Group, in conjunction with the MCG, in summer 2011 launched a text to win campaign linked to the PGA FedEx Cup. The hotel chain was looking to increase interaction with hotel guests and through the campaign, offer rewards. Additional community outreach was achieved by donations, issued through Wyndham’s charity arm, Wishes By Wyndham. While the campaign did not rely on lobby-based digital signage, it’s the unique kind of guest engagement that such signs in the future might be able to better promote. Rather than just receiving a simple text, imagine if a rich-media image of a 3-D golf ball had come off a digital screen, offering some discount at a nearby golf course? Along with the appropriate text to connect the image to the cause or promotion, greater redemption rates seem likely. It’s also the type of social experience that, if launched in a lobby setting, might set the stage for further in-lobby and social media-driven conversation.

But more on that in the section that follows…

From the Jetway to the Jetsons: Welcome to the Kinder, Gentler Lobby

Ultimately lobby 2.0 won’t just be about the technology. In an ironic twist, it’ll be about how the technology is bringing people together in more genuine ways. As mentioned above, the ability to connect guests to each other in meaningful ways, (say for example, guests looking to organize a hotel-based tour group for the city they’re visiting and an offering from the tour group incentivizing its use via smartphone and digital signs) will help drive both online and offline conversations.

Increasingly, the linked, synched and wired lobby will take a more living room-like or Starbucks approach where guest spend more time hanging out and interacting with their mobile gadgets and other guests who are using them as well, rather than using the lobby as an austere “waiting area” before embarking on the next part of their day. Hotels like A-Loft, Hyatt, Hyatt Place, Marriott Courtyards, and Hilton’s Home2 Suites extended stay brands have already begun installing mega-sized touch-screen TVs that display information like the weather and day-trip excursion information. While that’s a first step, imagine if those touch screen TVs, like digital signs, began offering branded content?

The A-Loft hotel brand is also testing its “smart check in” technology. Starwood Preferred Guest program members are sent a radio frequency identification (RFID) keycard in the mail. On the day of a guest’s arrival, a text message is sent to their mobile device with a room number, allowing the guest to bypass the front desk entirely. And according to David Strom, writing for ReadWrite Enterprise, the technology is in place at A-Lofts in New York, Massachusetts, Texas, Florida, and London. Also, the Oslo Comfort Xpress hotel has automated lobby kiosks that dispense RFID room cards. Admittedly, these technological advancements risk bypassing the lobby altogether. But it’s incumbent on the next generation of interactive digital sign designers to find ways to the keep the digital conversation in the lobby.

Continuing this look into the future, next generation digital signage, as seen by Samsung’s Transparent Smart Window at the recent 2012 Consumer Electronics Show, will merge the aesthetic of real windows with the virtual world. With advanced touch-screen technology, the 4-inch thick screens will allow up to 50 simultaneous “points of contact” or users.

Revenue Per Square Foot: From Slots to Signs

Anyone who’s been to a Las Vegas casino, or any gaming establishment from California to Monte Carlo, knows that it’s the slot machine – not the table game games – that generate the most revenue per square foot. About to turn 117, slot machines have for decades proven their worth to the hotels who’ve turned their lobbies into gaming halls, giving guests what they want, when they want it and in close proximity to their hotel rooms.

The parallels with in-lobby digital signage are striking. Both technologies – one from the 19th century and another from the 21st – engage the guest, build loyalty, and of course, improve return on investment.

Maybe the next generation of a casino-hotel’s digital signage will feature interactive images of slot machines where through contactless data transfer (NFC or Bluetooth connectivity) guests play the slots through their mobile devices? Instead of winning cash, players might receive coupons, discounts and loyalty rewards redeemable at the hotel.

Whether it is casinos, hotels, motels, or any lodging establishment in between, mobilizing the lobby is the revenue and loyalty way forward. Tech-savvy and mobile-equipped travelers continue to lead the way. It’s time for hoteliers to gather their resources and mobilize their lobbies today and hit the digital signage jackpot today.

The following article by Vanessa Horwell, Chief Visibility Officer of ThinkInk, originally appeared on Hotel Executive.

An Internet Hot Spot’s Cold Response: When Calling Something an ‘Experiment’ is no Safeguard from Critics

In one of the early scenes from the dystopian 70s cult classic Soylent Green the camera shows a largely homeless and grotesquely overpopulated New York City street whose riotous masses are cleared with dump trucks – called scoops – treated more like rubbish than people. And in later scenes the audience learns not only is prostitution legal, but the women that come with the little remaining luxury property that’s left are called “furniture.” Nice.

If only treating people like objects was confined to Charlton Heston-starring science fiction.

Instead, the recent marketing misstep by BBH Labs, the innovation arm of the international marketing agency BBH, has brought us all a notch lower on the “soylent slide.” Earlier this week, at the annual tech-fest better known as the SXSW technology conference, BBH Labs hired 13 volunteer homeless people to stand in as human mobile hot spots. Carrying Wi-Fi devices and wearing t-shirts that read: “I’m [name] a 4G Hotspot,” the volunteers were enlisted to help prevent the overload of the existing mobile network, a common occurrence at tech-crowded events. It was also intended as a conversation starter – homeless workers would have an opportunity to speak with mobile users about their plight and discuss America’s homeless problem. And who knows, maybe a chance encounter would aid their employment and housing prospects?

In fact, Saneel Radia, the director of innovation at BBH Labs, who was quoted in a New York Times story about the Austin, Texas event, seemed utterly surprised by the public backlash.

“We saw it as a means to raise awareness by giving homeless people a way to engage with mainstream society and talk to people,” he said. “The hot spot is a way for them to tell their story.”

Somehow I think that positive outcome is unlikely, especially when you start with turning homeless people into an awkward marketing ploy while treating them like glorified telephone poles –albeit telephone poles with enough of a human voice to request that their 4G “customers” consider a donation to help them survive. While it’s true that these unlucky 13 did volunteer for their services and were paid for their efforts (more on that later), the program speaks to the worst kind of human exploitation. It’s one thing to know your actions are exploitative and nevertheless carry them out based on some flawed “greater good” logic, but it’s another level entirely when you’re oblivious to that cruelty.

The marketing carelessness also highlights another disturbing trend related to technology, a term that Chris Klauda, a vice president at D.K. Shifflet & Associates, a travel and hospitality market research company calls, “isolated togetherness” – people in close physical spaces, but remaining disconnected from the “real world” and are instead solely focused on the goings on in their virtual worlds via their smartphones, tablets, laptops, etc.

As the technology through which we all communicate continues to advance, becoming more immersive, digitally interactive, and mobile, it’s critical we – not as public relations professionals but as moral, caring, and empathetic members of the human race – remember that treating people with respect isn’t just about asking for someone’s assistance or paying them for their efforts in some endeavor. Nor does calling a marketing misfire a “charitable experiment,” excuse BBH Labs from their decision. That kind of qualified and dare I say bullsh*t language serves no one. In fact, it’s the kind of language PR professionals rely on so often that gives our industry a bad reputation and further fans the flames of the media mess at the heart of this blog post.

For their efforts the 13 volunteers, selected from the Front Steps homeless shelter, earned themselves free t-shirts, $20 a day (which based on an 8-hour work day amounts to $2.50 an hour or about the same legal minimum wage in 1976, and $4.75 below today’s legal minimum), and the opportunity to collect some extra donations.

But if you ask me, and the many others who were similarly disturbed by this story, I think they all got a lot less than they bargained for. Consider this “charitable experiment” a dismal failure, and hopefully one that will not be re-dressed and re-hashed for the next South by Southwest technology conference.

They may not have been called furniture as in Soylent Green, but these 13 volunteers definitely served as a 2012 appliance.

Shame on us all.

Why ‘Good’ Press Releases = ‘Bad’ Journalism

The following article by Vanessa Horwell, Chief Visibility Officer of ThinkInk, originally appeared on Marketing Daily on 3/15/12. 

When writing news stories, editors advise young reporters to do the following: stick to facts, don’t opine, place important/newest information high, answer the five Ws, have a solid lead and conclusion, spell names correctly, use conversational language, meet deadlines and hit the word count.

It’s a formula for success that reporters of all ages rely on. More than that, however, the tips speak to the professional evolution of storytelling found to be most effective at getting points across, with a 150+year history.

Seems like a simple formula, right?

Then why do so many press releases I read —  and some I am required to write — fail to meet these standards? What’s changed in the communications industry that allows for the writing and distribution of such abysmal drivel? And why don’t the rules governing quality storytelling apply to many of today’s releases?

PR is NOT the Dark Side of Journalism – But Some Clients Might Work for the Death Star

Whoa. Three questions in one paragraph — and a possible clichéd Star Wars reference subhead. That, too, may violate a writing essential — that a story can be about one thing and should avoid clichés like the plague (cliché intended). Coming from a public relations angle, I can tell you that it’s not as simple as pitting agenda-pushing poor-writing PR professionals against reporters.

Too often the challenge lies with our clients and their expectations. Yes, as their communications team, it’s our job to direct conversation, to craft proper messages and distribute that message through the media in a concise, accurate and compelling manner. But like journalists, we too can’t always claim the moral high road. Clients pay our salaries, just as advertisers pay (or used to pay) journalists. Sometimes we just have to do what we’re told. Most times, we just have to “make it work.”

Press Release Dos and Don’ts

Of course, “making copy work” is not like making copy sing —  a nod to the lyrical and rhythmic flow of quality writing. An off pitch release (Not the PR pitch) “creates” news rather than telling something newsworthy. Ask yourself — if you didn’t work for company X, would you read it? If the answer is ‘no,’ then you’re already in trouble. The solution: clients need to be honest about their announcements. Writing a release about something that may happen in six months is not newsworthy. That’s about as useful as someone planning to be rich by summer.

At most, that’s the kind of company “news” that meets Twitter post standards or a short email blast to client investors. It does not require an 800-word release that causes journalists’ eyeballs to glaze over or public relations professionals to struggle through 17 drafts of a document that has failed to capture the “essence of the company story.” Sometimes what clients say just isn’t that important. Clients need to have the humility and presence of mind to know when to shut up — or at least respect when their PR staff tells them to.

Press releases also fail because of their language. If you’re writing a release in English, then write in English — not gibberish. Is some jargon necessary? Yes. But too much and a press release can bury its own newsworthiness.

Print This: PR Professionals and Journalists Play the Same Game on Different Teams

How’s that for a newsworthy press release? But even if we play on different teams — journalists dig for the news while PR professionals push what they’d like to be considered news — the rules of the writing game should not change.

Modern journalistic writing evolved from the rigors of changing technology – the telegraph. At a penny a character, brevity was far more important than expressive prose. Combined with the fear of technology failure, reporters were taught to write and report news as if readers only read the headlines and first paragraph. (Sound familiar?)

Today’s hyperactive news cycle and extreme mobile connectivity is the outgrowth of these technological realities. PR professionals, emerging some 50 years after Samuel Morse’s invention, really do know what good writing and storytelling is about.

If only we can teach clients that same lesson, perhaps the PR vs. journalism professional stalemate will be broken –- and great press releases will equal great journalism.

The following article by Vanessa Horwell, Chief Visibility Officer of ThinkInk, originally appeared on Marketing Daily on 3/15/12. 

Groupon’s Dodgy Deal: Can a PR Blitz and Site Overhaul Save the Company From Itself?

When it comes to Groupon, the daily deals digital Mecca, my, my, how the dot com angels have fallen.

Even as a public relations professional who’s seen and navigated her fair share of client missteps, I’m a bit gobsmacked by how a company that less than two years ago snagged the front cover of Forbes magazine with the eye-catching title “Meet The Fastest Growing Company Ever,” has managed to have its PR rug so skillfully pulled out from under them. What’s especially noteworthy is that Groupon’s recent rotten deal has been entirely self-made.

For readers who aren’t up on the latest Groupon happenings, the company has for the past several months, endured a barrage of PR setbacks, helping re-write the company’s until-now spotless public narrative. Here’s the errrr…..deal: In 2011 the Chicago-based company was roundly sacked following a Super Bowl XLV (45) ad that appeared to mock the decades’ long Tibet-China conflict. A few months later, and just ahead of Groupon’s November initial public offering (IPO), the company that had since its founding been branded based on its hyperactive growth, had to slice its reported revenue in half due to questionable accounting practices. Tsk tsk tsk.

Even the company’s opening stock price, fittingly perhaps, came in at a bargain $20 compared to an earlier valuation that said the couponing site was worth $30 billion. Re-tweaked fuzzy math brought that value down to $12 billion.

And while the company’s NASDAQ stock as of this writing is hovering near its opening price, only down .2 percent, and they’ve managed to start the new year with no additional public relations faux pas – that is if you exclude their announcement last week of a 2011 fourth quarter loss of $9.8 million – a sense of Wild West mentality combined with deck-of-cards-like fragility (some would say Ponzi scheme) continues to deal the company a PR blow.

To be sure, Andrew Mason, Groupon’s 31-year-old CEO, isn’t going down without a fight. In the effort to build back its image as a leader in the online deal-a-day world where coupons attract customers to once-hidden brick and mortar establishments and where everyone wins, the company announced this week major revisions to its website. Among the changes includes adding “thumbs up” and “thumbs down” capabilities so that Groupon users can help the site be more selective when doling out its latest offerings. And in another striking move, Groupon announced the hiring of public relations veteran Paul Taaffe to better manage the company’s image. His arrival comes after only a two-month stewardship by Brad Williams, formerly of EBay Inc.

Whether or not Taaffe, 50, paired with Mason,31, is the right combination of relative youth and relative years remains to be seen. But the fact that his arrival comes after his predecessor barely had time to break in his desk chair’s seat cushion, more than even erroneous math or disgruntled business owners crying foul over the supposed Groupon “deal,” is the best indication yet, that Groupon might be sick. Very sick.

As PR professionals we are tasked with helping keep our client’s message on track, being consistent and accurate with the media, and when calamity strikes, honest and up front about our mistakes. But that hard work should always be predicated on a company that gets its facts and its story straight –before it goes public. To do anything less is like having one hand tied behind your back during a boxing match. Or if you’re a lawyer, having your client reveal a critical detail that could alter a defense only moments before opening arguments. That type of handicap serves no one.

There’s no denying Groupon’s had a tough year. And while it may be easy to say “what’s 365 days in the course of a life?” Groupon, much like its leader, is still very young, having just celebrated its third birthday. But if you’re three years old and already a third of your life has been troubled with a mixed marketing message, what does that suggest going forward?

Taaffe’s got a rocky road ahead of him, for sure.

Good press or bad press aside, Groupon and its thousands of employees and millions of dedicated users aren’t going anywhere anytime soon. But taming the daily deal beast just doesn’t seem like a job anyone should embrace and revamping a website is just not enough. Public Relations leaders can only craft a message so far. Too much spin and a message – and a company – can spin out of control.

Let’s see what happens next.   

An Organization With Terminal Cancer

The following article by Vanessa Horwell, Chief Visibility Officer of ThinkInk, originally appeared on Marketing Daily on 2/10/12. 

Here’s something that almost anyone from any side of the political spectrum can agree upon: the past week has been heinous for Susan G. Komen. And it has shown that the organization most known for its staunch (some, like me, would say steamrolling) support for finding a cure and raising awareness for a single type of cancer — breast cancer — above any other has a cancer all its own. It’s a cancer common to any group that has become bloated with a false sense of self-righteousness and one whose arrogance and hubris causes it to stray from its stated (if overzealous) mission and become embroiled in a politicized mess.

What I’m talking about, of course, is this week’s announcement that Karen Handel, Susan G. Komen’s vice president of public policy, jumped before she was pushed. A speedy resignation with no severance package, Handel excised herself from the organization before mounting pressure within the group would have forced her imminent departure.

Her resignation caps a week of intense public backlash over Susan G. Komen’s decision to first cut and then hurriedly restore about $680,000 in funding to Planned Parenthood, a provider of reproductive health services, including contraception and abortions.

In her resignation letter, which has been posted on Forbes, Handel goes to great lengths to explain how the situation got so out of control. Her defense? Komen is in the business of saving lives. Anything that distracts from that goal is a disservice — thus the decision to pull funding and divorce itself from a controversial organization that might be spending money illegally, like funding abortions.

In October 2011, during Breast Cancer Awareness Month, I wrote about how the “pinking” of America was diluting the message of curing cancer and replacing it with corporate capitalism and too much consumption. I also took issue with Susan G.’s near-bullying tactics as they related to how the fundraising and marketing gargantuan has left smaller cancer-fighting organizations to fend for themselves, and how they aggressively muscle out any group that seeks to challenge breast cancer as the only cancer worth raising money for.

This latest misstep only adds to my great concern that Susan G. Komen, for all the good it has admittedly done for breast cancer awareness, has become a monopolistic and politically compromised organization. If she were alive today, I wonder what Susan Goodman Komen — whom the organization gets its name from — would think. After what must have been a grueling fight for her life, finding a cure and staying true to the organization’s mission and goals would be more important to her then whether or not grant money was going to another group similarly charged with helping save the lives of young, often poor women — an organization that happens to provide abortions.

Letters of resignation aside, let’s not forget that Karen Handel is a former Georgia Republican gubernatorial candidate, whose campaign promises included cutting funding for Planned Parenthood, and was Georgia’s 26th Secretary of the State.

On Sunday, the Huffington Post reported that it had obtained an email exchange between Komen leadership confirming that Handel had the sole authority in crafting and implementing the Planned Parenthood policy.

Does this not have all the makings of a woman hell-bent on achieving a personal goal and using a behemoth organization which itself had become too politically connected, as cover to achieve her aims?

Yes — the organization did reverse course in barely 72 hours, and restored the funds. It also made changes to its grant awarding guidelines that say only organizations under criminal investigation would be denied funding. But like a true cancer, this organizational one has already done much damage — to those who truly believed in the structure of non-profits being “doers of good,” to those who held Komen as saviors of women, and to the brands who’ve invested heavily to be part of Komen’s shiny pink halo.

The upside to all this? Susan G. Komen’s misdeeds have opened up an enormous pathway for all the non-profits around the country, breast-cancer-related or not — to start reclaiming their place in consumers’ hearts, minds and wallets.

And as for the PR advice, first administered by Ari Fleisher and now Ogilvy, all I can say is that it will take a lot more than some clever PR tactics and new positioning to rebuild this country’s trust in the Susan G. Komen brand and its “values.”

The following article by Vanessa Horwell, Chief Visibility Officer of ThinkInk, originally appeared on Marketing Daily on 2/10/12.