Uh-Oh, SpaghettiOs (Obvious Pun)

I've covered a few instances of messages and advertisements from companies that were not thought out so well, but this has to be the most stunning. Recently, on December 7, the anniversary of Pearl Harbor was celebrated. As anyone with a basic knowledge of American history knows, the Pearl Harbor attack was a surprise attack on an American naval base by the Japanese, after which the United States declared war and entered officially into the Second World War.

Knowing that, it's hard to imagine why SpaghettiOs thought this was a good idea. The company tweeted an image of its cartoon logo holding the American flag. Their intentions might have been perfectly good, but the juxtaposition of a cartoon logo as goofy as theirs with an attack that killed literally thousands is obviously poor planning. Predictably, the response was a combination of outrage and amusement at the poor judgment of the brand.

SpaghettiOs deleted the tweet and apologized for it, which was probably the best thing they could do at this point. However, this effort was potentially undermined by a former director of digital marketing and social media, who appeared to lay the blame at the feet of those who attacked SpaghettiOs' tweet. Overall, the biggest question here is how anyone could have thought the original tweet was in any way a good idea.

Week 15

This week mostly consisted of receiving assignments or knowing that I had assignments due within the next few weeks, and yet choosing not to work on them for no justifiable reason. I have a portfolio of work due for Intro to Creative Writing. I have a paper due for English Studies. I have another paper due for Philosophy and Film. I have done pretty much nothing for all of these assignments.

On the positive side, I don't know that I have any actual finals. It seems that my classes have generally just assigned papers instead, which could mean exam week will be pretty relaxed. In the time leading up to exam week, on the other hand, I need to actually start working or I'll be in some serious trouble.

Instead of actually doing work this week, I ended up distracting myself with YouTube videos, talking to other people, and writing. I did actually get some writing done on projects I've been working on for a while, so that does count for something. Still, I probably need to actually get to work soon, or face serious consequences.

Measure What Matters: Chapter 13

Chapter 13 focuses on the importance of measuring in not-for-profit organizations. Although, unlike for-profit companies, not-for-profit organizations do not have customers, measurement is still important for them. They have to maintain a good relationship with their contributors, volunteers, and the like. According to the book, at times they need to behave more like for-profit companies in their use of measurement, for the sake of their own success.

The chapter lists six steps: defining objectives, identifying and prioritizing audiences, establishing a benchmark, choosing metrics, choosing a measurement tool, and of course analyzing the results and making changes accordingly. Objectives stem from the mission of the organization, but it's important to keep in mind every aspect of the mission when determining the objectives. For instance, as Habitat for Humanity uses volunteers to build its houses, it needs to keep in mind the importance of volunteers--rather than just money--in determining its objectives. It's also important to keep in mind that, unlike with for-profit corporations, cooperation between not-for-profit entities is quite common.

This chapter appealed to me more than a lot of others in the books just because it addressed a group of entities toward which I'm more sympathetic. While there are few (if any) for-profit corporations for which I have much admiration, there are definitely a number of not-for-profit organizations that appeal to me. I thought the book's insights were interesting as well. While the idea of not-for-profit organizations taking a page from the book of for-profit companies is not an appealing idea to me, it does seem appropriate here. It does make sense to me, as well, that not-for-profit organizations would benefit from cooperation much more than for-profit companies would, which is part of my preference for them.

Measure What Matters Chapter 12

Chapter 12 focuses mostly on measuring relationships with salespeople. Obviously, it's important to find out just how well they're selling your product, as well as their overall satisfaction. For many large companies, this can be difficult. Often, money is thrown at the issue without any knowledge of just how useful the data being collected is.

It can also be a problem if there isn't both a clear message and a clear objective in all communications. This is particularly a problem with franchisees, since they may cater to a different audience than the company as a whole. The solution the book proposes is to focus on the commonalities in the message. Also, it's important to have a measurement program in order to find out what is being said and what image is being created.

This chapter was interesting because of its focus on communications within a company rather than with those outside of it. It's easy to forget that companies rely on many others for their success, and they may often have their differences with those people. The book definitely provides some useful advice in how to overcome those differences and be successful as a company.

Love-Bombing North Korea

A Swedish underwear company, Björn Borg,  held a poll for what country was "in most need of love and seduction." North Korea won. The problems here should be apparent already, but it only gets worse. Apparently, the company thought it was a good idea to have a journalist drop the underwear from her balcony, calling them "weapons of mass seduction." The fact that few people would actually find this joke funny in a highly repressive dictatorship that is actually devoted to developing nuclear weapons apparently escaped the people making this decision. 

This was a pretty serious PR mistake to begin with, but the company has done absolutely nothing to rectify it. Instead, their marketing director released a statement in which she said she was "proud" of the effort. Unsurprisingly, the move has garnered criticism from human rights groups, in light of both its insensitivity and the fact that it mostly just created an embarrassing situation.

If the company thought this would be a good way to promote their brand, their judgment is stunningly poor. They also seem to have yet to realize that they now have a PR crisis on their hands that should probably be dealt with by issuing an apology rather than doubling down on what was an imprudent idea to begin with. Whether they will actually realize their mistake has yet to be seen. 

Week 13

This week was mostly a lesson in the dangers of procrastination. I had an essay due for English Proseminar, a paper due for Philosophy and Film, and a story due for Intro to Creative Writing. I knew about all these things by Monday or Tuesday, and I decided I should probably do some work on them, but I didn't. By Thursday I still hadn't started any of them.

By Thursday afternoon, it was pretty clear that I needed to get started if I wanted to have any chance of finishing what I had to do. I started off with the paper for English Proseminar, which was only supposed to be about two pages and which I finished pretty quickly. Next was the paper for Philosophy and Film, and that's where things started to get difficult. I thought I had a pretty good idea of what I was doing, but it quickly proved difficult for me to meet the wordcount I was supposed to, and I found out I'd written maybe the first half of it wrong. So that took me several hours to do.

When I finally finished that paper, I moved on to the short story. I'd only figured out what the story was going to be about earlier that day, and I was mostly kind of making it up as I went along. Since it was the middle of the night by that point, I decided to go to bed and wake up early the next morning to finish it. So I was going on about five hours of sleep on Friday, but I only had one class so that worked out okay.

Measure What Matters: Chapter 9

Chapter 9 of "Measure What Matters" focuses a lot on maintaining a good relationship with communities. By communities, the book really just means the group of people with whom a company will interact. It uses two opposing examples when talking about this: first, the previously discussed Amazon example where the company had to remove books from its users' Kindles due to copyright issues; second, an example where PETA attempted to start a "free the whales" campaign against SeaWorld.

As previously noted, Amazon got a pretty poor response from their actions. Their customers saw them as acting unilaterally, without telling them properly about the problem, and they were understandably angered. Amazon damaged its relationship with its community by acting without letting them in on what was going on, and they had to apologize for it ultimately.

On the other hand, SeaWorld maintained such a good relationship with its community that PETA's campaign fell flat on its face. SeaWorld's visitors and community were willing to defend it against the charges of the animal rights group, and ultimately the "free the whales" campaign went essentially nowhere. SeaWorld had maintained a good enough relationship with its community that it avoided a crisis.

Ultimately, I think these examples illustrate the point pretty well. In business, as in many other things, it's good to have as many friends as possible. If this policy can help ensure that companies actually treat their customers well instead of as sources of profit, that's all the better. Unfortunately, it seems as if in many instances there's sort of a general agreement among companies not to treat customers too well, but only well enough that they'll come back. I think if a new company came along to challenge the current ones by actually treating its customers with full respect, then, as the book has laid out, it would probably enjoy a great deal of success.

The Obamacare Snafus

Anyone who follows the news at all closely has probably heard about the problems going on with the new healthcare law. There's the website, for one thing, which seems to be suffering some pretty serious problems at this point in time. Then there's the fact that President Obama told people they would be able to keep their plans and yet their insurers are now cancelling their plans, leading some commentators to accuse Obama of dishonesty.

Recently, in response to these issues, Obama gave an apologetic speech addressing what he called "fumbles" in the rollout of the law and in regards to the cancellation of policies the healthcare law has caused. He admitted that, of course, something more than just words was needed to solve the problems, and promised to help the people negatively affected by the problems that have been occurring. He also recently enacted a change of procedure that will allow everyone to keep their current plan at least through 2014.

Obama probably said the only things he could say in the speech he gave, and I don't think there was much else he could do. In terms of the website, it seems pretty clear at this point the preparation for it was insufficient, which was obviously an error in judgment. I also fault the president for doing a poor job of explaining the situation with the new regulations; overwhelmingly, people will be able to keep their current policies, but some will be cancelled by the providers due to new regulations (the regulations don't require these policies to be cancelled, but they do indirectly cause it at times). The president should have simply been completely honest about the situation and made an argument for the regulations in question. The delay of them really probably won't gain him much credibility and just puts off enforcing regulations that I believe are important, so I think it's a mistake.

Week 12

I seem to say in pretty much every one of these blogs that I didn't really have an eventful week. I'm sorry for how repetitive that must be at this point, but it's still true this week. My week wasn't boring for me, but I didn't really go and do a whole lot. So, I really don't have much I can write about here, I'm afraid. I just figured I would give that disclaimer before I talk about the usual things.

For Intro to Creative Writing, we once again discussed pieces of writing that students had done. This week, all three were poems. As I've said a few times before, poetry isn't exactly my strength, but it wasn't actually too difficult to comment on these ones. On Wednesday, one of the students in the class also gave a presentation about Japanese puppetry, which was random but relatively interesting.

In Philosophy and Film we watched a film based on a play by Shakespeare, which was honestly fairly difficult to follow. English Proseminar was pretty much how it's been when I mentioned it before, which is to say that we discussed a method of literary criticism that was complicated but fairly interesting. I did have an essay I had to write for that class this week, but it was pretty easy. Hopefully, the fact I thought that doesn't just mean I'm going to get a terrible grade on it and find out I did it completely wrong. Anyway, as the beginning paragraph insinuated, that's really about it.

"Measure What Matters" Chapter 6

Chapter 6 of "Measure What Matters" focuses mostly on how to get numbers that accurately reflect important factors. It starts out by advising the reader to use search settings that are sure to yield relevant results. Next, of course, those results have to be reviewed and tracked, as to eliminate anything irrelevant and get a good sense of the substance of the results.

After a month or so, it should be determined what outlets matter. That is to say, it must be determined what outlets mention the respective product the most, which get the most comments and so forth. Having done all that, eventually one must make a judgment on what the market's opinion is not only for one's own product but for one's competition as well. Lastly, the information that's gathered--particularly in regards to the competition--has to be used to gain the advantage, of course.

The chapter finishes by noting that it's important to find a way to quantify things like feelings by carefully selecting what to monitor and when to do so. All in all, the chapter is pretty short, but definitely packs a lot of useful information. It's easy to see the importance of everything it lays out, but it isn't stating the obvious because of how precisely it lays these steps out. I feel like it managed to cover a lot of ground in a short amount of time without making the reader feel lost or confused.

Guns & Ammo's Gun Control Editorial

Recently, in the magazine Guns & Ammo, readers were surprised to find an editorial endorsing gun control. To be more specific, they were not generally pleasantly surprised either. The backlash was so bad, in fact, that the contributing editor who wrote the editorial has been fired, and the magazine's editor has apologized for including the editorial in the issue at all.

The whole situation is, on many levels, unfortunate. The magazine's editor seems to have believed that the readers would appreciate debate on a relevant issue, and he wasn't irrational to believe it. The editorial was not anti-gun, but only presented an argument for some sort of restrictions on who can own a gun and how easy it is to get one. Unfortunately, it seems the average reader wasn't quite able to muster the appreciation expected.

In the end, it seems that the decision to publish the editorial has to be seen as a mistake from a practical standpoint. The magazine did not know its audience well enough to anticipate their lack of appreciation. The editor's apology suggests this wasn't any sort of stand on principle in any case. In the end, it's unfortunate how badly it panned out but not exactly surprising.

Week 11

In terms of classes, this week doesn't have a whole lot worth writing about. Everyone got their drills back in English Proseminar, and I think basically everyone had gotten 100 percent. Everyone was pretty baffled by this, but there wasn't any weird catch or anything like that. Aside from that, the class was pretty interesting this week given our discussion of philosophical concepts. There was definitely some pretty technical stuff being talked about, but I personally found it interesting.

For Intro to Creative Writing, we got to critique poetry--which was not especially great given my lack of knowledge of poetry--and fiction this week. The fiction was a little easier for me. It is fairly interesting to see the work of the other students in the class, and I look forward to submitting my own work for the class.

Other than that, I really didn't have much at all. My Philosophy and Film class was cancelled this week, which means I didn't have it for two weeks in a row. Screenwriting Workshop wasn't too eventful, and of course we know what happened in Social Media for the past week. I do think I have some papers coming up, however, which means a change in pace for sure.

"Measure What Matters" Chapter 2

I said after reading the first chapter of "Measure What Matters" that it didn't make any particularly new points for me, but I did expect the rest of the book to be more informative when it focused on how to measure rather than why. This chapter did seem to validate that view, as it was definitely more informative for me personally than the last.

This chapter focused mostly on the actual questions that need to be asked to get good data. A company has to know exactly what it's looking for before it measures and why it's looking for that. The chapter lists 10 questions that focus on objectives, audience, messages and so on. Admittedly, none of this seemed particularly surprising or revolutionary to me, but the book did lay it out pretty neatly to its credit.

The chapter also lists 4 ways in which bad data can be gathered: "Incomplete Assessment of Variables," "Relevancy of Content" (or irrelevancy more accurately), the fact that commercial services omit results, and "The (In)accuracy of Content Analysis." (from pp. 26-28) This does seem like a good approach to me--that is, to list the ways not to do something as well as the ways to do it. Overall, the chapter did seem to introduce some important and noteworthy ideas.

Toronto Mayor's Crack Scandal

Rob Ford, the mayor of Toronto, Canada, has already faced criticism and media exposure over the fact that a group attempted to sell a video of him smoking crack. Now the Toronto Police Department claims to have a copy of said video, though apparently not enough evidence for drug charges at this point in time. In any case, the news was enough for reporters to gather on the mayor's lawn and for him to later hold a press conference discussing the accusations.

By pretty much any standard, his handling of the situation would have to be called very poor, considering that he first actually got in a physical altercation with a reporter on his lawn, and then said he wouldn't give in without a fight and that he had done nothing wrong. Obviously, getting in fights with reporters is not helpful to having a professional public image to begin with, but further, it's probably a bit late in the game for Ford to claim he's done nothing wrong, as even the Police Department in indicating otherwise.

Probably the only defense that can even be made for his actions is that no matter how well he handled this, it would probably not end well for him, as it probably still won't. However, he could have maintained some semblance of professionalism if he had stepped down far earlier than this, since by now the original allegations seem undoubtedly true.

Week 10(?)

This was a fairly uneventful week for me, in terms of what went on here in Ada. On Monday, I had a drill for one of my courses, which was made slightly interesting by the fact that we had the choice of interpreting a Britney Spears song for one of the prompts. I didn't actually do that, though, although I did end up reading the lyrics out loud for the class, because they insisted on this.

I actually missed my film class on Tuesday for a concert I went to back in Columbus, which I didn't get back from until close to 2 a.m. The concert was pretty good, although I still need to watch the movie I missed by not going to class that day. The same class that I had the drill for Monday made things interesting (though fairly depressing) by focusing on Marxism for Wednesday and Friday.

I did get to adapt a few pages from a novel I wrote for Screenwriting Workshop on Thursday, which was pretty interesting. I did enjoy getting feedback from everyone about ways to build the story and make it work in a different format from what I'd originally written it in, so that was pretty cool. Other than that, it was a mostly pretty calm week.

"Measure What Matters" Chapter One

The first chapter of "Measure What Matters" is basically devoted to telling about why measuring is important in social--that is, gathering and analyzing data about customers and potential customers. The chapter gives examples of how measuring has helped companies improve their efficiency and get ahead of the competition. It closes by dispelling a lot of the myths surrounding measurement, such as the idea that it will bring bad news (obviously the bad news it would bring would exist without measurement) or that it will somehow damage those who subject themselves to it. The author asserts that is quite the contrary of the true consequences for assuming accountability.

To be honest, there wasn't a great deal that I got out of this chapter. In fairness, that's probably just because of how much the previous books we've read have covered the importance of measurement in social media, so reading a whole chapter devoted to it is mostly just telling me things I already know. For an outsider, and someone who doesn't yet understand the importance of measuring, this chapter would probably be more interesting, particularly if you believed any of the myths dispelled at the end. (I didn't, and while I don't doubt that there are people who believe them, they mostly seemed obviously wrong to me, not to sound pretentious.)

I imagine a lot of this book will focus mostly on how to measure, rather than just why, which is a subject that could cover a lot more new ground than this chapter did. Again, this chapter did make all of its points perfectly well, it just didn't really tell me much that I didn't already know, but obviously my perspective is a bit different than the average reader's by this point.

Week 9

This was a decent enough week for me. Classes were mostly okay, although Tuesday night became a mess when I realized I had a 30-page short story that I hadn't started (I mostly have to blame myself for that one). Thursday was probably the most eventful day for me, as I got to meet with a visiting author, Tessa Mellas, to go over a piece I'd written. We definitely have two different writing styles, but I did get some useful feedback from the meeting and I'm glad I got the opportunity to have it. I also went to the reading that hosted her that night, which was pretty interesting.

That was definitely the most significant thing to happen this week, as for the most part for the rest of the week I just worked on whatever I needed to get done (quite a few things were for this class, though I again have my procrastination to blame for that). On Friday we analyzed a Britney Spears song for one of my classes, which was pretty weird to begin with, but made even weirder that the rest of the class decided I should read the lyrics, which I did.

Other than that, not an especially eventful week for me, but enough happened that I wasn't bored either, so I can't complain.

Ohio Northern's Promotion of Homecoming

Homecoming, as we all know, was last weekend, and it's important for any school to promote such a big event. Ohio Northern has both its own Facebook and Twitter pages, so it should be able to promote such an event pretty effectively to at least anyone with any interest in what's going on here. I'll take a look here at how effectively it did on both in the weeks before homecoming.

On Facebook, Ohio Northern did a good job of at least letting everyone know that Homecoming was nearing by posting about events during Spirit Week, and posting photos from these events. This is certainly good, as it's visually stimulating and attention-grabbing; for those interesting in ONU's events, seeing pictures like these may get people talking about the events, and, as we remember from "Groundswell," word of mouth is a particularly effective way of energizing people around a product or event.

Unfortunately, Ohio Northern did not seem to post many links to provide information about the events that were coming up during Homecoming, which damages it because otherwise people might be more inclined to see what events are coming up and then attend if the events sound interesting to them. As "Share This" states, it is important to include detail when appropriate, and this is a case where it could have been useful.

Ohio Northern's Twitter is the bigger issue, though. Aside from a tweet or two, it looks like Ohio Northern mostly neglected to mention Homecoming over Twitter until the day itself, which is not good for promoting an event. Perhaps they wanted to avoid seeming repetitive, but that would be a smaller mistake than not under-mentioning Homecoming, which they seem to have done. They did prove willing to retweet at least one tweet about Homecoming, which is good, as it is a form of interacting in real time, which the book of the same has let us know is very important.

Overall, there was definitely some good stuff on both accounts, but also room for substantial improvement.

Link to my Storify covering Homecoming:  http://sfy.co/dSay
 

"Real-Time" Chapter 14

Chapter 14 of "Real-Time" is called "How Your Web Site Becomes a Real-Time Machine." After briefly giving a history of websites, the book notes that we are entering a new phase where they are sales in marketing machines that operate in (surprise) real-time. Websites have progressed to become more interactive with their users, to the extent that going onto a company's website is close to entering an actual store for that company.

Accordingly, for a company website to have any chance at success, it must operate within these guidelines. A big part of this is responding to potential buyers as quickly as possible, when they're still interested in buying your product or service and haven't moved on to other things. The book gives the example of the website of Bella Pictures, a wedding photography company, which flags inquiries for prompt response if both a wedding date and reception venue have been chosen. Further, a company should do its best to make sure its website stays, ideally, ahead of its competitors by analyzing data from users as quickly as is practicable.

Most of this chapter's ideas seem like no-brainers, but I suppose it is easy for companies to overlook them. It is important to keep up with new technology to make response time and all other necessary functions of a website as quick as possible, and there are definitely websites out there that have yet to deal with their users in real-time. The chapter is surprisingly brief, but that may just be because of how simple a lot of the things it puts forward are. It definitely seems to offer some useful advice, even if it doesn't have that much terribly surprising to say.

Macy's and Thanksgiving

Macy's recently polled its employees on how they would feel about working Thanksgiving night. The results weren't disclosed, but whatever the employees said, Macy's decided to open 8 p.m. on Thanksgiving. The company has (understandably) endured some criticism for deciding to open on a night that's usually reserved for spending time with the family, but in response they've said the decision was based on the responses of customers who want to start shopping earlier. "'Black Friday is the biggest shopping event of the year and brings with it a level of fun and excitement to our customers around the nation,' said Macy’s chief stores officer. 'For Macy’s, it’s important to make this day enjoyable and convenient for everyone, as our customers search for great deals on favorite wish-list items.'" (Quote from the PR Daily article)

While this may seem like a bad move from a PR standpoint, it is apparently a pretty safe one, as Macy's is not the first store to open on Thanksgiving. Furthermore, by portraying this as attempting to serve their customers better, the company will probably be able to shift some of the attention off of the employees who have to come to work the night of Thanksgiving.

The fact that this decision probably won't damage Macy's, though, doesn't necessarily make it any less worthy of scorn. "Consumerist" has called the 8 p.m. opening time "obscenely early," and it's easy to see why. Whatever benefit Macy's may reap from the decision, its employees are certainly going to have to suffer enough for it (and it's pretty unlikely that poll yielded many favorable responses to this idea). Whether the convenience this supposedly gives to the customers and whatever profit Macy's may get from this move justify making customers come in on Thanksgiving is for the observer to judge. 

Week 8

Because of fall break, this was, of course, a short week, so I don't have all that much to write about. The night I came back I wrote an entire seven-page paper about the philosophical message of "Memento," only to find out the due date had been postponed two days. Obviously this isn't the best start to a week, but I suppose I've seen much worse. The next day we had to turn in our revisions to our poetry for Intro to Creative Writing, and ironically I didn't have that, but I managed to get it in by the end of the day. The revisions were not easy since we had to remove all abstractions from our poems and my poems were largely about abstractions.

Thursday was mostly uneventful, although I did have a piano lesson I literally hadn't practiced for at all. That went surprisingly well, actually. Also, I'm apparently supposed to send out a few pages from a novel I wrote for I wrote to be adapted into a screenplay for my Screenwriting Workshop, which is actually pretty interesting. I haven't adapted anything I've written as a screenplay, so I'm kind of eager to do so.

On Friday I didn't make it to either of my classes, so perhaps it's better that this was a three-day week. Today I went to the parade this morning (which I live-tweeted) but other than that I didn't end up going to most of the Homecoming events. The parade was a pretty good one, although the weather made it a bit hard to enjoy. Anyway, that's basically been my week.

Real-Time Chapter 6

Chapter Six of "Real-Time Marketing & PR" is about communicating with the media on their time rather than one's own--in other words, at their convenience. The author gives a personal example where he didn't call a journalist back as soon as he could have, and ended up missing an opportunity to have a quote featured in a significant article the journalist published. He uses this to reinforce his point that one can't interact with the media simply when it's convenient, but rather has to engage them whenever the opportunity arises in order to both promote products or services and handle crises better.

As an example of the latter, the author cites the case where Amazon removed copies of "1984" and other novels from their customers Kindle accounts (the copies were illegal due to copyright issues) without telling them why. While negative sentiment grew more and more over social media, and news outlets published stories, Amazon still failed to respond until a week after the event when an apology was finally offered (which many customers seemed to accept). Had Amazon simply apologized and explained the situation earlier, the crisis could have been averted.

I think the chapter makes a lot of good points. The media are not there for companies' convenience, so they'd be naive to think it a good strategy to only engage them when it's convenient. The media are quite powerful and influential, and one would be wise to take whatever opportunity is given to get better coverage.

The Vatican's Mistake

There have already been a few recent PR snafus that have happened--Pepsi and Coke have been among the more notable ones, maybe--but this has to be seen as one of the more incredible ones. The Vatican recently had a number of bronze, gold, and silver medals minted, but had to recall six thousand of them because, almost unbelievably, the medals had "Jesus" misspelled as "Lesus." The Vatican caught this early enough that only four of the medals had been sold, fortunately for them.

One still has to wonder, once again, how things could have gotten so far before the mistake was caught. Coca-Cola's choosing to pair a French and English word without realizing that there could be some unfortunate combinations was poor planning, Pepsi-Cola's failure to recognize that its design for its posters made "AAPE" appear more like "RAPE" was more difficult to explain, but the Vatican's failure to notice not only a misspelled word but that the name of the figure central to their religion was misspelled is truly baffling.

It's pretty doubtful that this mistake, ridiculous and amusing as it may be, is going to damage the Vatican in any meaningful way, though it certainly doesn't speak too well of the level of competence going on in whatever department designed the medal. Nonetheless, not too many Catholics are likely to convert over a misspelling, so mostly this is just an embarrassing incident for the Vatican.

Seventh Week

While I didn't have any major events that I went to this week, classes did provide some interesting moments. In my Philosophy and Film class, we watched a movie called "Dead Man," which pretty much succeeded in confusing everyone in the class because of its long stretches of wandering through the woods and its excessively weird, psychedelic tone. It's a movie I would recommend just for the experience of watching it, considering how many bizarre moments it managed to fit into two hours.

In English Proseminar we read about, and discussed, feminism, which I just sort of avoided saying much one way or the other about in class. The discussion was pretty interesting though, as it bounced around between problems with radical feminism, whether men can be feminists, and so on and so forth. Earlier in the week we also had our second drill in that class, where we had to interpret a poem psychoanalytically, which was definitely kind of a challenge to say the least.

Other than that, I've mostly just had to revise my poems for one of my other classes, which has been a great experience given how easily it comes to me to write poetry to begin with (which is to say not at all). I'm also going to have to write a paper analyzing the philosophy of a movie soon, but I haven't started that yet, probably unwisely.

Real-Time: Chapter 1

The first chapter of "Real-Time Marketing & PR" succeeded in getting my attention, mostly by using an example I was already familiar with. The chapter focuses on singer-songwriter Dave Carroll's successful vendetta against United Airlines after his Taylor guitar was broken in transit. Carroll posted a song on YouTube entitled "United Breaks Guitars" that described the incident and United Airlines' failure to compensate him, and the video went viral. I actually remember a few years ago, probably shortly after the video began to gain rapidly in popularity, when one of my friends showed it to me. I didn't put all that much thought into it at the time, but this chapter definitely shows pretty well how significant it was in terms of PR.

Inevitably, a viral video attacking United Airlines proved rather negative for the company's credibility, but it was interesting just how badly the company handled the situation, doing nothing publicly to counteract the damage. Meanwhile, both Taylor Guitars and Calton Cases (a guitar case manufacturer) managed to capitalize quite well off the situation through fast action. The chapter did make an interesting and compelling case for how money is neither the sole nor even most important factor in PR, but rather the ability to act quickly and effectively and seize whatever opportunities come up is what can make or break a company.

Even having seen the video the book discusses, I'd never put too much thought into what kind of impact it would have or what its overall significance really was, but the book did contextualize it pretty nicely, showing how it was a sort of David vs. Goliath victory of a little-known songwriter over a huge corporation, as well as just why that victory was able to happen and how the companies that did benefit were able to do so.

Government Shutdown and PR

I've already examined a few issues relating politics and PR, and with the first government shutdown in seventeen years, it seems appropriate to look at how PR plays into this. The source of the conflict is the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, also known as "Obamacare," which Republicans attempted to defund. Congressional Democrats refused to pass Republican budget bills that defunded the law, and Republicans refused to pass a bill that did not defund the law, so, with no budget bill passed, the government shut down from lack of funding.

In terms of the conflict itself, there is a great deal of reality to it, and neither side is doing what it is doing entirely for show. The Republicans certainly hope to extract some concession through the shutdown, and the Democrats certainly don't want to defund the healthcare law. However, it is likely that part of the Republican motivation is to emphasize its opposition to the law by refusing to a pass a budget bill that doesn't defund it, and the Democrats (President Obama in particular) are likely trying to avoid being seen as too eager to compromise, as many liberals have criticized Obama for being throughout his presidency. Hence, both parties likely hope to use this to appeal to their more ideologically extreme bases--their target audiences--by emphasizing how they "stand by their principles."

Both parties also have to try to convince the public at large that they are right in this conflict. The Democrats' strategy has been straightforward, arguing that Republicans forced the shutdown by insisting on defunding a law that had already been passed years ago. This appeals to the average American's idea of democracy--that once a bill is passed, it should be allowed to become law rather than being defunded through some partisan battle--and appealing to the widespread desire for bipartisanship by portraying the Republicans as being excessively stubborn and refusing to compromise.

The Republicans' strategy has been more muddled. On the one hand, some have tried to argue that the shutdown is the Democrats' fault for refusing to even delay the healthcare law. This in and of itself would be a reasonable strategy--though perhaps not a successful one--but it's being undermined by other Republicans who are arguing the shutdown is actually positive, or at least not such a bad thing. These two strategies have a basic conflict, and this may perhaps contribute to the fact that so far the shutdown has not at all been helpful for the Republicans' image (though it hasn't necessarily helped the Democrats either).

Sixth Week

I can't say this week has been a particularly eventful one for me, though I did go to the first meeting for any extracurricular group I've attended so far this year (I said I would look into those in the first entry on this blog, but scheduling conflicts and the like prevented me from going to meetings for any of the clubs I was interested in up until this week). It was for the Environmentalists. The meeting was pretty short because there wasn't much that needed to be covered but I got to talk to a few new people so I won't complain.

Classes didn't seem to hold too many surprises for me this week, either. There were no papers due, only a short story assigned for one of my classes (the same one I had to write poetry for last week), which was not a big problem for me (the poetry had been the much bigger challenge). My English Proseminar class kept things interesting (to put it one way) by talking about psychoanalysis, which made for some slightly awkward class discussions.

Aside from that, I don't have too much else I've been involved with. I do have a few other meetings coming up that I plan to go to, but things are pretty calm at the moment.

"Share This" Part 7

Part 7 of "Share This," which is about (and is accordingly entitled) industry change, has a lot of insights to share about the changing nature of social media and public relations. What I want to focus on specifically here is toward the very beginning of the part, in which the book quotes Steve Jobs in asserting that "You've got to start with the customer experience and work back toward the technology--not the other way around." The book says the same applies to communication, and that in considering what a communication is going to be, the channel/tool used should be low on the list of priorities.

I won't pretend that I have any really strong feelings on this issue, but I'm inclined to agree. It does seem natural that having determined the substance and nature of a message, determining the appropriate way of communicating it would be easier. For instance, if a great deal of information needs to be conveyed, a traditional print ad may be a bad choice because it can only convey this information in a relatively non-attention-grabbing sort of way, whereas conveying it through the Internet could allow for more interactivity, making the information able to be conveyed in a more stimulating manner.

However, on the other hand, if one knows what their channel of communication is going to be in advance, irrelevant of what the message they must convey is, one must find a way to tailor that message to work well in the channel that's being used. So if, for instance, one knew they were going to be making an online video ad, they should keep that in mind in deciding exactly what message they would try to convey. This is really sort of stating the obvious, but it's a noteworthy caveat to the rule the book lays out, in my opinion.

Pepsi's Ad Snafu

Apparently, the past couple weeks have not been good weeks for our top cola manufacturers. Coca-Cola recently had its incident with a Vitamin Water cap that had a questionable (to say the least) phrase printed on it, and now their rival Pepsi-Cola has had a small issue of its own with a recent print ad. Nothing was out of the ordinary when Pepsi decided to partner up in an ad campaign with a Japanese clothes retailer called "A Bathing Ape" that was promoting a line of clothing called AAPE. However, due to a poor choice of font, some rather large ads promoting these two products appear at first glance to read "Pepsi x Rape."

Predictably, a spokesperson for the company has apologized to anyone who was offended and promised not to use said design in the future, and of course it's hard to imagine there's a real reason to be offended here as it was clearly a mistake on the company's part. However, one has to question how this advertisement actually got this far with no one realizing the problem with it. Of course, once it was released Reddit was all too quick to notice the problem, as one might expect.

Obviously, Pepsi-Cola was right to apologize for their mistake and not to use this design in the future, and it's sort of doubtful this will be any huge PR crisis for them (it certainly doesn't deserve to be). However, this is certainly quite a failure in advertisement design, and is even more inexplicable than Coca-Cola's failure to realize that perhaps pairing an English word with a French one could result in some bad combinations. Overall, it's hard to believe any serious harm was done even if it's a bit hard to comprehend how no one could have noticed the flaw in the ad.

Week Five

More than a month since the year's begun, and things are definitely starting to heat up. In my English Studies class, we had to deal with a literary theory that confused almost everyone by arguing that it's basically impossible to derive any single meaning from a piece of literature. For obvious reasons, this was something a good deal of the class found a little difficult to accept. Luckily, we haven't had to apply that theory too much yet.

Meanwhile, in Intro to Creative Writing, we had to write three poems by Friday. As a non-poet, this wasn't the easiest thing in the world for me, and against my better judgment I decided to put it off until Thursday night. Nevertheless, I did actually manage to get the poems done before class the next day, though I don't know whether they were really any good (poetry really isn't my thing).

I mentioned a film festival in my last entry, and pretty much everyone who went to that film festival agreed that it was probably a bad idea to show a documentary about a gang-related murder on Friday night, which I can sympathize with. I didn't really have any big events I went to this week, but classes were pretty interesting at least, and I did manage to write poetry, which is an accomplishment for me.

Share This Part IV Response

Part IV of "Share This" is entitled "Online Media Relations". Its subject matter follows accordingly. It discusses tools such as press releases, newsrooms, brand journalism, and so on and so forth. There's really not all that much in it to respond to, but I'll consider a few things that were mentioned in the book in this entry.

Press releases are discussed in the first chapter of Part IV, and the book mentions increased animosity toward old-style press releases. This is pretty understandable, as it's hard to doubt that press releases can be abused by companies and fail to provide any meaningful information, amounting practically to spam. The alternative is the new social media release, often using quotes, videos, and so on in order to carry some authority and be stimulating. The one thing I might criticize here is I think the book is somewhat vague as to why these social media releases are so preferable to press releases; it throws around ideas like "supporting facts" but doesn't really acknowledge that it's a given that such facts will be cherry-picked. However, I suppose from a pragmatic standpoint, as long as social media releases are more convincing, it does not matter if they're truly more substantive.

I also found it interesting when the book gave an example of a corporate blog post that backfired and caused a drop in the company's stock. This does seem like a legitimate risk, but also a difficult one to avoid, as stocks can be highly responsive to almost anything. It's hard to say what a company should or should not post on its blog just based on how the stocks will respond, and in any case it seems that whatever details are divulged would probably come out eventually anyway, which the book does not address. These are, however, just a few musings on the reading, not highly substantiated critiques.

Navy Yard Shooting and Gun Control

Monday of this past week, a gunman killed twelve people in a Navy Yard in Washington, D.C. Somewhat disturbingly, there have been enough mass shootings over the past year that the shock one would think this sort of incident might inspire has been mostly nonexistent, but aside from it will nonetheless be part of the ongoing PR battle between those who favor gun control, led at the moment by President Obama, and those who oppose it, led by the National Rifle Association.

The idea of using tragedies for PR purposes would probably seem tasteless to many, and rightly so, but it is a necessary evil in the system we have for those who want to accomplish anything. President Obama has already spoken again in favor of gun control in light of the recent tragedy, making the same points as he made after previous shootings--that we need stronger gun control to keep ourselves and our children safe from tragedies such as these. Obviously, the desire for safety among people in general is a strong urge, so it makes sense to appeal to that desire in promoting gun control measures (whatever one may think of the measures themselves).

On the other side, the NRA, led by Wayne LaPierre, has inevitably made an opposing set of arguments. While it is an obvious strategy to tie gun control to safety, LaPierre and friends must counter this by arguing that gun control is ineffective and the true key to safety is "good guys" with guns to stop the "bad guys" with guns. These arguments, no newer than the argument that gun control will make the country safer, have shown up already from gun control opponents. Further, a common strategy of the NRA, whether one agrees with it or not, is to argue that gun control violates the second amendment, thus appealing to Americans' respect for the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Further, in recent times LaPierre and others have shifted the focus from guns to mental instability, arguing that the mental health system in America is doing a poor job of keeping track of dangerous individuals, which conveniently takes attention away from the guns the NRA wants to keep readily available to the average citizen.

Thus, as ugly as the reality of it may be, and wherever one's sympathies may lie, both sides of the gun control debate have and will continue to use tragedies such as the navy yard shooting to promote their agendas--and given the current political system, such a strategy is their only choice.

Week Four

The fourth week of the year passed without anything of great significance, but it wasn't a boring week either. In Philosophy and Film we watched "Memento", which basically succeeded in confusing the whole class, as the movie tends to do. That class has also assigned its first paper, which I have yet to start admittedly. I did, however, get back the first paper I wrote for this year, and I got a pretty good grade on it, so academically this year is going all right so far.

For my screenwriters' workshop, I had to go to a film festival this Friday, which was a fairly interesting experience. We saw a few short films which we were pretty funny, followed pretty jarringly by a documentary about a murder that happened in Findlay a few years ago. Everyone seemed to agree this was not a good way to get excited for the weekend.

Lastly, Saturday was family day, so my family came up for the first time since move-in day. Everything went pretty well, as we checked out the street fair and went to Lima to eat. I had to answer all the inevitable questions about classes, my roommate and so on, but it was still pretty enjoyable overall. All in all, it was a pretty good week.

Share This Part III Response

Part 3 of "Share This", entitled "Networks", is about using social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter for PR purposes. The book has chapters on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, and blogging in general, listing both the advantages and drawbacks of each medium. The main drawbacks, it seems, are the possibility for users to express dissatisfaction with companies. Of course, this can happen whether or not the company itself is engaged in the site, so it's hardly an argument against companies having Facebook pages, Twitter feeds, and so on (and the book does not pretend it is an argument against it).

Interestingly, in discussing Google+, the book notes the failure of one of Google's previous projects, called Buzz. This was perhaps slightly prescient, as Google+ has not been a smashing success and has been mocked in some circles for the lack of impact it made. However, the chapter as a whole discusses it in a rather optimistic way, which isn't terribly helpful in allowing to see why Google+ failed (to the degree that it did fail), not that the book can be blamed for this.

The book did seem a little pessimistic on blogging, in terms of its potential to be used by companies. I can understand this, since blogging is personal and companies are by definition not, but I still think the book undersells the potential use of blogging, as it seems that a company could use a blog to share relevant information about upcoming products and the like. The book seems to worry that it's difficult to come off as "authentic" in corporate blogs, but I personally ask, why try? Corporations don't have personal experiences and their customers are interested in their products and services, so why can't a blog be used for information about said products and services?

The book also paints a rather glowing picture of Twitter's importance, mentioning its role in the Arab Spring. I personally have mixed feelings here, as I think the truth is that it's quite difficult to communicate anything too meaningful or well-thought-out over Twitter, although it did certainly play its role as the book says. Twitter should certainly be useful for companies, due to hashtags in particular, but I think the book might be slightly over-hyping its general influence and power.

Syria and PR Part II: Putin's Op-Ed

Having addressed the role PR has played so far in the Syria situation last week, I guess it's appropriate, with new developments having occurred, to address perhaps the most significant from a PR perspective. A few days ago, Russian president Vladimir Putin had an op-ed published by the New York Times on the subject of Syria. (All quotes in this entry will be from the op-ed, which can be found here).

Putin exhibits some expertise in the op-ed, beginning by noting both the times the US and Russia were at each others' throats (i.e. the Cold War) and when the two countries were allies, during World War II. Putin has both acknowledged the differences separating him from his target audience (Americans) and emphasized the similarities, thus avoiding the appearance of cherry-picking the similarities while at the same time finding common ground.

Putin continues to try to create common ground throughout the op-ed, stating that "No one wants the United Nations to suffer the fate of the League of Nations", which is why it's important for the US not to act unilaterally on Syria in his view. He appeals to common concerns in arguing against a strike, warning of escalating atrocities in Syria and disrupting international law and order. At the same time, he does his best to eliminate the typical image of the Syrian conflict as being a battle between a tyrant and supporters of democracy, arguing that "[t]here are few champions of democracy in Syria." He then appeals to the fears of his audience by mentioning the presence of al-Qaeda in Syria.

Putin proceeds to try to create a positive image of both himself and his government, stating that they are not defending the Syrian government (which is understandably unpopular) but rather simply trying to defend international law by seeking a peaceful settlement of the conflict. He appeals to Americans' war-weariness and the unpopularity of wars such as Afghanistan by highlighting the similarities between them and a potential strike on Syria. He appeals to his audience's sympathy by mentioning the civilian casualties, "including the elderly and children".

After highlighting the similarities and common interests between himself and President Obama, Putin pulls a particularly bold move by challenging the notion of American exceptionalism, stating that "we must not forget that God created us equal." This is a particularly shrewd move in appealing to members of the most heavily religious country in the first world, whose patriotism by and large could perhaps only be outdone by their Christianity (which Putin happens to share). To think Putin's op-ed is sincere is fairly laughable, but that fact only emphasizes the truth of what it really is, that is to say, a skilled example of PR.

Third Week In

Three weeks into the year, things have begun to pick up a little bit. I've already had to write my first paper for the year, which luckily wasn't too difficult, though I don't have a grade yet for it. I like most of my classes pretty well so far. My philosophy class in particular is nice since we watch movies every class, although so far they've been one's I've already seen.

In terms of social events and the like, there was the English Department picnic this week, which I did go to for a while. Unfortunately, it had to be on one of the days that was about 90 degrees, which was not especially pleasant. Aside from that it was okay. I saw a lot of people I know and there was free food, which is always a plus, even if I did have to bear through the icebreaker which no one really wanted to do because of the heat.

So far, I think my grades are going okay as well, though I haven't really seen them. There are definitely some classes that are presenting me with challenges, but I think I can probably handle them. Of course, it's important not to get overwhelmed, but I haven't had that much work so that hasn't been much of a problem yet. Overall, nothing too big has happened yet, but the year is beginning to start for real.

"Share This" Response

The first part of "Share This" didn't have any great revelations to make, though it had some interesting observations. I found it interesting that it essentially argued that social networks are "nothing new" but merely a new hi-tech version of the sort of association that has been going on since the beginning of humankind itself. The idea is somewhat thought-provoking, but I can only partly agree.
It is certainly true that social networks are analogous to clubs and other organizations to some extent, as those are also ways for people with similar interests to meet one another. The parallels are fairly obvious, and I agree that social networks are just building off a basic part of human nature, that is to say, sociability (as the term "social network" would imply, obviously). From this standpoint, there is nothing new to them.
However, I think social networks have  a defining difference between previous forms of social interaction, which is that they can take place with little personal contact. While certainly forms of communication such as letter-writing which involved no direct contact predate social networks by many years, these were primarily for people who knew one another to communicate with each other. Social networks, on the other hand, open the possibility of "meeting" people without having actually met them, which certainly separates them from clubs or anything of that nature, which involve physically being in the same general area.
Basically, while I found the premise the book started out with to be sort of interesting, I don't think it's entirely accurate.

Syria and PR

It may seem strange to try to connect public relations to the debate about intervening in Syria, but the government, like a business, must use PR tactics--the business uses them to sell its products, of course, while the government must keep its citizens appeased. In the end, the tactics are pretty similar much of the time.
President Obama and his cabinet have argued that the bombings they support are to enforce international law and protect innocent civilians. Naturally, these are two relatively popular ideas, and by trying to attach their proposed to such ideas, they attempt to win the public's support. However, their strategy has largely failed, as little support seems to exist for their proposed bombings. Likely this is because 1) the public does not the strikes will be an effective way to do either of the things the Obama Administration has tried to associate it with and 2) the idea of trying to enforce international law and save lives is not enough to overcome Americans' caution toward military intervention in Middle Eastern countries. This traces back to the PR campaign preceding the invasion of Iraq in 2003, which, while successful enough at the time, led to a war that became both costly (in both money and lives) and extremely unpopular. The Obama Administration's PR campaign has some large obstacles to overcome.
More important than the general public is Congress, whose approval Obama has chosen to seek before taking action. This, too, was essentially a PR move, as Obama had taken criticism for intervening in Libya without congressional approval. Congress, however, does not appear much more likely to be won over by the PR campaign than the public at large, for similar reasons, and because of the public's opposition itself. Many representatives have received letters, emails, etc from their constituents--their "target audience"--opposing the bombings. As the representatives must each manage their own PR campaigns to get elected, many will oppose intervening to create an image of themselves as being in touch with their constituents. The point, in any case, is that, like it or not, PR plays an important role in the Syria debate, on all fronts.

Dawn of a New Year

It's hard to believe that it's already been a year since I first started college. Freshman year went fast in a lot of ways. As for this year, I guess it'll take a while before I know if it's a fast year or a slow one. So far, there hasn't been anything too major to talk about for this year. All my classes have been okay so far, though unfortunately I've already missed a class, which isn't a great thing in the first week of school. Too late to worry about that, though.

I've got a few organizations I'm thinking about joining. Mainly, clubs and things like that that I signed up for last year but never showed up for. I might be a little more proactive on those sorts of things this year, though it doesn't help that I have a 6:30-9:15 class on Tuesdays. The clubs include the Environmentalists,  World Student Organization, and a couple others.

As for classes, they seem to be more centered around my major (creative writing) this semester, which is a good thing. The only downside to that is that I'll have to write poetry, which isn't really my forte, but I guess I can deal with that. Other than that, I have a class where we get to watch a movie every class, which is pretty cool.

In terms of goals this year, I do have a few. Grades are pretty obvious. I'd also like to meet some new people. I suppose getting involved in those groups I mentioned might be helpful in that area. But for the most part, I guess I'll just wait and see how things play out.