Paula Deen, Take 2

January 22nd, 2012 by Administrator | No Comments | Filed in Strategic Thinking, cindy.miller.atl

Paula Deen’s recent decisions could use a do-over.

Last week, Deen revealed that she had been diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes three years ago. The timing is important because Deen continued to promote her not-so-healthy recipes right up until the announcement of her new role as spokesperson for Victoza, the $500-a-month diabetes drug from Novo Nordisk.

Paula DeenFor decades, the Deen camp has built a sugar-and-butter-based empire around a cooking style that includes dishes like bacon cheeseburgers on glazed donut buns and deep-fried cheesecake.  Proudly wearing the crown “Paula Deen the Butter Queen,” the 65-year-old Savannah native has authored more than 20 cookbooks, and is associated with scores of others.

The headlines documented a backlash that was understandably harsh: “Paula Deen and the lure of the easy fix,” “What Paula Deen didn’t bring to the table” and “Diabetics call Paula Deen a hypocrite for hiding disease while promoting sugar.” The aftermath has been a communications crisis she could have avoided.

Timing is everything. Her commercial venture with Novo Nordisk should have been linked to the “Aha!” moment of her diagnosis.  As a food celebrity with millions of adherents, she could have immediately signaled her intention to more closely align nutrition with smart food choices.   Instead, she continued to deceive the more than 1.9 million Americans over the age of 20 who were diagnosed last year alone, and the nearly 26 million Americans of all ages who suffer from the disease.  Long after she knew better, she continued to profit from promoting an unhealthy diet that likely contributed to her own disease.

Sometimes you just say no. It’s hard to justify her signing on as a spokesman for a drug company.  (See the logo for Victoza on the bottom right on Deen’s Diabetes in a New Light website.)  There are other ways to throw her support behind the struggle against diabetes.  She could have followed the public service route as Michael J. Fox did with Parkinson’s research, or emulated the late Christopher Reeve’s support of spinal cord injury research.  Even a new cookbook would be more appropriate, perhaps one that takes her most popular recipes and aligns them with her new awareness of the link between nutrition and health.

Public figures have responsibilities to their publics.  Paula Dean seems to have left that out of her recipe for celebrity.

Cindy Miller is a communications strategist. Learn more at www.cindymilleratl.com.

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PR Pause: Google Manipulation

September 17th, 2010 by Administrator | No Comments | Filed in cindy.miller.atl

A Google search is a powerful tool.  It can find nearly anything on the Internet.  It can also be manipulated.

Jim Galloway writes a blog, “The Political Insider,” for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. The Sept. 16 installment should disturb anyone interested in fair play.  He reports on an Atlanta public relations specialist using his technical know-how to sabotage Georgia gubernatorial candidate Nathan Deal.

You could argue that Deal is doing quite well self-destructing all by himself, but politics isn’t the point here.  Seth Woodard Persily is out to get Deal, and isn’t shy about manipulating the Internet to do so.

Persily is vice president of Penn Multimedia, a two-year-old Atlanta firm that Galloway describes as specializing in “reputation management,” especially on the Internet.  In addition, Persily is a gay father of two, and sits on the board of YouthPride of Atlanta, an organization supportive of gay and lesbian teens.

Battling in a harsh run-off election in August, Deal criticized YouthPride in a paid advertisement. Persily decided to strike back by manipulating results of Google searches.  Galloway describes the technique this way:

“When you type any search term into Google, the search engine immediately suggests a number of additional words.  Whenever ‘Nathan Deal’ is now typed into a Google search panel, the first suggested word is ‘ethics.’”

If a user accepts this suggestion, she will be offered pages of articles about an investigation conducted by the Office of Congressional Ethics into allegations against Deal.

Here’s the catch: the term “ethics” is kept at the top of the list of suggested words because Persily and his allies have posted dozen of articles, dozens of times, in dozens of places that include the words “ethics” and Nathan Deal.”  Having prepared a connection, the attackers then go to Google and search for those terms from many computer locations.  The combination of posting the articles and then launching multiple searches keep “Nathan Deal” and ”ethics” connected when others users search for “Nathan Deal.”  It’s clever, it’s legal and it’s disturbing.  These tactics seem far removed from the “civil discourse” envisioned for a democracy.

“I’ve never tried to harm someone’s reputation.  This is a first for us,” Persily says in Galloway’s article.  “We’ve always been in the business of cleaning people’s reputations up.”

This episode should give us pause.  File it away as another example of just how powerful the Internet can be, and how it’s open for all to use or abuse.

Learn more about cindy.miller.atl communications at www.cindymilleratl.com.

Just Say Something

August 12th, 2010 by Administrator | No Comments | Filed in Strategic Thinking

It’s unlikely you missed this week’s story about the dramatic departure of JetBlue flight attendant Steven Slater, who grabbed a beer and slide down the inflatable emergency chute into infamy.  If you did, click here to watch a news clip and catch up.

JetBlue, known for its skilled use of its Twitter, Facebook and blog BlueTales, was uncharacteristically quiet after Monday’s escapade hit the news and tore through the Internet.  It took 48 hours for the company to address the situation in its blog, doing so in a short article posted Wednesday titled, “Sometimes the weird news is about us …”

As New York Times media writer Stuart Elliott reported today, the period of quiet is reflected in public opinion.  Elliott quotes data from Zeta Interactive, a digital marketing agency in New York, that shows the path of JetBlue’s positive rating. Before Monday’s incident, online comments about the company were 79 percent positive and 21 percent negative. On Tuesday, a day after the Slater incident, comments about JetBlue were 59 percent positive, 41 percent negative.

And on Wednesday, the day the company publicly commented, positive online comments rebounded to 70 percent positive and 30 percent negative.

The morale of this story is speak up.

Stuff happens, which is why companies of all sizes need a crisis management plan. In the age of the Internet, ignoring the obvious is rarely a successful strategy.

For more information on cindy.miller.atl communications, see www.cindymilleratl.com.

Back-to-School ‘Haul’

July 30th, 2010 by Administrator | No Comments | Filed in Strategic Thinking

Here’s another word for your social media vocabulary: Haul.

A “haul” on YouTube is a short video that an individual produces to show off (and review) her purchases on a recent shopping trip.

For retailer J.C. Penney, hauling is an opportunity to attract fashion-savvy teenage girls to its stores during this back-to-school buying season.  The company is banking on the appeal of “look what I got at the store” exchanges between teens, and promotes these hauls on  its Facebook page.

It’s an approach that Forever 21 and American Eagle are trying, too, all in hopes of snagging a bigger share of the $50 billion Americans are expected to spend on back-to-school and back-to-college clothes and other “must-have” goods.

J.C. Penney has included hauling as part of its push to use social media to help generate $1 billion in additional online sales by 2014.

Hauling is not without controversy, especially about compensating the participating teenagers.  Federal Trade Commission guidelines require haulers to disclose any compensation in their videos, but so far the practice of hauling has generally been self-policing.  (J.C. Penney has an agreement with six teenage girls, and provided each with gift cards ranging from $250 to $1,000.)

The most famous pair of haulers is the Fowler sisters Elle, 22, and Blair, 16.  The young women are video bloggers, and more than 6.2 million people have viewed Blair’s YouTube channel, juicystar07, and Elle’s separate channel, AllThatGlitters21. The blogsphere is full of questions about them: Are they paid?  Are those their real names?  Is Blair an intern at Seventeen magazine?

But questions aside, the idea behind hauling is sound: Getting satisfied customers talking about a brand is always a good idea.

Learn more about cindy.miller.atl communications at www.cindymilleratl.com.

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Real-time Customer Service

July 23rd, 2010 by Administrator | No Comments | Filed in Strategic Thinking

In this age of instant communication, all businesses are a cranky post away from a public-relations stumble.  Think back to Southwest Air and Kevin Smith, the guy who got tangled in a weight-two-seat-one-seat embarrassment, and told his 1.5 million Twitter followers about it.

But on the positive side, your business also has the ability to instantly soothe a disgruntled customer as never before.

Anyone who knows me understands my passion for Starbucks — not just the coffee (and that lovely donut), but the idea of a Starbucks store as my favorite “third place.”  Good refreshments, good music, good atmosphere.

So when I parked myself at a Starbucks for coffee and computer time one afternoon this week, imagine my disappointment at the continual disruption caused by a boisterous staff.  Disturbed but undaunted, I did what any wired consumer might do today: I complained online to the company and left the store.

Here’s the email that hit my inbox within the hour:

Hello Cindy,

Thank you so much for taking the time to write to us.

I am truly sorry that you had such a disappointing visit because of too much noise from our staff.  This is obviously not the experience we want you to have at our stores.

I want you to know that we take your concerns seriously and that I will share this not only with departments here in our corporate office, but also with the manager and district manager (of the store) to address this.

I would love to invite you back into our stores for the chance to make up for a visit that you did not enjoy.  What I will do is mail you some beverage coupons so that your next drink will be on us.

Thank you so much for giving us the opportunity to fix something that is wrong.  If there are any questions or concerns that I have not been able to address, please don’t hesitate to call us at 800 23-LATTE (235-2883), we are here Monday through Friday from 5:00 AM to 6:00 PM (PST).

Thank you again,

Irene W.

Customer Relations Representative

Starbucks Coffee Company

It’s personal, it’s timely, it works.  Now I’m a fan of Starbuck’s savvy customer relations as well as its coffee.

For more information about cindy.miller.atl communications, go to www.cindymilleratl.com.

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Where Are You With Foursquare?

July 6th, 2010 by Administrator | No Comments | Filed in cindy.miller.atl

You’re probably seeing the word “Foursquare” more often, and, like many, are wondering what the buzz is all about.

Foursquare, a location-based software, last week hit a milestone of legitimacy: $20 million in venture funding.  In April, Foursquare passed one million users. Since then, the service has added 800,000 more.

Millions of people use similar services such as Gowalla, Loopt and Where, all embraced by mobile-device owners to shop, communicate, socialize and play games.  Such services are part of a rising wave in mobile advertising expected to soar in the United States to $3.1 billion in 2013 from $320 million in 2009, according to market researcher BIA/Kelsey.

How exactly do you use Foursquare?  Click here to watch a short video by Howcast that will guide you through the basics.

Foursquare takes advantage of the GPS chips inside smartphones to let users check in at bars, restaurants, coffee shops, concerts venues and almost anywhere people congregate these days.  In some cases, users can compete for the free meals and other perks that merchants dole out to the virtual “mayors” in the game who frequent their establishments the most.

Here’s how three major brands are using Foursquare:

  • Six Flags Entertainment Inc. launched a Six Flags Funatic Badge for fans in all 11 domestic parks in U.S. from June 10 to Sept. 7.  The company will offer Foursquare players badges and special prizes, including an opportunity to win a 50th anniversary Exit Pass.  The Exit pass will allow access to Six Flags signature coasters all season.
  • The Bravo Network also introduced new Bravo-themed badges, and has also linked the personalities behind its reality TV shows to its Foursquare promotions.  The celebrities from programs such as The Real Housewives and Top Chef will share their tips and to-dos, essentially serving as curators of city-specific information that fans can follow and practice in real life.
  • The History Channel created a Foursquare initiative to promote America, The Story of Us, a 12-hour television event that tells the story of how America was invented.  When users check in around various U.S. cities, they can find historical tidbits about their location and unlock the limited edition History Channel badge.  “For example,” reads a release from the History Channel, “users in New York who check in to St. Paul’s Chapel will discover George Washington worshipped there before his Inauguration in 1789, and users in Los Angeles who check in at the Cinerama Dome will find out it opened in 1963 with the premiere of ‘It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World’ and that it’s the world’s only concrete geodesic dome.”

Location-based software is yet another tool people can use to connect with each other.  Smart businesses are starting to tap into this new community.

Learn more about cindy.miller.atl communications at www.cindymilleratl.com.

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The Power of Participation

July 1st, 2010 by Administrator | No Comments | Filed in Strategic Thinking

Australia wants you to come visit.

Tourism Australia recently launched “There’s nothing like Australia,” a $150 million advertising campaign and social media effort that “combines the insight of Tourism Australia’s 40 years of experience in knowing what international tourists want, and the Australian people’s knowledge of what makes Australia special.”

It’s a model that not only can work for any destination in the world, but for other products and services, too.

Here’s what they did:

  • Australians were invited to upload images of their favorite place or experience in the country, along with 25 words on why they believed “There’s nothing like Australia.”  Nearly 30,000 entries were posted.
  • An interactive map was created to illustrate these experiences.  The online map is searchable by experience type, location and 1,000 keywords.
  • An informational campaign was launched to connect airlines, travel agents and tour operators to the initiative.

It’s three simple steps that engage real people to an international marketing campaign.  How might that work for your business?

Learn more about cindy.miller.atl communications at www.cindymilleratl.com.

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BP illustrates the value of PR coaching

June 20th, 2010 by Administrator | No Comments | Filed in Strategic Thinking

If you’ve ever doubted the value of a good public relations coach, look no farther than BP for proof of what happens when you don’t have one.

From repeated public mistakes by CEO Tony Hayward to a dismissive public stance in the early days of the Gulf oil spill, the company has dramatically underestimated the power of good PR advice.  With Hayward in particular, he’s gone from a generally well-respected geologist and businessman to a national example of what not to do in crisis management.

The Christian Science Monitor posted an article Sunday that sums it up: “A yachting trip? The 10 worst BP gaffes in the Gulf oil spill.”

BP mercifully replaced Hayward on Friday as its public voice, putting Mississippi native and BP managing director Robert Dudley in that role.

Let’s hope the company has also pulled in some good PR help.

Learn more about cindy.miller.atl communications at www.cindymilleratl.com.

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Start simple

May 14th, 2010 by Administrator | No Comments | Filed in Innovative Communications

If you feel you can’t do social media well without a social media department, think again.  To quote new-media marketing consultant Chris Brogan, “Having a social media department is like having a phone department in your company.”

In other words, social media touches everyone and everyone should touch social media.

Start simple.  Use the tools that exist.  Clarify your social media objectives and standards to your staff — or to yourself.  But get going.

ALSOne easy place to start is with Google Search Stories.  It can’t be any simpler to create a clever video using searches to tell the story.  Here’s an example of how a Pennsylvania nonprofit, Alex’s Lemonade Stand Foundation, used the tool to create a simple YouTube video for itself.

It’s easy to get started.  Just do it.

Learn more about cindymilleratl communications at www.cindymilleratl.com.

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BP’s Social Credibilty

May 7th, 2010 by Administrator | No Comments | Filed in Strategic Thinking, cindy.miller.atl

If your company has yet to take social media seriously, pay attention to BP’s recent learning curve.    Simply put, the company was caught sleeping at a time when it really could have used some social currency and transparency.

BP, whose image will be forever stained by the on-going, massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, posted only one update on its Facebook page between Dec. 10, 2009, and May 2, 2010, and gained only 202 fans.  The May 2 post: “The BP Community Support Team has set up a hotline for those who would like to help with the gulf coast recovery efforts: 866-448-5816.” Only one of its fans responded, and it wasn’t pretty.

The company recovered quickly, wisely linking its social media efforts with organizations such as Homeland Security, National Park Service, Transocean and the Coast Guard to support the Deepwater Horizon Response project.  The project’s significant social media response — including a Facebook page with more than 12,000 fans and nearly 60 updates this week alone — provides an unfiltered view of what’s going on it the Gulf.

Most of us are not likely to get hit with a public relations crisis the size of an environment-altering oil spill, but it’s highly likely that something will happen that will require our attention.

Are you ready?

Learn more about cindy.miller.atl communications at www.cindymilleratl.com.

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