learn to set silos aside

silos are great for storing grain - and that's about allLast month I was in Baton Rouge for, among other things, the Public Relations Association of Louisiana’s (PRAL) June meeting. The featured speaker was SSA Consultants partner Christel Slaughter, whose emotional plea was for everyone in the audience to “Stop The Silos!” as the first step in improving internal and external employee engagement.

Silos are a popular marketing metaphor for the formal compartmentalization of personnel, departments and functions. Silos not in the agricultural sense, but in the org chart ability to keep contents separate; corn from wheat, rice from peanuts, sales from marketing, pr from advertising, progression from regression – a.k.a., bureaucracy run amok. Continue reading →

living in the truman show

ehsan maleki is a tehran photographer and bloggerI entered “iran election photos” to get a sense of how, in a little over two decades since the collapse of the Soviet Union, communication technology has changed the face of the world.

The first page of hits included Ehsan Maleki’s appropriately title Iran Election Photos, which led me to his wonderfully entertaining self-titled photo blog.

Just two weeks ago I posted new content that attempted to parse the world of emerging/social media in terms readers would find relevant in a tumultuous business climate. Nothing could better demonstrate the incredible gulf between old and new media than the events surrounding the Iranian elections – and the cellphone driven technology (twitter) that’s responsible. Continue reading →

what this industry needs…

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…is a good strong dose of sense of place. Too bad we don’t see more entertaining content on this side of the pond – blame it on to sober, to somber, to self-important pseudo-creatives all overreaching to showcase the next cirque du soleil meets terminator product positioning footage. You know – pull back from scruffy boy beard, quick cut to black boot over saddle, c/u thumb on starter, cut to pipes, insert chest full of fake boobs, off into the sunset on a two-lane strip of gleaming asphalt. Enough!

pr, pr, pr – now more than ever

pr-prosAs a member of PRSA (Public Relations Society of America) I was able to take in two chapter meetings in the past two weeks; the first in Tampa, hosted by the Florida Public Relations Association, and the second in Baton Rouge, hosted by Public Relations Association of Louisiana. The luncheon gatherings featured web-based communication solutions as their main focus. Continue reading →

cinco de may-O-mayo

acambaro_001CW Trek pal Steven Soto (second from left) sends his warmest Baja de Mayo regards after a quick weekend spin south of the border. Though not a doctor, and he doesn’t play one on t.v. either, Soto reports that swine flu was easily kept at bay by constant replinishment of the essentials: great trail, good friends, warm hospitality and tequila. As in margarita.

j-school diary: day one, hour one, lesson one

the third rail of headline writingYesterday’s fleeting Yahoo! “most popular” roundup alerted readers to the newest fetish sweeping the country: muggers in need of relief by band instrument. Takeaway: if you can deal with the swelling, the intensity is supposedly worth the humiliation.

This is People’s Exhibit “A”, the dreaded headline faux pas el supremo taught in every college of journalism as the prime example of the unintended consequences of an unintended double entendre, caught in authentic screen shot mode as distributed by AP. We mostly don’t make this stuff up – but are thankful when it happens right in front of us.

PS – NPR’s rewrite: “High School Band Member Thwarts Muggers”

deja vu redux

blast from the pastFast Company blogs the return of the Cub. Supercub that is, aka Honda C100, as seen at Indy in the Carter-Sym booth. Rebranded as Symba – oh, we get it – and as a knockoff over in the stadium at flyscooters display as a proto version to gauge reaction.

Available next month with out the door pricing of $2,600, the ’60s icon that last sold in the US back in the early ’80s joins a very crowded field in a price sensative market, all jockeying for position in a shell shocked economy shaped by gas prices and recession woes.

big city creative strikes out

if it ain't broke - no really, don't fix it!Last January 8, PepsiCo owned Tropicana rolled out their stunningly bland new corporate look, a makeover fashioned by Omnicom owned NYC shop Arnell, at a campaign launch cost pegged by some at no less than $35 million. A little less than two months later, PepsiCo couldn’t shovel dirt on it fast enough. The funeral was February 23.

That little detour down “Don’t Even Think About It” Lane has now, according to the April 2 issue of AdAge, reportedly cost the powerhouse beverage brand 20% in unit sales, 19% in dollars ($33 million) and unknown market share damage. Ka-pow! For those who still think packaging’s no big deal and brand management is way overrated, this Oh-Jay’s for you. Continue reading →

social media strategy…juggling twitter

comm trends - tweeting for effectManaging your online marketing assets didn’t get any easier when Twitter stampeded onto the scene a couple of months ago. The newest, and in some ways the most intriguing, social media limits messages (tweets) to 140 characters. So, like, where’s the value? Lets see if we can break it down.

Online communication – and really, that’s how the bulk of business is conducted these days – revolves around e-mail, web pages, blogs, RSS and social media sites like Facebook. Twitter, for not so obvious reasons, may be the missing link in connectivity. Continue reading →