The Clarity Commandment

The B2B marketing-scape is littered with statements like this one:

SpineMap 3.0 Navigation Software is designed to optimize the surgical experience through an intuitive solution which includes a personalized surgical workflow to help support OR efficiency.

Much of B2B copy not only bores, but breaks a rule Herschell Gordon Lewis calls "The Clarity Commandment:"

When you choose words and phrases, clarity is paramount. Don’t let any other component of your communication interfere with it. 

Like other commandants handed down, easier said than done.

Clarity comes from more than short words and phrases.

It comes from avoiding jargon and any terms with less than laser-precision.

"In our enthusiasm for creating uniqueness, sometimes we lapse into poetry or in-talk, or we pick up phraseology that may make sense within the office but is gobbledygook to outsiders," Lewis says. 

"Or we go just one step beyond clarity—not a cardinal sin, but not a message that’s quickly and clearly understood."

Clarity's at risk whenever ambiguity rears its head.

Think about the example above:

Really, what's an optimized surgical experience?

A personalized surgical workflow?

What is OR efficiency?

And clarity's at risk whenever we add the unnecessary.

Why an intuitive solution? 

Why to help support?

"Clarity is hog-tied to simplicity," Lewis says.

And simplicity's, well, simple.

Copy that doesn’t demand analysis is more likely to hit its goal—command of the reader’s attention—than complex copy.

PS. An inquiring reader asks, How would you handle the statement above? Here goes:

SpineMap 3.0 Navigation Software gives you a second pair of eyes and hands during back surgery. Less time in the OR means more time on the green.

Now, I think I'll go watch This is Spinal Tap.

Short and Easy

"It is more fun to talk with someone who doesn’t use long, difficult words but rather short, easy words like ‘What about lunch?’"                               

― A.A. Milne

Most often, your purpose in publishing is to inform and persuade. Why mask your meaning with long, difficult words?

Why say your product "will provide seamless multi-user functionality," when you mean it "supports up to 15 users?"

Why sound like some abstruse academic or dodgy bureaucrat?

"Bad writers, and especially scientific, political and sociological writers, are nearly always haunted by the notion that Latin or Greek words are grander than Saxon ones, " George Orwell says in "Politics and the English Language."

Latin and Greek words are grand, but their use in business is dreadful.

Just look at this balderdash from Accenture:

Insurers will need to open up to their ecosystem partners, sharing not only customer data, but customers themselves. To encourage and support such ecosystems, IT architectures will need to evolve, ensuring flexibility and interoperability with external partners and providers. A key challenge will be to orchestrate innovation and legacy evolutions while simultaneously managing security threats and changing IT processes to roll out and manage new products and services faster and cheaper.

Acccenture means:

Insurance companies need to upgrade their IT systems so suppliers can use their customer data. But they can't let the changes interrupt routine business.

This morning's lesson: short and easy.

Now, what about lunch?

Other People’s Audiences

Gary Slack provided today's post. He is chief experience officer of Slack and Company, LLC, a leading global B2B marketing strategy and services provider based in Chicago.

"OPA" is often what a Greek restaurant waiter will shout when lighting up a plate of saganaki.

For me these days, OPA means "Other People's Audiences."

I've borrowed the term a bit from Jeffrey Hayzlett, who talks about using OPM (Other People's Money) to do really efficient marketing.

As much as we encourage clients to create their own media platforms—and publish great original content on them—the reality is most B2B marketers will reach and influence far greater numbers of customers, prospects and influencers by tapping and leveraging OPA.

In fact, too many B2B marketers, in our opinion, have it backward.

While they should be investing in and experimenting with their own media platforms, they often are over-investing time and money here and under-investing in getting their messages across through OPA.

What do I mean by Other People's Audiences? It includes:

• Guest columns or posts in widely followed external blogs
• Commentary posted on discussion boards at relevant B2B news and media sites
• Commentary posted on online B2B community sites and LinkedIn Groups
• Quotes folded into news and feature stories
• Media interviews
• External speaking engagements, panels

If some of the above bullets sound like PR, it's intended.

How do you identify the right OPA? It's really pretty easy—or at least straightforward.

You investigate and audit where large numbers of the people you want to reach, influence and motivate—at any stage of the buy cycle—are congregating and spending their time both online and offline.

Actually, it's pretty classic media pathway and channel analysis —the stuff you should be doing anyway in building integrated marketing communications (IMC) plans.

Some B2B marketers have built huge audiences for their own media. Adobe is one. Even so, they still tap OPA big time.

But most B2B marketers aren't where Adobe is, and they should consider redoubling their efforts to better tap OPA.

And have some delicious saganaki while at it!

Fish Story

Here's a story with a hook.

Skift reports SeaWorld's CEO, after denying his employees posed as animal rights activists to infiltrate PETA, has admitted to conducting a covert operation.

In a report to stockholders, Joel Manby acknowledged corporate spies were sent by SeaWorld "to maintain the safety and security of employees, customers and animals in the face of credible threats.”

But a PETA spokesperson says SeaWorld sent agents provocateurs to bait PETA's people.

“SeaWorld’s corporate espionage campaign tried to coerce kind people into setting SeaWorld on fire or draining its tanks, which would have hurt the animals, in an attempt to distract from its cruelty and keep PETA from exposing the miserable lives of the animals it imprisons,” Tracy Reiman said.

SeaWorld's spokespeople have clammed up, claiming further comment would disclose "confidential business information related to the company’s security practices."

SeaWorld has been angling to fix its damaged brand for three years, after the movie Blackfish sent park attendance reeling and put profits in the tank.

As a case study in floundering PR, this one's a keeper.

Where Do You Draw the Line?

Admirable work only results when creatives draw the line, Seth Godin says in his recent post, "Milton Glaser's Rule:"

"There are few illustrators who have a more recognizable look (and a longer productive career) than Milton Glaser," Godin says. 

"Here's the thing: When he started out, he wasn't THE Milton Glaser. He was some guy hoping for work.

"The rule, then, is that you can't give the client what he wants. You have to give the client work that you want your name on. Work that's part of the arc. Work that reflects your vision, your contribution and your hand.

"That makes it really difficult at first. Almost impossible. But if you ignore this rule because the pressure is on, it will never get easier."

Agency exec Bill Kircher (my former boss) used to spout similar adages when the pressure was on. I'll sum them up in a rule I'll call "Kircher's Law:"

Whenever an agency bows to a client's creative direction, the probability of later incrimination approaches 100%.

Although creatives are quick to cite their duty to themselves, the truth is, every professional shares the right to draw the line.

Remember the film The King's Speech? 

Early in the story, the therapist draws the line with a haughty Queen Elizabeth: "Sorry, this is my game, played on my turf, by my rules."

But with prerogative comes accountability. You can't have your kingly cake and eat it, too. 

Do you:

• Respect everyone, coworkers and clients alike?
• Arrive on site ready to work?
• Tackle chores that need to be done to stay in business?
• Avoid short cuts and excuses?
• Learn from mistakes?
• Consider how your decisions affect the company, not just your department or career?
• Speak truthfully and with the passion of an owner?

Do you—where do you—draw the line?

Pandemonium? Blame the Media.

Presidential politics rides a wayward bus.

It's named Media.

Media revolutions drive voters away from party élites, as historian Jill Lepore says in her article about populism in The New Yorker.

Lepore looks back at party upheavals of the early 19th century.

Although slavery was the big issue, the rise of populism was driven by revolutions in media:

• In the 1830s, advances in printing brought down the cost of a newspaper to a penny;

• In the 1840s, newspapers began to get news by telegraph;

• In the 1850s, newspapers began to include illustrations based on photographs.

"For a while, party élites lost control, until the system reached equilibrium in the form of a relatively stable contest between Democrats and a new party, the Republicans," Lepore says.

Then came the 1890s, when occurred another populist revolt, "which took place during another acceleration in the speed of communication, brought about by the telephone, the Linotype, and halftone printing, technologies that allowed daily newspapers and illustrated magazines, in particular, to carry political news faster, and to more readers, than ever before."

In the same decade, color printing appeared, which gave rise a nationwide "poster craze." Campaign posters papered every wall of every building, in every city; and every candidate "ran as an outsider."

Oddly enough, the 20th century was saner. 

Although voters saw the introduction of phonograph records, radio, weekly magazines, movies and TV, media's power to propel populists waned. 

"Despite the upheavals of the Depression, the Second World War, the Cold War, and Vietnam, the era of national newsmagazines, newsreels, and network broadcasting was a period of remarkable party stability."

But with the advent of mobile phones and the Internet, populism is again heating up.

"The American party system is not only a creation of the press; it is dependent on it," Lepore says. 

"It is currently fashionable, indispensable, even, to malign the press, whether liberal or conservative. But when the press is in the throes of change, so is the party system. And the national weal had better watch out. 

"It’s unlikely, but not impossible, that the accelerating and atomizing forces of this latest communications revolution will bring about the end of the party system and the beginning of a new and wobblier political institution. 

"With our phones in our hands and our eyes on our phones, each of us is a reporter, each a photographer, unedited and ill judged, chatting, snapping, tweeting, and posting, yikking and yakking. 

"At some point, does each of us become a party of one?"

Adaptability is Our Secret

Kimberley Hardcastle-Geddes contributed today's post. She is president of San Diego-based mdg, a marketing agency that currently serves 10 of the Trade Show Executive Gold 100.

Given the pace at which the media landscape continues to evolve, it’s impossible to say (with any degree of certainty) what mdg will look like in five years. 

That’s precisely why, when evaluating new candidates for employment, we look less at their current skill set and more at their proven ability to learn new skills. My business partner, Vinnie Polito, and I make it our mission to hire the right people, have in place the right processes, and create the right culture to allow us to adapt to meet the ever-changing demands of the clients we serve.

Most recently, we’ve met these changing demands by enhancing our offerings in specialty areas and hiring more professionals skilled in digital marketing, coding, video production, international marketing, database marketing and public relations. Our clients’ needs in these areas are becoming more significant, yet they don’t have the corresponding internal resources (nor the desire and budgets to develop them internally), which enables us to efficiently and effectively fill gaps. Over the next five years, we’ll continue operating under the same general philosophy, developing new business units that align with evolving demand.

We’ll also stay focused on delivering results. While we believe in the power of a strong brand, we know that our clients hire mdg based on the agency’s proven ability to increase attendance, grow membership, enhance the bottom line or achieve whatever objective happens to be at the forefront of their marketing plans. 

mdg has built a reputation over the past 39 years for an ability to effect real change, and will continue reinforcing that reputation over the next five.

Tomorrow's Agencies Will be More Consultative

Rick Whelan contributed today's post. He is president of Marketing General, a full-service membership marketing agency based in Alexandria, VA.

What will my agency look like five years from now?

We’ll look exactly the same, but different. 

I say the same, because the need for great strategy, consulting, creativity, program implementation and back-end results reporting and analysis will be the same; but different because the speed at which all the components will be needed, and the constant evolution of tools, technique and technology, will force us out of our comfort zone. We'll have to test new media and new methods to get ever better, faster results for our clients, all for less cost.

Other changes I think we’ll see are fewer full-time on-site staff, and the increased use of freelance specialists worldwide who are employed for their expertise in a certain areas and for a particular project or program, and then let go until they are needed again. This will maximize my agency’s talent pool, but also allow me the convenience of “just in time” experts to match clients' needs, budgets and expectations.

One thing that will not change is the need for some sort of agency orchestration of all the moving parts of a marketing campaign. If anything, agencies will be more much more consultative in nature and challenged to prove and then reprove their worth to a client over and over. 

Finally the biggest change (and one that's been building all along) will be the use of better, bigger and more encompassing data on prospects and customers alike to drive all facets of the marketing spend.

Series continues.

A Team of Trusted Advisors

Jean Whiddon contributed today's post. She is president and CEO of Fixation Marketing, a woman-owned, full-service marketing communications company based in Bethesda, MD.

Last week I met with a new primary care doctor. As I approached the desk of the new practice, I noticed a significant display of business cards: on the left, about 10 card holders for the primary care docs; on the right, a smaller cluster for the related specialists. Ah, I thought, one-stop shopping for integrated medical care.

I bring this up because the medical practice somewhat mirrors my vision for the marketing firm of five years from now. 

At the center is a core of hands-on creative strategists and designers, able to conceive, write and/or help execute the solid building blocks of an effective multimedia campaign—advertising, direct mail, email, websites, print and digital collateral. They’re agile, experienced and savvy (clients are in a hurry, so they need adept problem solvers). 

In our “one stop shop” for strategic campaigns, the extended team includes “specialist partners,” incorporating, but not limited, to a researcher, media planner, SEO/SMM/SEM pro, developer and focus group/meeting facilitator. All these subject matter masters may be independent, but are vetted, curated and managed by Fixation with complete transparency (and with as much direct contact as warranted between client and partner). It’s a model that’s heavy on custom collaboration and light on overhead, because that’s what works best.

What a far different model than the “all in-house” agency I joined nearly 25 years ago, but one driven by client needs and a changing marketplace. And really, it’s been evolving for a long time.

Series continues.

Personalization and Flexibility Will Define Agencies in the Future

Kevin Miller provided today's post. He is president and chief strategist of Frost Miller, a Bethesda, MD-based integrated marketing firm that provides a complete range of marcom services.

Five years from now our agency will pretty much look the same as today—smart folks sitting around eating donuts and creating results-driven marketing campaigns.

Broadly speaking, there are three overarching trends that will help shape how our agency works:

1. Strategy, planning and execution are becoming intertwined

2. Digital marketing is getting more personal

3. The more things change, the more they stay the same

It used to be that the only way to achieve a client’s marketing goals was to develop a strategy, put a plan together, and then execute that plan. That’s all changing. 

With real-time measurement of digital campaigns, tactics—and even strategies—can be changed immediately. Underperforming campaigns get replaced with ones that generate better results. But in order to improve performance, the people producing these campaigns will have to be strategic thinkers who can make changes on the fly.

An unfathomable amount of personal data about customers is allowing marketers to target very specific audiences. Targeting once achievable only through direct mail lists or Nielsen ratings—which only tracked the broadest audience characteristics—is now done through technologies that allow you to know exactly who, and where, your prospects are. Mobile, Facebook and Google lead the way, but this trend will reshape how we market in years ahead.

Telecommuting, virtual workspaces, and other trends that affect most types of businesses won’t have such a big impact on agencies. That’s because what makes a good agency great is collaboration—especially in an integrated marketing agency like ours. Sharing ideas among people with diverse individual skills leads to the development of fully integrated, and more successful, campaigns.

Series continues.

Abe Lincoln, Storyteller

"Humor is both a shield and a sword in politics," Ari Fleischer, press secretary to George W. Bush, recently told CNN.

"Humor is a shield because if people like you they will tend to give you the benefit of the doubt. It is a sword because one of the most effective ways to make fun of your opposition is humor as opposed to direct, frontal, mean-spirited attacks."

Among the presidents who wielded humor—including Teddy Roosevelt, Coolidge, FDR, Kennedy and Reagan—none did it more skillfully than Lincoln.

Lincoln considered himself a "retailer" of other people's puns, wisecracks, japes and yarns. He had a photographic memory for funny material, and spent hours studying humorists' books and essays.

Although quaint by 21st century standards, some of Lincoln's gags can still raise a chuckle.

Lincoln told a story of a man in the theatre who put his top hat on the seat next to him. A plus-size woman sat on it. ""Madam," he said, "I could have told you the hat wouldn't fit before you tried it on."

He told another story of a professional speaker's arrival in Springfield, Illinois. “What are your lectures about?” a city official asked the speaker. “They’re about the second coming,” the speaker said. “Don’t waste your time," the official said. "If the Lord’s seen Springfield once, He ain’t coming back."

He told yet another story of a drunk named Bill, who was so wasted, he passed out in the mud. When Bill came to, he went looking for a way to wash off the mud, and mistook another drunk leaning over a hitching post for a pump. When he pumped the man's arm up and down, the man puked all over him. Believing all was right, Bill found a saloon. A friend inside said, "Bill, what happened?" Bill said, "You should have seen me before I washed."

After one grueling speech, Lincoln said of the speaker, “He can compress the most words into the smallest ideas of any man I ever met." He called the arguments of his opponent for president “as thin as the homeopathic soup that was made by boiling the shadow of a pigeon that had starved to death.”

Once after being called "two-faced," Lincoln said, “If I had two faces, why would I be wearing this one?”

When Nebraska's governor told Lincoln there was a river in his state named "Weeping Water." Lincoln said, "I suppose the Indians out there call it 'Minneboohoo,' since 'Laughing Water' is 'Minnahaha' in their language."

His contemporaries said Lincoln's real success as a comedian was due to a talent for mimicry. He could mimic voices, accents, gestures, postures and facial expressions perfectly.

Fellow attorney Henry Whitney said, "His stories may be literally retold, every word, period and comma, but the real humor perished with Lincoln."

Watch Daniel Day-Lewis perform as Abe Lincoln, Storyteller.

When is Advertising a Waste?

Marketing maestro Edward Segal contributed today's post. Edward helps REALTOR® associations generate publicity about their activities and shows their leaders, staff and members how to deliver effective presentations.

John Wanamaker, a merchandising pioneer in the 19th and early 20th centuries, said, “Half of the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.”

Many people still regard advertising as the best way to help position, promote, and sell their products, services, or expertise. After all, if you have enough money, you can say whatever you want, wherever you want, and for as long as you want, to anybody you want. And in today’s competitive marketplace, there are advertising opportunities that simply did not exist a few years ago, such as Facebook.

The trouble with advertising, however, is that unless you are careful, some or all the money you spend on it can be wasted. 

But how can you guarantee every penny of your advertising budget is well spent?

Check your ego

Think you can do it yourself? 

Do not let your ego get in the way of your advertising success. 

The reality is that there is a lot involved in successful advertising, ranging from strategy and creativity to messaging and placement, and you need to know what you are doing every step of the way. Put another way, would you ask a lawyer to perform brain survey on you? Of course not. So why would you believe that you can do your own advertising if you’ve never done it before, or well?

No one cares about your product

You think everyone in the world will want to buy whatever you are selling. Face it: just because you may be in love with what you are promoting does not mean that anyone else will be, or will even care about it. A marketing professional can help ensure that you are reaching the right audience for the right reasons and in right way.

Money pits abound

Here are other major potential budget-wasting mistakes to avoid. You:

• Do not have a clear marketing message or effective marketing strategy.
• Do not know your niche in the marketplace, or who your target market is. 
• Have not weighed the pros and cons of the different advertising outlets. 
• Don’t know whether a particular advertising medium is the best one to use in order to communicate your message, or if that medium will even reach your target audience.
• Do not know how often you will have to advertise in order to have an impact.
• Do not know much money will you have to spend in order to be effective.
• Do not experiment or test market your messages or strategy before launching your campaign.
• Pull your advertising before you have given it enough time to work.

Until you have taken steps to avoid these fundamental mistakes, it might make sense to place your advertising plans on hold, and consult a competent marketing professional.

Perhaps if John Wannamker had followed the advice above, half of what he spent on advertising would not have been wasted.

Government Communicators: Send Outreach into Orbit

Award-winning video producer Ann Ramsey contributed today's post. She is a senior producer at the US Department of Health & Human Services in Washington, DC.

Although traditionally a favorite of corporate communicators, the Satellite Media Tour (SMT) should be part of every government communicator's toolkit. 

SMTs make efficient use of time-starved spokespeople who want to reach multiple media markets. This winter, for example, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services held weekly SMTs throughout the Health Insurance Marketplace Open Enrollment period. The benefit? Without leaving Washington, busy officials reached broadcast journalists all over the country with continuing updates about healthcare enrollment.

Not every government communicator knows the ins and outs of the SMT, so here’s a rundown. While some agencies use PR firms for their SMTs, I will assume your agency has its own broadcast studio, or at least access to one. 

What is an SMT? An SMT is a series of video interviews featuring a spokesperson responding in front of a camera to the audio of each remote interviewer’s questions. The broadcaster remotely receives the sound and picture of the spokesperson, usually via satellite, for play-out in a live news program, or as a recorded media file for editing into a package for later broadcast. SMTs generally take one to four hours of the spokesperson’s time, and interviews are typically scheduled in 10-minute windows. If radio broadcasters are included, the interview series is referred to as an SMT/RMT.

Advantages. An SMT is an opportunity to tap broadcasters in order to introduce, or respond to, a newsworthy or time-sensitive topic. It allows for targeting of media markets, for direct interaction between the spokesperson and reporters, and for the opportunity to tailor the desired message to each market.

Must-haves. At minimum, you need an available spokesperson; a satellite-capable broadcast studio (look up: is there a dish on your building’s roof?); the manpower to pitch to the networks; and a modest budget to rent a block of satellite time.

Prep. First, send out a pitch notification (media alert) that includes your desired topic or announcement, the planned date of the SMT, the spokesperson’s bio, and any pertinent facts that can be used to leverage an interview. Target your top media markets, stations and networks, and work up a schedule of time-slots to fill. Most SMTs are aimed at some combination of TV news shows (morning, noon, evening) and/or radio drive-time shows. Contact local and network news divisions to pitch your SMT. Once your agency’s broadcast studio has a block of satellite-time arranged, notify all participating stations of the satellite coordinates and signal format details.

Pitching tips. Local TV/radio news divisions are busy places. Nonetheless, a government agency can appeal to them by offering the twin advantages of authority and topicality. That a national authority, such as the Secretary of a cabinet-level department, is available to speak directly to a reporter about a hot topic is attractive to a network, particularly a small, local affiliate. Furthermore, offering a local angle can be helpful, if you can tailor your statistics and examples to each media market. Once a news producer is interested in the interview, the concept and timing normally need to be cleared with a news director at the station. That’s why each time-slot may take a couple of phone calls or emails to confirm.

Day-of. Your agency’s broadcast studio will likely handle booking and supervision of the makeup artist, production crew and satellite link-up, as well as delivery of any non-live interviews to the network producers. You will be assigned a studio SMT producer and floor director to oversee the production. You will need to provide the studio talking points to be loaded into the teleprompter, so your spokesperson can refer to them during each interview. It’s smart to confirm that the studio team has all the information for each interview, including time-slot, the station’s network control room telephone number, producer name and number, interviewer name and number, IFB (“Interruptible Feed Back”) number (used by the studio to dial into each station), backup/engineer number, and delivery method (live or taped).

On-air tips. As a communications professional, you should coach and assist your spokesperson. Be aware that on-air time with the reporter will be short; perhaps just a few minutes. Often the final story is only 90 seconds long. So reporters need your spokesperson to make between one and three points concisely. You should be on site with the spokesperson during the SMT, and coordinate with the studio’s SMT producer and floor director. Let your spokesperson know the first name of each reporter (the reporter will be speaking directly into your spokesperson’s headset). For each interview, the IFB number for the remote station is phoned by the studio’s audio engineer to create a direct audio link between the interviewer and the spokesperson. If needed, this link can be interrupted by the studio SMT producer or floor director, in order to keep the spokesperson informed. (Think of Jon Stewart on The Daily Show listening to a fake mic in his ear and saying, “Wait… I’m being told…”). If any linkup is lost, or any station has to cancel or delay, the studio SMT producer will make on-the-fly changes to maximize the scheduled line-up.

Afterwards. Your agency broadcast studio will deliver any non-live media to stations that have requested taped versions for editing or later play-out. As desired, you may want to follow up with broadcasters for feedback and to confirm that post-delivery airing took place. You can also get a tape of your spokesperson’s on-air answers from your studio, for media training purposes or to keep as an archival record.

Trends. Downsizing in broadcast is having an impact. Today you may find the network news producer and interviewer are one and the same person. If something urgent takes place, the floor director or studio producer must use the IFB to reach the interviewer. Another new wrinkle is that the interviewer may want to do the interview remotely, and so, rather than dialing into a station’s IFB number, the studio dials directly to the interviewer’s own mobile phone. It can be tricky! Social media is also having an impact. You can research the Twitter handle of a given broadcast station, in order to follow and interact on social media before and during a given live interview. And it's now possible to create so-called “air-checks,” permanent internet links to selected news show segments that make them available in play-back to stakeholders after the fact.

Go Ahead, Back Up

As January's "Snowzilla" bore down on the Nation's Capital, the head of DC's Metro told The Washington Post it was wiser to shutter his incompetent agency during the storm than tread "a false floor that everybody knows is false.”

While candid, the exec's expression of foreboding " may not soothe the frustrations of stranded customers," The Post said.

It's easy for customers to blame failures of government on lack of drive (in fact, it's a hobby of mine).

But then you can't explain the shipwrecks of driven profiteers like Target, which last year lost $7 billion on its calamitous rollout of Target Canada.

Its also easy for customers to blame failures of government on "pointy-headed" government execs. 

But then you can't explain the blunders of smart CEOs like Carla Fiorina, who halved HP's stock value while she ran the company.

So what's to blame for systemic failures—both public and private?

As turnaround experts observe, it's leadership's refusal to abandon a strategy that simply doesn't work (like the one illustrated in this insightful video). 

Going Virile

Ad exec Madonna Badger's new video We are #WomenNotObjects, which asks marketers to stop eroticizing females, is hot, The Wall Street Journal reports.

Ms. Badger's beef is only one among many voiced by women in advertising, including the 21,000 sister mad women who comprise the 3% Conference.

3% Conference founder Kat Gordon told Forbes the issues surround "lack of."

"Lack of support for motherhood, lack of mentorship, lack of awareness that femaleness is an asset to connecting to the consumer marketplace today, lack of celebration of female work due to gender bias of award juries, lack of women negotiating their first agency salary and every one thereafter," Badger said.

Female event marketers are also flexing their muscles.

AWE, the Association for Women in Events, has opened its doors in Washington, DC, according to TSNN.

Chipotle Serves Up Nonsense

"I have a bluntness problem," says a character in Mozart in the Jungle.

I wish Chipotle had.

Fresh from rehab, the chain tells us it's cured, in a January 19 news release:

Chipotle’s enhanced food safety program is the product of a comprehensive reassessment of its food safety practices conducted with industry leading experts that included a farm-to-fork assessment of each ingredient Chipotle uses with an eye toward establishing the highest standards for safety.

Chipotle may now wash dirt off its tomatoes.

But it obviously won't scrub its announcements of corporatese.

Jargon destroys credibility, as journalist Phil Simon says.

Philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein called quaggy statements like Chipotle's nonsense.

And as he insisted, there is no such thing as deep and important nonsense.

There is only one kind of nonsense, and it's fundamentally suspect.

PS: To be blunt, I would've advised Chipotle to say, We asked food-safety experts to help us improve both our own and our suppliers' procedures.

Potpourri

Concise writing achieves communication in pure form.

So it's considerate on his 207th birthday to celebrate Edgar Allen Poe's "one-sitting rule" of writing.

In "The Philosophy of Composition," Poe extols brevity for the effect it creates.

"If any literary work is too long to be read at one sitting, we must be content to dispense with the immensely important effect derivable from unity of impression—for, if two sittings be required, the affairs of the world interfere, and every thing like totality is at once destroyed."

Long-windedness deprives a piece "of the vastly important artistic element, totality, or unity, of effect," Poe says.

"It appears evident, then, that there is a distinct limit, as regards length, to all works of literary art—the limit of a single sitting."

Using the right tools are just as important, Poe insists in "How to Write a Blackwood Article."

"In the first place, your writer of intensities must have very black ink, and a very big pen, with a very blunt nib. No individual, of however great genius, ever wrote without a good pen a good article."

Farhenheit 1832

Last month, the members of the Internet Engineering Steering Group announced that websites blocked by governments will display the error message, "451 - Unavailable for Legal Reasons."

The jokers on the committee were, of course, alluding to Ray Bradbury's 1953 novel, Fahrenheit 451.

The novel depicts an America devoted to biblioclasm, the ancient practice of suppressing objectionable ideas through book burning.

Still a weapon of choice for thugs like ISIS, biblioclasm is beginning to show signs of age.

With 94% of mankind's knowledge digitized, tyrants need to embrace technoclasm.

That's a word I've coined to describe the burning of computers to quash dangerous thoughts.

The fires they ignite will have to burn hotter, too, because silicone only combusts at temperatures above Fahrenheit 1832.

Blowing in the Wind

An inveterate blowhard, Warren G. Harding popularized the term bloviation to describe his public speaking style.

Bloviation, Harding said, is "the art of speaking for as long as the occasion warrants, and saying nothing."

While contemporary office-seekers vie for his seat in the Valhalla of the vacuous, few can bloviate like Harding.

H.L. Menken thought Harding's appeal to audiences reflected their IQ. 

 "Bosh is the right medicine for boobs," he wrote.

How to Take Advantage of the Challenges Facing News Organizations

PR expert Edward Segal contributed today's post. He has placed stories in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal and The Los Angeles Times, and is author of Profit by Publicity.

The challenges you face in convincing the media to do stories about you or your company is matched only by the challenges editors and reporters face in gathering and reporting the news.

In order to produce their news products—such as a daily newspaper, the latest posts on their Web site or social media platforms, or nightly TV news program—editors, producers and their staff must contend with a never-ending series hurdles. These include:

• Making decisions on which events or activities to cover, especially in the face of late-breaking news.

• Weeding out the truly newsworthy press releases from the hundreds of apparently superfluous, irrelevant or poorly written ones that they receive every day.

• Fact-checking stories.

• Finding the best available experts to interview, explain or provide perspective on  technical or complex stories.

• Maintaining staff morale in the face of budget cutbacks, mergers and acquisitions among news organizations, and the creeping influence of some advertising departments on the news judgments of editorial personnel.

• Providing enough time and resources so reporters can adequately research stories and be properly prepared to interview people for them.

• Ensuring that the work of their reporters, editors and producers meets the criteria of good journalism. 

How do you turn the media’s lemons into your lemonade? To ensure that, despite their problems and difficulties, you’re able to convince news organizations to do the stories you or your company want done? By going the extra mile to help make their jobs—and their decision to do stories about you—as easy as possible. Here’s how:

Help them with their homework. Provide them with as much background information as you think is appropriate about your story, including news releases, fact sheets or other stories that have been written about you or the topic. 

Don’t wait until it’s too late. Give editors and reporters as much advance notice as possible about scheduled events such as news-making special events.

Show them the story. Find the best possible visuals to "show" your story as well as tell it; and be sure to let the news organizations know about your visuals when you contact them. 

Give them ideas. Call editors and reporters with story ideas that you think they may be interested in, even though those ideas may not result in news coverage about you. By showing them you are a resource of information and ideas, they will be more receptive to your calls later when you pitch them a story about yourself. 

Provide good sound bites. Once you have the media’s attention, take full advantage of the opportunity by providing them with the quotes they need to help tell their story to their audiences. The better your quotes, the more likely it is that they’ll be used… and that the reporters will come back to you in the future for more interviews.