A Call to Armchairs

Midway through his fireside chat at SXSW last month, President Barack Obama issued government communicators a call to arms.

Or, more accurately, armchairs.

It's communicators' fault that citizens only associate government with failure and corruption, rather than humming infrastructure, the President said.

"A significant part of the task at hand is telling a better story about what government does," Obama said.

Sadly, the President's call for storytelling comes a little late. 

His second term will soon be history.

Not that private-sector storytellers are much better at the craft, as Hill+Knowlton's content director Vikki Chowney notes in PR Week.

Private-sector flacks are too technocentric to tell stories customers care about.

"In an age in which people get their information from digital platforms, it’s our responsibility as communicators to not just think about building new things—but also think about what we say and where we say it in order to get people to care more," Chowney says.

Private-sector flacks should shun the shiny objects swimming before their eyes and get back to PR basics, Chowney says.

"Cutting through the overwhelming noise of online content with a clear, concise message is something we should all be reminding ourselves to focus on daily."

It's All Over Now, Baby Blue

The Ocean State's marketing captain has been fired by the governor for sinking 10% of the state's $4.5 million budget into a new logo.

Betsy Wall paid famed designer Milton Glaser $400,000 for his work. She poured another $150,000 into logo pre-tests.

Glaser's tab included the tagline Rhode Island: Cooler & Warmer, which the governor has also deep-sixed.

Glaser, the power behind the Dylan Poster and I Love New York, seemed the right man for the job—until media scrutiny took the wind out of his client's sails.

Wall's spending spree hit the front page of The Providence Journal and put the governor on treacherous seas.

"It is unacceptable how many mistakes were made in this roll-out, and we need to hold people accountable because Rhode Islanders deserve better," the governor told the paper.

The day before she was fired, Wall told Adweek she wanted to make a splash with Glaser.

"The Milton Glaser art, that is not your typical state logo," Wall told Adweek. "If you look at what other states have on their websites, it isn't usually true art like that, it isn't usually so thought provoking and inspiring. I can't think of another state, besides obviously New York, that would think to bring in somebody like Milton Glaser."

The storm's just politics, in my book.

In the early 1980s, I spent $450,000 for my employer's new logo.

No one lost her job.

Decades later, a version is still in use.

Welcome to Indenture

Employers who recruit a lot of recent grads are luring them with a new perk: student loan repayment.

Bloomberg reports that investment and consulting firms like Nataxis and   PricewaterhouseCoopers will pony up as much as $250 a month toward a candidate's college debt.

McKinsey, Bain Capital and Accenture will also pay down employees' student debt, according to The Wall Street Journal.

If you're willing to provide seed money, we can jump on the bandwagon and start up our own firm to compete with Accenture.

Indenture.

A pillar of colonial America, indenture (a version of "enforced servitude") underwrote the tobacco economy in the Chesapeake region.

Under the system, an Englishman who sought a clean start in America signed a contract that promised he'd repay his master for ship fare, clothing, and room and board by laboring for seven years. 

Women also signed the contracts.

The word indenture refers to an indentation made on each contract. When it was drawn, two copies were made. One copy was then placed over the other and an edge indented.

As a result, master and servant could always spot whether a copy might be forged (often the end-date would be changed by one or the other party.)

On a serious note: Burdensome debt is no laughing matter. It drives in part the popularity of Bernie Sanders among Millennials. As one Boomer told a group of college students, “Your generation’s debt is our generation’s draft."

View-Master Revisited

This week, I was treated to a rough-cut of a DMO's forthcoming virtual reality promotion.

The glories of the city's convention center and hotels were revealed in full and fabulous 3D.

Writing for Associations Now, Samatha Whitehorn claims VR is destined to become "a mainstream feature of association meetings and destination marketing."

Little wonder, Whitehorn says. "The power of VR is that it gives the viewer a unique sense of empathic connection to people and events."

DMOs will tap VR to give their cities an edge in event planners' eyes, and even offer it as an alternative to live streaming, so folks unable to attend an event can join in from afar.

But wait a cotton-pickin' minute!

"VR's going to kill my event," every planner's shouting.

Not in my book.

I may be a curmudgeon, but VR is only higher octane View-Master.

Don't get me wrong: I loved View-Master as a kid. But it didn't keep me from exploring the world beyond my bedroom.

I predict VR will indeed find its niche—alongside the Pet Rock and the Cabbage Patch Kid.

What do you think?

You Don't Have to be Jewish

Once upon a time, I had the privilege of interviewing madman George Lois for a magazine article about ad creative.

When I asked, "What makes an ad effective?" Lois said, "An ad has to kick you in the ass with an idea you like."

In other words, the advertiser needs to startle you, then evoke a little love.

Last year's most-shared ads, according to Unruly, did just this.

Each ad transmitted a powerful idea by marshaling a string of surprising sounds and images that, taken together, can't help but excite love… at least a little.

As Don Draper said in Mad Men, “Advertising is based on one thing: happiness. And you know what happiness is? Happiness is the smell of a new car. It's freedom from fear. It's a billboard on the side of the road that screams reassurance that whatever you are doing is okay. You are okay.”

And now for last year's most-shared ad…



Read more about emotion's role in advertising here.