Commander in Control

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One of the points I had hoped to emphasize in my last post was that Twitter, blogging, Facebook and Google+ offer an even more controlled communications environment than what a fastidiously prepped/messaged executive might face in a media interview.

David Carr may give Rupert Murdoch props for his more authentic Twitter persona, but it's Mr. Murdoch who's thumbing his nose at Mr. Carr and his colleagues in the Fourth Estate whose journalistic scrutiny Twitter has allowed him to sidestep.

This week, we're witness to another example of this "command(er) and control" approach to making one's POV heard in a less fettered manner. Our President participated in a Google+ Hangout.  In her piece titled "Obama finds virtual end-around to bypass the White House press," Amy Parnes wrote in  The Hill:

"The virtual interview is part of a larger effort by the White House to connect directly to Americans without going through the news media."

In his defense of Mr. Obama's media public availability, White House press secretary Jay Carney said:

"I know we’re not picking the questions," then quipped: "Would that we could."

Journalists were not too pleased:

"I worry sometimes that the administration subverts the Wild West appeal of new media by rather scrupulously scrubbing and screening questions — like they have done in various new media town-hall settings," said Julie Mason, a talk show host on Sirius-XM.

Here's the full hour-long session:



Truth be told, communications pros have more options available to them than ever before. I, for one, am not discounting the value of "earned" media, especially when one considers the still-dominant digital and social footprints generated by stories originating in stalwart news orgs such as The New York Times, Bloomberg or Reuters. Didn't HP's study of some widely shared stories on Twitter validate this?

On the flip side of the coin, when was the last time Google subjected itself to a media interview? When it wants to make news, it simply posts what it wishes to say on one of the company's blogs. Those that stalk Google soon are tweeting away until the world knows what Google wanted it to know.

This "owned media" strategy for delivering unfiltered prose is especially effective when it emanates from a company in the media spotlight or a recognized newsmaker or newsmaking enterprise. As Tom Foremski astutely noted, all companies are media companies today. Now we just have to figure out how best to call out those who use their new-found platforms-to-persuade for nefarious ends.

Then again, most don't. I'm looking forward to CNBC's Darren Rovell's Google+ Hangout on Monday following the Giants victory over the Pats this weekend!

Communications Slop

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"The modern chief executive lives behind a wall of communications operatives, many of whom ladle out slop meant to obscure rather than reveal."

David Carr

-- David Carr of The New York Times lamenting the way many CEOs have long interacted with members of his profession. Not surprisingly, he lays the blame on communications professionals. The quote appears in his must-read column today on Rupert Murdoch's sudden embrace of Twitter. More on that below.

He's right, and wrong.  Yes, the PR pro is charged with advising C-Suite executives on what to anticipate in a media interview, and how best to respond to journalists' questions. Frankly, why should only the reporter's editorial agenda be met? Shouldn't the company also use the opportunity to advance its agenda? If not, why grant the interview in the first place?

And just as a good reporter will do some homework in advance of engaging a newsmaker, the better PR people among us will strive to wrap their arms around where a reporter's journalistic proclivities will take the conversation. In fact, there is no shortage of ex-journalists making their livings as "media trainers," though few of them directly interface with reporters to ensure that the goals of both sides of the media relations equation are met. (We take special pride in pegging reporter's questions in advance.)

Obfuscation? Maybe in the eyes of the journalist, but from the perspective of the CEO, C-Suite or Board of Directors, this is a necessary step for advancing a company's POV, let alone enhancing its reputation.

Mr. Carr does make a good point when he infers that the CEO has traditionally hidden behind the company's communications (or general counsel as was more likely the case). This began to change a bit as corporate blogging took root. The CEO of Sun, vice-chairman of General Motors, founder of Zappos were just a few of the corporate chieftans who embraced blogging early on as a means to share their (mostly) unfettered musings. It was also a way to bypass journalistic scrutiny to speak directly to core constituencies.

UMass Study of Corp. Blogging Among Inc. 500 ('09-'11)

Ironically, it was probably the company's PR department that nudged their CEOs into this brave new medium, though a new study of the Inc. 500 by UMass Dartmouth indicates that corporate blogging may now be on the wane:

"Small businesses are backing away from blogging as a marketing tool and shifting to other social media outlets. Bye-bye, company blog—and hello, Facebook? The number of Inc. 500 companies maintaining corporate blogs has dropped."

Rupert Murdoch (graphic via Gawker)

Are they being replaced by shorter-form, and less time-consuming tweets? Perhaps. The catalyst for Mr. Carr's piece was the unlikely embrace of Twitter by the octogenarian (and lately much beleaguered) CEO of NewsCorp, Rupert Murdoch. Carr writes:

"But, Twitter has the potential to cut past all that clutter. Given its ubiquity, there’s a chance to get a glimpse into the thinking of otherwise unapproachable executives, and sometimes even have a real dialogue with them. No one can be forced to use Twitter, but some people, even captains of industry, cannot resist."

What's ironic about Mr. Carr's take on the PR profession is that the "flacks" he accuses of masking the company's real CEO are again the same folks who advised Mr. Murdoch to take to the Twittersphere. The strategy was simple. After Murdoch was hammered in the media stemming from his appearance in the British courts and subsequent revelations, someone on News Corp's comms team had an epiphany: let's use Twitter to humanize him. It worked like a charm. Mr. Carr end his piece with this:

"Mr. Murdoch’s desire to be seen as a paragon of civility in any media realm, old or new, is rich. But give him credit for engaging in the world we all now live in and for not losing sleep over what pops out."

Ironically, News Corp's top communications officer resigned today. Was it the phone-hacking scandal or Rupert unleashed on Twitter? We'll probably never know for sure.

Those Five-Star Reviews

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How important are consumer-generated reviews in your purchase-making decisions? If you're like me, the answer is VERY. When assessing hotels, the write-ups on Virtual Tourist and Trip Advisor invariably make or break my booking. The reviews on Yelp play the deciding role in tipping the restaurant scales. Same with Fandango for movie reviews.

Then there's the granddaddy of them all, Amazon, which recognized the intrinsic value of its customers' reviews early on in the game. It even applied for and was granted a patent.

As I think about it, nearly all of the big-branded retail websites today allow customers to weigh in -- good, bad and ugly. More importantly, these "peer" reviews have attained such influence, they've pretty much usurped the influence of professional gadget, restaurant, and film reviewers at media outlets like CNET, New York and TIME magazine, respectively, who do this full-time for a living.

One, two, five stars...how ripe are these reviews for gaming? Wouldn't an enterprising marketing executive fork over some dollars to elevate the ratings for his company's product or service? A computer scientist at the University of Illinois tells The New York Times:

“More people are depending on reviews for what to buy and where to go, so the incentives for faking are getting bigger,” said Mr. Liu. “It’s a very cheap way of marketing.”

A few years back, I wrote about how one cruise line (smartly) cultivated some prolific bloggers whom they identified as rabid fans of the cruise line. Consumerist cried foul, implying that the company was resorting (excuse the pun) to a pay-for-positive-play scheme.

The ubiquity of consumer reviews on e-commerce sites has given rise to more sophisticated methods to manage this increasingly important determinant of purchase decisions -- from the perspectives of both retailer and manufacturer. When it was learned that an author of a book being sold on Amazon had pseudonymously written a review of his own work, Amazon stepped up efforts to shore up the sanctity of its reviews. Or so I thought at the time.

A piece in today's New York Times lets shoppers know that there's still some gaming going on. One firm made a business out of selling rating stars for $10 a piece.

"By the time VIP Deals ended its rebate on Amazon.com late last month, its leather case for the Kindle Fire was receiving the sort of acclaim once reserved for the likes of Kim Jong-il."

Of course, it's one thing for the retailer to monitor and moderate the reviews posted to its site -- if that's even scalable at Amazon given the number of reviews it hosts -- and another to put the kabash on companies outside its control who seek to capitalize on this new "very cheap way of marketing" that permeates the world of e-commerce. The Times alerted Amazon to its findings, which prompted Amazon to reply that:

"...its guidelines prohibited compensation for customer reviews. A few days later, it deleted all the reviews for the case, which itself was listed as unavailable. Then it took down the product page itself.

Asked why Amazon did not seem to notice that at least a few consumers called into question the VIP deal on its own site, a spokeswoman declined to comment. Nor would she say exactly what happened to VIP’s other products, like the Vipertek VTS-880 mini stun gun, which also disappeared from the retailer."

If the world's largest online retailer can't fully get its grips around the duplicity that exists within its consumer reviews section, just think about the myriad other online retailers hosting such reviews.

Maybe I'll rethink my blind reliance on these reviews when I purchase my new video camera, and head back to CNET or gdgt whose motto is "Reviews from people who actually know." As for pricing and interface, Amazon, you still rule.

Update: Received a link to Big River Review via email after my post appeared.