Rock Star Founders

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Apple co-founder Steve Jobs (photo: Reuters) 

A much buzzed-about piece in wunderkind Justin Smith's The Atlantic titled "Steve Jobs's Law" explains "Why Founders Make the Best Leaders." It was accompanied by an iconic and familiar image of Mr. Jobs wowing the cult of Mac at one of his soon-to-be legendary product launch events.

Author James Kwak writes:

"Still, the conventional wisdom among investors, if not the media, is that founders need to move out of the way for an experienced CEO to take a company "to the next level."** This piece of mythology plays into Steve Jobs' remarkable story. Apple would not be the world's most valuable and powerful technology and media company today without Jobs, its co-founder and its CEO from 1997 until last week, when he resigned because of health issues."

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg (photo: (CC) Brian Solis) 

The relationship between a CEO's reputation and his/her company reputation is long proven. Back in the days of the imperial CEO, Dr. Leslie Gaines-Ross, then at Burson-Marsteller, conducted some excellent research that benchmarked and even quantified the correlation between the two. 

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos (photo: Josh Haner/The New York Times) 

These days, some of the conversation has shifted to suggest that  product innovation may drive a company's reputation maybe more so than a compelling CEO.

 More recently, as the writer of The Atlantic piece infers, there's something even more special about a founding CEO and the halo effect it has on a company's reputation and business success. (Groupon's Andrew Mason aside.)



So from a PR perspective, how much PR lift can a company get by deploying a visionary founder on the public stage for a significant press announcement?  Few can argue that Mark Zuckerberg's star turn at last week's F8 conference wasn't a total media home run.

Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page

And after reading The Times's Jenna Wortham's account of Jeff Bezos at the Amazon Kindle Fire launch presser today, it was clear Mr. Bezos charmed the bejesus out of a rapt audience.  (Could a 7" Android tablet alone have fired up all those journalistic platitudes?)

Here's a pic from Google's co-founders at their last (?) presser together at NYC's Grand Central Station in 2008 to announce some HopStop-like Google Map feature.  It makes you wonder whether we'll soon see Larry take the stage at Google's next boffo event.
 
Of course, the biggest question that's looming in tech luminary-land is whether Apple's new CEO Tim Cook will pull off a command performance on October 4 when Apple devotees gather for the company's presumed iPhone 5 launch, and a surprise Facebook tie-in or two. (Anyone check Zuckerberg's calendar that day?)


International Business Times' Dave Smith asks:

Apple CEO Tim Cook (Photo: Reuters)

"As hundreds of journalists, bloggers, and techies converge upon Cupertino, Calif., for Apple's media event next week, new CEO Tim Cook needs to weigh how he will measure up. Can he effectively assume the aura of Steve Jobs?"

So where does all that accumulated reputation capital fit in the mix?  Maybe the public's embrace of Apple and Amazon isn't entirely about their gadgets-du-jour and legendary founders'? Maybe their history of product innovation and customer service are the real drivers of their public relations panache?

Both companies have enough reputation capital in the bank to weather the usual missteps.  (Groupon, btw, hasn't.)  Hence, my bet next week is on Mr. Cook wooing the crowd, even if he doesn't fully reach the bar that Mr. Jobs has raised to such implausible heights.   

Your Weekend Viewing

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Costanza! 

I suppose if Seinfeld weren't in re-runs, this TV spot for Google Wallet's "first customer" would be obsolete. (via TechCrunch)



And here's @Pogue's version of the first Google Wallet video spot:




Disrupt the World

The Next Web dispatched a couple of reporters to the TechCrunch Disrupt confab in San Francisco last week. They hit the floor for an MOS with some of the showcased startups, all of which aspire to change the world.





A Billion Served

I'm old enough to remember the sign above the golden arches: "More Than A Million Served." Last week Mashable and others reported that Foursquare (the McDonalds of the modern era?) reached the billion (with a "B") check-in milestone. (I think McDonalds sign now reads "Billions & Billions Served")




A Week of Check-ins on the Path to One Billion from foursquare on Vimeo.


Lew Talks to Steve about Sean

Pretty cool assignment for Forbes reporter Steve Bertoni who had a chance to chat with the mythic Sean Parker for the magazine's Forbes 400 issue. Here's Forbes editor Lewis D'Vorkin asking Bertoni about the experience (after the :30 commercial).


Vidcaster

@Scobleizer says "corporate video producers will love @vidcaster. This video demo shows why.




Talk to Me, ATM

Leave it up to MoMA to show us an ATM machine as if it were built by interaction designers. (via Technology Review)




The Winklevoss Twins Go Nuts

The lawsuit may be over, but their 15 minutes of fame lives on...I guess. (via New York Observer)

Moneyball Levers Twitterati

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Having started in the PR biz handling national publicity for motion pictures, I've seen a fair share of pre-release buzz-making scenarios. My first boss achieved decent track-tion by holding the premier of The Who's film "Tommy" underground in NYC's 57th Street subway station. (It gave new meaning to the lyric "Tommy, can you hear me.")

 I'll also remember the invitation-only screening we held in Washington D.C. for Alan Alda's first film "The Seduction of Joe Tynan" about a popular Senator's infidelity. The rub: only sitting Congressmen's wives were invited to attend. That gambit resulted in a fab Washington Star piece quoting many of the attendees.

We later held the film's premiere in NYC with Eddie Lapidus-provided klieg lights, red carpet and velvet stanchions holding back myriad paparazzi from every photo agency imaginable. This was before Corbis and Getty swallowed the industry.  Few knew at the time the future value of their images of a radiant 20-something Meryl Streep in her second film role after "The Deer Hunter."

The strategy to find "affinity" influencers to help spread the advance word among presumed receptive audiences has deep and proven roots. I had written about it in 2005 for the "Chronicles of Narnia" and a Disney film, each looking to tap the faith-based crowd. You also have Mel Gibson's "The Passion of The Christ," which initially turned down a request by the Vatican for a private screening, but later allegedly secured a Papal blessing after a private screening. Both provided supremely targeted publicity fodder.

In the sports film genre, did you know that "The Blind Side" also tapped the faithful by offering advance films clips and specially developed Blind Side sermons to megachurch constituencies across the country?

I was thus surprised to see the new baseball film "Moneyball" turn to a most unlikely, but undeniably influential audience to build its advance word-of-mouth. Last night, across my Twitterstream flowed a number of tweets touting the Oakland, CA premiere of the Brad Pitt-starrer.

 It appears that the inimitable Brooke Hammerling was able to brew up a special showing of the film at which the cast and filmmakers took the stage. More significantly for the filmmakers, and the evening's apparent sponsor (and Brew PR client?) Netsuite, was Ms. Hammerling's ability to invite all the Twitter-verified influencers she knew in the Bay area. Here was some of the fodder:

@brooke w/ @karaswisher @alexia @nickbilton @dmac1 @wennmachers @zacharyanelson @LaurieSegallCNN @smart #Moneyball #NetSuite http://yfrog.com/mfgnxolj

@karaswisher At Paramount Theatre for "Moneyball" premiere. Everyone here for Pitt, but I love Kotick: http://yfrog.com/nvxlpftj

@LaurieSegallCNN Moneyball premiere..Thanks @Brooke! Media crew here cc: @nickbilton @alexia (@ Paramount Theatre w/ @smart) http://4sq.com/qnHMNZ

@PR_Maven SUITE! RT @smart: At the #Moneyball premiere. Thanks @brooke and #NetSuite! (@ Paramount Theatre w/ 16 others) http://4sq.com/oTcbA8

@smart At the Moneyball premiere. Thanks @brooke and #NetSuite! (@ Paramount Theatre w/ 16 others) http://4sq.com/oTcbA8

@brooke Aaron Sorkin, Michael Lewis, phillip Seymour Hoffman, Jonah Hill, Billy Beane, Brad Pitt take stage. #Moneyball #NetSuite #HOT

@nickbilton Just saw premiere of "Moneyball" w/ Brad Pitt, Phillip Seymour Hoffman & Jonah Hill. Great movie! A must see, especially for math nerds.

Ahhh, so there's a math component to Moneyball!  Darren Rovell: let's hope the filmmakers (and their surrogates) see the wisdom of giving you an early look. Or maybe they already have?

@darrenrovell Brands in Moneyball: Mizuno, Franklin, Rawlings, Gatorade, Lacoste, Nike, Puma, Easton, Met-RX, Majestic, Louisville Slugger, adidas.

Google, Zagat & Dining in San Francisco

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I have been like totally off the grid this week. Scant few tweets, only one or two 4Sq check-ins, no blogging, and my Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+ streams have never felt so neglected.

Recession be damned: client work has kept me from the social graph, and (gratefully) the minutest of machinations from Apple, Google, Facebook, Twitter, Groupon, Netflix, AOL...that rise to headline stature courtesy of the social echo chamber.

I'm penning this post from San Francisco where I have client meetings, but more importantly where my #2 son just settled following his graduation in May. It's thus far a productive trip for my wife and me given our discovery that my son's clothes remained unpacked and the Ikea furniture he purchased sat unassembled and unopened in their boxes in his historic home's bedroom in Pac Heights. (That was a four-hour project yesterday.)


(WashingtonPost.com via BloombergTV's @emilychangtv)
 

On the wifi-free flight out (JetBlue, what gives?), I had the good fortune to sit next to the NYC editor for Zagat who not only share his informed opinion on where to eat and where to hang in the Big Apple (think Williamsburg, Brooklyn), but we had a chance to talk about what his employer's new owner Google might do with the original crowdsourced restaurant guide. Here's what I told him could happen (not based on any proprietary information):

• The online paid wall at Zagat will soon come down, allowing Google to monetize the rich CG content through local advertising.

• Not unlike what we're seeing at Yelp, Google will energize Zagat's social and share-ability on all the major social nets.

• Right now, Zagat's reviewers are incentivized with free printed guides. What about check-in and badges to supercharge content creation?

• The content itself will be greatly enhanced through more sophisticated search, and the layering of Google Maps and other rich media apps. (CG video, anyone?)

• And then there's mobile: is there room for improvement with Zagat's iPad and mobile apps? You bet.

Net net: I told my seatmate that he should be excited by what Google is cooking up for Zagat's digital and mobile future.

Talking about restaurants, all this social graph deprivation made my Foursqure check-in last night at Wayfare Tavern especially gratifying. I earned 18 points, leapfrogging some very social 4Sq friends and coming within one of Mashable's new editorial director.

I also earned the Eater 38 Game-changer badge, which is described: 

"You've hit five restaurants on Eater.com's list of their 38 most favorite restaurants in this city. We applaud your appetite for this here badge!"

Now if only my wife and #2 son could understand my enthusiasm!

Your Weekend Viewing

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iOS Magic

Not sure how he does this, but here's an i-Opener as seen on stage at TED.




Arrington Animated

You know you've arrived when you become the subject of a Taiwanese animated spoof.  As if we didn't hear enough last week about the trials and tribulations of Arrington, Armstrong and Arianna, including a post from this blogger, here's one more take.






Marty McFly Shoes (x2)

Talk about retro marketing! Here are a couple of video clips from Nike harkening back to the 1989 film "Back to the Future" and its news of the new Nike MAG Marty McFly shoe. The shoe may be retro, but the marketing is anything but -- with 2.1 MILLION and 1.45 Million views on YouTube and counting. (via mashable)

 




Mario: Locked & Loaded

Mashable's Ben Parr tips us off to a variation of Mario in which the iconic video game's namesake comes loaded.   (Super Mario Bros. + Portal via Hacker News)




World’s Scariest Wave in Slo-Mo

No, surfriders, this is not from last week's Quiksilver Pro Surfing event in Long Beach (L.I.), NY (of all places!). Think Tahiti. (via Gizmodo, HT @john_frankel)




Brain Cramps via Car Cam

Enjoyed watching Mark Schaefer wax poetic and extemporaneously on an infliction called brain cramping to which he attributes many of the ill-conceived marketing overtures that he (and many of us) receive from those who are paid to do such things.  (HT Steve Farnsworth)


 


Twitter Goes Commercial

News this week from the inimitable Paul Holmes that Twitter has hired its first PR firm (for an initial project) after a competitive shootout.  In other Twitter marketing news, AdWeek's AdFreak blog shares Twitter's first TV commercial, asking why it has to be so crappy.  Oh well. I'm sure Edelman will do a better job.




Newspapers: 9/11/01 and 9/11/11

Finally, as America commemorates the 10th anniversary of that tragic day in lower Manhattan, Washington DC and Shanksville, PA, the Albany Times-Union released a short video describing the challenges putting together its newspaper on September 12, 2001. Separately, The New York Times this week crowdsourced an interactive map in which anyone can pinpoint where they were at that fateful hour and offer comments. (I was watching the towers burn from my office window facing south from the 12th floor on 19th Street & Park Avenue South.) The Times's social media maven Liz Heron reports that almost 40,000 people have contributed thus far.

Back to School @ NYTM

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Flushing Meadow Tuesday evening (via Reuters)

I'm always amazed how the New York Tech Meetup never fails to fill that 800-seat Skirball Center at NYU for its monthly showcases of "the next big thing." This was especially true on Tuesday evening when the skies refused to acquiesce even to the U.S. Open, now in full swing just 10 miles to the east.

A be-shorted Nate Westheimer

I arrived promptly at 7pm and quickly found my fellow Tufts alum Laurie Jakobsen in her usual spot handling PR chores for the SRO event. (Toward the end of the session, I was glad to hear moderator Nate Westheimer (at left in his end-of-summer board shorts) give her PRops from the podium.)

In the days leading up to the September #NYTM, a couple of reps for presenting startups reached out to put their companies on this blogger's radar. Most journalists ignore such overtures, but having been on the other side of this media equation, I certainly empathized with and appreciated the pro-acticity of the folks at MoveableFeastMedia and CalorieCount.com ("Hack-of-the-Month").

So I made my way down to my usual spot in the auditorium in the left front orchestra seats adjacent to the special area filled with fidgety presenters in their logo'd t-shirts awaiting their star turns. A few seats to my right was a relatively young boy sitting next to his Dad whom I recognized immediately. It was former NBCUniversal chief Jeff Zucker attending his first NYTM.

Across the aisle, I also recognized former Paine Webber chief Donald Marron who now chairs and heads the investment committee of Lightyear Capital, a PE firm with a good book of business in technology. Very cool. I mentioned to Zucker that I also had brought my son to a NYTM earlier this summer to which he replied that it was his son who actually brought him. (Future coder, I imagine.)

But the real stars of the evening's event were the ebullient presenters and their coded creations. Here are some of my faves (in no order of preference):

TaskRabbit founder/CEO Leah Busque

TaskRabbit - Pint-sized presenter Leah Busque, founder and CEO of this (job-creating) startup that raised $5 million last spring to expand nationally, quickly disarmed the usually jaded audience with a very tight presentation on the virtues of this mobile and web urban marketplace that lets people get their tasks accomplished easily and inexpensively. I especially liked the filters TaskRabbit uses to screen prospective service providers.

GoJee's answer to CalorieCount

GoJee -- So what do you crave for dinner tonight? Or better, what's in your fridge that can be combined into something edible for dinner tonight? The team at GoJee has amassed a mammoth, human-curated searchable database of independent food blogs that offer quality recipes. What's more, the images of the dishes featured make even the most finicky eaters salivate with dining desire. Given the myriad food blogs around the world, I just wonder whether a small internal team can cast a wide enough net to capture and curate the best culinary creations out there. Perhaps a crowdsourced solution could work? Epicurious, move over.

Kikin - As a new owner of an iPad2 and an avid user of Chrome and occasionally Firefox, I have issues getting used to the iOS default browser Safari. Enter Kikin, now in the iPad App Store, whose founder Brian Rogers audaciously called Safari's iPad browser experience "barbaric' compared to his browser app. It was also good to hear him answer my question about Kikin's ability to easily copy or share the page URL (in addition to text on the page).

Not-so-SimpleCV

Ingenuitas - Who knew there was such a thing as SimpleCV? Having repped one of the top 2D barcode companies, it was cool to see how far visual recognition technology has advanced. The company's principals have serious tech and coding cred. Here's how they start to describe SimpleCV on their website:

"SimpleCV is a Python interface to several powerful open source computer vision libraries, in a single convenient package. With it, your software can have access to high level algorithms in feature detection, filtering, and pattern recognition without wrangling with separate libraries."

I'll take their word for it.

CalorieCount: See how svelte?

CalorieCount - Finally, as someone who's licked the exercise part of the weight management equation, but who struggles with the intake piece, I was glad to learn about CalorieCount.com. The founders have spent some seven years scanning hundreds of thousands of nutrition labels. What's coolr (and different) for the "Hack-of-theMonth," the mobile app allows the user to simply say what he or she has eaten (versus keying it in) and it's logged. Nicely done.

All in all, another great showing. Very curious to know how Mr. Zucker and Mr. Marron felt about the evening.

The A Team's PR Missteps

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TechCrunch's Arrington

Isn’t it ironic? After years of railing against PR people, TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington certainly could have used a good PR person when announcing CrunchFund, his first formal and well-financed foray into funding tech startups.

Absent such counsel, Mr. Arrington now finds himself summarily booted from the tech media enterprise he started and nurtured into the most influential in the land. Furthermore, his already tempestuous reputation has taken some unneeded hits, prompting the conflicted chronicler of (and now investor in) all things digital to try to temper tempers via Twitter.

@arrington slow news day. 1 Sep

@arrington I'm going out on my boat to go fishing with my dad for the rest of the afternoon. Please direct all press inquiries to @paulcarr 2 Sep

The media maelstrom, which quickly rose to “gate” status, started with word of the establishment of Mr. Arrington's $20M VC fund and its luminous list of investors including Greylock Partners, Sequoia, Kleiner Perkins, and his own employer AOL. The PR consiglieres (from said employer?) thought it best to announce this sticky piece of news between the carnage of Irene and the respite of a long Labor Day Weekend to minimize the inevitable cries of journalistic conflict-of-interest.

It didn't work. The intrepid Nich Carlson of BusinessInsider jumped on the story early (first?), with his boss Henry Blodget following shortly thereafter with an even more declarative piece. Something clearly was awry in TechCrunch-HuffPost-AOL land.

AOL's Armstrong

How could AOL possibly permit Mr. Arrington to continue to exert editorial influence over a news organization that covers the very companies in which he has a financial stake, let alone their competitors?

Didn't he or AOL chief Tim Armstrong ever hear of R. Foster Wynans? It's no wonder The Journal's digital doyenne Kara Swisher was so vociferous in her criticism.

Mr. Armstrong didn't help matters with this equivocation (from The New York Times):

“TechCrunch is a different property and they have different standards. We have a traditional understanding of journalism with the exception of TechCrunch, which is different but is transparent about it.”

HuffPost's Arianna

Not so fast, said Arianna Huffington, Mr. Arrington's boss, and founder of Huffington Post, which itself has endured a decent share of criticism from journalistic purists. Ms. Huffiungton, who was apparently left in the dark during the deliberations of Mr. Arrington's fate, told The Times's David Carr that Mr. Arrington has been expunged from the editorial decisonmaking at TechCrunch, and will be relegated to the role of occasional unpaid contributor.

No matter. The damage is done. The Atlantic chimed in with this piece titled

"Takeaway From Arrington Startup Saga: AOL Is Looking Sleazy."

And then The Times's dean of the media equation David Carr opined in today's paper and digital editions:

"...the idea of a news site that covers every aspect of nascent tech companies sharing a brand name and founder with a venture capital firm financing these same companies seems almost comically over the line."

It's easy to look back in hindsight and imagine what might have been with a cleaner news announcement. Personally I don't think it was ever a tenable option for Mr. Arrington to hold onto his editorial perch at TechCrunch, while managing a venture capital fund for digital start-ups -- his blog's bread and butter.

But how could Messrs Arrington and Armstrong not have arrived at the same conclusion? Who was so PR-naive to think that Mr. Arrington might have weathered such an inevitable attack. For, in order to do so, one needs a sizable war chest of reputation capital, something Mr. Arrington did not have, i.e., he has lots of enemies.

Lessons learned: PR is less about one's Google contacts, Twitter followers and Facebook friends. It's less about hiding controversy over a holiday weekend.  Its essence lies in one's instincts and having the prescience to recognize the implications/backlash a potential newsmaking decision can produce. On this front, the "A" team (Arrington, Armstrong, Arianna and AOL) fell short.

With that said, I do wish Mr. Arrington success in his much-ballyhooed new venture. It will certainly be one to watch.     

Power PR Failure

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A cursory search of the Long Island Power Authority's lame Twitter feed (@LIPANews) only begins to tell the story of the monopoly's massive communications failure during the post-Irene power outage affecting more than a half million of its customers, a third of whom remain powerless six days later. And this is not the first time. God forbid Irene was an actual hurricane. (Hello Katia?)

@JPZAMBETTI @LIPAnews One of your reps just told me that the online outage map is wrong. East Hampton has a sub station problem, and there are far more

@Evanswweather LIPA is not helpful with info.

@EastMeadowMom Amazed that @LIPAnews used a 30 year old disaster recovery plan. Simply. Unacceptable. #irene

@MikeSeils @LIPAnews Still havent even received a call from you guys since I reported the blackout days ago....

@SBS0311 @LIPAnews People understand this takes time, but your automated system should stop promising callbacks that never happen.

@JonMcCarthy @LIPAnews thanks for the new pole but where is the on switch??

@PeterHirdt @LIPAnews Yesterday your chart showed 74% restored in Syosset, today it shows 31%. Do you even know what you're doing?

@Eaches Still dark. It's sad when the cable & phone companies provide better customer service.

@hskurnik @LIPAnews Can you PLEASE look into my office building in Syosset, which remains w/o power? All neighbors have power. 575 Underhill Blvd thx!

@Evansweather @LIPANEWS Sounds like you need more than a news crew! May not be power for much of Labor Day weekend.

@Sodoom Ok all jokes aside this is beyond unacceptable. @LIPAnews is not doing enough. I don't care about all those "numbers". I call shenanigans!

@WellAppointedHouse Day 5 of No Power in #Bridgehampton- only 7% of residents have power. Where is LIPA? Updates? @LIPANEWS @NewYorkPost

Even WABC-TV News' meteorologist Dr. Bill Evans gets into the act, and here's how LIPA is dealing with him and other complainants on Twitter:

"This is LIPA's news and info feed. It is NOT monitored 24/7 for replies."

Geesh. The way LIPA has handled its PR is scandalous. Basically, management told every consumer-facing employee to repeat day one's talking point that "we hope to have 90% of customers' power back by 7pm Friday. We do not have any more information."

It's unfortunate, and a sign of the times, that Long Island's leading daily newspaper Newsday -- a longtime champion of the people -- is back to being firewalled and thus incapable of exerting any real public pressure on the utility. The paper finally chimed in late yesterday with a piece "LIPA acknowledges communications problem" in which reporter Mark Harrington learned:

"Part of the problem, Hervey said, is that for Irene, LIPA dusted off a two-decade-old plan that called for decentralized dispatch repair operations, effectively creating 30 separate, nearly independently run repair utilities at substations."

As this still-powerless blogger endures the incessant and annoying grinding of the Starbucks' blender, he has come to the shocking realization that the absence of a solid line of communications between the field workers and customers is likely indicative of a much more dangerous and fundamental operational issue faced by the power company.

LIPA is simply unprepared to deal with the effects of a significant weather event, which, in our climate-changed world, is way scarier than the inconvenience of no lights and spoiled food.