February 19th, 2012
Don’t be evil. A noble, if somewhat affected, little sentiment coined at the millennium by Silicon Valley wunderkind Paul Bucheit as the motto for his workplace, a new little search engine: Google.
The Googleplex is one of those places where smart people work hard and play hard. Long hours of writing code are relieved by a visit from the on-site masseuse. Or a wholesome game of volleyball. Googlers, as they’re called, ride their bikes to work and scooter to meetings. They practice yoga. They recycle. They eat dolphin-safe tuna and drink fair trade coffee. They help each other and the world at large. In short, Googlers are good. They are not evil.
Evil people lurk outside your bedroom window to see if you’re wearing Victoria’s Secret or Hanky Panky. Evil people peek in your bathroom to see if you’re squeezing the Charmin or cuddling the Cottonelle. Really evil people go through your medicine chest to see if you’re taking any prescription drugs that would identify you as living with HIV, in treatment for cancer or kidney disease. And then they tell people. Strangers, even. People who would try to make money off your choices or circumstances.
Google, recently exposed for circumventing the privacy settings of those who use Apple’s Safari Web browser, has become the giant search engine that could—and did—track users’ online searches without their knowledge and specifically against their will. Google countered users’ conscious choice to keep their searches private. Google says it was all a big mistake and it won’t do it again.
Now, as a rule, I assume everything I do on the Web is being watched by someone either in a bunker at Homeland Security or across the street. (A five-year-old is more tech savvy than I am.) So, I’m not shocked at Google. And honestly, tracking Internet searches in order to sell me things is not evil. Ethnic “cleansing” is evil. Child abuse is evil.
This is dishonest and greedy. But—there is huge potential here for evil.
When does tracking searches to sell things morph into tracking searches to keep you from getting a job or getting health insurance? What if employers, clients, or insurance companies want to know what you search? What if that information, which we know is attainable, becomes available?
Mr. Bucheit, who originated the “Don’t Be Evil” admonition, is himself a proponent of less privacy. In a 2010 interview at the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco, Bucheit, who by then was working at Facebook, told his audience, “I actually changed my privacy settings to be more public… I like the ability to share everything… There are a lot of surprising benefits to sharing everything with the world. There’s serendipity.”
Serendipity: an aptitude for making desirable discoveries by accident. But what about making private discoveries on purpose—in secret—and selling that information to those who can wreak havoc on your health or livelihood?
Evil.
Felicia Knight is President of Knight Vision International, LLC
Image by Robert Scoble
Tags: Google, Online Secrecy, Paul Bucheit, Search Engines
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February 7th, 2012
While much of the Facebook and Twitter traffic last week was revving over the colossal miscalculations of Susan G. Komen for the Cure; regarding Planned Parenthood, another textbook case of brand destruction was unfolding, albeit to a smaller, but no less passionate audience.
A small item in the Wall Street Journal announced that the Oak Room at the august Algonquin Hotel in New York City is closing.
Several years ago, the Algonquin became a “Marriott Autograph Hotel,” a top tier property with a signature identity and brand all its own. People stay at the Algonquin, not because the rooms are more spacious or the view is better than what they’d find at, say, the Marriott Marquis several blocks away. I’ve never had a room at the Algonquin where I could have both my suitcase and the bathroom door open at the same time. More often than not, the view from my small window is of other windows from across the HVAC shaft.
No, people book into the Algonquin because they enjoy seeing Matilda the cat lounging at the check-in desk. Because as they make way for another passing guest in the narrow hallways, they like to think of who else may have squeezed through that passage decades before. People stay at the Algonquin because it has history and character, not because they want the same color scheme and bed linens they could get at a Marriott anywhere from Portland to Paducah.
The Algonquin Hotel will soon transform its storied Oak Room, the room that hosted “The Vicious Circle” of literary giants such as Dorothy Parker, Alexander Woolcott, and Robert Benchley until it moved to a larger, round table in the Rose Room, into a lounge for “Marriott Reward Elite guests.” Mrs. Parker was fond of saying, “What fresh hell is this?” Indeed.
In later years, the dark paneled Oak Room helped launch the careers of Diana Krall and Harry Connick Jr. It gave Michael Feinstein a home before he built his own. It let us grow up and older with Karen Akers and Andrea Marcovicci. Soon it will be filled not with music lovers but with business travelers delighting in their free wi-fi and complimentary crackers and cheese.
I don’t begrudge business travelers a few amenities on the road. God knows, as just such a traveler, I’m eager to find any quiet port in the traveling storm that offers me a few moments of calm, a glass of wine—and free wi-fi. But there are maybe two other places in New York to hear first-rate cabaret artists. There are at least eight other Marriott Hotels in New York City alone. Why not upgrade one of those lounges? Why rip the heart out of a piece of Manhattan culture and history?
To a young aspiring actress who once sat in the Algonquin Hotel nursing a $9 cocktail (they were much cheaper in those days) imagining her starring role in the one-woman play she would write about Dorothy Parker (which remains unwritten), this is distressing news. For a middle-aged business owner enrolled in the Marriott Rewards program, this is depressing news.
On his blog, author, playwright, librettist, and critic Terry Teachout called it an act of “cultural vandalism.”
The Algonquin’s own Facebook page is wallpapered with comments denouncing Marriott and declaring to withhold their business. “NEVER again at a Marriott,” wrote one producer who has the power to book multiple rooms. Even loyal Marriott customers are dismayed, with one vowing to move her business to Hilton. One post called the closure of the Oak Room “soulless.”
With this one decision, Marriott damaged its own brand and extinguished the Algonquin’s. And for what? Will Marriott’s elite guests find more satisfaction in yet another generic traveler’s lounge than they would listening to incomparable jazz and vocalists? Talk about being tone deaf.
Dorothy Parker once mused that her tombstone should read: “Wherever she went, including here, it was against her better judgment.” Amen.
Felicia Knight is President of Knight Vision International, LLC
Image by aoifemac
Tags: Dorothy Parker, Marriott, Oak Room, Terry Teachout, The Algonquin, Wall Street Journal
Posted in Branding & Positioning, Latest News | No Comments »
January 29th, 2012
Many of us who remember when Broadway musicals were an important contributor to pop culture are delighted that NBC has taken the risky step of placing Smash on it’s prime time schedule. Smash follows the fates of Broadway singers, songwriters, producers, directors, and dancers as they attempt to birth a musical about the life of Marilyn Monroe.
Given Fox’s success with Glee, NBC probably has a better than even chance that Smash will resonate with its target audience; presumably the sweet-spot demographic of women 25-49. Still, NBC’s version of “let’s put on a show” is not a sure thing, seeing that its primetime schedule occasionally places behind some basic-cable networks in the overnight Nielsen ratings, and that even Glee is having trouble maintaining the outsized success of its opening season.
With Steven Spielberg and a dream cast of Broadway veterans behind the series, NBC isn’t taking any chances in making sure that viewers know about Smash. Articles in New York magazine, The New York Times, Newsweek, and other print journals have reached the traditional viewers—those who still read newspapers and magazines—while a promotional campaign that links it with the year’s most-watched sporting event (“Smash debuts Monday after the Super Bowl.”) will resonate with those who get their information primarily from the Web and from television.
But the brilliant part of NBC’s marketing is that the network, a dinosaur of old media, has embraced new media by posting the entire pilot episode online. You can watch the episode before it airs nationally and then (per NBC’s plan), tell your friends about it.
I was told about it in a text. After I watched it, I posted the link on Facebook for other likeminded friends.
This is the network’s new version of an old-fashioned Hollywood tool: the movie sneak preview. Except that instead of having to sit through an iffy Jennifer Aniston rom-com, you get to see two outstanding female singers (Katharine McPhee and Megan Hilty) vie for the role of Monroe, an engaging Debra Messing as the co-writer of the musical, and a formidable Anjelica Huston as the money behind the production.
The multi-platforming doesn’t stop there, however. The television show itself may ultimately be an hour of weekly publicity and promotion for a real Broadway production of Marilyn: the Musical, should that part of the plan (see the New York magazine article) come to fruition. If Smash builds an audience, then so does Marilyn: the Musical.
If you don’t know Marilyn, if a white dress flapping over a subway grate means nothing to you, if the phrase “Happy Birthday, Mr. President” doesn’t cause a smile to creep into your memory, or if you don’t know what she and Yankee legend Joe DiMaggio have in common, then you’re unlikely to enjoy a mash-up lyric like “baseball diamonds are a girl’s best friend.” If that’s the case, then maybe Smash isn’t your cup of TV.
We’ll see.
In the meantime, kudos to NBC for embracing the Web, for giving us theatre geeks a chance to spread the word about an exciting new series, and for proving that old- and new-fashioned marketing hasn’t gone the way of Broadway’s influence on pop culture.
Felicia Knight is President of Knight Vision International, LLC
Image by NBC
Tags: Anjelica Huston, Broadway, Debra Messing, Katharine McPhee, Megan Hilty, NBC, New York magazine, Newsweek, Smash, Steven Spielberg, The New York Times
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January 19th, 2012
Hey y’all! It’s my turn to weigh in on Paula Deen. And let me begin with full disclosure: I luv Paouler Deen. I watch Food Network—and like it. I also know that cigarettes will kill you and so will texting and driving.
These days, people are upset that the woman who sends love and best dishes, preferably rolled in bacon, deep fried, and buried in butter sauce, has for three years kept hidden her diagnosis of type-2 diabetes, coming clean only after she’d signed a contract with pharmaceutical giant Novo Nordisk. With indignation worthy of Captain Renault, they are tripping over themselves to throw grease on the fire, calling her “greedy” and “a hypocrite,” and they accuse her of being the incarnation of that ultimate ne’er do well, “The Devil.”
Let’s look at some of the issues:
1. Paula, whose multi million-dollar empire was borne of her exposure on Food Network, neglected to tell Food Network of her diagnosis.
2. Paula, whose recipes are a cardiologist’s nightmare (or dream, depending on the cardiologist), swears she’s “always stressed moderation.”
3. Paula disclosed her diagnosis only after signing with Novo Nordisk.
4. Paula says she kept her diabetes a secret because she “had nothing to bring to the table,” until she had the Novo Nordisk deal.
Where to start? There are enough public relations missteps here to create a syllabus on crisis communications not to mention sheer ineptitude. The Paula Deen, Food Network, and Novo Nordisk brands are all taking hits here.
Food Network could play the “we’ve been lied to, too” card, but it’s hard for the Network that also brings you Cupcake Wars and Diners Drive-ins and Dives to escape the now energized microscopes of the food police. Paula is also one of its biggest moneymakers. Should Paula have told Food Network before now? Oh yeah. Three years ago.
I don’t know who approached whom about the Novo Nordisk deal, but the company, whose credibility with its customers, namely diabetics, is on the line, should have told Paula to “disclose, clean up your recipes, start turning around your image, and then we’ll talk to you.” The company should have let her establish some credibility in having “seen the light” before hitching its brand to the woman who also has endorsement deals with Philadelphia Cream Cheese and Smithfield Ham.
And Paula, Paula, Paula. Until the type-2 tsunami, Paula’s biggest PR problem was being insulted by Anthony Bourdain. That didn’t exactly make her unique and in fact, made her more sympathetic to her fans. While Bourdain has been among the first and loudest to pile on, this latest crisis is all her own doing. Her failure to act may have been out of fear, naïveté, or maybe, in fact, greed. Regardless, she handled it poorly and will need to do a lot more in the cause of healthier eating and living to acknowledge the seriousness of her diagnosis, that she should have disclosed sooner, and to truly bring something to the table in her new role as role model.
Now, to the charge of hypocrisy. Both detractors and fans alike have leveled this charge. I get it (sort of) coming from people who’ve always thought her recipes irresponsible in the face of America’s obesity epidemic. Still, it’s not as if she ever promoted her food as good for you. Her forkfuls of deep-fried everything are always taken with a nod toward the decadence, if not the danger, of it all. But since she did promote it, fine.
Her fans, however, are another story. The people who hang on Paula’s every cup of heavy cream, who salivate over buttermilk marinades and bacon wrapped mac-and-cheese, who delight at brunch buffets of sticky buns and chocolate chip pancakes with cinnamon cream—how, exactly, were they “betrayed” by Paula not telling them she has diabetes? Do they really think these recipes are tickets to immortality? Do they truly think overweight, wheezing Paula Deen is a nutritionist? Are these same people surprised that Amy Winehouse won’t be getting a shout out from Willard Scott? Or that David Crosby needed a liver transplant? If they think by her very existence Paula Deen is validation for a high daily intake of saturated fat-laden calories, then after a bowl of cheese grits, why don’t we all grab a cigarette and go texting and driving?
Felicia Knight is President of Knight Vision International, LLC
Image by lifescript
Tags: Diabetes, Food Network, Novo Nordisk, Paula Deen
Posted in Branding & Positioning, Crisis Communication & Management, Latest News, Media Relations, Public Relations | No Comments »
January 2nd, 2012
While I’m a huge fan of good comedy, stinging satire, and rapier wit, I’ve never been a fan of Bill Maher. (Note, I said, good comedy.) So, I find it ironic that as I shamefully revel in schadenfreude over his latest attempt to outrage the masses, it is a quote of his from about a decade ago that inspires my first blog of the New Year.
“If I cared what you thought,” he once quipped to the camera, “I’d read your blog.” I remember laughing and thinking, “Exactly! Blogs! Feh! What do I care what some pale pajama-wearing cellar dweller who’s still eating his mamma’s Coco Puffs thinks about anything? Puhlease.”
Well, now I blog and Tweet and now so does Bill Maher. My opinions, however, have not caused national boycotts nor have they forced me from network television onto cable. No, my opinions establish me as a thought leader and public relations sage and drive potential clients to my Website. Especially, if I salt them with search terms such as crisis communications, strategic media consulting, and branding.
Bill’s blogs and Tweets establish him as a highly paid provocateur who says outrageous things for the sake of being outrageous while those who are outraged because others are outraged bleat about free speech. Bill, meanwhile just cashes the checks, washes his hands, and says, “My work here is done.” (I think he learned it from Rush Limbaugh.)
Blogging and Tweeting as well as using Facebook or Google+ or Tumblr, are like being First Lady: it’s really up to you to make of it what you will. Yes, for three years, I’ve now engaged in this activity that I once derided as the purview of sequestered nerds, many of whom are now filthy rich and who’ve bought their mammas new condos in Boca. Yes, I now read multiple blogs daily because I find them informative, thought provoking, or entertaining – and with any luck, all three. I read blogs about politics, arts, sports, literature, Hollywood, PR, medicine, and food to name a few – many of which have the luxury of covering topics the mainstream media can’t or won’t.
Most people blog because they believe they have something to say that other people may find worth their time. Most of what I blog about is applicable, in some way, to my profession. Sometimes it’s a stretch. I often want to write about a topic that may not readily have a PR angle. That’s when I have to ask myself, “Who cares what you think? If they cared, they’d read your blog.”
Thanks for reading. I’ll try to make sure it’s still worth your time.
Felicia Knight is President of Knight Vision International, LLC
Image by Maria Reyes-McDavis
Tags: Bill Maher, Rush Limbaugh, Strategic Media Consulting
Posted in Branding & Positioning, Crisis Communication & Management, Politics, Public Relations | No Comments »
December 12th, 2011
Woke up. It was a Chelsea evening and the first thing that I heard was myself saying, “Whaaa?” Chelsea Clinton, avoider-in-chief of all things media just made her debut as a “special correspondent” for both NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams and the prime time program, Rock Center.
When news of her appointment at NBC first broke I was in the middle of one of those family crises that puts everything in perspective. The new me realized: life and death = important. Plum media job goes to former off limits first child who as an adult shuns media with open disdain = whatever.
But now that I’ve seen it, I’m sorry, the old me is back and has to comment.
Billed now as a “broadcast journalist,” Chelsea, Clinton is, in fact, a PhD candidate who once expressed an interest in studying medicine.
Well, television is not, as they say, brain surgery. But it is more difficult than it looks. Those who effortlessly communicate intelligently and effectively on television make it look easy and that makes just about anyone think, “I can do that.” I hate to break it to about 85 percent of you, but you can’t.
If you don’t know how to communicate with people you cannot “do” television. You can have the best writers, the coolest photographers, the craftiest editors, and the savviest producers, but if you don’t know how to follow your gut or get other people to spill theirs, or how to look into that camera and talk so people will listen, then you can’t do television. Not even the “special” stories that Chelsea (or her NBC colleague Jenna Bush Hager) is assigned.
Chelsea, who when this appointment by NBC was announced, refused to comment to the media, is now on television and “delighted to be here.” Why does someone so smart not see the irony? How can she not see the difficulty of her audience in trusting the message of one who so hates the medium?
Immersed in my recent crisis and surrounded by actual surgeons, I had many questions all coming down to trust. Can I trust you with my loved one’s future? Do I trust you to tell me all the risks?
We can’t all know how to do everything. Someone has to fix the car. Some has to build the rockets. Someone has to perform the life-saving surgery. We have to be smart enough to know what we don’t know, ask the right questions, and when to let those who do know do their best.
I wish Chelsea were smart enough to know what she doesn’t know.
Felicia Knight is President of Knight Vision International, LLC
Image by Natalie Maynor
Tags: Chelsea Clinton, Media, NBC News
Posted in Latest News, Politics | No Comments »
October 19th, 2011
Knight Vision International’s Felicia Knight offers her opinion on a “second life” for the current GOP presidential candidates in this posting on “The Wrap.”
Tags: GOP Candidates
Posted in Latest News, Politics, Public Relations | No Comments »
October 12th, 2011
Here in Red Sox Nation, most people have dried their tears, put away their beer koozies, swapped out their red and white for their yellow and black, and told their seven-year-old children to buck up; they don’t know what real suffering is.
To the post-2004 generation, “Wait ’til next year” isn’t a phrase fraught with generational despair and chronic disappointment. It’s now something we say if the Pats should lose in the playoffs or the Bruins fail to bring home the Stanley Cup. We’ve so recently drunk the champagne, it’s no big deal. (The Celtics, meanwhile, are AWOL with the rest of the NBA.)
Still, the September slide of 2011, presided over by the same management team and some of the same players who brought us a World Championship in 2004 (while also coming from a 3-0 ALCS deficit to sweep the next four games from the Yankees) and another in 2007, was painful to watch. What the heck happened?
In an excellent piece of reporting, the Boston Globe’s Bob Hohler connects the dots that led to the downward trajectory.
To sum up, hubris, laziness, indifference, lost focus, lack of leadership, and too much beer and fried chicken. (While beer and chicken may have been rocket fuel for Wade Boggs, they apparently were more like Sterno for Lackey, Lester, and Beckett.) All this and a $161 million payroll to boot.
Sweet.
It’s easy, not to mention fun, to hurl insults at a group of grown men being paid fairy tale money to play a game they are expected to play better than most anyone. It’s easy, and even more fun, to deride their arrogant disrespect for the game and us, the fans.
Not so fun, is to turn the questions back on ourselves and our own professional practices.
> Do we get cocky?
> Do we get lazy?
> Do we ever lose focus?
> Do we always provide the leadership necessary to inspire our best work and that of colleagues?
> Do we ever bring in beer and fried chicken when crudités and iced tea would have been more appropriate?
If you’re lucky enough to be signed to an $82.5 million contract, you’re probably not reading this blog looking for tips on best business practices (If you are, can I interest you in hiring a PR firm?), but you probably are in the business world. People are always applying sports metaphors to life and I admit it’s depressing to listen to some facilitator with markers and flip charts drone on about “playing to win” and giving “110%.” It’s more depressing, however, to lose a contract or a job because of complacency, indifference, or laziness.
So, let the 2011 Red Sox be a wakeup call. Step away from the fried chicken, put down the beer, look in the mirror and ask, “Is it next year?”
Felicia Knight is President of Knight Vision International, LLC
Image by Andrew Malone
Tags: Boston Globe, Bruins, Celtics, Red Sox
Posted in Branding & Positioning, Crisis Communication & Management, Latest News, Media Relations, Public Relations | No Comments »
September 19th, 2011
“Use your words” is one of those new parenting phrases that I find annoyingly precious. It’s right up there with “Who needs a time out?” But then I was raised on “Because I said so” in a house with an actual woodshed.
“Use your words,” however, has run through my head on more than one professional occasion. I cannot count the number of times I have listened to an adult who cannot verbally communicate with credible authority. In addition to an addiction to “like” and “you know,” their words and sentences run together so fast, you’d swear they were being paid by the word:
“OhmyGodyouknowhwatwouldbereallycoolwouldbelikeifwecouldgetabandtoyouknowplayastheyunveiltheproductonyou-knowthelikeactualstepsofthebuildingwhen-peoplearegoingtolikework?”
I hear this and I think, who invited Moon Zappa? While this highly caffeinated idea spewing is irritating, so is the slacker approach.
“Prolly the bes thing wuh be… uh… ya know, like maybe… ih we gotta ban ta play.”
Why don’t you and Jeff Spicoli go flesh this out and get back to me, okay?
Perhaps the most credibility sapping of all poor speech patterns is something called upspeak. Upspeak turns all declarative sentences into questions.
“It would be really great? If we could get a band to play on the steps? As we unveiled the product? When people are actually going to work?
When I hear this, I want to call a halt to the proceedings and demand, “Are you asking or telling us? Because from the tone of your voice, it sounds to me like you have no idea what you’re talking about, that you’re grasping at ideas and looking to the rest of us for validation.”
Of course I don’t say this. Usually. But I think it – and I’m sure others do too.
Elocution is an old fashioned word. It calls to mind the “one Grecian urn” scene from The Music Man. But authoritative, intelligent, verbal communication is needed in the modern world. One should have not only a facility with language but also an ability to speak clearly and intelligibly.
If you think you need help with your verbal communication skills, do yourself a favor and call a communications professional.
And don’t forget to use your words.
Felicia Knight is President of Knight Vision International, LLC
Image by pa1nt
Tags: Communications, Slackers, Upspeak, Use Your Words
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