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	Phil's Blogservations Friday, August 23, 2002 Posted by philgomes 8:49 PM Broadcast News Competition Goes Haywire: Tonight, your nightly news update will be on at five...Unless, of course, it airs at 4:57 p.m. In an effort to be first with the news versus their competitors, it would seem that Seattle news stations are jumping the 5:00 p.m. starting gun, according to this article. This trend is the result of a shrewd marketing ploy: "It gives audiences the uneasy sense they may have missed something big—which is part of the idea." As a result, if you turned on your TV right at 5:00 p.m., you probably missed the lead story and, worse, you probably would think that the second story was the top news of the day. Actually, it's kind of funny 'cause I used to swear for the longest time that KTVU—my local Fox affiliate—was doing the same thing with The X-Files in order to add to the series' mystery. My clocks were probably just fast, though. The cynic might ask why people are complaining about a three-minute difference. But think about how much broadcast news is typically conveyed in that time, especially in this age of compression. Think about how much might be missed by the punctual viewer. And what if you were fortunate enough to place your client or company as the top story? Who exactly would see the coverage? The day might come when we supplement geographically determined time zones (PT, MT, CT, ET) with domain-specific ones: "Broadcast News Time," "Surgery Initiation Time," "Pick Up Girlfriend At Airport Time," etc. Thursday, August 22, 2002 Posted by philgomes 3:39 PM Gomes' Eighth Law Of PR Invoked: Gomes' Eighth Law Of PR states "No amount of PR—no matter how carefully or strategically applied—will help a faulty or underperforming product in the long term. Corallary: Offending company should offer a humble act of contrition and solution for transgression that breaks the Eighth Law." Before I begin... I should say that, though I do carry a Handspring Visor Deluxe, I am a big fan of Palm. The OS is fast, lightweight, and clearly optimized for the tasks that handhelds typically perform. I've been waiting with bated breath ever since the Be, Inc. aquisition to see if a new, multimedia-rich PalmOS will become available soon. For a short while, Palm even inspired the kind of wild-eyed, cultish enthusiasm generally ascribed to Apple fanatics. One former manager of mine even exclaimed "I love my Palm!" during a meeting, inspiring plenty of giggling at the accidental (and potentially dirty) double-entendre. (Sidenote: I've always thought—and hasn't everyone?—that "Palm Pilot" could have been an insult that Beavis might've hurled at Butthead had they performed their adolescent hijinks in Silicon Valley instead of some nameless backwater.) Anyway... It's worth pointing out to Blogservations readers that wireless industry scribe Elisa Batista has been chronicling the unfortunate marketing-vs-reality disconnect surrounding the Palm m130 handheld. In short, the device's marketing and packaging claimed a display with 16-bit color depth, though it only features 12-bit color. This translates into a device that can display only 89% of the colors it claims to offer—maybe less if certain color blending techniques are not employed. Only thing is, as of this writing, Palm isn't doing anything about it. HP ran into a similar problem with some products in its Jornada handheld line. However, HP did the right thing and offered customers a refund. I can't find an apology on the Palm site. The only thing I'm reading in the press is that Palm made an "honest mistake" when certain electronic components were mis-characterized. Now, I know that HP has much deeper pockets than Palm, so perhaps it's a little easier for them to field a refund program. But, from where I sit, it looks like Palm is blowing its customers off. Even an electronic coupon redeemable at Palm's online store would be a good start. Consider that this switch might've cost Palm's competitors some significant sales. After all, if one handheld offered true 16-bit color, but another claimed the same color depth at a lower price, wouldn't you pick the latter? There's a lively discussion taking place on Slashdot, if you're interested. Blogservations will keep a keen eye on how this is resolved from a PR perspective. Wednesday, August 21, 2002 Posted by philgomes 3:37 PM Dan Gillmor Features Phil's Blogging Article And Other PR Thoughts: I was quite honored to find that Dan Gillmor thought my ExpertPR article on PR and blogging was worth mentioning along with other thoughts on the topic. Mr. Gillmor rightly points out that we ought to get clients to put up blogs. He also realizes, though, that the lawyers would probably make this highly unlikely. Widespread corporate blogging, if it happens, probably won't start from the top-down. The residents of the corner offices and the majority of the investors they serve probably haven't "grokked in fullness" the communications advantages that blogging offers. However, the technical and technology enthusiast community has. If members of a company's engineering organization were trained as to what information was verboten for public consumption, then I think that companies could start a strong cult-of-personality within the developer community if that audience felt that they were closer to a company's high-level technical thinking. A blog run by, say, a well-spoken senior engineer could achieve this. And, as Mr. Gillmor points out, "PR portions of corporate Web sites generally suck." Studies have actually shown that a journalist gets what he or she wants out of a company's PR page less than 60% of the time. Tuesday, August 20, 2002 Posted by philgomes 2:41 PM Phil's Glad He's Not As Dumb As He Thought: Now, I'm a pretty tech-savvy guy. I used to be a sysadmin at a library, and a Webmaster before the "table" HTML tag came out. In my PR career, I've represented the techiest of the tech companies. But, for chrissakes, what the hell is this .Net thingy from Microsoft!?! I've read the trade press, studied the whitepapers...Hell, I even listened to Steve Ballmer's Churchill Club speech about the topic. (I think they had to resurface the floor after his sweat pooled under the stage.) I've done all this and I still don't feel I have a true grasp of what Microsoft is talking about. Apparently, I'm not alone. According to this c|net story, it's pretty clear that the launch of this concept yields a valuable lesson in technology evangelism. Namely, the problem has been attaching the ".Net" (pronounced "dot-net") name and concept somewhat broadly throughout discussion of Microsoft's current and future offerings. While this seems to have worked in terms of an infrastructure story, it's unclear what .Net means to consumers and businesses. And, of course, Sun Microsystems will claim that "Web services" has existed as Java apps for several years. This will indeed be an interesting rollout to follow. Thursday, August 08, 2002 Posted by philgomes 9:47 PM "CEO As Rock Star" PR Fad Gets Last Gasp: Darwin is running a piece on CEO-level, Web-based crisis communications in the Enron era. It rightly suggests that one thing that Worldcom is doing right is offering a micro-site where people can catch up on all things having to do with the "restructuring." Agreed, but then the article takes another turn: According to a survey of more than 100 "most-admired" company websites of the Fortune 500, Burson-Marsteller found that just 12 percent included a dedicated section to their CEO—a key figure in building and fostering a company's image and reputation. What the survey didn't tell you is that less than 12 percent of the CEOs in the Fortune 500 are worth knowing too much about anyway. While I certainly agree that much of a company's perception-influencing charge issues forth with the CEO at the lead, one can die by that approach just as much as s/he can succeed by it. Scientific, technological, and conceptual innovation, well-marketed to key audiences at all stages of growth, is the only thing that succeeds in business. Period. Often that marketing component requires the CEO be out in front. Fine. But that CEO can leave, find a better job, decide to "spend more time with the family," get on the Board's bad side, and get caught with hands in the cookie jar...or worse places. Take the band Journey, for example. Steve Perry, a relative newcomer to the band, soon became its figurehead. It's singing CEO, if you will. He eventually started making all of the decisions, including firing the rhythm section of Ross Valory and Steve Smith during the Raised On Radio sessions. Despite all of the expert songwriting talent and musicianship in the rest of the band (Neil Schon will never get the credit he deserves as a guitarist), all of the perceptual wampum was holed up in Steve Perry. When he departed the band for good, Journey was left with a mere sound-alike: "Steve Perry with a perm," as drummer Deen Castronovo put it on VH1's Behind The Music. The music is still alright—I never was a huge Journey fan—but Journey lived and died by the CEO-as-brand marketing strategy. Business Lessons From '80s Musicians. I smell a book coming on... Tuesday, August 06, 2002 Posted by philgomes 10:10 PM No, I Take That Back...: I totally spoke too soon. This is the kookiest agency marketing stunt I've ever seen! O'Dwyer's comes through twice in one day with strange tales of agency self-promotion gone horribly wrong. Here, gigantic multinational PR firm Edelman is asking its vendors—presumably newswire services, news retrieval databases, etc.—to pony up dough and participate in a spread within the Sept. 23 issue of Advertising Age. The occasion: Edelman's 50th anniversary. Big wow. I must say that this is a rather ill-conceived stunt. It's especially maladroit if Edelman's vendor accounts are indeed past-due by 90 days or more, as one post alleges. What motivation does a vendor have to participate in this? There were so many PR-related things that Edelman could've done. Maybe head up a high-level conference discussing the history and future of PR? Perhaps moderated and hosted by Stuart Ewen, author of All Consuming Images and PR: The Social History Of Spin? Do I have to do all the thinking around here!?! Update: Tom Murphy sounds off with his own astute opinions. Posted by philgomes 11:47 AM Agency Marketing Standards Seek New Parameters: I've seen agencies do some pretty odd marketing stunts. I'm convinced that many agencies promote themselves more than their clients. And then, in cyberspace, there are the Macromedia Flash abuses that Tom Murphy so regularly chronicles. But, now, Vanilla Coke shills Hope-Beckam are running billboards that describe their services as "kick-ass PR." Huh? Atlanta public transit authorities wouldn't allow the words "kick-ass"—or "K-A" as the prudes at O'Dwyer's put it—on the sides of their buses, so "killer PR" was used instead. Don't get me wrong: everyone wants "kick-ass PR." The question is whether it's tasteful to market oneself that way. This could either be the most gutsiest agency marketing move I've ever seen, or a colossal blunder made by a group that has otherwise done quite well. We'll have to watch this closely, oh faithful Blogservations readers. Monday, August 05, 2002 Posted by philgomes 8:36 PM How To De-Motivate Your Senior Management In Ten Easy Steps: Step one, of course, would be to use a public forum like EBN magazine to declare that you will be axing several members of your executive staff. I hope these guys knew about this RIF before this piece came out! Thursday, August 01, 2002 Posted by philgomes 8:36 PM New Technology VC Buzzwords Offer Same $#!+, But Different Flies: Red Herring's Julie Landry has penned a brilliant piece about how buzzwords are changing in the venture capital community. Where some see a humorous piece, I see a warning. "Dry powder," "flight to quality," and "sticking to our knitting" are tiny grubs that may soon grow into pernicious, ghastly, Lovecraftian locusts descending upon the English language. I should know: I see verbal effluvium like "end-to-end," "robust," and "strategically leveraged solution" every day! Posted by philgomes 3:47 PM Your IT Person's Junk-Food Addiction, Lack Of Short-Term Memory Explained: According to a U.K. survey, one in three pot smokers are employed in the high-tech sector. Then again, living in the Bay Area, one in three of anybody is employed in the high-tech sector. HOME | OBSESSIONS | FAQ | HEROES | CAREER | BLOG | CONTACT Note that the views expressed on this site do not necessarily reflect those of Phil's employer, its business partners, its clients, or anyone or anything that doesn't come from Phil.	ABOUT THIS BLOG This blog not only discusses PR and media matters, but Phil's everyday observations about a variety of topics. 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