Are You a Stamp Collecting, Bible Reading Maytag Customer?

I recently purchased a new Maytag dishwasher from the best furniture and appliances store that I am distantly related to, Schenck Furniture in Germantown. So yes, for the record I am 1/8 Schenck.

While you finish snickering about that I want to tell you about the super invasive and scary warranty card that came with my Maytag model MDB6709AWW2. The first thing you notice is that it is dual-language in French. This is interesting, I realized later, because I thought both Europeans and Canadians were crazy about corporations invading personal privacy.

After asking normal warranty-card-appropriate things like name, address, store, date of purchase, the Maytag card moves on to asking everything but my cholesterol level. Apparently, in order to let me know of any recalls or issues with my dishwasher, Maytag needs to know:

• Our occupations
• Household income
• Level of education
• The names of credit cards I use regularly
• Whether I own or rent my home
• If I am a stamp collector
• Do I read the Bible
• Have I vacationed on a cruise ship
• Do I care about wildlife or environmental issues
• If I go fishing or hunting or just like to shoot
• My interest level in health foods

There is no indication on the card that this additional information is optional, however, there is some fine print. Let me summarize it here: We have cashed in on our good brand name to get you to give us a lot of valuable information for free, which we will immediately sell to the highest bidder and keep all the moolah. Actual sentence on the form: Please check here if, for some reason, you prefer not to participate in this opportunity.

Oh, I'm sorry Maytag. It was an opportunity for me. How ungrateful can I be?

Is it possible the Maytag repairman got so bored, he decided to do a little spam marketing on the side?

Bio-Degradable

In my world of public relations, if I'm not writing short biographies (bios) of corporate executives, I'm being asked to write one for myself.

I thought it would be fun to write my real bio; maybe I'll start using this:

Holly Michael once wanted to build, then promote the world’s largest Oreo on Times Square or drive the Oscar Meyer Weiner Mobile, instead she tackled the world of corporate communications, writing many, many press releases with the word “solution” in them. Over the course of her career,  Holly has managed, against stiff opposition from many engineers-turned-marketers, to get companies mocked on The Daily Show and written up in the Wall Street Journal next to charts of their declining stock price. An award-winning writer and strategist, Holly has accepted local and national awards for programs involving, separately, budgets for dead bodies and private investigators. Holly lives on an un-air-conditioned pig farm.


PhotoCredit: Watauga Democrat

Leverage Two Synergies and Call Me in the Morning

Last week I got a text from my good friend and former corporate colleague, M, who is now a stay-at-home-Mom (SAHM). M had just dropped off her oldest for two hours of pre-school; she was sitting in her minivan in the Starbucks drive-thru lane when she realized she was slipping into SAHM-hood, perhaps losing her corporate edge.

Racing to the elevators on my way to a meeting, I thoughtfully texted back, You are a lost cause. I was joking--just because M doesn't have a corporate paycheck doesn't mean she isn't the same smart, savvy corporate player she always was.

But I can understand her concern about losing her corporate mindset in a world filled with Yo Gabba Gabba. So I have helpfully developed a list of things that SAHM's like M and other women who find themselves away from the corporate grind for a while can do at home to stay in the zone corporate-wise.

Create a corporate atmosphere - It's probably not possible to cover your walls in grey cubicle fabric, but there are a few inexpensive ways to create a more corporate atmosphere in the home

• Ask your neighbors for some random leftovers. Put them in the back of the fridge and let the lovely aromas instantly transform your kitchen into a corporate break room. Bonus points for posting a passive aggressive note above the garbage disposal switch. Oh, and don't forget to burn some popcorn in the microwave once a week, at least.
• Create a cumbersome barrier to your bathroom. Lock the door and tie the key to a giant block of wood or maybe walk through three or four rooms of the house each time before you get to the door.
• Get a lot of fake, green leafy plants. Or if budget permits, get a lot of real plants and hire a lady with a cart to come through and water them. Bonus points for posting Don't water me signs on each pot.

Simulate corporate interactions - It's the people that are a company's most important asset, right? Do what you can to recreate the special feeling of belonging to a corporate workforce.

• Type up a detailed report of everything you did this week--then e-mail it to someone in another city who you have only talked to on the phone but never met. Bonus points for using Excel.
• Instead of talking to the people you see every day, like your neighbor or even husband, send them lots of detailed e-mails.
• Stop driving all over town for PTA or neighborhood association meetings. Make every meeting a conference call. Bonus points for scheduling them back to back.

Enjoy an expense account - Recreate that feeling of satisfaction you felt in spending the corporate budget like it was your own money. Except now it really is your own money.

• Hire an agency to do something you used to do (e.g. housework, childcare, cooking, landscaping). Announce that you will be doing the strategic thinking while they act as your hands and feet. Fire them in six months when you get sticker shock from the invoice.
• Go on a boondoggle with one of your biggest vendors. Note: Call this by the corporate name of User Conference rather than the SAHM term: BlogHer.

So you see, it is possible for SAHM's who want to re-enter the workforce eventually or women who are currently looking for a job to keep their head in the game. I guarantee that these tips are just what the doctor ordered to keep you prepared for corporate life. If they don't, you can always leverage two synergies and call me in the morning.

If You Can't Beat 'Em, Join 'Em

When I first started this blog, I did it to have a creative outlet. I was very tired of spending my days writing about my B2B employer's leading innovative solutions.  I never had any goals for this blog about making money from selling ads or any type of sponsorship.

Along the way I heard about these very savvy women bloggers known as the mommy bloggers, a term some embraced, others decried but all were willing to have tattooed on their a$$ if it meant a free trip to Blogher.

I kept hearing about the trips, the clothes, the free toys, the Twitter parties with giveaways and finally I said to myself and my good friend and fellow blogger M, maybe we're doing this wrong.

One day, on a lark, I signed up for Mom Select, a company that connects mommy bloggers and companies. I thought it would be good research for my career. I also used career research as the excuse for applying for my very first mommy blogger adventure--becoming a Soft Scrub Club Captain.

Well, Big Butter Jesus on toast (this phrase may be copyrighted by Soy Boy Mama), they picked me.

As Bugs Bunny would say--and oh God, most of the mommy bloggers are too young to have seen Bugs Bunny--if you can't beat 'em, join 'em.

So stay tuned. I took pictures of my filthy sink.

A Tip for Dayton

I can't stand it when people get all indignant and can't see the humor in things. Nothing is more unappealing to me than when an individual or an organization is so self-focused that they can't or won't allow for any self-deprecating laughs.

That said, this farm wife from Dayton HATES, HATES the "cow tipping" shirts that greet visitors at the Dayton (we offer connecting flights to Canada) International Airport.

Oh, you haven't seen them? I tried to take a photo during my most recent trip:



Right after I snapped the photo I was told by the Paradies Shop cashier that I wasn't allowed to photograph the shirts--they are copyrighted, apparently.

The shirts greeting visitors to Dayton--our suggested last-minute gift items to take home to loved ones--they say "Nothing Tips Like a Cow." So you see my quandary. It is sort of funny. It says, "hey honey, look what I brought you back from the middle of nowhere." It's Ohio, nothing here but cows, get it?


Call me no fun, or boring, or unappreciative of our strong agriculture base (of which I am a part), but I can't stand these shirts. So much so that on the way home I snuck up and took more photos through the shop's closed bars, with a friend standing guard.

So what's my problem? Why does the farm wife, of all people, dislike these shirts? Because I also work in public relations and branding. Because Dayton is struggling. We are struggling to grow our business base. We are struggling to retain the companies we have. And when companies leave, what is their excuse for leaving--that no one sees Dayton as a business destination. You know, it is rumored, that the non-Dayton CEO of a certain Dayton-founded company calls his employees in Ohio "the corn people."

WELL MAYBE IF WE DIDN'T REINFORCE THAT WITH COW TIPPING SHIRTS AT THE AIRPORT IT MIGHT HELP. Sorry.

I did a mini-interview with the Paradies Shop cashier and asked her, since the Dayton Airport is owned by the City of Dayton, who decides what goes in the stores. She said that Paradies has a Dayton-based manager who does the purchasing.

Let me just put forth a crazy idea. What if we invested a lot of money and had an out-of-town branding company come up with a unique way to graphically represent our current vision for Dayton with also a nod to the past. If they came up with something good, it might catch on and become the basis for a city branding campaign.

Nah, Dayton would never do that...


Yeah, it's just too bad we don't have ANYTHING better to graphically represent our city than an up-turned cow.

Congratulations from the Barnyard Animals

Sometimes when you are straddling the worlds of corporate communications and agriculture, you have conversations like this.

Me from work via cell phone: Guess what? We WON! We won a national PR award!

Noises coming from Husband's cell phone: OINK. oink, oink, snort. OINNNK.

Husband: That's good isn't it?

Yes, I'm very proud to say that our team won a PR News Platinum PR Award for a community relations program geared to introduce area high school students to careers in health care. The event included a cadaver lab and mock trauma in the ER.

I'd say it's a safe bet that the national PR agencies (Coyne, Ogilvy) and major brand names (Hard Rock, GE, Lego, Coca-Cola) that also won awards in this program did NOT spend 2/3 of their program budget on dead bodies.

But then it's also a safe bet that their PR team wasn't congratulated by barnyard animals.

PR Idea of the Week

This week I had the opportunity to speak to some Intro to PR students at our local Community College (Chevy Chase was not there. Darn.). The adjunct faculty member and I had worked together years ago doing B2B public relations. She asked me to share a little about my career path and how I had now landed in non-profit healthcare.

Since I have also been asked to be on a social media panel for another local university's PR students, I thought I would use my blog to share the differences between working in public relations/communications in high-tech B2B and non-profit healthcare.

Why you love to work there:
Healthcare- Small department moves quickly. Ideas discussed in the hallway in the morning are underway by the afternoon. Management is all local.
B2B - Challenge of taking high-tech jargon and turning it into compelling media pitches. Tech trade journalists and national business pages can be tough to crack--but very exciting when you do.

Your biggest frustration on the job:
Healthcare - Highly competitive industry + Highly local industry = Highly personal issues
B2B - Endless, soul-sucking approval processes.

When you arrive at the office at 7:15 a.m...
Healthcare -You are already late for your 7 a.m. meeting.
B2B - You get a SWEET parking spot and a few hours to work before your colleagues on the West Coast start sending e-mails.

Team meetings include:
Healthcare - Sitting around the table with your team, interrupted by the paging of code blue--a reminder that life and death are part of your business.
B2B - Joining a conference call with your colleagues in three states and two countries. Have to stop typing e-mails and take phone off mute when ready for your report.

Perks of the job:
Healthcare - Good benefits. On-site pharmacy, chapel, gift shop, cafeteria.
B2B - Expense account. As many logo shirts as you can fit in your closet.

Access to your organization's customers and influencers:
Healthcare - Two floors down in surgery. Sitting at the table next to you in the cafeteria.
B2B - Industry conferences and trade shows. Expensive focus groups.

Colleagues from other parts of the business rush around...
Healthcare - Saving lives. Referring to folded up pieces of paper jammed in their lab coats.
B2B - Grabbing a quick break between conference calls. Clutching their BlackBerry in case something comes in while they are away from their desk.

Students, know that geography, interesting challenges, connections and plain dumb luck will play a heavy part in determining what industry you end up in.

Whether you're working for Disney or the local sanitation department, PR is all about identifying and connecting with your target audiences. My advice to students is to build your skillset and look for opportunities to do the interesting, innovative PR projects that drive you.

Top 10 Dayton Media on Twitter

I took my popular Dayton Media Twitter list and did another analysis this week to determine the most frequently followed Dayton journalists on Twitter.

1. WHIO TV7 - 1608 followers


2. Dayton Daily News - Hal McCoy - 1462 followers


3. Dayton Daily News - 1387 followers


4. WDTN TV2 - 1286 followers


5. Dayton Daily News - Ohio Politics - 990 followers


6. Dayton Daily News - Mark Fisher Wine - 927 followers
   
7. Greenville Advocate 360 - 903 followers


8. WDTN TV2 - Kennan Oliphant - 794 followers
   
9. WHIO TV7 - Rich Wirdzek - 676 followers


10. Dayton Daily News - Mark Fisher Food - 611 followers

*Followers as of Oct. 10, 2009.

A few observations on this list:

• The list changed very little since August, with the addition of @darkecounty, which bumped
  Dayton Daily News - Kim Margolis.
  
• WHIO TV7 took the lead over Dayton Daily News - Hal McCoy. Just today, the paper announced that Hal will be staying on in a freelance capacity and continuing his Twitter account.
  
• Kennan Oliphant remains the most prolific individual media Twitter account, now with 4,710 updates.


• Interestingly, the Dayton Daily News editorial team hits the bottom of this list for both followers and updates, with Scott Elliott, Ellen Belcher, Ron Rollins and Brian Kollars all amassing about 110 updates (97 of them from Elliott).


• Mark Fisher, columnist for the Dayton Daily News, is still the King of this list with TWO of the top ten most popular media Twitter accounts in Dayton.
  

To see how all the media on my Dayton Twitter list fared, see my spreadsheet.

Most Popular Dayton Media on Twitter

I took my popular Dayton Media Twitter list and did a little analysis this week to determine the most frequently followed Dayton journalists on Twitter.

1. Dayton Daily News - Hal McCoy - 1375 followers


2. WHIO TV7 - 1281 followers


3. Dayton Daily News - 1244 followers


4. WDTN TV2 - 1217 followers


5. Dayton Daily News - Ohio Politics - 865 followers


6. Dayton Daily News - Mark Fisher Wine - 861 followers


7. WDTN TV2 - Kennan Oliphant - 645 followers


8. Dayton Daily News - Kim Margolis - 606 followers


9. Dayton Daily News - Mark Fisher Food - 601 followers


10. WHIO TV7 - Rich Wirdzek - 550 followers

*Followers as of Aug. 20, 2009.

A few observations on this list:

• Congratulations to @HalMcCoy_Reds, Dayton's most popular journalist on Twitter. Unfortunately, Hal has been given his walking papers, so perhaps he won't be Tweeting for the paper for long.


• Jeff Booth of WRGT/WKEF TV easily made the top ten, but I took him out of contention because his Twitter account is largely personal.


• Kennan Oliphant is the most prolific individual media Twitter account with 3,564 updates.


• Mark Fisher, columnist for the Dayton Daily News, should be recognized for holding TWO of the top ten most popular media Twitter accounts in Dayton.
  

To see how all the media on my Dayton Twitter list fared, see my spreadsheet.

Tip of the hat to Ed Bennett for this idea--his applied to hospitals on Twitter.

PR Idea of the Week

Egads! Before I become a complete Mommy blogger (not that there's anything wrong with that), I thought I would get back to the third element of this blog and share an interesting PR campaign.

The marketing/PR/social media team at Discovery Channel has hit a home run in promoting Shark Week--by "killing off" most of the nation's TV bloggers. Put down your logo folder and back away from your USB drive PR people, because the press kit for Shark Week includes mangled surf shorts and a customized obituary for each recipient.

Here's a photo that's been shared on multiple blogs with the contents of the kit received by James Hibberd, blogger for The Hollywood Reporter.

There are several good blogs deconstructing this campaign but by far the best quote--and best takeaway from this press kit--is from Hibberd's blog.

"I love it, I think it's great," says one PR executive at an unrelated company about the Discovery campaign. "And the reason I love it is because you're writing about it."

It DOESN'T MATTER that the headline of Hibberd's story is "Creepiest network marketing effort ever?"

Peter Ha from CrunchGear, who also suffered a tragic shark-attack death at the hands of Discovery, similarly photographed and documented his experience with this press kit. And Sling went as far as to offer their free suggestions for other shows who might be looking for edgy press kit concepts. (I know it's a cliche but I literally LOL at the one for Hoda and Kathy Lee.)

A few years ago (a few months ago?) if you asked journalists at a media panel what they think about getting clever PR stuff in the mail, they would mostly say that they don't like it and you should just email them a solid story idea. BUT the definition of journalist has changed as well as the opportunities to go viral by appealing to vanity (Pepsi told recipients of their campaign they were among the top bloggers in the nation), and the fact that people are looking for cool stuff to post online.

You have to think that there had to be naysayers at Discovery who thought that the obituaries were tacky or that the bloody shorts were too scary, or that they shouldn't be promoting shark attacks since they are so rare and it undoes years of science education--all good points.

But if their goal was to get blog hits and people talking blogging and tweeting about Shark Week--then they were a big success.

Pork and PR

We get a lot of publications at our house that feature many, many pictures of pig balls. Get your mind out of the gutter! These are serious publications that include ads from boar studs (a boar stud is exactly what you think it is) that are showing the males they have for sale.

We also get a number of earnest publications put together by the Pork Producers Council and the Farm Bureau featuring swine manure management strategies or perhaps stories about farmers and how they plant the exact grasses in their pasture to maximize the digestive process of their goats (an actual story that I read).

The point I'm getting to is that in looking over the farm literature that comes into the house daily I'm starting to see a trend. Farmers, at least when talking to each other, are tired of lying back and letting others shape their image.

I participated in my first #agchat on Twitter tonight. For two hours, I watched over 130 tweets roll in from people all over the world who are concerned about the image of agriculture and the way certain groups have gotten ahead of us in framing a conversation based on emotion rather than the science most farmers are more comfortable with.

I helped Husband tweet about the Ohio Pork Tour, a print, Web, YouTube campaign to show that Ohio's pig farmers are real people who care about the environment, taking good care of their hogs, and supporting their families. As a PR person and a hog farmer, I find this to be an interesting campaign at an opportune time. I encourage you to check it out.

PR Idea of the Week

This week I just couldn't look away from the PR-wreck in process with a local school district. It's almost comical how predictable the story is. It goes like this:

1. Local school district writes well-intentioned code of conduct with "zero tolerance" type policies.
2. Cute first grader brings in a plastic knife to cut her cupcake, or 6th grade punk gives cough drop to his girlfriend, or kindergartner kisses a classmate, or wrestler steals (or forgets to pay for) $1.30 worth of cookies
3. Gutless principal is very sorry but he MUST apply all the rules to EVERYONE THE SAME and also the punishment
4. Astounded parents, accompanied by their lawyer, go to the court of public opinion (and real court) via the media
5. School board and other school officials hide behind policy of not discussing student disciplinary issues
6. Minor situation that could have been handled by a detention becomes national news story
7. Repeat steps 4 and 5 until community is completely divided and/or media move on to something else

As a PR person who enjoys a juicy school vs. media showdown, I say why introduce common sense at this juncture. Your zero tolerance approach is really working for you (let me know how that school tax levy campaign goes, will you).

But as a mother, voter and more importantly, a taxpayer, I would like to see schools start thinking about how winning the war of public opinion is always more important than winning the battle over little Suzie's plastic spork.

How to get a passing grade in PR 101:

1. Insert a common sense clause into your handbook. The American Bar Association has a very thoughtful report on zero tolerance. A key quote: Schools are confusing equal treatment with equitable treatment. . . . Kids in middle school and high school care most about fairness. When they see two students whose 'offenses' are vastly different being treated exactly the same, that sense of fairness is obliterated and replaced with fear and alienation.
2. Speak up. Assuming you have followed the first rule, then don't wait five media cycles to say something in the school's defense. You have a duty to the rest of your well-behaved students not to let parents, lawyers or media smear your district unfairly.
3. Get some media training for the school board and key administrators. Don't let your school board send poorly-written emotional notes to the media after the story has almost died down.
4. Grow a pair--of externally focused eyes--that are able to see how the real world is going to perceive what is happening inside your little educational bubble.
5. There will be a test. Actually, it will start out as a pop quiz to see how well your administration can handle an unanticipated breech of student rules. Follow steps 1-4 above, and maybe we won't need to cover the same materials on the final.

Impregnated by Marketing

I've never met him (or her!) but someone at a mail list broker has impregnated me. Yes, call it the Im-mail-culate conception.

Let's be crystal clear: I AM NOT ACTUALLY PREGNANT. But yesterday I received a mailing from Pampers with a handy guide of what to pack for the hospital--complete with a free sample newborn diaper.

I laughed it off as a weird error until today when I received the Enfamil coupon. Oh my God, someone out there thinks I'm pregnant.

I'm not sure what to do. These mailings are not random, they have my full name and proper address. I guess they'll stop in nine months (?)

I'm racking my brain to think of what I could have done out there in the world of market research that would get my name added to the pregnant list. Maybe this is a joke and someone out there will read this post and see that they got me good.

I know lots of women my age are still having kids, but I have a nice scar in my belly button that proves I'm outta commission.

What will be next? Offers from Gerber? Pamphlets from La Leche? Am I going to have a daily piece of junk mail that is completely off the mark. What other lists am I on? Triathlete, scuba diver, stamp collector, hula instructor, perhaps.

When you think about it, these largely unknown list-keepers control a lot of what you know and who reaches you. Think of the power. With a touch of a button they can mark you as old, diseased, gullible, health conscious, rich. Apparently, they can even impregnate you.

PR Idea of the Week

I was traveling northbound on Gettysburg Ave. (before the intersection of James H. McGee) in an economically depressed part of Dayton this week when I saw a billboard. Could it be? The Dayton Patented campaign? I paused in the turn lane to snap a few photos


The story about Devon Berry is a good one. Local guy sees the world but decides Dayton is where he wants to raise his family. That's all well and good.

But it seems like this would be phase two of the campaign. What about a campaign just to socialize the rubber stamp logo? They are really trying to do a lot with the four seconds they get until you speed past this billboard.

This is really the first I've seen or heard from the campaign since there was an article in the Dayton Daily News and some blog chatter back in August. Maybe, since I'm already committed to living and working in greater Dayton, I'm not seeing the campaign because I'm not the target.

Everyone's a critic when it comes to branding, so I'm trying to be supportive. I will say that the City of Dayton is missing a few opportunities on this one. First, they could be using people like me and other local bloggers to spread the word. We would do it for free! A cool badge for my blog would be nice, noting that I'm also a Dayton Original.

And how about that t-shirt order page? You have to GO to the public affairs office (between the hours of 8:01 and 4:59, I bet) to buy one? Are you kidding me? I'll buy one online, especially if you throw in two more for me to give away on my site.

Dink-dink, dink-dink (that's the sound of me tapping on the monitor). Are you there Dayton public affairs office? It's us, the people of Dayton. We are originals. We want the city and therefore the region to be cool. Let us help you.

Thanks for Reading in 2008

Happy New Year! Thanks for reading this blog.

Thanks to those of you who openly read the blog and bring it up in conversation with my husband who then says I didn't know that. And thanks to those who are closet readers and try to pretend they don't even know I have this blog--I know who you are (can you say Google Analytics) and I am very tempted to out you by posting embarrassing photos of your spouse [just kidding, I think].

And a special thanks to my friend M who started last year at this time urging me to start a blog, so she alone didn't have to hear about how I thought my son felt like an octopus when he was being born.

What a year it has been. We had a a presidential election, a hurricane, an earthquake, and a blizzard and this blog was there to cover it all.

I tried to offer content you couldn't get on other blogs, so I enrolled all of you in remedial agricultural education, including pigs 101 and field trips to the World Pork Expo and the county fair. In covering agriculture I tried to give you special access to exclusive information like the secret code of pig farmers. I worked to broaden your horizons and teach important terminology. I toggled between grossing you out and sharing cute photos of pigs.

I put a lot of myself out there for you, including sharing my compassionate side and my best motherhood wisdom in addition to my thoughts on married life. And sometimes I very gently joked about my husband. Like the time he fought crime.

Oh, and just to keep this blog really from finding a niche, I made "interesting commentary" on PR and marketing issues.

The best compliment I ever had on the blog was from my friend MP who said after reading on her lunch hour I almost shot Diet Coke out my nose. Here's to more ruined nasal passages in 2009!

PR Idea of the Week

I may be dating myself but how many crisis communications presentations have I sat through that praised Tylenol for its handling of the tampering crisis.

Well, get ready to update your PowerPoint Crisis Guys, there's a new pain reliever case study in town. And this time, you have to share your story with a million social media wonks who will liven up their versions of the story with screen shots of the Twitter search.

Of course, I'm talking about this weekend's Mommy blogger Twitter stampede to condemn Motrin for what many found to be an insulting ad about the pains moms get from "babywearing."

Huh

Kevin Dugan said it best: People reading this on Monday are in one of two camps regarding Motrin Moms – in the know or 2.0 slow.

I am relatively new to Twitter and just happened to be playing around with it this weekend when I witnessed what can best be described as a "brand-wreck" in process. For me, it started with Peter Shankman and led to Twitter search where even a newbie like me could see that becoming the number one topic, beating out Obama and Thanksgiving, is a sign of something great or BIG TROUBLE.

I pulled up the #motrinmoms search thread but couldn't read through the postings fast enough, Twitter kept letting me know that new posts were arriving--at the rate of about two per second.

Finally, the people behind Motrin tracked down all the right lawyers, marketing directors, VPs, janitors, etc. to open the doors and put together an emailed statement apologizing for the ad. Oddly enough, they couldn't locate their web team, so the janitor was forced to just pull the plug on their Web site. Apparently, their Web team was out most of Monday attending remedial Twitter school and couldn't plug the site back in until this afternoon. [I'm joking, of course.]

Seriously, you have to wonder what was going on behind the scenes there at Motrin. In hindsight, the ad is gone, a halfway decent apology is posted in its place and Twitter has moved on to Mark Cuban's SEC troubles.

But for those hours on Sunday afternoon and into Sunday evening, the company really missed an opportunity to... well some would say they missed a chance to join a dialogue. I say, they missed a chance to "stay in character." To keep with the somewhat cheeky tone of the ad but use that to say, obviously we missed the mark here and we've worked all night to come up with a new ad--here it is. As it was, they appeared to have gotten scared of their newfangled Internet gang and just shut the whole thing down until they could catch up with the chief legal counsel at his weekend home and write a typical corporate response.

Note to PR and marketing people planning to dip your toe in social media and online marketing
1. Get the authority to deal with issues in real time.
2. Have SOMEONE keep an eye on your online brand at all times.
3. Get the home phone number and address of your Web guy/gal. And have several people trained to edit all parts of the site from anywhere.
4. Know that you can't just take your ball and go home if it doesn't work out the way you planned.
5. Never, never, never screw with the Mommy bloggers. They will hurt you.

PR Idea of the Week

Have you heard about the new Pepsi logo? What a case study in social media and branding.

Pepsi launched their new logo by sending the new look first to a select group of only 25 bloggers (my package must have gotten lost in the mail). Oddly, they sent three packages in twenty minute increments. The first two boxes included empty cans with old logos, the third box was branded with the new logo and contained six full cans (the contents are still the same).

Besides counting on the bloggers to post about these packages, the online component to the launch included a spot on FriendFeed.

Did it work? Well, my last Google of "Pepsi new logo" generated 287,000 hits. Of course, the Web is abuzz with branding experts and other critics who aren't sure this is the right move.

But I am fascinated with the method they chose, mixing courier deliveries with blogging. I have to think they accomplished exactly what they set out to do. The select bloggers felt special. Others jumped in to share the news and offer commentary. The fact that not all these marketing experts and branding gurus liked the logo is irrelevant. Pepsi wanted to create online buzz and anticipation of their new launch--which actually rolls out in 2009.

I think it's important for PR people to note that not a single part of this strategy involved trying to get on the front page of USA Today. I think it's a lesson for all of us in how important connecting with influencers--whether online or offline--is becoming just as important, or maybe more important than connecting with media.

PR Idea of the Week

Get with the times, New Roman. If you've ever designed a publication, or even just sweated through the drop-down options in Word, you will love this.



Mailbox, mailbox, mailbox!

Who are You? And What did You do With our Bacon?

Thanks to Ohio Farm Girl, I learned about the free backgrounds available at http://www.thecutestblogontheblock.com/.

UPDATE: I'm back to Blogger templates now, having gotten my "dark background phase" out of my system.
UPDATE UPDATE: I'm back to a "cute" template again. Sorry.

I apologize if this is like the early days of the Internet when people found out how to make things blink in html, and so they did. All the time. Even the company logo was blinking.

And then they moved on to adding bright yellow starbursts that said "new" to everything.

This was only slightly less annoying than the people who used dark gray patterned backgrounds with white text. Surrounded by things that were blinking.

So, I promise, no blinking on this site. But we may see a few more new backgrounds before I settle on one for a while.

Enjoy!

PR Idea of the Week

If anyone in the company is going to be asked to find a giant something, it's going to be the PR person, especially if they also do events.

ABC News did a local segment on GreatBigStuff.com and shared the video online at abcnews.com. The company, very wisely, put the video on YouTube and I have embedded it here.



This company has had great success in product placement, including Ellen, Extreme Makeover Home Edition, and even CSI. I love how the tone of their About Us page reflects their fun company culture.

I'm adding this site to my bookmarks, because you never know when the boss will come back from a meeting, having promised you would procure a giant coffee cup.