Redemption

The main stream sports media has mostly ignored the real story of redemption in the NFL this season. While they beat-up stories about divine intervention around Tim Tebow, and whipped wing-nut fans into a frenzy with religious hyperbole, San Francisco Forty Niner QB Alex Smith was quietly finding redemption of true Biblical proportions. On Sunday he came down from the cross to live on in 49er hearts forever.

Not that he would mention it. Smith is what we used to call a mensch. Despite seven offense coordinators over 8 years, numerous head coaches, two of which were rookies and legions of fans wishing we had drafted Aaron Rogers insead, he never complained. Well, once he a had a go at Mike Nolan after the former head coach called him soft while he played with a broken shoulder. Where is Nolan now we wonder, certainly not in the play off picture. Maybe at home studying x-rays of broken shoulders.

I have nothing against Tim Tebow, a nice young man who does the world a lot of good. I do have problems with using your celebrity, and lets face it professional athletes are celebrities, to proselytize others to your religious or political beliefs. Which is what the Christian right and Tim Tebow are doing. The Family Research Council ad depicting children reciting John 3:16, which ran during the Broncos-Patriots game, and not during any other play-off games over the weekend, is a testament to their, well, blatant propagandizing of their cause using Tebow’s celebrity. Imagine the outcry had it been a pro Muslim, Gay or Abortion ad. Perhaps that ad would not aired at all in the land of the free?

But I digress, the real story of redemption this season, if we are to use religious analogies, doesn’t lie in media darling Tim Tebow, but with a quiet warrior who overcame much more than media embellishment (which Tebow handles admirably) to lead his team to their first NFC championship game in nine years.

He rarely blows his own horn, quietly conducts valuable charity, and keeps his own counsel, on and off the field. Alex Smith is truly the kind of role model professional sports really needs today, but whose story is rarely told.

 

6 billion cell phones make PR mobile

Recently I read that there are no 6 billion cell phones in use in the world, and that were over 1 billion apps downloaded during the Christmas holidays. Certainly the mobile phone is keeping more of us connected where ever we may roam, as long as we pay the bill.

Fast Company blogger Wendy Marks explores what this means for PR practitioners in her recent post Transforming PR For A Mobile World. The concept of social media allowing the PR maven to bring the journalist to your story, or ‘newsjack’ the editors, as opposed to taking your story to the journalist in the more traditional manner is not new to social media savvy publicists, but Marks’ article gives some insight on how to co-opt the mobile phone to do just that.

 

Send in the Clowns….

Tina Fey’s humorous (I know that’s an oxymoron) article about her experiences on SNL, ‘Lessons from Late Night’ (The New Yorker, March 14, 2011) offers managers of creative types, or as I was once referred to, ‘Chief Driver of the Clown Car’, some insight in how to keep the show running and the clowns from crying. Her discovery of the power of ‘policing enthusiasm’ as a successful managerial tactic to keep all the plates spinning is a good tactic for leaders of creative types everywhere, not to mention advertising/marketing/public relations agencies that attract clowns of various sizes and talents.

In my own experience of working under the big top I’ve encountered many creative environments where policing enthusiasm was the goal, yet rarely attained. These environments come in many forms. There is the agency where everyone has toys on their desks, Nerf darts fly through the air and power coffee and tea is freely available in the kitchen. The result is often hyped-up foam warfare between bickering parties who too often leave for new battle fields in another circus.

Then there is the circus where no one laughs, heads are down, work is serious and nothing of real value ever happens, unless you consider the Whack-a-Mole management style of value. But you can never keep a true clown down, and soon creativity, though often perverted as practical jokes, (to this day the remote control fart machine remains, in my mind, as the all time greatest office prank), runs unharnessed, and again, clowns trudge off into the sunset seeking a new traveling show.

For management the secret to successfully policing enthusiasm is to be a good audience. All clowns seek an audience. It’s why we show up bleary-eyed and sleep deprived with horrible creative ideas we spent several nights agonizing over, (Bowser the Flying Dog never had a chance), its why we abhor wearing suits unless sailing and actually think dwarf-bowling is an under appreciated reality TV concept: all proceeds would go to charity!

No, we just need an audience. And here is the secret ingredient that only the best managers know how to add to the mix: we need it when we fail as much as we need it when we succeed. Failure, as the good ring masters know, is an event. And when that event is recognized and appreciated, enthusiasm is truly being policed and the clowns will come up with some golden nuggets.

 

The Middle East and the ‘internets’

I’m glad I’m not the only one who noticed that the uprising for democracy and change that occurred in Egypt last month, and continues to roll across the Middle East today,  is not the result of Bush and the neo-cons, or Al Qaida, but of people connecting on the internet via Facebook, Twitter and other social utilities, http://tiny.cc/df9ip. The reason seems easy enough to understand; disenchanted by a blundering, though often well intended, American mid-east policy, and eviscerated by the extreme fanaticism of Al Qaida, people in the middle east began talking and listening to one another on the web. They shared ideas, debated points, formed communities and decided that strength in numbers was better than American tanks and suicide bombers combined. And when the Egyptian government turned the internet off, they took matters into their own tweetering hands and took to the streets.

The rest is history, and there is more on the way. The ‘internets’ indeed Mr. Bush.

 

Neuromarkting helps GOP in mid-terms

Orwellian? http://www.fastcompany.com/1699985/politicians-using-neuromarketing-in-ads-to-win-votes?partner=leadership_newsletter

 

What Entrepreneurship Means

http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=15726083&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=1&color=&fullscreen=1&autoplay=0&loop=0

What Entrepreneurship Means from Alicia Morga on Vimeo.

 

Ramblings from the Edge…

Recently I was reading an interview in the AMA’s Marketing News about B2B marketing and its growth over the years. One of the major points made by Rick Segal, CEO of GyroHSR, was that companies often determine the result of their marketing by how they approach it from a corporate budgeting point of view, to paraphrase Mr. Segal; companies needs to ask themselves is marketing part of the construct of a sale or part of the overhead? If marketing’s job is to position the company for success, doesn’t it make sense to make an integral part of the sale from the get go?

One company that seems to get this, in my estimation at least, is Zappos. From CEO Tony Hsieh’s always relevant and fun tweets to its Delivering Happiness program, the Zappos marketing team create incredible brand awareness and loyalty.

Recently online cyclist retailer VeloGear started a program to recruit cyclists to be product testers and then blog about their riding experiences etc and receive free Velo Gear. A great way to engage and build your audience and create brand awareness in a niche market…and they have really cool gear too! Check ‘em out today.

 

Austin Edgington Public Relations

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The Lowdown on the High Times of the Silicon Valley

Last Thursday’s PRSA luncheon in San Francisco offered an insightful look of the economic picture of the Silicon Valley as well as insight into how the recession is changing the media landscape for PR pros.

Wells Fargo’s Gary Schlossberg, a senior economist of Wells Capital Management buoyed the hopeful with the assertion that economic recovery was underway, albeit slowly. An area of concern for Californian’s, and particularly Silicon Valley, was the slow of recovery of the export- industries, i.e. motion pictures, technology, and aerospace. However, he believes there is some pent-up demand for high ticket items but expects California to lag behind other states in the recovery due mainly to our high vulnerability to bad mortgages and the credit crisis. After all, real estate is the industry in the highly populated southern California, and we are a state weighed in jumbo mortgages. I find this interesting, since my pent up demand for high ticket items would blow Richter off the charts.

Bay Area KRON video tech journalist Gabriel (Gadget Gabe) Slate took us inside the expanding yet shrinking world of broadcast journalism. While more and more stories are being produced those that produce them are becoming fewer and fewer. KRON news went from producing 10 hours of content with 800 employees to producing 13 hours of content with 75 employees. Today Gabriel is his own producer, and that makes his time for receiving pitches from PR mavens and flacks minute. He gave us some insight into pitching him though, 1) always have B-roll for him to download, 2) make sure your story has a consumer user for him to speak with or on the video, (research reveals that viewers do not want to see the CEO or corporate talking-head any longer) and the product must be ready to ship or shipping or just arrived at stores. He also gave us a passionate plea to stop using BETA; it’s expensive for us and a time eater for him. This was interesting as I was quite sure Adam was still in diapers the last time BETA was used, come on people it’s the digital age.

The ever thoughtful San Jose Mercury News business columnist Chris O’Brien, best known for his high level think pieces on issues and trends effecting the Silicon Valley, shared his thoughts on how employment, and the ever popular churn that occurs in the technology industry, shapes the economics of the region. Although there is no real data to support “Valley Burn & Churn” as I’ve come to call it, the almost constant input and output of employees in companies like HP has to impact our ability to achieve a stable economic environment. Juxtaposing this phenomena are companies who leverage outside investors to provide funds to allow employees to cash out shares before the company goes public in a bid to retain the employees. He also made the interesting observation that the last thing we need is another dot.com era similar to the late 90s. And I agree, having worked during the era when VCs couldn’t wait for PR folk put a spin on and get any old garbage technology to market, the current era of how long can we boot-strap before calling in the PR team is refreshing; after all how much lipstick can you put on a pig?

All panelists agreed that the mobile-wireless industry shows a steady growth and offers a bright future, or at least one where the lights stay on. In addition to the recent revelation of the i-tablet by Steve (Moses) Jobs, the movement towards mobile banking and shopping, (using your mobile phone to purchase goods and services) is growing fast and will bring a new wave of innovation, which is truly the currency of the Silicon Valley trades in.

Now, I’m sure there are other viable technology sectors that are growing and providing innovation to buoy the valley, but our sandwiches were long gone and it was time to go. What, besides the mobile and wireless space, do you see as a growth sector for the valley?

 

Austin Edgington

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via Austin Edgington.