Since the Komen Foundation announced changes to its grant program a few days ago, all I’ve seen or heard about it, from the network news programs to Twitter and Facebook, is how awful it is that this charity is beating up Planned Parenthood, and how politically motivated the Komen decision really was.

Honestly, if you have a smart phone and haven’t been inundated with this, you either have no friends, don’t know how to use your phone, or have a Blackberry.

Set your personal politics aside. Frankly, set reality aside.

It does not matter that Planned Parenthood does not offer mammograms. It does not matter that the Susan G. Komen Foundation has poured nearly $2 billion over three decades into battling breast cancer. If you’ve watched television, listened to the radio, turned on a computer or (for you Blackberry users) borrowed a friend’s iPhone, you KNOW that the Susan G. Komen Foundation is pure evil and that Planned Parenthood is under a vicious attack from right-wing fanatics in Congress and their willing compatriots in the grant-giving community.

The Komen people stumbled out of the gate. I spent the morning digging past hundreds of “reactions” to the announcement and more spin than I can stand. Most of the news related to their decision to halt funding points to a foundation policy of not donating to any organization “under investigation.” Last September, Florida Congressman Cliff Stearns (a Republican!) launched an inquiry to determine whether Planned Parenthood uses public money to fund abortions (which is illegal).

An LA Times article on Feb. 1 quotes Sue Dunlap, chief executive of Planned Parenthood Los Angeles:

“We had the sense this was coming and that they were under pressure. I find this really disappointing. I think when women’s health is more of a political conversation than a conversation about healthcare and taking care of people, then we’ve gone too far.”

The article repeats in several newspapers and on more websites than I care to mention, complete with the standard “could not be reached for comment” line suggesting the Komen Foundation was circling the wagons.

(They were. Negative comments started disappearing from the Koman Facebook page shortly after Planned Parenthood went on the offensive with an eBlast to its exceptionally large list.)

Strategist Kivi Leroux Miller did a great job of laying out step-by-step how Koman botched its response to this unfolding melodrama in her blog, “The Accidental Rebranding of Komen for the Cure.”

Miller writes, “I believe they could have avoided this huge rift had they communicated upfront, and honestly, about the decision. They should have released it, instead of letting Planned Parenthood own the messaging.” (Emphasis added by me.)

I’ll let Miller’s post speak for itself. The link opens a new window. Please, take a few minutes and read it.

If you didn’t click the link, here’s the key section from it:

Previously Komen stood out as a tremendous organizer and mobilizer of women across the political spectrum who would raise money like crazy for them. They kept it nice and simple, and non-controversial. Wear that pink ribbon and raise money to fight breast cancer.   The abortion debate was nowhere in sight. It was all about the breasts, and not about the uterus. And I think that’s one thing that made them different — Komen was an organization that dealt with women’s health issues without getting caught up in the abortion debate, like most women’s organizations end up doing.

No more. They took a deep dive into the hot swirling waters head first (but apparently eyes shut). No matter what they do from here on out, they will be forced to pick sides, and that’s just awful for the Komen brand.

If they stick by their decision, they will endear themselves to pro-life women, and lose the pro-choice. If they give in to the pressure and petitions, they will win back the pro-choice women, but anger the pro-life. It’s a no-win situation that could have been avoided had they developed a communications strategy on this decision at the start.

Nuff said.

Again, it doesn’t matter what you or I think about Planned Parenthood, Koman, or the abortion debate. Fact is, the score sits at Planned Parenthood 10, Komen 0.

Truer words have never been spoken.

I never cease to be amazed by how clients come to Tin Cans Unlimited.  We work hard on new business initiatives all the time – and yet 98 percent of our new clients come from referrals.  The two percent that did not come from a referral?  They came because someone saw us speak at a business event. 

My favorite referral of all time came several years ago, when I was working for another company.  One day a well-dressed gentleman walked in off the street asking about website design.  Although the company was located on Main Street, walk-ins were very rare – it simply wasn’t that kind of business.

The gentlemen asked for me by first name.

I chatted with him for a bit and explained how I might be able to help him promote his local, industrial business online.  We shook hands and decided to work together.

As he was leaving, he told me how he’d heard about me/my company:  from his brother.

Again – not too surprising.  But as I was wondering who his brother was and how I knew him, he continued his story.

And my mouth fell open.

Turns out, his brother was a mentally ill veteran who was a resident at the halfway house about a block from my office.  I would often see him in the mornings as I walked from the parking lot to the front door, and we would exchange smiles, sometimes chat about the weather or the news, or what I was doing that day.

He was a scruffy-looking older gentleman I knew as “Tommy the guy who sometimes hangs around the building in the mornings.”   I didn’t know Tommy’s story or that he was associated with the veteran’s home.  Sometimes I’d toss him one of my bananas – he could catch it with one hand.  This would make both of us giggle.

Tommy’s brother visited him once a week at the house and one week was telling him about a new website he needed to have created.  And Tommy told him about “the nice lady who makes websites who talks to me every morning.”

And a business relationship was born.

Is this a rare story – a rare example?  Of course it is – I’m not suggesting that you begin soliciting business from folks on the street.

But it certainly confirms the old adage:  it’s all about who you know.

But some clients, including the good people at BristellUSA, have a decidedly different opinion on that issue.

It’s been a while since I’ve gotten to write about a client. Maybe I’m out of practice, but I really don’t know how to say this without sounding like a suck-up. The fact is, we really enjoy working with these folks. And not just because their sister company employs our flight instructors!

Speaking of… I need to toss in a shameless plug:

[Begin shameless plug]

Be sure to visit their Blue Skies Blog, which is currently being guest-written by Yours Truly. Laura and I are headed to Sebring, Fla., representing BristellUSA at the US Sport Aviation Expo. Laura is accompanying our clients on a commercial flight down. Soon as the weather clears, I’ll be co-piloting the plane we’re exhibiting, and live-blogging about the trip, as we make our way from Lancaster, Pa., to Florida.

I’ve always wanted to say this: If you don’t like the way I drive – stay outta the sky!

No, that's not me. Fellow Bristell pilot John Rathmell departed for Sebring ahead of the weather!

]]> http://tincansunlimited.com/2012/01/if-you-dont-like-the-way-i-drive-stay-outta-the-sky/feed/ 0 http://tincansunlimited.com/2012/01/tcu-adding-staff-again-meet-marj/ http://tincansunlimited.com/2012/01/tcu-adding-staff-again-meet-marj/#comments Wed, 11 Jan 2012 18:30:36 +0000 Jeff Peyton http://tincansunlimited.com/?p=2601 Jeff: Without any ado, please join me in welcoming Marjorie Kirchner to our staff here at Tin Cans World Headquarters!

Well, some ado is certainly in order, particularly where Marjie is concerned.

Marj is our new “project coordinator,” with a special eye toward client services. A social-media savvy writer, speaker and teacher, Marj comes to us from the Harrisburg Area Community College Institute for Entrepeneurial Studies, where she has spent the past several years teaching workshops and special programs on entrepeneurship, marketing, branding and social networking for business.

We will be rolling out new services for small business in the coming months, and we expect that Marj’s background and experience will prove to be a great benefit for our clients in that arena.

Please, drop Marj a line to say hello and welcome her to the Tin Cans team!

Holiday ads -  particularly those on television – fell flat for me this year.  In fact, this was the first year that several ads were SO odiferous that my husband, without any input from me, would mute or worse, change the channel, to avoid them.

Are you listening television advertisers?  He would CHANGE THE CHANNEL to avoid your message!

First up:  the annoying Target lady.  You know the one – she can’t wait for black Friday and is prepping for the big day by performing various training tasks all while SCREECHING at the top of her lungs.

Unreal how much this series of spots agitated me – and anyone else I asked about them.  And honestly?  I am not easily agitated.

But just when you think it’s safe to turn on the TV again, we get Kohl’s entry into Black Friday advertising – the Friday earworm!

Imagine the conversation amongst Kohls marketing folks:  “You know that song that everyone hates?  The one that 14 year girl did on YouTube – you remember the girl whose parents had more money than sense?  Let’s USE that as the cornerstone of our holiday advertising!”

And of course, we can’t forget Patrick Warburton for Honda

I get it – he’s droll.  But he’s so droll that I leave these spots wondering why I would want a Honda – and I already own one.

But on the other side of that coin was Singer-songwriter Jessica Frech singing ad nauseum about how glad she is to have a Hyundai.  Yes, she’s a YouTube star – but unlike the “free credit report” jingle we were all singing a few years ago, her annoying ditty doesn’t make me want to rush out and buy a Hyundai.

Couldn’t we meet somewhere in the middle folks?

The Lexus spots were better – but the hooks in these commercials relied on consumers immediately recognizing the Lexus “song.”  I didn’t realize Lexus had a theme until I saw the lady playing it with her kids on Guitar Hero.  Perhaps if I was in the market for a Lexus I’d know the tune?

And finally, we have to have a shout-out to those famous sisters – yup — we are to believe that the Kardashians (and yes that is the last time I will say/type that word in 2012) shop at Sears.

Earlier this week, I received an email from Kate Spade advising me of a post-holiday sale:

It was a simple, colorful, well-branded email telling me about the sale.  I clicked through to the website and browsed for a few minutes, eventually adding a handbag to the shopping cart.  Then, as often happens, I got distracted by work, a client call, a meeting, Peyton telling me about the movie he saw, (pick one!) and promptly forgot about it.

Then today, two and a half days later, I got another email from Kate Spade:

The subject line?  “Pssst…”

The marketing folks at Kate Spade GET IT.

I did 90 percent of my holiday shopping online this year – and I would guesstimate that I abandoned at least a dozen shopping carts in much the same way as I just described. Started to shop, got distracted, and forgot about it.  Maybe I came back to it later in the day/week, maybe not.  In some cases, when looking for a very specific gift, “came back to it later” involved starting at the point of my initial Google search.

But not ONE of those online stores – and we’re talking some major national players here – sent me a follow up email like Kate Spade did this morning.  Not one.

Many of them continue to bombard me with emails – bordering on spam – with new sale information, etc. Three of them I took the trouble to unsubscribe from – so annoying was their post-holiday bombardment. Not one ever referenced my abandoned cart.

But Kate Spade – with whom I could loosely be considered a good customer (I buy, on average, one handbag a year from them) sent me a cute follow up that will likely end with my making a purchase.

They have found an easy, non-intrusive, FUN way to get folks like me back to our abandoned carts.  Well done.

Take notice other retailers.  Or as the folks at Kate Spade said to me this morning… “Pssst…”

1. I resolve to avoid all things Kardashian whilst I await the inevitable media backlash (please let it be soon!).  Someone needs to explain “oversaturation” to these girls (or perhaps to their mother?).
2. I resolve to eliminate the following words/phrases from my vocabulary – particularly when discussing online marketing:  ”engagement,” “authenticity,” “baked in,” and “hard stop.”  Honorable mentions to phrases like “drinking the Kool-Aid” and “secret sauce” (unless in direct reference to an authentic Big Mac!)
3. I resolve to instead focus on words like “revenue,” “profit,” “goals,” and, most importantly, “results.”
4. I resolve to immediately walk away from anyone who mentions how “the economy” is the root of all issues with their business.
5. I resolve to unfriend anyone who sends more than three passive-aggressive status updates or tweets in a row.  Share the problem, issue or bad day – I’ll try to help if I can.  But stop with the vagaries designed to do nothing but encourage 204 people to comment “what’s wrong?”
6. I resolve to stop “—izing” words to make my point.  No more “templatizing,” “calendarizing,” or “supersizing” (again, unless I’m attempting to up my caloric intake at a fast food restaurant.)
7. I resolve to strike the word “literally” from my lexicon, and replace it with the word “figuratively” – which is literally what I mean anyway.

Last, and frankly what should have been first – I resolve that 2012 will be the greatest, most prosperous year yet!

In 2011, no one needs convincing of the need for a business website.  It’s a given.  

But, in 2011 I am asked instead, “why does my business need Facebook?” (or Twitter, or YouTube) – “isn’t my website enough?”

And the answer is simply “no.”

Facebook is the biggest, most visited website in world – even Google says so.

• Years to Reach 50 millions Users:  Radio (38 Years), TV (13 Years), Internet (4 Years), iPod (3 Years)…Facebook added 100 million users in less than 9 months…iPhone applications hit 1 billion in 9 months.
• 80% of companies use LinkedIn to find employees.
• 34% of bloggers post opinions about products & brands and 73% of online users admit to trusting peer recommendations.
• More than 1.5 million pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photos, etc.) are shared on Facebook…daily.
• 25% of search results for the World’s Top 20 largest brands are links to user-generated content.

(from Socialnomics, by Eric Qualman)

In the olden days of business marketing, you had to “play to play” – mostly on the golf course, it seemed.  Sales were made somewhere between teeing off and sinking the putt.  You got to know your clients and they got to know you – somewhere between the 12^th and 18^th greens.

At the turn of the last century (yes, 11 short years ago), this evolved into “PAY to play.” The companies with the largest budgets – the ones that could afford the Superbowl spots and could afford to blast their messages through multi-media – seemed to be the big winners.

In 2011, “play to play” has made a huge comeback. But this time, we’re playing on social networking sites, including Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, instead of the golf course.  These days, budget plays little part in a message going viral.  Now you get back what you authentically put in.

Unfortunately, a significant number of decision-makers – notably the same ones who once believed that putting their brochure online constituted a good website – now believe participating in social sites like Facebook means posting press release headlines and blocking comments.

Sigh.

Jeff: Social marketing puts the emphasis on social, not marketing. Businesses reporting the greatest success in social networking demonstrate two best practices. These are (1) businesses there to introduce themselves to potential clients and (2) businesses there to provide even better customer service (or tech support) to current customers.

Social media is not the end of the sales funnel, it’s the outer edge of the top of the funnel. Selling your product or service at this stage is akin to running into a random stranger at the supermarket and introducing yourself with an offer they can’t refuse. (Trust me, they’ll refuse.)

This is a very common store in my beloved St. Louis, so I am familiar with its layout.  The ATM is in the same place in all of them, so is the soda fountain.  I round the corner and dodge a young man holding a mop, leading a mop bucket out of a store room.

To my immediate right are two bright red doors.  As I dodge the mop bucket and mop-wielding 20-something, the store room bumps out just a bit, so the placard identifying the gender of the restroom at my right is not clearly in my line of sight.

But the placard to the left of the second door is clearly marked “Women.”

The mop-guy cries out as I swing open the door on the right. “Dude – the men’s room is down the hall.”

Confused, I let go of the door.  In my peripheral vision, I see the sign next to the door on my left.

“Women.”

I reach for the door again and think, “kids today.”  Mop-guy warns me again, “You don’t want to go in there.”

I look, and to my right is another placard.  It clearly says “Women.”

This particular store had been remodeled in the last several months, and the restrooms had been expanded.  By rotating my head to the left an additional 30 degrees, I could see a door marked “men’s restroom” further down the hall (back where I would have guessed the back door would be).  In this case, the planners clearly decided to save money by not knocking down the wall between the old men’s room and the ladies’ room and removing the door.  Instead, they opted to simply place an extra sign on the walls – reminiscent of the dubious solutions archived on the website “There, I Fixed It”.

A key aspect of usability is not surprising the user with novelty.

Whether it is restrooms, brochures or websites, there are certain things that are expected to function a certain way.  These are called affordances.  If your novel idea deviates from a common practice you may be introducing a problem.

Novelty is not bad all the time.  Certainly a GUI* beats the heck out of using DOS commands to run a computer, but the likelihood of your particular project being the breakthrough idea in user engagement is fairly remote.  Requiring your user to relearn how to engage your content has a high probability of creating headaches.

I have seen software developers shave a couple hours off a project by not improving a flawed usability feature, only to cause countless hours of extra work by the end users.

Mop-guy and I talked for a few minutes.  Since the redesign, he had spent a lot of his time keeping gents out of the ladies room.  Think about that for a moment. If he spends an extra 10 minutes a day correcting for poor bathroom usability planning, his boss loses an hour of his time every week – even before we consider the opportunity cost of what mop-guy should have been doing.

When considering a design – whether it is a presentation, a website, packaging or brochure – carefully consider the usability features, and ask yourself if it will confuse the user.

*Graphic User Interface (say, Windows)

As a rookie dad, I didn’t get it. I can’t tell you how many sleepless nights were spent trying to rationally explain to a four-year-old all the reasons why there could not be a hideous scaly monster with stinky breath and poisonous scales in her closet, or how many more such nights were spent trying to convince her that if such a beast were there, it was just visiting.

At some point along the way, a good friend who was also a grandpa many times over finally set me straight. “Your problem,” he said, “is that you aren’t giving any consideration to how she feels. You aren’t taking her concerns seriously.”

“But there’s no monster!” I protested.

“She believes there is,” he replied. “Her perception, not yours, is the only thing that matters.”

Flash forward five years. An advertiser with my newspaper was upset because there was something wrong with her ad, and this misplaced comma was going to cost her bazillions in lost sales. Her sales rep had tried being reasonable and was well on her way to experimenting with unreasonable.

I invited them into my office and, after what seemed like an hour of profuse apologies, I assured this distraught woman that I would “take care of it.”

She calmed down considerably, thanked me for my assistance, and went on her way. My sales rep barely waited til she was gone before blurting out “but you don’t even know what the problem is!”

“The problem is we have an upset client,” I said.

“The problem,” my rep replied, “is that she didn’t proof her ad copy.”

“No,” I repeated. “The problem – the ONLY problem – is that we have an upset client.”

Of course I cared about WHY my client was upset, but only in passing. Because the issue that upset the client was, in my reality, a very small, otherwise irrelevant typo that (it turned out) nobody else noticed. The issue on deck was not my reality, however. My client perceived a crisis, so a crisis there was.

Last week, Laura suggested that you define “crisis” by ranking issues by level. In doing so, she hinted at what is probably the trickiest part of crisis management.

Timothy Coombs defines “crisis” in his book “Ongoing crisis communication: planning, managing and responding” like this:

A crisis is the perception of an unpredictable event that threatens important expectancies of stakeholders and can seriously impact an organization’s performance and generate negative outcomes.

To loosely paraphrase: A crisis is anytime you believe something will ruin your day.

I’m not being flip. The magnitude of a crisis depends solely on the perceiver. And that’s what makes labeling a crisis as Laura suggests so darned tricky.

Let’s go back to last week’s examples:

Level 1: A level one crisis is one that will feature an inconvenience for your employees and customers alike. Your basement has flooded, and you will need to close for a day or two during clean up.

Level 2: A level two crisis is going to take you out of commission, literally or figuratively, for a week or longer. Or it might be a nasty article that has appeared about your business in the local/regional media.

Level 3: Level 3 is a catastrophic, Katrina-esque event.

If you did your homework, you’ve identified lists of possible crises for your business, and you’ve assigned levels of severity to each. And you’ve identified audience segments for each possibility and level.

Now the tricky part I mentioned: Have you noticed that your list of possible crises and severity levels doesn’t match up to your list of audience segments? That’s because what you perceive as a Level 1 crisis for you might be a Level 2 crisis for an employee whose lost hours means he won’t make rent.

This is critical: Communicating effectively in a crisis requires you to see everything from your audience’s point of view, not your own.

When your basement floods and you need to close for a few days, you might be tempted to “put on a happy face” and demonstrate to customers that it’s not as bad as it seems, and that you’ll be back in no time, etc. But you’ll need to be project a very different message to the employee who just lost a week’s wages.

When a regional media outlet releases a nasty article about your organization, your response in public should be considerably different from your response to employees, which should be different from your response to customers.

I am not suggesting you complete 50 different strategic plans. I am saying that you must – repeating: you MUST – build your communications strategy around your audience and THEIR perception of the situation.

Perception IS reality. So for homework, go back over your lists and start thinking about how you assigned severity levels to each possible crisis, and how those potential crises and severity levels will differ widely by the perception of each audience.

Next week, we’ll start putting all on paper and formalizing your own crisis plan.