Sensitizing Americans: Special Interests

There is an interesting twist to two so-called controversial advertisements produced and pulled by Mars Inc. and Heinz Company. According to an Advertising Age article, some people in the United Kingdom aren’t happy that Mars Inc. and Heinz Company pulled advertisements after being pressured by American special interests.

The Mars Inc. commercial featured a speed walker being harassed by Mr. T to become a “real man.” It was targeted by The Human Rights Campaign (HRC). The Heinz Company commercial, which featured a two dad household, was targeted by The American Family Association, which is a Christian activist group. Neither advertisement aired in the United States.

"People in the U.S. tend to be very reactive," Gerry Moira, creative chairman of Euro RSCG, London, told Advertising Age. "Everybody there belongs to a minority — even if there are millions of them.”

One spokesperson for Stonewall, a U.K. gay-rights group, reportedly said the Mars Inc. ad seemed "harmless" and that there was “no suggestion [the speed walker] was gay.” In fact, not even one U.K. gay rights group was bothered by the ad.

All in all, it seems neither the HRC (nor the American Family Association on the opposite end of the spectrum) pressure on companies has made much of a statement for homosexuals or family values. Both groups have, however, made a statement about Americans.

For more some other views, see this post, which includes an interview with Mr. T, and this post for the Heinz ad. The latter, which offended some conservatives and some homosexuals in the United States, received a mere 200 complaints in the U.K. where it aired.

Personally, I think we’re getting ban happy. It’s just too easy to call something like this ad something it’s not.

Pulling Under Pressure: Mars Inc., Nike, Heinz, Verizon

The Human Rights Campaign (HRC), which is a gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender civil rights organization, has convinced Mars Inc. to pull an advertisement running in the United Kingdom.

According to the HRC, the ad featured a man whose appearance and actions – speed walking in an exaggerated manner – conjured up stereotypes of gay men. Worse, they say, that the advertisement portrays homosexuals as second-class citizens and that violence against GLBT people is not only acceptable, but humorous.

Although the HRC praised Mars Inc. for the decision, it seems getting the advertisement pulled was not enough. They lamblaste Mars Inc. for another Snickers advertisement that ran in 2007. Ironically, that advertisement seemed to poke more fun at men who were more homophobic than homosexual.

The Guardian, which posted the commercial, has a different opinion. It called the HRC claim — that the speed walker in the spot is homosexual — preposterous. The article suggests that Mars Inc. might listen to Mr. T rather than coddling what seems to be sensationalized oversensitivity. Apparently, Mars Inc. is not the only company.

Nike also pulled advertisements, which can be seen at the Gawker, because it was claimed they carried an anti-gay message despite the context. Verizon also pulled an advertisement under pressure from another activist group.

Meanwhile, Michael Wilke, executive director of Commercial Closet Association, which advocates and honors advertisements that feature gender identity/expression and sexual orientation issues, laughed about the advertisements being pulled.

Bill O’Reilly commented as well. He reminded viewers of a Heinz Company advertisement that was pulled for the opposite reason. It featured two guys kissing. Heinz caved, he said.

All of this sounds familiar to me for some reason. Oh, right.

“… minorities, each ripping a page or paragraph from a book, until one day the books were empty and the minds were shut and libraries were closed.” — Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

Ho hum. I’m starting to wonder if I have to write another post about the difference between a writer implying context and a reader inferring context.

You know, based on the release from the HRC, I’m not so sure that Mars Inc. communicated sensitivity to the issue as much as it simply demonstrated its willingness to be browbeaten. And maybe the same can be said for Nike and Heinz and Verizon.

In fact, I’m not even so sure the activists communicated sensitivity to their own issues. It seems to me they all promoted the adoption of inferred stereotypes as identification. And that’s bad for everybody, equally.

Advertising Frankness: Cottonelle

On the heels of a $100 million “Be kind to your behind” advertising campaign for Cottonelle, Adweek asks whether personal products are becoming too frank for consumers. The new campaign, produced by JWT (New York), skips past fluffy clouds and cuts right to reality.

Mark Wodern, brand manager for Cottonelle, thinks so. He told Adweek that consumers are telling them loud and clear that they have more permission to speak to them directly and more overtly about their behinds, cleaning, and care for their bottoms.

Although some companies are still struggling with the idea, the trend extends beyond personal care. Consumers are growing tired of being sold on sappy, happy feel good moments alone. They want to know what the product or service really does (and I don’t necessarily mean they want it to be crude).

We see it here too. The number of clients who expect their copywriting to “sell” the product or service is diminishing as smarter clients are listening to their customers. Better writing communicates the product’s message.

Sure, writing can still be fun, clever and eye-catching. But not in the way some clients used to think. Consumers are developing an aversion to messages that try to hard — to be funny, to be clever, to seem bigger than they are, and to ‘sell’ the product.

They’re right, of course. Any writing that tries too hard is likely to indicate the opposite. More than one woman has complained about the silliness of the new Always campaign. More than one shopper has figured out that adding “!!!” at the end of the “SALE” does not make it more exciting. And most people have figured out that being “one of the leading companies” simply means it’s not in bankruptcy (maybe).

Of course, before public relations professionals snicker at their advertising peers, I might mention they are no better. Especially in the resort industry, laundry lists of facts and figures about floor space litter every release. Reality check needed? Maybe.

“Honey, where do you want to stay?”

“Um, I want to stay at whatever resort has the most square feet of casino floor.”

“Yeah, me too.”

Come on. It’s not like counting cup holders in a vehicle, which is significantly more important to consumers. Although, I suppose that might be better than calling Playstation 3 “Ready to rumble. It's hot.” It might be marginally more tolerable than duplicating a list of retailers to make the company bigger than it is. And it's absolutely better than asking people to “take the risk” with their antiperspirant.

Making Lazy: Passive Customer Service

When it comes to communication, the most impacting miscommunication almost never appears on the news, in print, or anywhere near the marketing department. It happens on the front line, and the people impacted are customers, one at a time.

The two most common causes of miscommunication for larger companies is trending to be passive communication (eg. expecting customers to stay up to date on the company Web site) and scripted employees (eg. requiring representatives to work from scripts even in non-script circumstances).

There are plenty of examples that we’ve helped several companies resolve recently, but I thought it might be fun to share some personal examples to illustrate the point.

Passive Communication.

Cox Communications Inc. recently implemented a new e-mail filtering program to block a specific Internet port. The only mention of the service change is on their Web site.

The reasoning behind the implementation was a good idea, but they did not notify their customers of the change in service beyond posting to their Web site. In fact, we may have never known there was potential problem had it not been for a small number of clients and contacts using Cox as their primary e-mail provider. For some reason, our Cox service provider was disallowing our POP e-mails to Cox customer clients.

Their customer service representatives are now investing time to research the problem and provide a solution. To their customer service department’s credit (once the script questions were ruled out), they immediately upgraded their level service, even calling back with updates rather than leaving us on hold.

While the person-to-person customer service was great, I’m still wondering if better front-end communication might have prevented any service interruption.

Scripted Employees.

It works in reverse too. Not all companies are so fortunate to have proactive employees willing to research the impact to their customers. Some customer service representatives seem too lazy to move off script. This recently occurred when one of our last payments to Volkswagen Credit disappeared in the mail.

We were notified of the missing payment, first by receiving our next payment coupon, which required a double payment, and then by an automated call from the company on the same day the double payment went out. (Again, these are passive communication solution as opposed to a letter or live person phone call). Regardless, my wife called immediately about her car.

Despite learning the payment was likely lost in the mail, the first customer service representative insisted she answer personal questions, without explanation, including about her employment status. Not only did it seemed overly intrusive for a lost payment call, the representative informed her that the missing payment would be reported because the company had allegedly made numerous calls to notify us. Knowing that was not true, she then asked to speak to a supervisor.

“No, you may not speak to anyone else. I’m handling your account.”

For real? As unbelievable as it sounds, yes. She took his name and number and then promptly ended the call. She called back to speak to someone new. The difference was like night and day.

“I see you’ve never missed a payment. I’ll clear this up right now.”

As for those calls? They never happened. The first representative made it up. As for the general ill-tempered representative? The second representative was left having to apologize. As for the personal questions? Volkswagen Credit has recently created a program to save people who are struggling financially from defaulting on their payments. It’s a great idea, but it didn’t apply to our circumstance nor did the first representative mention “why” he needed to ask.

Mixed Messages.

Considering how many companies lean toward intrusive marketing to push products and services (I even had a mortgage company come to my door yesterday), it’s equally amazing how many become passive once you become a customer (I hope you know that periodic calls to your credit card and insurance company almost always result in lower rates).

As for the examples above, proactive communication seems like it could have been the best answer to keep everyone happy. And, once we, as customers, were forced to take proactive steps, the outcome was tied to how empowered the representatives were to make decisions.

Sure, some executives think scripting employees helps representatives stay on the same page. In reality, scripting employees only leads to one-way communication, which we already know is no communication at all.

The solution is somewhere in the middle. Proactive post-purchase communication and strong internal communication can help develop a consistent, and not overly scripted, level of service that empowers employees and reinforces to the customer that they have the right company.

Burning Music: The Irony Of Anti-Violence Violence

"We are considering having something similar to a rally where parents and children can bring CDs and video games that they consider are destructive to the mind set of our youth and have a burning, just like they had a gun buyback last year.” — Pastor Richard Patrick

Blogcampaigning summed up their take on a potential anti-music/anti-game rally as something that they thought only happens on the Simpsons, which is pretty amusing since the Simpsons would likely land in the fire. Otherwise, it happens all the time.

What makes this Newport story interesting is the amount of attention it has received. Slashdot even pointed to some studies that suggest what is on the burn list might not be to blame.

One study concluded that “there were actually higher levels of relaxation before and after playing the game [World of Warcraft] as opposed to experiencing anger, but this very much depended on personality type.”

The latter is true. You never know what people are going to do when exposed to any material. For example, four years ago, a 19-year-old poured grease on her boyfriend’s face during an argument about a Bible verse. The Bible, of course, had nothing to do with the decision.

So while the pastor might be right in that some youth emulate the material they are exposed to, encouraging “burnings” seems to be a same path alternative. After all, it’s one thing to teach youth and parents how to make positive life choices, but it’s another to encourage the destruction of everything disagreeable.

Wagging The Dog: Social Media Lessons

Next Friday, May 2, I will be teaching Social Media For Communication Strategy class for the Division of Educational Outreach at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV) public relations certificate program.

In addition to providing an overview of various technologies — blogs, news aggregators, social networks, digital media, presence applications — I’ll spend some considerable time emphasizing real-life case studies, how to manage messages in the new media environment, and how to custom develop a blog and social media presence from the ground up. More importantly, I’m hoping those who attend take away one important fact about social media.

The long tail of social media need not wag the company dog.

You might know what I mean. Almost daily, someone immersed in social media writes about how companies just need to unfasten their safety belts and ride the social media wave in some sort of customer-driven free for all.

Yet, if companies simply succumb to the wisdom of the masses, adjusting entire communication plans based upon feedback from select customers and others within the same sphere, then their message is likely to spin further away from its center and not toward it.

Delivering only what people want is best left to politics, where these notions appear with reckless abandon, and voters are sometimes left to scratch their heads in wonderment when their elected officials seem to bear no resemblance to the candidates. In fact, it’s this very kind of thinking that served as a precursor to the struggles that this country faced in the wake of winning independence, with John Adams yielding principle by signing the Alien and Sedition Acts.

Even in social media, such thinking leads to erroneous ideas like “no criticism” controls. Those eventually erode.

Lead with core values and the tail will follow.

While such ideas come with the best intentions, they are almost as cliché as drinking the Kool-Aid. Of course, far be it from me to suggest we all need to put our anti-masses Charles Bukowski hats on either (though the man had a point about catering to the crowds). That’s just another extreme of the opposite color.

The only truth I have been able to discern is that most companies will never face blog dramas or social media stompfests that leave people bruised or banned. Those are best left to professionals who are trying to carve out a niche in the social media leadership scene and/or educators who are less sensitive to intellectual criticism because they know that open debate is simply a method to find the truth.

On the contrary, most companies will not likely become embroiled in the same colorful conversations that seem to spring up from time to time in social media. Sure, a few might aspire to, but only a relatively small fraction. All that means is that proven communication methods are largely the same.

So, as for those battle cries that online worlds need to be populated by customer input … well, I suppose that might work for some. Yet, more and more, it seems to me that if social media is all customer-driven content all the time, then we are merely supplanting one-way communication — corporate speak — with another one-way communication — customer speak. That’s not engagement.

Ergo, corporate speak and customer speak are the extreme ends of a much more robust bell curve, leaving companies with many more options then they have been led to believe. Of course, presenting this might make me seem a little less skilled at “telling” people how to do social media. But I have found it works very well in teaching people how to determine what might work best for them, their companies, and their clients.

Eye-popping Predictions: The Genius Of Perception

The newest trend in communication seems to be the art of prediction.

A quick search on Google reveals some 15.4 million results that contain the word “predicts,” with more than 15,800 appearing in media stories — 400 in the last 24 hours alone. Prediction racks up another 11,000 hits, many trumped up with words like eye-popping, chilling, and current (which gives a nod to the idea that predications change, frequently).

Yep. The hypothetical hyperbole, which we often advise clients to avoid, is king of the hill. It’s become easier than ever to find someone with a crystal ball.

• The Alliance Trust predicts that household expenditures in Britain over the next 12 months will continue to decline as the credit crunch continues to squeeze on people’s finances.

• The Rage predicts that Carrie, in the movie “Sex and the City,” will either fall down a manhole as she rushes to meet the girls for brunch or asphyxiate herself with a Fendi boa.

• Researchers can now predict which button a subject will press 60 percent of the time, slightly better than a random guess.

• The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) predicts a “silent tsunami” in which high food prices across the globe could force as many as 100 million people into hunger.

The latter is significant at the moment because it’s partly true. Increasing demand from developing countries and poor crop yields are to blame for rising rice prices, up 70 percent this year.

However, the reporting of rice shortage predications is causing restaurants to stock up on and hoard rice and major supermarkets to place limits on the product, which has caused even more demand, making the world rice shortage an almost certain self-fulfilling prophecy.

You can make predications too. It’s easy.

There are several great ways to bend perception into reality, but two have become all my all-time favorites.

The non-committal prediction.

The weather will continue to change for a very long time.

The genius of this prediction is that it is no prediction at all, but rather simply a statement of fact, much like predicting a recession. Sooner or later, it happens. You know, like the CIBC predicting gas to hit $7 per gallon by 2012. Heck, I can do better than that. I’ll guess $10 a gallon, unless we do something about it.

The extended timeline prediction.

Within the next 50 or 100 years, something will happen, anything really.

The genius of this is that you can float a long-term prediction, based upon any number of qualifiers, and have a slightly better chance than a random guess. If it happens, you claim credit as a genius. If it does not happen, no one will remember anyway.

Personally, I think it would be just dandy if journalists started rating predictions on their apparent validity and then giving them a less serious, but more accurate terminology — wild guesses. There are only a paltry 58 of those.

Checking Reality: Green For A Day?

For all the success of Earthday, there seems to be some cause for concern too . I’m not sure how to describe it. It’s like over commercialization and meaningless messages at the same time.

"Every company is out there touting 'we're green' -- it's the new requirement for being a good corporate citizen," Allen Adamson, managing director of WPP Group's branding consultancy Landor Associates, told The Wall Street Journal. "The noise level is so high now. The first few people into it had some benefit. Now it's a cost of entry.”

The Wall Street Journal article was something I thought about today while meeting with one of our clients — an engineering firm that retrofits boilers, making them more energy efficient and environmentally friendly. Enough so that one retrofit is equivalent to planting 700,000 trees. It’s important because of what they do, but it’s not their only message. Their work also achieves payback in less than one year.

And then I thought of some other messages I had seen today: Subaru of America is donating 160 cherry trees across the country; Nokia launched a program to make recycling mobile phones easier. SmarterTravel highlighted “green” travel designations on their Web site.

While there is nothing really wrong with any of it, it does makes me wonder.

Do these more frivolous pursuits for media attention do any good? Or do they merely distract from people and companies who do things daily? Does seeing a commercial with two Anheuser-Busch employees talking about the environment make you want to buy the beer? Was Wal-Mart really smart to declare April "Earth Month?" Should we all send Earthday cards around the planet from now on?

I don’t know. Maybe that’s the difference between participation and engagement. You can celebrate Earthday today and/or you can do something about the environment daily.

We’re dropping some artificial turf in the backyard tomorrow, which makes sense when you live in a desert. (Water conservation is a big deal here.) I suppose I could have issued a news release and called it an Earthday solution.

But given we can only communicate so many messages about ourselves and hope to have any one of them be remembered, there wasn’t much point in pretending. Huh. Maybe we could call that message conservation.

Right on. Let's make Earthday daily, but not a marketing gimmick or public relations stunt. We have enough of those already.

Tinkering With Definitions: Social Media Engagement

According to Universal McCann, a full-service media communications company, there is no slowdown in social media adoption.

Globally, 73 percent of Internet users are reading blogs with 48 percent seeking out consumer generated content. In some countries, like South Korea, new media has already edged out old media with 77 percent of Internet users reading blogs and only 58 percent reading the mainstream press.

But here’s the rub. As Adweek pinpointed in the Universal McCann study, consumers in the U.S. and Western Europe are more likely to be passive social media participants — sharing videos and reading blogs — while those in emerging markets are more likely to be content creators.

Social Media Engagement Is Not A Measure

According to the study, more than 60 percent of Internet users in the U.S. read blogs, but only 26 percent are blog content creators. In contrast, more than 70 percent of Internet users blog in South Korea and China.

"By and large, in the U.S. we're a country of voyeurs," said David Cohen, U.S. director of digital communications at Universal McCann, which conducted the study. "We love to watch and consume content created by others, but there's a fairly small group that are doing that creation -- unlike China, which is a country of creators."

This might ruffle some feathers among social media experts that have inflated the “value” of social media engagement (comments, bookmarks, and links from other bloggers) over other forms of engagement (regular readers, tangible actions, and changes in behavior). The reason: companies that create sites reliant on user created content only appeals a fraction of total audience and not necessarily for the right reasons.

It also hints at why the sudden surge in “my” URL Web sites might be the wrong illusion. Simply adding “my” to a Web site does not make it automatically more personal.

Sure, the idea worked for some and there is no dispute that people want to feel connected to the sites they visit. However, one must always take care to remember that the participants they are catering to are most likely the choir and not the parishioners (never mind those who never made it into the service).

Engagement Takes Many Forms, Not Just One

If we consider that there are approximately three passive visitors for every one participant, then the most vocal of the total audience might not always be representative of the total population. In other words, if companies define engagement too narrowly, then they might inadvertently disengage passive participants — people who are engaged and take their actions offline.

It’s something to think about, especially because there is still ample wiggle room between online traffic measures. Enough so that digital-advertising executives have long doubted comScore and Nielsen Online because they already know that there are research gaps. Even less reliable is Alexa, despite being the favorite among bloggers to compare scores and its frequency of use among ranking algorithms.

The bottom line is that engagement takes many forms. Some people might leave a comment or cite what you write on their blogs. But then there are also those who might read a company blog faithfully and only take offline actions.

For example, the last time I had a question about a home repair, I sourced the company and found the information. I didn’t blog about it nor did I leave a comment, but I did use the information to get the job done.

While I might be counted as being engaged by their social media consultant, I most certainly might have been more engaged than the person who had left a comment that disagreed with their solution. You see, unlike the commenter who theorized, I actually did the task and found that it worked.

Making Connections & Divides: Social Media Relations

Yesterday, Steve Rubel, author of Micro Persuasion, pointed to a pair of surveys that may be significant to public relations professionals. While both surveys include too few respondents to be considered an accurate measure on their own, they do mirror conversations I've read about the subjects.

Does their public relations firm do a good job identifying the specific interest of individual bloggers and sending them relevant information?

• Only 52 percent of the public relations professionals asked said yes.
• Contrary, 65 percent of the bloggers asked the same question disagreed.

If there is any hint of accuracy to the survey, it suggests that public relations practitioners may be creating the same divide between themselves and bloggers as some have between themselves and journalists. Maybe the division is occurring because public relations practitioners tend to spend more time talking up each other than developing relationships with bloggers. (That, by the way, is what bloggers tell me.)

The second survey, with the same participants, seems to mirror another discussion point that I’ve seen it come up from time to time: Paying for posts.

It is okay to compensate bloggers for writing about my clients, but it is not up to me to tell them to disclose the payment.

• Not one public relations professional thought it was okay to pay for posts.
• Contrary, 48 percent of bloggers thought it was okay; 16 percent were neutral.

What strikes me as odd about these survey results is that public relations practitioners who blog often take a stand against pay per posts, even with disclosure. Yet, some who maintain blogs write reviews about their clients.

The first survey was published in PR Week as part of APCO Worldwide’s new “The State of Blog Relations” blog, which defines itself as a “pioneering Web initiative aimed at capturing and analyzing thought leadership in the blogosphere.”

I don’t know; these questions have been asked for years. However, what I do know is that social media is being applied in some odd places and convincing some to draw odd conclusions.

Also from Rubel, recently, was the addition of advertising social media feedback mechanisms on advertisements. Although many praised the post in the comments, I think it’s one of the most ridiculous ideas ever.

Why? For two simple reasons. The CNET and AOL Network ad platforms allow non-customers to offer feedback on ads. Depending on the advertiser, this non-customer feedback may influence advertising that resonates with customers. That could lead to some dangerous conclusions.

Have we so soon forgotten the lessons learned from Miller when it attempted to target microbrewery beer drinkers with ads aimed at them? Not only did non-customers NOT buy Miller, but the ads alienated Miller’s core blue collar consumer. The net outcome was a lot of awards for the advertising agency, and one of the best ad campaigns, not for Miller, which footed the bill, but for its rival Budweiser, which quickly captured the alienated Miller drinker.

The measure of advertising seems much more simple to me. Did people click on the ad, visit the store, perhaps buy the product? And, if you are really curious how customers feel about your advertising, wouldn’t it be smarter to ask them as opposed to asking everyone, including people who are so outside of your demographic that it just doesn’t matter?

You know, “because we can” doesn’t always measure up as the right answer. Misapplied research can cause more damage than it's worth.

Speaking Chinese: Salesgenie.com Pandas

Salesgenie.com was not the only SuperBowl advertisement to attempt “ethnic humor,” but it is among the first ads to be pulled amid growing customer complaints.

The New York Times reported yesterday that the spot will be pulled from the airways, though it hasn’t been pulled from the Salesgenie.com Web site as of this morning.

When I first read the article, I thought to give Vinod Gupta, chairman and chief executive of InfoUSA (parent company of Salesgenie.com), some props in handling the public relations fallout over the ad. It makes good sense to apologize and pull the advertisement. That’s responsive.

But in looking at his explanation, I became more skeptical. Gupta, who wrote the advertisements himself, told The New York Times that “We never thought anyone would be offended. The pandas are Chinese. They don’t speak German.”

Well, pandas don’t really speak so who really knows.

In looking at the ad again, perhaps I can offer some explanation for Gupta why the pandas drew more criticism than Salesgenie.com’s Ramesh spot, which also employed accents. Unlike the Ramesh spot, which also wasn’t very good, the pandas cross the fine line between laughing with people and laughing at people.

If Gupta believed his own explanation, then Salesgenie.com’s “psychic” panda would have a Chinese accent too. She does not. She also adds separation between Salesgenie.com’s apparently ignorant target audience and the wisdom of the company. The spot just isn’t good enough to carry any comedy.

The Ramesh spot, on the other hand, doesn’t drive home such separation, with exception to the quip about “having seven children,” which is why it didn’t draw criticism. However, there’s another reason too. The spot isn’t good enough to generate any emotion. It just lands flat.

I faced a similar call last year when a client asked me to add in ethnic accents on the tail end of a radio spot. Instead, I wrote the scripts two ways, and the one without accents survived. Why? Because accents aren’t funny. Specific people are funny, whether or not they have an accent makes no difference at all.

Case in point, it’s not funny to learn that people have been making fun of Gupta’s accent for years. What might be funny is a CEO laughing at his own wit and having “yes men” follow him around agreeing with whatever comes out of his mouth. You know, as if he just came up with the best SuperBowl commercials of the year. It might not even be that far from the truth, because this is the second year Gupta-written Salesgenie.com commercials were disliked.

The New York Times attributed the backlash to being indicative of increasing consumer sensitivity to marketing messages, particularly when ethnic images are involved. Hmmm … I think it is indicative of increasing consumer sensitivity to dumbed down marketing messages, particularly when the only people who like them are the creators. Right on. When you can’t be funny, shoot for publicity. Yuk, yuk, yuk. Yawn.

For another funny, check out MultiCultClassics, where I read Gupta is ready to pick up his pen next year too. I can hear his staff in back ground right now, “Brilliant idea! You're one funny guy.”

Missing Targets: Target PR

Last week, the public relations department at Target learned something about new media: it’s interconnected with old media (if there is such a thing anymore) and the links and lines between the two are not always clear.

The New York Times followed up on a post by ShapingYouth, a blog about the impact of marketing on children. The apparent conflict arose over an advertising campaign that has been criticized, as The New York Times describes it, because it “depicted a woman splayed across a big target pattern — the retailer’s emblem — with the bull’s-eye at her crotch.”

Personally, I never made the connection. But there are plenty of advertising folks and consumers who did.

But this post really isn’t about that, despite having years of research that relates to sexually suggestive advertising as well as cognitive thinking by consumers. Nor is it really about ShapingYouth author Amy Jussel’s approach to contacting Target or Target’s ill-advised response, given that it wasn’t even true.

“Unfortunately we are unable to respond to your inquiry because Target does not participate with nontraditional media outlets … This practice is in place to allow us to focus on publications that reach our core guest.”

There are a number of public relations and social media-related blogs that have already weighed in on the subject, most of them recognizing that Target may not have needed to respond to Jussel’s aggressively assumptive inquiry, but delivered an inappropriate response. Here’s a sampling:

“So, let the lesson be loud and clear: Bloggers are media too!” — Speak Media

“…despite the ridiculous sentiments of Jussel, Target’s response was even more out-of-line.” — The PR News Blog

“In an ideal world, PR pros should always strive to enter into a conversation with any journalist that submits a reasonably legitimate media query. In reality, however, it's not scalable to offer the same level of responsiveness across the board.” — The Flack

Answering Social Media Inquiries Is A Function Of Public Relations

While scalability to address social media seems to be an issue for many public relations departments (even at larger companies like Target, apparently), it doesn’t make sense to me that any company would dismiss a blogger’s inquiry given that they wouldn’t dismiss the same inquiry by an average customer. And therein lies the real rub.

Companies are becoming too hung up on a definition of “blogger” as a noun and not considering that “blogging” is best described as a verb. Unfortunately, when it is applied as a noun, everyone gets a bit wacky and dismisses all the other nouns that might apply.

Case in point: Jussel is not only a blogger, she is also a consumer advocate and Target customer. I doubt Target would have dismissed either of these definitions as readily as they dismissed Jussel as a blogger, regardless of her approach.

Jussel is not alone. Most “bloggers” have multiple labels that emblazon their name badges. (I have several dozen; take your pick.) Let’s consider that.

Some bloggers are journalists; some are not. Some demonstrate at least some semblance of being one, even if it is more op-ed commentary as opposed to objective reporting; some do not. Some want to be engaged by companies; some do not. Some … well, you get the point. But among all these titles and monikers and definitions and styles, there is one thing every company must consider.

All bloggers are consumers and possibly customers. Period.

Given that most companies would not brush off consumers the same way — “We are unable to respond to your inquiry because we do not address the concerns of customers because it’s not scalable to offer the same level of responsiveness across the board.” EGAD! — it doesn’t make sense that a public relations department would brush off bloggers, consumers who may publicly write about it.

So what’s the solution? Pretty simple, really. At minimum, even if the company has some erroneous anti-blogger policy, public relations departments need to be able to identify who is making the inquiry and then route the call to the appropriate department if the appropriate department is not public relations.

That’s not a social media policy. It’s common sense.

And if Target had applied even some semblance of it, they may looked like heroes instead of something else. It takes far fewer words and follow up to simply send out something along the lines of … “Thank you for your inquiry. The advertisement is not meant to be sexually suggestive. However, we have forwarded your concern to our [insert department].”

Sure, as a 3-second solution, it’s not perfect. But then again, I wasn’t shooting to be interviewed by The New York Times or irritating several thousand customers. I was simply considering what the lowest level of response might be, assuming the company wants to pretend that social media doesn’t exist.

E-Mailing Everybody: Marketers Say Spam Works

Forget Facebook and other online advertising models for a minute. Datran Media released a study that says direct-to-consumer e-mail spam works.

More than 82 percent of the marketers surveyed indicated that they plan to increase e-mail marketing this year. That’s a whole lot of e-mails.

Why? As much as everybody complains about e-mail advertising, it seems to work. The Direct Marketing Association (DMA) even released a report that says e-mail ROI can hit as much as $45.65 on every dollar spent, which is twice as much ROI earned from other mediums.

This study mirrors other industry specific releases sent out by the DMA, including one that predicted e-mail from the insurance industry will increase as much as 23.4 percent in the next few years. The insurance industry is not alone. E-mail advertising has become a red-hot choice among marketers nationwide.

Except. There are some things working against e-mail ROI. There is the increasing pressure on state legislatures by the public. There are the issues that cross over into the Federal Trade Commission’s consideration of online advertising. And, of course, there is the growing problem of over saturation.

Simply put, the more e-mail advertisements that consumers receive, the less effective the medium will become and the more likely it will be prone to stricter regulation. There are other considerations too, including that the DMA study on ROI in terms of dollars does not adequately consider long-term brand consequences or negative impressions. It also doesn’t consider the risks that more consumers associate with it.

Like most advertising and communication, direct e-mail advertising is a tool. It does not work for all companies or products, and can even be detrimental for some. Inc. recently published a great column that helps temper the hype and brings it back into focus.

Personally, before considering an e-mail campaign, I think many companies are better off thinking about a well-executed social media plan. Social media can be equally, if not more, effective because it allows the consumer to receive information when they want it and how they want it: RSS feed, e-mail subscription, social network announcement, Google search, etc.

Sure, social media, such as a blog, is considered passive by comparison. But then again, the communication doesn’t rely exclusively on an e-mail list either. In other words, while more than 70 percent of marketers said they intend to use e-mail to enhance consumer relationships, one wonders if consumers share their point of view.

Counting Words: 16 Makes A Sentence

Almost every year, I set up the students in my Writing For Public Relations class by asking them “how many words does it take to write the optimum sentence?”

Inevitably, several will enthusiastically answer. Sixteen words!

“Ah ha!” I smile, walking a bit closer to anyone whose eyes might have drifted downward for lack of answer. “It’s always good to know who is reading the assigned chapters … and who might not be. I’m even more impressed that some of you have already committed that gem to memory.”

“Too bad though. That answer is absolutely WRONG.”

Seriously, if it wasn’t for the fun discussion that Doug Newsom’s text has provided me for the last several years, I would instruct the students to immediately leaf over to page 96 (depending on what version), tear the page out, and destroy it before the nasty notion that sixteen words makes a magic sentence sinks in.

Newsom got the idea from Robert Gunning, author of The Technique of Clear Writing, who noted that most modern prose read by the public has an average sentence length of 16 words. Thus, he concludes, if your sentences are much longer than that, you are likely to be diminishing readability.

“How many words does it take to write the optimum sentence?”

As many as it takes to clearly communicate your point. Period. If it takes one word, do that. If it takes 13,955 words, er, it’s likely to be too long, but you never know. It worked for Jonathan Coe. (Previous contenders for the world’s longest sentence include William Faulkner and James Joyce.)

Of course, I forgive Newsom for several paragraphs of misrepresenting sentence lengths, but only because he pays tribute to Albert Einstein who wrote one of the shortest sentences in a scientific paper.

“If, for instance, I say, ‘That train arrives here at 7 o’clock,’ I mean something like ‘The pointing of the small hand of my watch to seven and the arrival of the train are simultaneous events.”

You cannot be much more clear than that, although others in the scientific community may have needed several pages or even books to explain the same. Interesting stuff, this language.

All of this touches on some blog banter, back and forth, with Valeria Maltoni on the economy of language. Most recently, she cited her appreciation for Reader’s Digest, noting that David Ogilvy did too. Ogilvy, for those who don’t know, is one of my favorite greats among advertising copywriters.

Memorable writing does tend to be simple, and not just for copywriters. As I said there: very often, the only reason writers are not able to discuss complex subjects in simple terms is because they either do not understand it themselves, live within a confined industry ecosystem, or try too hard to be clearly brilliant when all they really need to do is be brilliantly clear.

Of course, none of this really means that we must all become Hemingway. Economy of language means thinking about what you write. No matter what the purpose, the burden of communication best remains with the writer and not the reader.

This seems to be the very reason that James Michener struggles over his words, stopping to retype everything four, five, and six times. And, from the opposite end of the spectrum, it seems to be why William Saroyan used to throw things out because they weren’t great. That is, until one day, he realized it didn’t need to be great.

It needed to be clear.

Clarity and word counts are not the same thing. Although G. Donald Gale, with whom I once sat on a panel discussion about writing, was fond of saying even Winston Churchill said short words are the best words

There might be something to that, though I am probably more apt to say the best words are the right words, every time. Because, after all, there are no rules. Not really.

Improving Advertising: Nine Rules, Part 2

“Copy is a direct conversation with the consumer." — Shirley Polykoff

For all its benefits, social media communication sometimes misses. One of my favorite misses is the constant buzz of conversation and how it differs from traditional communication. It’s even one of the premises in Join The Conversation, recently reviewed by Valeria Maltoni.

Yet, despite never being engaged in social media, Shirley Polykoff felt the same way. She was a copywriter — the first woman copywriter for Foote Cone & Belding, and best known for her work on the Clairol account. Her work increased hair-coloring sales by 413 percent in six years and expanded the market from 7 percent to 50 percent of all women.

Most of Polykoff’s work was grounded in conversation, not all that dissimilar from the famous Volkswagen ad I reference last week after revisiting Fred Manley’s satirical “Nine Ways To Improve An Ad.” Once upon a time, almost all ad copy was a conversation or, at the very least, an invitation to have one.

Many advertising agencies have lost sight of this in the last decade, leaving some to become mired down in rules, committees, or exercises in attempting to “out clever” the other guy. Sure, that’s all fun and good, but communicators today might take more time to understand that social media, blog posts in particular, are sometimes similar to classic advertising, which was conversational.

If you don’t believe it, ask the man in the Hathaway shirt. Or consider the writer.

“If you're trying to persuade people to do something, or buy something, it seems to me you should use their language, the language they use every day, and the language in which they think. We try to write in the vernacular." — David Ogilvy

Only a fraction of ads today seem to grasp what Polykoff, Ogilvy, and other greats really meant. So what happened? Well, I have some unsubstantiated theories, but those can wait for another day. Today, I’m sharing some real advertising rules, the companion piece to last week's post.

The Real Nine Rules Of Advertising

Rule 1: There are no rules. Most memorable ads in the last century broke some, if not all, conventional rules. Like Manley, Ed McCabe often said he had no use for them.

Rule 2: Most products are not unique. Finding the right value proposition or product/service contrast is more important than a clever ad touting the same selling point. Copying the other guy just doesn’t work.

Rule 3: Brands are important. Despite this new Advertising Age article, brands are important (image campaigns, maybe less so). Brands represent the relationship between the consumer and the product, person, or company.

Rule 4: Advertising messages are unimportant. Given that people are bombarded with thousands of messages every day, advertising tends to be unimportant, which is why every ad needs to be communicated effectively.

Rule 5: Clients are already convinced. Clients and their spouses almost always think they have a better product or service; whereas advertising is an exercise in convincing others. In other words, it’s not about you.

Rule 6: Many people lie. Sometimes they lie in surveys, polls, focus groups, and rating systems. There are many reasons, and sometimes, there is no reason. My favorites were early studies that suggested Perrier would never work. Pay more for water? Bah! See rule 7.

Rule 7: People are irrational. Sometimes we buy things for no reason at all. It is why checkout stands at the supermarket offer great product placement and probably why I’m convinced Comet is better than Ajax.

Rule 8: Clichés are boring. With very rare exceptions, people tend to tune out clichés. The only exception, and even then they might not work, is when drawing attention to the cliché or challenging it, without being “cute.”

Rule 9: There is always a better way. There are a few great ads, some good ads, and a boatload of bad ads being produced every day. But even the best ads can always be made better.

There are a few others, but these are nine favorites. Not one tells you what to put or not to put in a headline, despite how many people have told me to, um, never ask a question in a headline. Good thing they didn't tell Polykoff.

Improving Advertising: Nine VW Rules, Revisited

On Monday, after alluding to advertising rule number 5 (people sometimes lie), which is simply meant to remind professionals not to follow qualitative focus groups or quantitative surveys on blind faith, I received an e-mail asking me what some other "advertising rules" might be.

I thought about posting a few, but then decided doing so deserves the same pretext I provide public relations students (sometimes public relations professionals write ads in a pinch). Before sharing any advertising tips, I always reference Fred Manley, then vice president and creative director of BBDO.

In 1963, Manley wrote “Nine Ways To Improve An Ad.” He didn’t use just any ad. He set out to apply "rules" to the 1960 classic “Think Small” Volkswagen ad, which many in the advertising industry and Advertising Age have since called the best ad of the 20th century.

There is also an Apple/Microsoft branding parody that conveys a modern take on Manley’s musings. You can find a link to it right here.

Both presentations are pointed, but Manley’s original and less available version, last republished by Communication Arts in March/April 1999, is exquisitely timeless. Here is a summarized version that strips away the satire, but, hopefully, still conveys the point…

Nine Rules To Improve A Volkswagen Ad

• Show your product as large as possible
• Include the product name in the headline
• Add in some “news” about your product
• Never use negative words in headlines
• Show people enjoying the product
• Make the logo as big as possible
• Add snazzy copy, bullets, and sales points
• Always localize ads, eg. make it American

In the article, Manley successfully transforms the classic headline, “Think Small,” into “New! From Volkswagen! A ’63 Sizzler with new sass and skee-daddle!”

Yes, yes, pretty heady stuff for an ad in 1960s. And yet, we still run into clients who tell communicators and copywriters stuff like this all the time, forcing their companies and brands to conform to rules invented for a medium. (Hmmm. Reminds me of … social media.)

So there you go. I’ll post a few smarter “rules” for advertising next week, but the most important rule is the one Manley conveyed so well. Advertising Rule Number 1: There Are No Rules.

Banning The Net: Survey Says 31 Percent

Every now and again, Ragan Communications hits upon a good story related to social media. Michael Sebastian did yesterday.

Less interesting are the feuding comments that followed, which do nothing more than polarize the issue into this or that, black and white. Despite the back and forth, everyone seems to ignore that lost workplace productivity, now blamed almost exclusively on social networks, predates the social network explosion last year.

In 2006, it was estimated that employees spent an average of 1.86 hours every eight-hour workday on something other than their jobs, not including lunch and scheduled breaks. Some of it was surfing the net. However, many attributed time wasting to socializing with co-workers, running errands outside the office, and "spacing out."

The Recap

Ragan Communications polled 430 professional communicators from North and South America, asking them if their companies permit access to social media sites. The majority said they did, but 31 percent are still left in the dark.

The list of banned sites includes just about everything: Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Flickr, Twitter, Squidoo, Second Life, blogs, podcasts, video-sharing sites, streaming, and, er, everything.

But does banning these sites from the office reverse wasted productivity attributed to “spacing out?” Probably not. Will employees be given enough to do to fill their time? Doubtful. Will leadership engage employees on a level that motivates them to excel? Unlikely.

Banning Abounds

The “workplace bans Internet” topic is being listened too despite being tired. Ironically, while Americans seem chafed that countries ban certain sites, they’re happily banning themselves under certain circumstances.

Not only at work, but more universities are continuing to ban Google and Wikipedia. It's common nowadays and hardly news.

While it is true that neither Google nor Wikipedia are adequate sources when working on "scholarly" papers (or client projects, I might add), banning Internet resources negates suitable uses for the tools, much like banning them at the workplace.

There is nothing wrong with using these tools to “source” for sources, in my opinion. Sometimes searching for key information is quicker, leading you to the appropriate journal, article, newspaper archive, published government report, interviewee, or lecture podcast from Harvard. And I guess that brings me to wonder ... why?

Social Media Is A Tool

I never understood the concept that social media is more of a lifestyle choice as opposed to a versatile tool, especially in academics and in the workplace. While people keep framing it up as "good or bad," it seems to me that it all comes down to acceptable usage and asking the right questions.

Do we want an air traffic controller surfing the net? Probably not. But open access to the net sure seems to make sense for an employee in charge of business development. Competitors have Web sites. And some of them have FaceBook accounts. So do prospects, I imagine.

So what’s the right question? How about … how do we teach students and employees to use the net for specific purposes that coincide with their assignment or job as opposed to overreaching or simply entertainment? And, if their productivity drops as the result of abuse or if they cite Wikipedia as a primary source (yikes!), what constitutes appropriate action? That seems more productive to me.

In contrast, blanket bans seem to limit how much material might be considered for a scholarly paper and/or dictate how you want your employees to waste their time, which they might just do anyway.

“We’d rather they just space out, Richard.”

Survey says … just space out? Six percent already do.

Checking Reality: Business Blog Validity

Liz Fuller, who writes Business and Blogging, recently pulled together a list of Fortune 500 blogs. In sum, she found 8 percent of Fortune 500 companies had some level of corporate blogs. Two of the top ten — GM and GE — have blogs.

The GM Fastlane Blog, of course, has been sourced as a best practice staple for some time. It appeared in my first presentation on business blogs in 2005, cited for its human approach, industry insights, product updates, press rebuttals, industry passion, and responsiveness.

While Fuller meant her post to be a precursor to evaluating 41 corporate blogs — the good, the bad, and the ugly — in the weeks ahead, longtime recruiting blogger and recently named “Best Recruiting Blogosphere Personality” Recruiting Animal flipped the headline to conclude Business Blogging Flops, adding in a reference to The Guardian article that notes the one percent rule is an emerging trend.

The One Percent Rule

The one percent rule is that if you have a group of 100 people, one will create content, 10 will interact, and 89 percent will just view it. That’s about right, unless you nurture engagement.

For example, our BlogStraightTalk group has 200 members with slightly better numbers, with 10 percent helping to create content, 30 percent offering comment, 50 percent viewing it, and 20 percent never dropping by again. However, although I have been focused on other projects, encouraging engagement is by design.

Honestly, this isn’t all that much different from face-to-face organizations. Without encouraging engagement, members of any organization, regardless of where it forms, will likely follow similar behavioral patterns: 1-10 percent lead, 10-20 percent manage, 30-80 quietly participate, and the balance forgets why it joined in the first place.

There is no difference, leaving The Guardian’s information interesting, but its conclusion is invalid because it fails to draw a comparison to real life.

Business Blogs Flop?

This knowledge brings us back to the headline flip. It seems to me that blogs and other social media/new media applications are sometimes too easily dismissed as viable because the expectation is an 80-100 percent adoption rate.

This isn’t realistic. In fact, with the possible exception of business cards, I don’t believe any communication tactic —brochures, newsletters, radio, television, Web sites, etc. — has an 80 percent adoption rate. So why have we set the expectation higher for the newest communication tool on the block?

Exactly. It doesn’t make sense.

The Truth About New Media

I can no longer open any communication-related publication without reading about the application of social media. Even Communication World (CW), which is a magazine for communication management, promoted “Social Media: Extend Your Reach” on the cover of its Jan.-Feb. issue.

Given the organization that publishes CW tends to be more conservative and representative of corporate communicators than advertising agencies and maybe public relations firms, it seems to me they present an accurate picture of where business communication is headed. Much of it will be online.

Will that mean every company will have a blog? Probably not. But not every company buys a television spot either. There are virtually hundreds of ways that companies can become engaged in social media on some level. And there are dozens of ways to employ a blog to fit the specific strategic communication needs of a company.

As I’ve pointed out several times, a company might not have a formal social media program in place, but they are most certainly engaged in it whether they know it or not.

For example, Bank of America might not have a blog, but I have more than 500 network connections (the maximum number returned) to existing and former Bank of America employees and associates in my Linkedin network alone. Even more telling, a quick Google blog search on “Bank of America” reveals more than 2.7 million hits on blogs. (That’s just blogs.) Similar results turn up on the other eight companies that round out the Fortune 500 list.

Simply put, most companies are engaged in new media. Whether or not they monitor or manage their message or support a corporate blog is a different question. Because the truth is, whether they do or not, it seems painfully obvious that their customers, vendors, and employees do.

Missing Customers: Verizon Tries Distress

While most cellular phone customers are savvy to text messaging, some are becoming all too familiar with distress messaging. Specifically, anyone who makes up the 27 percent of the smart phone market captured by the Apple iPhone, especially if they were a Verizon customer.

These folks, like me, are probably receiving distress message mailers. The latest from Verizon, sent about two weeks after I become an AT&T iPhone windfall customer and about a week after Verizon’s letter that claimed “I made a mistake,” tells the real story:

We miss you already.

• Free BlackBerry Pearl with GPS Navigation
• $100 off any phone of your choice
• Free activation

Call today!

While I’m not privy to the response rate, my best guess is that it’s flat. It might also be causing some brand damage to what once was the network of choice among 1 million subscribers, at least those who recently made a switch.

Messages such as take $100 off, come back and save, and come back to the network you trust are emblazoned on almost every panel of an 8-panel direct mail piece. Most of them, if not all of them, are misdirected, clearly reinforcing that Verizon has no idea why it has to send a “miss me” mailer anyway.

It’s not the network, it’s the phone. But now, looking back, maybe there is something questionable about the service strategy at Verizon anyway. As a former customer, why did I have to quit in order to get offered the best package perks ever?

For all these efforts, they were four months too late. That was the beginning of the end. Four months ago, my second-to-last Verizon phone was damaged during my ”never fly US Airways unless I absolutely have to again” flight.

Naturally, once I returned home, the first order of business was replacing my broken phone. The choices were slim without a contract. So, my company made a Band-Aid LG phone buy. It was the worst phone I’ve ever owned.

Contrary to the mailer’s claim “Your phone is only as good as the network it’s on,” $5 more per month for an iPhone opened my eyes up to what I was missing, starting with unlimited data, something Verizon never wanted to talk about until now, assuming you’re a lapsed customer (ie. unlimited data is now available on select phones, for new and returning customers, with one- and two-year contracts, for about $5 more than AT&T offers with the iPhone). They don’t get it.

“The best time to start missing a customer is before they stop being your customer.”

Sure, no one can say that Verizon is dead, but it’s very telling when a once perceived market leader does more following than leading. While they did pretty well launching the LG Voyager concept copy, a phone that Today’s Paul Hochman called the only viable competitor for the iPhone (I’m less convinced). However, the plan still lacks where AT&T came through. Customers don’t want 2-year contracts because technology is changing too fast to commit.

More to the point, Verizon would be better served by revisiting its marketing strategy from the ground up. They need to invest more on existing customers, recognizing that the recapture rate seems thin if you wait until after a lost customer already signs another contract or are unlikely to use their iPhone as a paperweight. Besides, it costs more to recapture a lost customer than attract new customers. Why? Lost customers already made up their mind once.

Here are a few quick tips for the Verizon marketing department:

• Improve your marketing to existing customers before their contract ends
• Re-engage customers who fulfill their contract with new customer perks
• Keep existing customers engaged, offering opt-ins on new customer perks
• Stop playing games with location rates; a national price plan is long overdue
• Verizon is a prime new media candidate; a presence last year would have went a long way, especially if you could have hinted at Voyage 9 before people bought iPhones

But above all, fix your messages. Touch gets more stylish? Come on. Honestly, the best thing Verizon has going is the geeky phone guy. He’s become a great icon on television but everything with text falls flat. It doesn’t connect to the smart phone market, which by all accounts, is the new market. Even Citigroup knows that. And they’re not even in the phone business.

Making Messes: News Release Resolutions

With the fast approaching New Year, it’s no surprise that New Year's resolutions and predications are among the hottest topics across the wire.

Sure, some journalists scramble for such tidbits because their readers expect it, doubly so when the space between Christmas and New Year's seems painfully short. But that’s hardly a reason to force a media release into a prediction or faux resolution piece, hoping it might get picked up as mainstream filler.

Here are five of my favorites, but not because they are true.

• FabJob.com released that quitting your job might be a good resolution because 77 percent of its visitors are dissatisfied with their jobs and are planning to look for a new career opportunity.

You think? If they were satisfied with their jobs, they probably wouldn’t be on FabJob.com to begin with.

• Transitions Lenses released that keeping New Year's resolutions is a matter of perseverance. “To stay true to your resolutions, experts recommend choosing realistic goals, like visiting your eye doctor yearly,” they say.

Geesh. If you're going to lower your expectations that much, there isn't much point in making a resolution in the first place.

• The Texas Society of CPAs came up with a boatload of “helpful hints” for meeting financial goals, including “paying off debts” and to “start saving.”

Sure, it’s pat advice. So pat, I can tell you that without being a CPA.

• A Body Worlds 2 (an exhibit in the Bay area) release suggests: everyone “Get fit. Drink less alcohol. Quit smoking. Spend more time with friends and family. Visit cultural events. Seek out educational activities.”

While the exhibit looks pretty neat, these tend to be the six most common resolutions people make every year anyway. Yawn.

• Sixty-two percent of respondents to the Turnaround Management Association's annual Trend Watch Poll said that homebuilders will face the "greatest financial and/or operational difficulties" next year.

Hmmm. Maybe the housing market will continue to be in a slump as long as experts continue to tell us it’s in a slump. (Hat tip to Wells Fargo for releasing the slump will not be as bad as some fear.)

Well, if you can't beat them, join them. I have a resolution suggestion too. Public relations professionals might resolve to save their clients about $400 per wire submission in favor of releasing ... drum roll ... relevant news. Releases like these leave big messes in the morning.