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Baby Blogger Relations

And, no, I don't mean relating to babies who blog.

The title of my graduate project is Online Public Relations: Using the Internet to build and sustain relationships. I am aware the title is a little lengthy and doesn't flow off the tongue as well as, say Peppy PR or One, Two, PR or even My Book: As Seen On Oprah. But it is what it is.

Photo by Umut Kemal

The reason I'm mentioning it is because I finished the chapter on blogs the other day and sent it to my project chair for approval. I'm still doing updates on the earlier chapters that he sent back to me. The chapter on blogs, though, just isn't complete even though I sent it. I left space for, but didn't fill in, a section on Blogger Relations. Why? Because blogger relations is in its infancy. Rest assured I'm paying incredible attention to what Shel Holtz is doing (as per usual) with his blogger relations campaign. There was a lot of talk in the past with the way Wal-Mart and Edelman handled their earlier blogger relations campaign. And I'm not foolish enough to think there aren't others or that Shel, for instance, is the first to do what he's doing. But one thing I can assure you, Shel's going to do it right. Or as right as anyone can for something this new. And it looks as if he's succeeding so far. So I'm going to be following this very closely for the next few weeks until my project committe chair rips my graduate project out of my hands and says that it's done. At that point I'll finally have to stop writing about it in my project. But I certainly won't stop paying attention to the campaign. The blog for the campaign participants is here if you're interested in seeing it.

Fortunately for me, Shel is posting updates about it so that we may all learn from what he's doing. Keep up the great work, Shel, there are many of us who appreciate and count on it. Now back to work on Chapter 187, "How to assure another blogger that you're not an online predator."

Hat tip to Erin for sparking the writing muse.

CIBA Vision Shortage – They’re Alive! – sort of

Update V: (3/6) I really appreciate how often people have stopped by to share experiences and stories with all of us. In light of CIBA Vision’s lack of communication, it’s good to have a place to converse about our problems and fill that void. I do want to caution everyone, though, about checking sources and verifying information before taking any advice shared on this site. I’m a communicator, not a medical person, and I can’t speak for any of the people who leave comments on this blog. Before taking any advice, check with a professional. The Internet is a great resource, but can be abused, use caution.

That said, I just want to point out a new story I read on CNN Today. Baush & Lomb is still having problems, as well. What the heck is going on with eye care products? For so many months we’ve been seeing this industry suffer unexplained accidents. Keep your eyes and ears open for news and continue to share it here. Peace. [end update]

Update IV: (6/2) We have product stocked in NE Ohio. Another reader left this comment, which I wanted to bring to attention.

Got their email today, May 31, 2006 @ 8AM PST (California)

Hi Bruce,

Thank you again for contacting CIBA Vision. This is the latest list of retailers to carry CLEAR CARE. Due to a manufacturing facility upgrade, it has put us in a backorder situation. The upgrade took longer than anticipated.

Albertsons, Bergen Brunswick, CVS, Drugs Store.com, Duane Reade Corp., Fred Meyer, H.E. Butt Grocery, Harmon Stores, Harris Teeter, Inc, HY Vee Food Stores, Imperial Distributors, Kinney Drug Companyu, K-Mart, Kroger,Marsh Supermarkets, Maxi Drugs,McKesson, Meijer, Inc, Progressive Distributors, Pulix Supermarkets, Raleys Supermarkets, Rite Aid, Roundy’s, Safewaty, Shopko, Sparten Stores, Supervalue, Target, Wal-Mart, Walgreens, Wegmans, Weis Markets, and Winn Dixie. We started shipping March 22, 2006, to their distribution centers for allocation to their locations. Once it reaches their distribution center they tell us the turn around is 7 to 14 days to get it out to the stores. We are continually shipping to these centers and we hope that they can get it into the stores in a timely fashion. We do not have a schedule of the stores are distribution times as we do not deliver to the stores themselves, just to their warehouses. Softwear Saline will be available again in September.
Please ask your eye care professional what he or she would recommend in the interim.
Again thank you for contacting CIBA Vision.

Kind regards,
CIBA Vision Consultation

UPDATE: A kind reader named Jessica just left a comment on this post and on this post which I will cut and paste some of for your information. It reads:

Hi Jessica,
Thank you for contacting CIBA Vision. We always appreciate hearing from our consumers’ with their concerns and comments. Due to a manufacturing upgrade our products are on backorder. AO Sept will be available the second week of April and Clear Care will be back on the shelves at Wal-Mart, Target, CVS and Walgreens the first week of April. Please ask you eye care professional what you can use in the interim.We are sorry for the inconvenience this has caused. Again, thank you for contacting CIBA Vision.

Kind Regards Sherry Vanore Product Consultant

So at least now we know that CIBA Vision has actual people working there instead of CIBA Vision Consultation Specialists. I wish there were a way to express to CIBA Vision how mistreated we all felt, but they seem to have the market cornered on this type of product. I’m open to suggestions, an organization shouldn’t be able to treat customers this way and get away with it. Thanks, Jessica, now we know what we can expect.

After my somewhat bitter post on March 3 about CIBA Vision and their silence regarding a shortage of numerous products including Clear Care, AOsept, and others – a story finally emerged. Of course, it wasn’t CIBA Vision who announced that, it was Lori Rackl, a health reporter from the Chicago Sun-Times, whowrote a story

regarding the shortage. She actually has quotes from a person with a name from CIBA Vision.

My post generated quite a wide range of comments from all over the US and even into Canada. Ottawa, Rhode Island, Minnesota, California, Seattle, Dallas, Ohio, Conneticut, Viriginia – and these are just the people who left comments. Our traffic has nearly tripled since I posted information about this disaster. It’s been quite a refuge for people seeking answers and offering advice. A great group of people, these are. Some even revisted to post additional information knowing that this was the only place (that I know of) for answers.

CIBA Vision, what were you thinking? This is, unfortunately, probably not going to damage your reputation enough to financially affect you – but I kind of wish it would. There’s a lesson to be learned here – communicate! Why torture your loyal consumers, which is what has happened. It frustrates, disappoints, and angers me all at once. This isn’t just revenue, these are people with eye care issues, who rely on your services and products. And you’ve been slapping them across the face for over a month. Especially since Rackl’s article indicates that you were aware of all of this MONTHS before the shortage hit the stores. And no backup plan (see my other post) other than “we would recommend contacting your eye care professional for their recommendation of the best solution for your lenses in the interim.” I guess you’re lucky you don’t have a lot of direct competition. Unfortunately.

Lego Letting Go

This article by Daniel Terdiman titled Hacking’s a snap in Legoland from CNET really gives one pause. Can this really be happening? Can a company really be letting go and allowing consumer evangelism to help them?

Personally I find this a) great and b) really surprising. Joseph Jaffe had quite a problem with the Lego brand last September (2005) because Lego didn’t seem able to let go. Jaffe took issue with the fact that Lego had (i.e. posted on their website) insisted that people refer to the wonderful colored put-them-together plastic bricks as Lego bricks, but not as “legos.” As it turned out, Lego was just trying to defend their brand name.

Allen Jenkins sums it up nicely on his site or you read more on this topic at Jaffe’s original post. Either way, check out Jeremy Pepper’s commentary on the Lego brand situation.

That aside, this may seem surprising that Lego – or any company – would hand over so much control to its consumers. Or, should I say, allowed them to hack with such passive pleasure. Read Mr. Terdiman’s article and get back to me. One excerpt from this article that hits the PR nerve is this:

Scherer [senior producer in Lego’s interactive experiences group] explained that Lego has to walk a fine line when it comes to allowing access to its systems but that the company recognized the value of letting users adapt the tools to their needs.

Wow. So, the trend is letting go and sharing control. Will this continue? Will others follow? From a PR perspective, how do you counsel this? How do you keep people from freaking out about control? Better yet, should you? I’m certain the answer, like most others, is “it depends.” But it depends on the situation today. Yesterday it would have always been a resounding “no.”

Kryptonite II – I blinked and missed it

I hate to rehash what amounts to an enormous and severely beaten topic, but I just have to know. Where did I miss the second half of this debacle? From a PR standpoint, this certainly takes a revisit. Apologies if you’re tired of the subject.

For those of you who don’t know (and I imagine a fair many of you don’t, so that’s okay), I’ll try to sum it up for you.

This is an incredibly simplified version. See the links below for more detailed information.

Kryponite Lock is a company that makes, you guessed it, bike locks. In 2004 several videos circulated across the Internet demonstrating how to defeat a certain type of lock style with a typical ballpoint pen. The news originally broke on an “online forum,” and this is important later on. This spells bad news for Kryptonite, right? Well, the blogosphere went crazy and there was quite an uproar even in some traditional mediums. Things got blown out of proportion – as I hope to detail in later posts – because of the mob mentality of parts of the blogosphere. I say “parts of the blogosphere” not all. But I’m digressing.

So to make a long story longer, this went on for some time and finally Kryptonite offered a lock exchange program to replace (here’s a interesting note) not only the pickable locks, but many other locks as well at a significant cost to the company. Sounds great. Word is that Kryptonite suffered irrepairable losses because of this crisis, which could have been avoided if only they had been monitoring the blogosphere. Is this true? Could it have been avoided? Were they not being constantly vigilant?

Well guess what, maybe they were.

Kryptonite has become the poster child for “Blogosphere Monitoring, how NOT to do it,” and why not? Well, because Donna Tocci, Public Relations Manager for Kryponite, argues that they were watching, they knew about it from day one. I did some online snooping and came across several blog interviews with Tocci that range from April 2005, to December 2005 (see the links below for more information). Here are my new thoughts about the issue:

  • Too slow to see? No. Tocci indicates they knew about it from day one. The interviews go into chronological detail (especially the Naked Conversations blog post). Good eye, but it’s what you do with that information that matters.
  • Too slow to talk? I say yes. Donna admits that maybe they could have communicated better. It’s a relatively small company and they had various angles to contend with during this and it affected their communications. Could be trouble.
  • Too slow to act? I don’t think so. Donna makes some great cases for not implementing a plan until they had every aspect covered. Sounds good and I agree. You can’t institute a lock replacement program until you can figure out distribution, storage, costs, etc. This takes time.
  • Too slow to get the real story out? I might have to agree. The initial story broke in September, 2004. The first mention I see of Tocci out in the blogosphere trying to get the real story out is April 2005, then July 2005, then December 2005, and into 2006. In my email conversation with Donna she wrote, “This was just the time frame that we were able to start some conversations.” Again, back to the fact that they had scads to do during the crisis. Is that a good reason to drop the communication ball? No one would agree if asked, but it’s the pressure of the situation that really determines what kind of communicator you are. Let’s all remember this: no matter what happens, you must still communicate. Either way, Tocci did go out and get the truth out. Maybe late, but she was tenacious about telling Kryptonite’s story. All last year she was doing interviews, on blogs, posting comments, replying to emails, being available. That’s good communication. She even answered my email to rehash what they consider a closed topic. And who am I? Just a student, trying to learn the truth, trying to share a case study that everyone already assumed had gone wrong. But I maintain this: It wasn’t as wrong as people said it was, not by a long shot.

I posit that the blogosphere is like TV or Radio News at times. If it isn’t sensational, it’s not going to make the cut. Bad news is always news, but good news is fluff. (At least that’s how some journalists make communicators feel at times – oops, my PR is showing). My point? When it hit the fan for Kryptonite everyone and their grandmother was writing about it, but when the real story comes out, people don’t care. I indicated this to Tocci who wrote, “This is a very big generalization. The news of our lock exchange program did get out lots and lots of people through the internet and traditional media sources. But, yes, as in most mediums controversy ‘sells’.” And that’s why I actually had to search to find the second half of this story. You couldn’t read a PR blog, listen to a PR podcast, or read books about the blogosphere without hearing about this mess when it first came out. But after that I had to search for it. And – oh boy – it’s out there.
There is also a thread of information in the following posts that Kryptonite knew about the faulty locks since 1992 when a British publication wrote about it. I’ve read enough articles to gather that Kryptonite Locks weren’t specifically mentioned, so people are putting too much emphasis on that article. However, brand name listed or not, why didn’t they check it out? Do we have a problem here? In crisis PR we call that a prodrome, noticing circumstances that have the potential to become crises. None of the Tocci interviews go into detail about that, she states the article never mentioned Kryptonite Locks.

But the myth remains, blogs nearly destroyed Kryptonite, blogs discovered the ineptitude of a shoddy company, you have to monitor the blogosphere, Kryptonite did a lousy job, etc etc. You can think whatever you like, I don’t care. What I care about is researching the truth. How many other people did that? From a PR standpoint, It’s true that you need to monitor the Internet, it’s true you need to know what your publics are saying about you. But it’s also true that you need to communicate as often as possible, especially during a crisis. Maybe Kryptonite knew from day one, maybe they could have done more, been better communicators. Even in the aftermath, why does it take so long to get the real story out, over so many channels, over so long a period of time? PR is about communicating effectively, right?

Check out the links below to read interviews with Tocci, opinions and all. If you read on, make sure you read all the comments as Tocci usually follows up to people’s questions. PR flack or honest communicator? I’ve formed my opinion, but let me know your thoughts.

No Luv 4 Google

I decided to continue the story about Google, because it relates to what we have been discussing about PR and social media. Apparently, Google set up a search engine for the Chinese Government to censor searches controlling what people read, write and view. The Communist government polices the news, Internet and media. It is their law, their government and they have a right to their sovreignty. I guess it depends on your beliefs. If an American company wants to do business in China they have to follow their laws. The problem many people have is the fact that Google is working with the Chinese Government to promote censorship. Rep. Tom Lantos (D-California) said “They caved in to Beijing for the sake of profits.” ( From the The New York Times)

And because of their business with China a protest has commenced by The Students for a Free Tibet called No Luv 4 Google. Valentine’s Day is Google boycott day. People are signing up and pledging to boycott Google. Here is the campaign’s purpose, “We want to provide an outlet for the widespread outrage people worldwide have expressed since the launch of Google.cn. We want people inside Tibet, China and other Chinese-occupied territories to know that we respect their right to the free access of information just as much as we value our own. We want Google — and all other international companies doing business in China — to know that there is a basic human obligation to uphold higher standards than those set by the Chinese Communist Party. We want Google to end their partnership with the Chinese government and stand on the right side of history.”

The group has posted some catchy taglines, like “Google break up stories…break up here.” You can click on the icon and e-mail Google and tell them why you are breaking up with their gmail and “just google it” services. You can even include your picture.

What should Google do? How can they or any company effectively respond to a potential boycott? Respond, sometimes that isn’t enough. The Students for a Free Tibet have a decent PR campaign going on. Activist organizations rely on the Web to communicate, advocate and find other volunteers to rally their issue.
Google has provided reasoning for launching Google.cn, which can be read on the Google Blog. I think that Google needed to make a statement.
Anyone interested in studying the impact of social media should look to activist and advocacy organizations blogs and web sites. They can be powerful tools that impact businesses and influence others to act.
Some examples are: Exxpose Exxon, Sierra Club’s Compass, US PIRG and Greenpeace’s Weblog.

Epic – is this the future?

Last year a professor pointed out this amazing 10-minute online video entitled “Epic” (Update: I just found out there’s a newer version here.) that I’ve been obsessed with ever since. I’ve been dying to talk to someone about it. To date I’ve found nobody else (other than my class) who has seen it. Our professor showed it to us under the guise that it had been someone’s graduate research project. I’ve been unable to verify. It’s pretty cool. I just find it incredibly fascinating and a little scary. Not scary in the “I see dead people” sense, but scary because I see this consumer-generated content concept, specifically the blogosphere phenomenon, as actually headed in this direction.

Hardcopy newspaper readership is down, online credibility is reasonably questioned (or should be), and – as my colleague Beth points out to me as often as she can – the blogosphere is like a big wheel of “news” that may or may not actually go anywhere. Some blog writers resource other blogs content without actually adding any value. What’s the point? Where’s your opinion? Okay, some would argue that having an opinion isn’t the same as adding value, but at least it’s a start. It shows a little effort.

And how about a little fact checking? Traditional journalists are held to pretty high standards. Shouldn’t people on the ‘net who scream to be taken seriously be held accountable for what they write, as well?

I’m interested in your thoughts on the Epic video. With all the craziness going on with Google right now, I find this conjecture irresistible. Is this something we should fear? Is it something that could happen? What will this mean to PR folks? Where will we send our press releases!? *gasp!* Is 2014 too far a prediction for this to be happening? Let me know, I’m craving to talk about this.

UPDATE: Apparently I’ve missed the boat on this. Neville Hobson blogged about this last June and just posted something today (2/4) about it. What he writes is even creepier than I could have imagined.

Can students help other students? You bet!

I was flipping through Technorati today when I stumbled upon a mention of this blog. For your information, Technorati is a search engine geared towards fast updating webpages like news, blogs, and others. It’s a fantastic resource because, as the website points out, “Unlike other engines, our results are individual posts (portions of pages), so they’re more specific. Search results are listed newest to oldest, and are often only minutes old!” So bookmark or add to your favorites the Technorati search engine.

Anyway, I found a flattering comment posted by Robert French from Auburn University on his professor blog (his other blog is here). He writes:

Another great blog I suggest you check out is the new Graduate Observations of Public Relations at WordPress.com. OK, not that new, but new to my students. Check it out. Glad to see some grad students blogging. Congrats!

To which I say, “Thank you.” And actually, Robert, it is fairly new. We’re just over a month and a half old at this point and looking forward to going strong. When I graduate in May, however, I’ll have to change the name, eh? By then the MA after my name will give me an air of credibility – right? Correct? Hello? Is this thing on?

Check out his InfOpinions site to read the whole post and our comments.

So I emailed Robert to get some more information about the Auburn sites and how they are all related, here is the abridged (and approved, of course) email he returned:

Essentially, there are three main sites – with many parts, or sub-sites, involved. Those three sites are: PRblogs.org; Marcomblog.com; AuburnMedia.com

PRblogs.org – The site offers a free WordPress Multiuser blog to anyone involved in, or interested in, public relations to create a blog. All lof my students now have their blogs there each semester and this will allow them, if they wish, to continue blogging after class and graduation. I think of PRblogs as a community, but also as a jump off point for those new to blogging. After blogging there for awhile, it is possible to go off and establish your own domain and import your old posts into the new site.

My students are required to blog in their classes. The focus of their posts depends upon the course. This semester the Style & Design students post twice a week in their blogs. The Survey Research students post once a week in their blogs and it must focus on Survey Research.

The content must focus on PR/Marcom – anything about PR/Marcom. Ideally they will (a) develop an awareness of the latest PR issues and trends while (b) perhaps applying the ideas they gain to their future PR practice. Students are also required to seek out other blogs and post two comments in those blogs each week. The idea there is to help them begin conversations (networking) with established PR practitioners around the world. Some of these relationships have already led to internships and jobs. The best part is that the students now have an opportunity to meet practitoners they never would have know about – let alone get to interact with before.

Marcomblog.com: This is a virtual online mentoring program. Ten professionals from a variety of PR/Marcom firms, and PR support companies, have volunteered to post on a fairly regular basis about latest trends. The students read their posts and are required to post comments each week. The conversations often spill over into email interaction directly between the practitioner and student. The participants are from all over the world.

We have contributors from the US (west coast to east coast), The Netherlands, Denmark, Spain and France. They range from large firms (Edelman, Weber-Shandwick) to medium/boutique firms and individual practitioners/consultants and one educator. I do not tend to post there often. My students get enough of me in my blog and classes.

AuburnMedia.com: That is my site and where I host my blog. OK, they are all my sites, I manage them, but you get my drift. I also try out new software all the time and share those installations with my students. Most are opensource and range from lead generators to wikis to calendars to portals and any other social media I can find.

Finally, we also have wikis interspersed throughout. The one we most often use for class is Marcomblog Wiki at http://www.marcomblog.com/wikimedia/ That site is used for everything from group press release writing exercises to just learning what a Wiki is and how to use it. It is also a repository for various links to blog/wiki related background information.

So there you have it. What a fantastic resource PR students or practitioners wanting to learn more and perhaps try out the blogging medium. What I’ve read on the PRBlogs site leads me to believe the students appear to be on the cutting edge of new media and are well informed, creative, and willing to discuss – my favorite aspect of the blogosphere. The site Marcom Blog features posts by marketing communication and PR professionals with advice, information, and mentoring. Another great resource. Check out these links, join the discussions, and offer your own opinions.

Can students help other students, you bet, and with active pros offering advice and guidance, how can PR go wrong?

What makes a bad pitch?

Bad pitches? Yes, it’s true. Sometimes – and some of the students here might find this shocking – but sometimes PR people pitch stories to the wrong people, or the wrong publication, or in such a sloppy, disastrous manner that it ruins the credibility of the PR person and his/her company. When I worked for a company in Cleveland, I was guilty of this. I don’t consider it my fault – entirely – I was short on time and expected to make turn proverbial water into wine. Well, I’m not a magician and at the time I was a relatively inexperienced PR flack, so I made mistakes. Deep down, though, I knew something was wrong. Alas, I was unable to fix it.

That’s behind me know, I feel a little more experienced, and a lot more knowledgeable. But how do we continue to learn about pitching? Especially in this era of new media, how do we stay on top. Well, fortunately there are real time case studies going on as we speak. Phil Gomes pointed to a new blog started by Kevin Dugan and Richard Laermer from which we can all learn, The Bad Pitch Blog.

So I think it’s mostly meant for Blog pitching, but from what I read, each post has a lesson we can learn about pitching news, stories, or whatever to a wide variety of media. Newspaper, magazine, blog…no matter what you’re trying to pitch the cases are here. A great resource, use it wisely. It’s also pretty funny, too.

New Semester, New Year

Time to immerse ourselves in learning and discussing the ever changing sphere of new media again. I would like to start my post of the new year mentioning the Society for New Communications Research. The Society is devoted to the study of how new tools, technologies and interactive communications impact our culture, business and broader
society. Check out their journal, New Communications Review. I suggest signing up for the free e-newswletter and reading Phil Gomes post in the PR section.

Over break I reflected-I had a month! And here is my question to all…blogs are a form of consumer generated media, they are created by the user. When organizations and companies blog this alters the medium. The consumer is no longer the creator and user but the receiver of a message an organization wants to communicate with its audience. And more often than not the audience does not always post comments on corporations blogs making the medium less interactive. So are these blogs really blogs? Any thoughts?

Bent out of Shape by Staples

Steve Rubel posts an interesting quiz for us on his website. Staples has apparently been charging customers for virus scanning on files that people come in to have printed. $2.49, Rubel reports, and it’s creating quite a stir in the blogosphere. Check out Steve’s post and we’ll create our own discussion here.

FOLLOW UP: Steve Rubel now contends that Staples is a blog winner. Recent developments indicate there was some confusion about what the fee was actually for, as Beth notes in the comment section of this post. Excellent work, Beth. Rubel notes that BoingBoing posted Staples’ response. My favorite part of this whole fiasco was what Jeremy Pepper wrote on Rubel’s follow up. This has been my complaint of the blogosphere since I started paying attention to it. And guess what? I fell into the exact same trap that I’ve been complaining about. I’m going to add “Lessons Learned” to the categories of this post…because it was a HUGE lesson for me. Pepper’s comment indicates the lack of professionalism in bloggers’ methods. Attacks are made with little fact or research and it is allowable. We’d never allow a traditional journalist to get away with this without being flayed. Somehow the electronic medium makes us forget to think or have consequences. I posted something similar in response to Tom Murphy’s Blog in his December 12th post titled Crossing the Tortoise.

I’ve learned something valuable here. I actually thought about calling my local Staples to verify this, but didn’t. The rumor mill sucked me in and I got ground up. Lesson learned.