Zeno Group Blog

Anyone who has spent any time reading blogs, news sites and forums knows how often the conversations on these sites degrade into name-calling, insults, accusations, and generally uncivil discourse. The cause of this incivility is widely written and pondered about; I personally believe that the combination of anonymity and the platform provided by the Internet causes people to ignore the decency “filters” they use in everyday life. Real-life social settings carry the threat of repercussion or scorn by your peers if one says something distasteful – not so on the Internet.

I spoke to Jonathan Martin of Politico.com about this at the Politico 2008 Election Conference last Saturday and he mentioned that the Politico editorial staff was confronting this exact issue. As the political fervor increased during the 2008 election, the quality of the comments on Politico’s blogs dropped sharply; readers started attacking the candidates, impugning the writers, and insulting each other’s intelligence. The editors were left wondering; what balance should they strike between allowing the community members to speak their minds and preserving the civility of the conversations.

Politico is not the only publisher facing this issue. Sites have taken various steps to combat the problem: some have banned posting of comments, some require registration and identity confirmation (on the hope that writers will be more civil if it can be tied back to them), and some, like Politico, have no restrictions and let people write what they will. The decision to restrict commenting is especially difficult for journalistic sites, since they exist to disseminate information and foster discussion – not to stifle it.

However, this problem also presents an issue for any company that provides an online forum for its customers. Are you a technology company with an online support forum, a social networking site, or a blog? How do you decide what should be allowed and what “crosses the line”. What do you do when someone writes something negative about your company, in a negative tone (as opposed to a legitimate negative review/experience)? Do you remove it and risk being attacked for censoring criticism, or do you leave it up and allow the quality of the forum to degrade.

There are no simple answers to any of these questions, and the best way to protect yourself and your company from an awkward situation or public relations crisis is to formulate a comprehensive policy before the issues arise. Create a registration process and lay out exactly what you expect from forum members; continually monitor the forums and moderate comments or posts that violate the decency rules; and finally, apply the rules fairly and firmly across the entire community – this consistency will help reinforce the standards across the community and protect you from being accused of censoring posts later on.

As for Politico; they have decided, after much internal debate, to leave the comments unmoderated.

Here are some articles the Zeno team has been reading from November 20th through November 25th:

• ESPN: General Motors Corp. ends nine-year endorsement deal with Tiger Woods
• New York Magazine- Daily Intel: Sarah Palin’s PR Strategy Gets Weirder
• Medill Reports: Entrepreneurs: Tighten your bootstraps for a rough 2009

Here are some articles the Zeno team has been reading from November 18th through November 19th:

• The Atlantic: Annals Of Stupid Corporate PR Tricks
• Time Magazine: ‘Saved by Zero’: The Toyota Ad That Won’t Stop
• Gawker: Twitter Mom Power! Innocuous Ads Successfully Banned

By now, most people in the online world are aware of the recent “fiasco” surround Motrin’s new online ad about mothers who carry their babies on a continual basis. Last Friday, Motrin posted an ad on their Web site featuring the voice of a young mother talking about the pain caused by carrying her baby in a pouch or sling. It was quickly noticed by mommy bloggers who immediately started tweeting and blogging about it, spreading the word throughout the community. The first Tweet on the subject was posted on Saturday evening, and within a few hours angry moms made hundreds of posts on the topic – all conveniently aggregated by the #MotrinMoms hashtag. The mothers were angered for several reasons including:

• The implication that baby-carrying is a fashion and that the mother’s who do it are doing so to look “like an official mom.”
• The trivialization of baby-carrying: The ad repeatedly refers to the “supposed” benefit of carrying your baby as opposed the documented and widely accepted belief.
• That mothers who carry their babies look “crazy.”

Plenty of other bloggers have written about this topic, including Peter Shankman and Lisa Belkin, and their posts have covered much of what Motrin did wrong here. Personally, my biggest problem with the ad is how poorly written it is; in addition to being offensive to many mothers, the language is poorly chosen and does not make much sense, nor does it reach a real point. However, I think there is one aspect that hasn’t been fully addressed: the lack of integration of marketing, PR, and communications professionals into the social networks they are targeting.

As I watched the Motrin controversy unfold most of the day Sunday, one thing became apparent to me: Motrin representatives were nowhere to be found. Not only did the Motrin response not come until the end of the day on Monday, but the ad wasn’t even pulled off the site until Monday afternoon. To me, this says that nobody from the Motrin PR/marketing team (or their agency) was actively engaging the Twitter community – if they had been they would have seen the controversy unfolding much earlier, and been able to respond faster. As the use of social networks in PR campaigns has grown more accepted, the number of campaigns has dramatically increased, as have the number of campaigns being run by people who are not a part of, and do not understand, the networks they are targeting. Too many companies simply log on to Twitter, create an account, post a couple Tweets, and think that they are done.

A truly effective social media campaign requires that the people running it are actually a part of the community they are working with. The entire Digital Lifestyle Team here at Zeno manage their own blogs, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Digg accounts – and use them everyday. This allows us to stay connected and to better understand the communities we work with – this also allows us to identify and confront issues before they grow into something biger. In the last three months alone, I can count at least five instances where we found blogs or tweets where the author had complained about an issue with a client’s product – we immediately contacted our client’s customer service team and directed them to the author and were able to resolve the situation before most of the community were aware of the problem.

Hopefully, as social media becomes more engrained in our profession, we will see more people truly integrate themselves with the communities, instead of doing the bare minimum. Unfortunately, it may take several more high profile incidents like MotrinMoms for companies (and agencies) to realize the benefit of using people who truly understand and are part of these networks.

For a great idea on how to introduce your office to some of the social media tools we use everyday, check out Andrea Nowack’s post on her “Social Media Scavenger Hunt”

As a member of the Zeno Group Digital Lifestyle team, I feel that it is my duty to help engrain social media into our everyday PR lifestyle. So, for this past week’s Zeno LA “Happy Half-Hour Friday,” it was my turn to put my party-planner hat on, creating our first ever Social Media Scavenger Hunt! I think the digital lifestyle team was a little more excited about this than, say, our business manager, but overall the event was a great success.

The scavenger hunt featured several different social networking tools (Facebook, Digg and Twitter, to name a few) and called for participants to not only learn about them, but take the extra step and interact with each other using these tools. For example:
1) Sign into Twitter and create a Tweet using the #ZenoLA hashtag.
2) Now, respond to one Tweet that another Zeno LA employee posted.
3) Post an insightful comment on one of your favorite PR blogs. Which blog did you choose to comment on?

Of course, this was not meant to be a full training on all the social media tools available, but rather a fun way to expose the office to some of the new tools and apps available. (For example, most PR professionals know about Twitter, but many might not be aware of the long – and growing – list of apps that are available for it).

Broadening the scope of this post a bit, we are entering into an era where it is important for everyone in PR to at least be familiar with the basic social media and networking tools. By now, many PR professionals are aware of the ‘biggies’ (i.e., what they should pay attention to), but many have not taken the time to actually learn about and understand them (let alone start using them). Simply creating a Twitter ID and tweeting once or twice isn’t enough anymore; smart PR people should take it one step further and engage with the community on a regular basis, especially if it’s something that might make sense for a client down the road. At the same time, it’s okay to focus your attention on a select number of tools after you’ve explored all of the options. If you try Friendster but realize, “hey, maybe this one isn’t for me,” that’s okay! At least you took the time to figure it out.

On a different note, I encourage you to implement a social media scavenger hunt in your own office and share the results in the comments section below!

As Alex Miller recently blogged, some members of the Zeno LA team helped out with the Alliance for Children’s Rights National Adoption Day this past Saturday in downtown Los Angeles. This was my second year participating in the event, and the two could not have been more different.

In 2007, I worked with Jessica Vitale to make Adoption Day a success – 200 children received permanent families, community involvement was at a high, and the media turnout was more than we could have hoped for. We secured broadcast and print hits, including coverage on the local FOX, ABC, Telemundo and NBC affiliates, as well as the LA Times. The Alliance was thrilled with the resulting coverage, which helped bring awareness to event and all the groups that made Adoption Day possible.

For this year’s event, we had all the makings of a successful day – again, more than 200 Los Angeles-area children would join their new families permanently, actresses Lucy Liu and Nia Vardolos were going to assist with the adoptions, Nia was going to make a special announcement regarding her own recent adoption success story at the press conference (she had not yet announced that she and her husband Ian Gomez had successfully adopted a little girl in the previous months), actor Willie Garson was in attendance for the second year in a row and multiple families were adopting siblings of those who had been adopted on previous Adoption Days.

Our successful media day was quickly foiled by an outbreak of wildfires in Riverside, Orange and Los Angeles counties on Thursday, November 13. On the day prior to the event, we warned The Alliance that these fires could be problematic in getting media to the event, but that we should still have a decent turnout. Saturday morning would prove differently. Overnight, hurricane force wind gusts had spread the fires to numerous counties, and major freeways such as the 405 were closed in surrounding areas. Obviously, the broadcast and print crews, already limited in number due to the weekend staffing, would be covering these major developments. Media follow up on the day of the event brought bad news – no one would be covering anything but the fires, and they would not run b-roll footage of the event.

The Alliance was already dealing with multiple families who were put hours behind schedule due to the road closures and fires, and had to adjust the schedule of events to accommodate those families already in attendance. While The Alliance was understanding of the media situation, it was still disappointing for everyone involved – National Adoption Day is such a great event and brings awareness to the foster care systems in Los Angeles and across the nation.

While the fires disrupted a number of adoptions scheduled for the day, and lowered our expected media attendance, it was still a success in the eyes of everyone involved. We prepared the Alliance for the possibility that we wouldn’t get any media – and when this turned out to be the situation – it wasn’t a huge surprise to them – likely making it easier to accept.

I am already looking forward to the 10th annual National Adoption Day next year – a decade of successful adoptions in Los Angeles is certainly something to celebrate! Let’s just hope Mother Nature doesn’t throw another kink into our plans.

If you saw Sunday night’s “60 Minutes” interview with President-elect Barack Obama, or his appearance on Monday Night Football the night prior to the election, you know that there’s one sports issue that elicits a strong opinion from Obama – the subject of a national college football playoff. Any chance of that happening during his first term was eliminated this week as ESPN gobbled up the television rights to four Bowl Championship Series games to the tune of $500 million over four years beginning in January 2011. As long as the BCS remains the postseason format of choice, the playoff system that Obama and so many others seek will remain elusive.

There’s a hypocrisy at play involving college football and those who cover the sport. Turn on ESPN in November and December, and you’ll hear endless debate over the BCS, the convoluted formula that determines which two schools will play for the national championship. Inevitably the discussion will turn to the preferred alternative to the BCS, a playoff system. How can an ESPN analyst suggest that college football implement a playoff system when the half billion dollars the network is paying in rights fees is the driving force to maintain the status quo?

Many years ago I came to the realization that nearly every decision related to sports is based on money, so I’m not foolish enough to think that college football will suddenly create a playoff system just because that’s what the fans (or the President) want. The alliance of schools that comprise the BCS will continue to sell whatever package brings in the most money from networks. When you see how ESPN creates an enormous block of programming around the current bowl structure, it’s hard to see them paying more for an eight-team, seven-game playoff. What’s good for ESPN is good for the schools they’re paying. 

So dream on, President-elect Obama. Solving America’s financial crisis is more do-able than bringing a playoff to major college football.

Here are some articles the Zeno team has been reading from November 16th through November 17th:

• Washington Post: Onion Nation: If its absurdist twists and wicked parodies of conventional journalism are just a joke, the country’s leading satirical newspaper is having the last laugh
• Newsweek.com: Can Obama Save the Media Industry?
• NYTimes.com: Consumed – The Brand-ness of Strangers

I just finished with assiting with the 9th annual National Adoption Day, along with several of my Zeno colleagues.  National Adoption Day is a nationwide event, originally started here in Los Angeles by the Alliance for Children’s Rights. Judges, lawyers, families, and the community come in once a year to finalize hundreds of adoptions in every city and bring attention to the 129,000 children who are in foster care and available for adoption. This year we had several celebrities, including Lucy Liu, Nia Vardalos (who recently adopted a daughter), and Sue Naegle; help the families finalize their adoptions.

I had a wonderful time at the event. It was truly amazing to watch all of the parents and children, some of whom had been together for years as foster parents and children, officially become families. Most touching were the foster parents who had previously adopted a child and were back this year to adopt one of that child’s siblings. Several things struck me about the day.First was the outporing of support from the community. Before any of the adopting families showed up, dozens of volunteers, ranging from girl scouts to corporate lawyers, arrived to decorate, provide food, give out gifts, and assist with the adoptions.

Second was the level of emotion. While I was expecting people to be happy about the day, the sheer sense of joy and euphoria in many of the families was astounding. Several of my co-workers who had participated in the event before had told me about it, but you cannot fully appreciate it until you see it for yourself. I chose the picture at the top of the page because it is the single shot that best captures the feeling of the day. You can truly see the joy on this mother’s face as she signs the adoption papers and officially becomes the mother of the little boy sitting next to her.

Third was the dedication of everyone who was working there. Despite several hiccups in the day (such as many of the families being delayed due to the fires raging through LA County), everyone was calm and patient. Everyone there knew the importance of the day and was committed to making sure that it happened. Schedules were juggled, plans were changed, and in the end, all of the children were united with their new families.

I’d like to say congratulations to all the other Zeno LA staff who were with me today (in particular, Kari Ramsey who did an amazing job coordinating the Zeno presence). I encourage everyone to reach out into their communities and find organizations that they can assist. The sense of joy and accomplishment gained from this work is truly unmatched by anything else we do.

Here are some articles the Zeno team has been reading from November 14th through November 15th:

• Chicago Tribune: Sirius, XM hear a lot of static for merging their lineups
• PRNewser: Do We Need PR Anymore Now That We Have Social Media?
• Chicago Tribune: Sick of Toyota’s ‘Saved by Zero’ ad? You’re not alone