Logos team blog posts

Worth Reading, Oct 29, 2012

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As we here in the NYC area wait for Hurricane Sandy to make landfall, a few items of note from the last two weeks (in case you need some extra reading material wherever you are). Stay safe, all.

  • Young adults’ reading habits: If the popular consensus seems to be that younger people don’t read books anymore, a recent Pew study found, “More than eight in ten Americans between the ages of 16 and 29 read a book in the past year, and six in ten used their local public library.”
  • Anonymity, free speech and the Internet: A Gawker article about a notorious anonymous user on Reddit, “Unmasking Reddit’s Violentacrez, The Biggest Troll on the Web,” set off a wave of discussions about the dynamics and ethics of anonymity and free speech online. Nieman Journalism Lab has a good summary of the discussions that ensued.
  • Political misperceptions: We read an interesting academic paper, “When Corrections Fail: The persistence of political misperceptions,” which looked at the persistence of falsely held political beliefs despite corrections to the contrary. This study “conducted four experiments in which subjects read mock news articles that included either a misleading claim from a politician, or a misleading claim and a correction. Results indicate that corrections frequently fail to reduce misperceptions among the targeted ideological group. We also document several instances of a “backfire effect” in which corrections actually increase misperceptions among the group in question.”
  • The New York Times goes global: The Times announced plans for a Brazilian website edition to launch next year, and other elements of its global expansion plan are already in the works, including the launch of its Chinese edition this past June.
  • And Newsweek goes digital: The venerable news magazine said that as of January 2013, the magazine will be going entirely digital, after “80 years in print.”
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Worth Reading, Oct 15, 2012

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  • Reputation loss and crisis: Dr. Leslie Gaines-Ross provides a useful analysis of a recent report, Reputation Review 2012, in her post “The High Cost of Reputation Loss.” The report looks at the dynamic between crisis and a company’s financial performance, and as Dr. Gaines-Ross summarizes, found, “Among 10 crisis-ridden companies in 2011, only News Corp found itself in positive terrain afterwards. In fact, what they found was that 7 of the top 10 lost more than one third of their value. Two companies lost nearly 90% of their value.” The report also looked at the effects of having a reputation recovery process in place, the CEO’s response, and clear and transparent communication on the overall recovery process after a major crisis.
  • Customer beliefs and communication: Shel Holtz’ review of research from The Futures Company and its report, “Global MONITOR 12/13,” should give all corporate communicators something to think about in today’s environment. As Holtz says,  “An overwhelming 86 percent of consumers believe that companies put profits over the interests of their customers’ interests, according to a report on the study. That means any communication or marketing campaign faces a brick wall of skepticism.” Holtz outlines a few approaches for companies to work more effectively to align behavior and communication.
  • Employee law and social media policies: This helpful post, “How to Tell if Your Social Media Policy is Unlawful,” discusses some of the recent decisions by the National Labor Relations Board and how those decisions might affect other companies’ social media policies. “In nearly three-quarters of the cases brought to the National Labor Relations Board, the agency that protects worker’s rights, the Board found 17 out of 23 policies governing the use of social media by employees to be unlawful.”
  • An alternate history of the social web: At The Atlantic, Alexis Madrigal posted a thought-provoking piece about the power of what he calls “dark social” in “Dark Social: We Have the Whole History of the Web Wrong.” He describes “dark social” as platforms like email and instant messaging (which have been around much longer than the big social media platforms), and uses recent data to show that the majority of content sharing occurs through these more difficult to measure outlets versus big social media networks like Facebook and Twitter.
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Worth Reading, Oct 8, 2012

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  • Politics, politics, politics: The first presidential debate last week provided lots of good reading fodder:
    • Presidential body language – The New York Times broke down the meaning behind each candidates’ gestures. “After the first televised presidential debate, held between John F. Kennedy and Richard M. Nixon 52 years ago, campaigns have been acutely aware that voters may judge candidates in such encounters as much by their appearance and gestures as by their words.”
    • Fact-checking the debate – There were many fact-checking versions done around the debate, including this one from PolitiFact.
    • PBS and Big Bird – Even if you didn’t watch the debate, you couldn’t escape the discussion around the mention of PBS and Big Bird. PBS’ official response statement is a useful example of organizational communication in a heated national context.
    • Record-setting night for Twitter – With more than 10 million tweets, the debate last week was “the most tweeted-about event in U.S. politics.”
    • Errant KitchenAid tweet – By now we’ve seen a number of examples of errant tweets being sent from corporate accounts, but the latest was KitchenAid’s errant tweet during last week’s debate.
    • Campaigns and social media – This year’s presidential campaigns are going beyond the groundwork set in 2008 and trying a wide variety of social media strategies and tactics to reach and engage voters (particularly younger ones).
  • Civility and politics in America: Not specifically tied to the debate, but Weber Shandwick released its third annual survey, “Civility in America.” Among other things, the survey found that “83% [of people surveyed] say a candidate’s tone or level of civility will be an important factor in the 2012 presidential election,” and “63% believe we have a major civility problem in America.”
  • FTC Green Guides: The FTC issued the final version of its “Green Guides,” which aims to bring more accountability and clarity to environmental claims in advertising. The FTC’s summary is a helpful synopsis.
  • Facebook hits one billion: Facebook passed the one billion user mark last week and released its first television ad.
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Worth Reading, Oct 1, 2012

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  • Social media and customer service: New research from the forthcoming “The Social Habit” report found that “42 Percent of Consumers Complaining in Social Media Expect 60 Minute Response Time.”  (Also, a majority expect the same response time on nights and weekends.) These kinds of customer expectations have concrete implications for companies managing customer service issues through social media.
  • Geography and news consumption: A new Pew study looked at how geography impacts people’s news consumption habits, and a good post on Nieman Journalism Lab breaks down the findings. The study looked at the differences between urban, suburban, small town and rural residents, and looked at what types of topics people were interested in and what sources they turn to for news.
  • CEOs and Twitter: The Wall Street Journal had a much-discussed piece last week on CEOs fear of Twitter and a few notable executives who have embraced it so far. While some CEOs have taken the plunge, “Seven in 10 Fortune 500 CEOs have no presence on major social media networks such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest and Google+, according to a recent report by CEO.com and analytics company Domo.”
  • Company culture and social media: An excellent post from Shel Holtz on the challenges of not only implementing social media but truly adopting it across large businesses. As he says, “All the technologies in the world won’t make an organization social, nor will strategic plans for implementing those technologies, if the culture won’t support it.”
  • Apple apology: Apple issued a rare apology last week for problems with its new Maps function, unveiled recently in the new iPhone and operating system.
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Worth Reading, Sept 24, 2012

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  • Media and quote approvals: There’s been an intriguing series of discussions in the New York Times (and Vanity Fair and elsewhere) about the practice of allowing interview subjects to review quotes due to be used in articles prior to print. The Times covered this aspect of political reporting back in July; David Carr explored it more recently in “The Puppetry of Quotation Approval” and in a follow-up article asking participants in the process to weigh in; and then finally on Sept. 20th, the Times issued a new policy that “forbids after-the-fact quote approval.” From our experience, this is a practice that has become somewhat common in the world of financial and business reporting as well (not just relegated to politics), and it will be interesting to see the effects of the Times’ new policy, if any.
  • Distrust in media: A new Gallup poll found that “Americans’ distrust in the media hit a new high this year, with 60% saying they have little or no trust in the mass media to report the news fully, accurately, and fairly. Distrust is up from the past few years, when Americans were already more negative about the media than they had been in years prior to 2004.” As Gallup points out, this lack of trust has particular implications during an election year. (via Romenesko)
  • Fortune 500 and social media: The University of Massachusetts Dartmouth’s Center for Marketing Research issued its latest report on the use of social media by the Fortune 500, which it’s done every year since 2008. Adoption and range of use continues to grow in this group, and the annual study provides a good comprehensive look at global business adoption of social media.
  • New Pew Internet research: The Pew Internet and American Life Project issued two recent reports of interest, one on smartphone ownership in the United States (they found that “45% of American adults own smartphones”), and one on “Photos and Videos as Social Currency Online.”
  • Cultural critique, Gangnam-style: It’s almost impossible to escape the Internet meme of the late summer/early fall – Gangnam Style, a music video by the South Korean artist Psy that’s overtaken the U.S. and much of the world. But The Atlantic provided one of the more interesting cultural insights into the video in the article “Gangnam Style, Dissected: The Subversive Message Within South Korea’s Music Video Sensation.”
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Small World

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Santiago

One of the joys of launching a book is that you never know who will read it and where.

The Power of Communication launched in May. The publisher, the FT Press imprint of Pearson, is global and the book got broad distribution.  But because it was launched in the US in English, I focused most of my attention on the US and in countries where I’ve recently done teaching or have clients (China, Switzerland, Italy etc.).

So imagine my delight and surprise when in early August I received an e-mail from a graduate student in Chile who had been assigned to read the book.

Fernando Godoy is an industrial engineer in Santiago, studying in the Global MBA program of the Universidad de Chile.  In his Business Management course students are assigned a number of books, and each week a group of students presents a book to the rest of the class.  Fernando and his colleagues Natalia Ruz and Christian Aravena had been assigned The Power of Communication, and they took the initiative to reach out to the author for resources.  They had done their homework.  They had seen the companion video.  They had read the book.  And asked whether I had any visuals I could share.  They also asked if I could do a short video introduction.

 

So I did.  I sent slides and illustrations, and recorded a video greeting.  As it happens, and unbeknownst to Fernando and his team, I have a Chilean connection.  Although born in Brazil and a native speaker of Portuguese, my grandfather was raised in Chile – in fact, my last name is Chilean – and my Spanish is passable.

Fernando, Christian, and Natalia presented to their class, and told me that the students were surprised to hear the video greeting in Spanish.  They say they had a very good response and lots of interaction.

As part of their global MBA Fernando and his colleagues will be traveling the world this year, studying in the US, Britain, Australia.  It’s a very small world.  I look forward to connecting with them when they’re up north.

 

Lima

Tonight I’ll be heading to Lima, Peru, to speak next week at the International Public Relations Association (IPRA) annual meeting and concurrent Latin American Congress.

I’ll be speaking Wednesday, September 19 on The Power of Communication in a Crisis.  I’ll blog and tweet (@garciahf) about that from there.  I’m looking forward to spending time with a number of folks from the States whom I know directly or by reputation.  But mostly I’m looking forward to spending time with folks from elsewhere, expanding the community of the book to a broader audience, even as my publisher begins the process of securing translations into other languages.

Stand by for updates from Lima.

Ciao….

Fred

(In Latin America, I go by my first name, Helio…)

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Worth Reading, Sept 10, 2012

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  • Politics & social media: The Pew Internet and American Life Project released a new report last week, “Politics on Social Networking Sites.” The survey noted, “The vast majority of SNS users (84%) say they have posted little or nothing related to politics in their recent status updates, comments, and links.” And a fairly small number of people said their political views had changed as a result of political activity on social networking sites. Only “16% of SNS users say they have changed their views about a political issue after discussing it or reading posts about it on the sites.”
  • Future of media: The Columbia Journalism Review’s “Special report: the future of media” provides interesting fodder on “the long view” of the future of media.
  • Wikipedia and PR: This month’s edition of the CW Bulletin (a monthly e-newsletter) from IABC, “PR and Wikipedia: Building a better relationship,” dives into the issues and current topics around the relationship between communicators and the world’s largest encyclopedia. There are feature articles on ethics, strategy and engagement, as well as additional column articles and case studies. For a complementary view on the challenges people sometimes face in updating incorrect or outdated information on Wikipedia, read the novelist and author Philip Roth’s “An Open Letter to Wikipedia” from the New Yorker last week. (Note that the Wikipedia entry for Roth’s The Human Stain has since been changed and is now correct.)
  • Corporate social media management: Jeremiah Owyang has published a helpful series of blog posts over the last few weeks on the internal structures and management of social media at large corporations: “Breakdown: Social Media Workflow, Process, Triage,” “Breakdown: Converged Media Workflow (Coordinating Paid + Owned + Earned),” and “Breakdown: Corporate Social Media Team.”
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Worth Reading, Sept 4, 2012

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We hope everyone enjoyed the long holiday weekend here in the U.S. Now back to our usual schedule.

  • Trust and the media: A recent study found that even though trust in media institutions has been falling, most people would still rather get their news from professional journalists. From Poynter‘s story on the study: “More than 60 percent of U.S. adults say they “prefer news stories produced by professional journalists,” and more than 70 percent agree that “professional journalists play an important role in our society,” according to new survey data from the Reynolds Journalism Institute.” The full survey also looked at the role of mobile technologies on news and views on media consumption.
  • Social technologies and business value: The McKinsey Global Institute issued an interesting research report in July, “The social economy: Unlocking value and productivity through social technologies.” The report “explores [the technologies’] potential economic impact by examining their current usage and evolving application in four commercial sectors: consumer packaged goods, retail financial services, advanced manufacturing, and professional services. These technologies, which create value by improving productivity across the value chain, could potentially contribute $900 billion to $1.3 trillion in annual value across the four sectors.” In essence, the research found that although the majority of companies are using social media in some capacity, “very few are anywhere near to achieving the full potential benefit.” (report via Shel Holtz)
  • President Obama and Reddit: The President participated in an “Ask Me Anything” (or AMA) forum on the social site Reddit last week, notable as a new presidential social media tactic. The Nieman Journalism Lab has a good round-up of opinions on the tactic, and David Carr at the New York Times has some background on Reddit, for those not familiar with the site.
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Worth Reading, Aug 27, 2012

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Hello again. After a summer break (including the launch of my colleague Fred Garcia’s book The Power of Communication), the Worth Reading updates are back, with highlights of items that have caught our interest in the last week or so.

 

 

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Teachable Moments from the Aurora, Colorado, Tragedy

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Even as America mourns and tries to make sense of Friday morning’s massacre in Aurora, Colorado, there are some lessons emerging on appropriate — and inappropriate — response to tragedy.

Context Drives Meaning

Context drives meaning.  Words, actions, or events that are perfectly appropriate one day may be wildly inappropriate, distasteful, offensive, or even inaccurate the next.  One key discipline for leaders and organizations is to continuously adapt to changing circumstances that may alter the context in which communication takes place.

The shooting that left 12 dead and 58 wounded in an Aurora, Colorado movie theater is such an event.

Unknown Object Read more

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