Kats Eye on Life

Words and Actions

Post #10 for my MBA class, "Communication Strategies for a Global Marketplace."

I’ve written before about authenticity.  Those of you still with me may be tired of my favorite word.  I’m a writer and lover of language, yet there are words (authenticity being one of them) which I never tire of hearing and using.  These words for me are so powerful that I am literally stirred anew every time I hear them.  Some of these words for me (and I am separating them here so that you may look at them as individual words, rather than a list – a useful exercise with language) are:

faith

 

justice

 

integrity

 

trust

 

What are words that you love?  Why do you love them? 

Then there are the words that... I don't love as much.  (We have a moratorium on hate talk in my household so I'll elect to describe my feelings for these words by using "abhor", "strongly dislike", "find highly irritating", etc.) Here are a few words and phrases - some of them from the English language, others that don't exist in any language, as far I know:

alright

chomping at the bit

 

irregardless

 

best practice

 

Same question - what are some words or phrases that get under your skin, either because they're often used incorrectly or overused or used to make the speaker/writer seem more intelligent/important, etc.?

A recent guest post on the blog ConversationAgent – connecting ideas and people – how talk can change our lives was titled, "Top 10 Reasons Conan O'Brien's Social Media Stuff is Better than Yours".  Obviously the post is a play on the humorous lists made popular by late night talk show host David Letterman.  But this list has a point - one made clear in a few of the list's points:

#7 - Conan is having fun; you're "engaging" customers

#6 - Conan's staff is on a mission; yours has a mission statement

While all of the points are great and each of them says something about how Conan has done so well connecting with fans via social networks, I think the two above are key.  Whether you find Conan funny or not, it's difficult to imagine anyone viewing one of his skits and not believing that he's having fun.  And he has fun with social networks too, by creating Team Coco, a platform for integrating videos, Facebook, Twitter, his blog and many other social sites.  The fun he's having appears to come as naturally to Conan as breathing, which is what differentiates him from organizations which are seeking to "engage" their audience or market.  Conan has no barriers - he is part of Team Coco but so are we.  The Team Coco site looks as though it was a progression of the fun, rather than an orchestrated attempt to capture more viewers.  (Which of course is also what it is.)  By sitting in an office and creating a strategic plan to maximize efficacy of marketing via social networks organizations build a barrier between "us" and "them" which then reminds the audience that they shouldn't trust big business or corporate mouthpieces.

I love #6 too - mission statements are useful but too often, employees need to look in a book or on a website to remember the words of their company's statement.  When people are personally invested in a specific approach or outcome, that becomes part of everything they do, rather than a set of abstract words for which they need reminding.

Where in your life and work are your words and actions in alignment?   Where are they divergent?  How do you feel in these environments?  As my friend Patti Digh is fond of saying, "We are always in choice."  Like Conan, we are our most powerful and persuasive when in alignment.

Death Threats and a Pullet Surprise

Post #9 for my MBA class, "Communication Strategies for a Global Marketplace."

The world of higher education has been my home for the past 9 years and it's a space I continue to monitor closely, even though I'm not currently employed by a college or university.  I read the Chronicle, maintain my AACRAO and NACAC memberships and receive daily updates from Academic Impressions and Inside Higher Ed.  I also follow a number of higher ed blogs.

Social networks have altered higher education marketing as much if not more than they've changed other industries' marketing practices.  Higher education has not traditionally been known as an arena on the cutting edge of the newest technologies.  Despite the fact that universities are providing the research behind advancements in every industry, the institutions themselves are slow to adapt to the latest technologies.  One reason for this is most larger colleges and universities are very decentralized, with individual schools and divisions and departments using different information systems for everything from data collection to marketing.  It's difficult to get these diverse groups to agree to abandon their beloved technologies in favor of something completely different.

The other thing that social media has done for higher education is to permit a peek behind the curtain of academia.  This view was formerly reserved for those with multiple years of advanced education and research experience, saved for those who could speak the language and appreciate the vista.  Academicians are known for being brilliant scholars who have spent so much time with their field of study that they've forgotten what exists outside that field and how to speak to people who don't share their passion for the application of rapid annealing to nonequilibrium precipitation reactions or the characterization of the genes involved in branched-chain amino acid transport in Escherichia coli.  (Areas of study for two faculty members at Case Western Reserve University - www.case.edu)  I make these statements with great admiration and appreciation - many of my friends have doctoral and professional degrees and I would love to pursue my own Ph.D.  But the stereotypes of the absent-minded professor exist for a reason.

So how has social media helped (or hurt) higher education?  One example I spotted recently in the Chronicle pertains to a college president.  Along with lifetime academicians, the college president has remained an elusive being.  Rarely spotted, often misunderstood and underappreciated, the leader of our institutions of higher learning has had a tough road to hoe.  How to be seen as a person - someone who cares about students but also has the ability to garner multi-million dollar donations and broker partnerships with corporations and non-profits alike? 

The president of Pitzer College, a prestigious, small liberal arts school in California, recently found herself the subject of a blog post in the Chronicle of Higher Education, the industry's primary publication.  The post is entitled, "A Tale of 2 Chickens, a President, and Her Mother" and was written by Lawrence Biemiller.  The first line of the post reads, "It’s not every college president who has to explain chicken-butt photos to her mother, but when the time came, Laura Trombley managed. All part of being a president, she said."

So here we have a situation where possibly too much information, or not the right information is being shared.  Though I stand by the idea that some publicity is better than no publicity, (as I was previously unfamiliar with Pitzer College, and I now know that it's ranked #1 in Fullbright fellowships for American liberal arts schools) I expect that President Trombley is an extremely accomplished woman who is portrayed in this article as the school's chief chicken guardian.  While authenticity is something I prize, I don't know if this image of President Trombley is truly a match for who she is and the role she plays in shaping the college.

And then we have the situation of Dr. Frances Fox Piven, a professor of political science and sociology at the City University of New York's Graduate Center.  Dr. Piven wrote an article for the Nation entitled, "Mobilizing the Jobless" which analyzes the circumstances of unemployment in the United States and why, with so very many people unemployed or underemployed, there is no significant organizing or protesting or even riots, as there have been in other countries when the jobless rate rose so sharply.  She cites a number of reasons why this may be so, and in no way advocates for violence or even specifically for protest.  Yet, this longtime scholar has become (through this article and others before it) a target of conservative radio and television host Glenn Beck. 

According to another article in The Nation, "Glenn Beck Targets Frances Fox Piven":

"This fusillade was evidently set off by Piven's recent Nation editorial calling for a mass movement of the unemployed ["Mobilizing the Jobless," January 10/17]. But Beck has had Piven in his cross-hairs for some time. In the past few years he's featured Piven, along with her late husband, Richard Cloward, in at least twenty-eight broadcasts, all of which paint them as masterminds of an overarching left-wing plot called "the Cloward-Piven strategy," which supposedly engineered the financial crisis of 2008, healthcare reform, Obama's election and massive voter fraud, among other world-historical events (see Richard Kim, "The Mad Tea Party," April 12, 2010). Cloward and Piven, Beck once argued, are "fundamentally responsible for the unsustainability and possible collapse of our economic system." In his most recent diatribe against Piven (January 17) he repeatedly called her "the enemy of the Constitution." In Beck's telling, because Piven and her comrades on the left support civil disobedience in some circumstances, it is they—not the heavily armed militias of the radical right—who threaten Americans' safety."

What's alarming about the focus that Mr. Beck has placed on Dr. Piven is that it has led to multiple death threats, both directly to her and offered up as "services" in the comments portion of Mr. Beck's website.  And yet I had heard nothing about any of this until the February 10th issue of The Chronicle. 

So a college president's ill chicken is news, and death threats against a university faculty member is news too - even more prominently distributed.  Yet with so much social media information available, how is one able to filter appropriately?  How do we see what is most critical for us to see and learn what we need to know to grow and develop, help ourselves and others and become the best global citizens possible? 

I should note that I appropriated the second half of my blog title from comments on the Chronicle's blog post about President Trombley.  Loved the perfect pun from jbarman.

 

Is Any Attention Good Attention?

Post #8 for my MBA class, "Communication Strategies for a Global Marketplace."

I may be the only person on the planet who missed Groupon's Super Bowl Tibet Ad, but what I couldn't miss was the uproar about it. 

I dislike televised sporting events in general and football games in particular.  I never really learned the game as I didn't play it and I quit being a cheerleader for it at age 7 when I learned that after spelling the name of a football player in my cheer, there would never be a point in the game when someone would be spelling my name.  That did it for me.  Unjust.

Anyway, I not only don't watch the Super Bowl but I typically like to be in a location where the Super Bowl is not being viewed.  So on Super Bowl Sunday 2011 I found myself out to dinner with my mother and sister-in-law, who were visiting from the east coast for my daughter's birthday weekend. 

As a writer and marketer I do like to hear about the Super Bowl ads, so Sunday evening found me lurking around online to dig up the dirt.  Had I not been dealing with a health issue too, I'm certain that I would have caught the YouTube link to the Groupon video.  As it is, I'll have to share what I know and have read.

Sandra Fish on Politics Daily wrote:

The ad began with scenes of the Himalayan land in the western part of China. Tibetans have protested their lack of freedom under the Chinese government, with many Tibetans imprisoned as a result.

"The people of Tibet are in trouble," actor Timothy Hutton says at one point. "Their very culture is in jeopardy. But they still whip up an amazing fish curry."

Then he goes on to rave about the Groupon discount he used at a Chicago restaurant.

Without viewing the ad I don't want to comment regarding its tastefulness or lack thereof.  But I do want to talk about the concept that there is no such thing as bad publicity.  I've often thought about this idea, that in some circles and for some people/organizations, it almost seems that even what would spell certain death for the rest of us, only serves to increase notoriety and popularity.  Is it because the public loves a good story, even if it's not a positive one?  When I think of "celebrities" that fall into this category, my thoughts turn to people like Lindsay Lohan, Britney Spears, Charlie Sheen, Jesse James, Kelsey Grammer.

Again, according to Sandra Fish on Politics Daily:

Twitter lit up with backlash against the ad. One employee of the agency that created the ad, Crispin Porter+Bogusky, tweeted in response: "Pretend to be upset by our #groupon ad, but we got people talking about Tibet & are donating money. More than what you're doing." He later deleted the tweet, but it was retweeted several times.

I'm shocked that a representative of the ad agency would have tweeted that response, particularly since it doesn't sound like it's in line with what Groupon's CEO Andrew Mason had to say about the situation on the Groupon blog:

We hate that we offended people, and we’re very sorry that we did – it’s the last thing we wanted. We’ve listened to your feedback, and since we don’t see the point in continuing to anger people, we’re pulling the ads (a few may run again tomorrow – pulling ads immediately is sometimes impossible). We will run something less polarizing instead. We thought we were poking fun at ourselves, but clearly the execution was off and the joke didn’t come through. I personally take responsibility; although we worked with a professional ad agency, in the end, it was my decision to run the ads.

To the charities (for which we expect to net over $500,000) and others that have spoken out on our behalf, we appreciate your support.

To those who were offended, I feel terrible that we made you feel bad. While we’ve always been a little quirky, we certainly aren’t trying to be the kind of company that builds its brand on creating controversy – we think the quality of our product is a much stronger message.

This is a powerful response, in my opinion.  While he explains what they were attempting, he fully acknowledges that it didn't work and takes personal responsibility for the ad.  He also highlights the quality of the products that Groupon represents.  Well done, Mr. Mason.

Would any of you refuse to use Groupon after that ad?  What about after reading Mr. Mason's apology?  We know that a child, when not being given the proper attention for positive actions and behavior, will resort to negative means to secure such attention.  The result of this "negative attention" is typically bad for all involved.  Does the same premise work for companies, brands and people?  Or does it work in reverse for certain types of organizations and individuals?  Talk amongst yourselves.

Have You Seen This Child?

Post #4 for my MBA class, "Communication Strategies for a Global Marketplace."

I began to write this post by going to NPR's Facebook page to refresh my memory about a broadcast based on the book by Peggy Orenstein, "Cinderella Ate My Daughter"

However, when I landed on the NPR page I saw a story titled, "Missing Girls Shouldn't Be Missing From The Media"

I clicked on the link and was stunned by what I read.  A young woman named Phylicia Barnes disappeared on December 28th in Baltimore, MD while visiting her older half-siblings.  And today was the first time I had heard or read anything about it.  Phylicia's birthday was January 12th and she turned 17 that day.  She is an honors student at Union Academy in North Carolina and is scheduled to graduate a year early due to her exceptional academic record.  She has also already been accepted to college.  Why has this not made national news?  Why do I know all about the iPhone being available with Verizon and birds falling from the sky and the fact that senators and representatives partook in calling President Obama's speech "Date Night" due to the fact that many of them agreed to sit with individuals not in their own party? 

I love social media.  I love Facebook and Twitter and my Google feed reader and Flickr and Delicious and on and on and on.  But what does it mean when the trending topics on Twitter involve Charlie Sheen but not Phylicia Barnes?  Are we to blame bad timing - that Phylicia went missing between Christmas and New Year's Day?  There are accusations, some from the Baltimore police department, that because Phylicia is African-American, her disappearance has not receiving the national news media coverage that it would if she were Caucasian.  The comparisons to the disappearance of Natalee Holloway in 2005 are apt.  And there are updates about Natalee's case on the major news outlets' sites as recently as November 2010.

If you're reading this and have a Twitter handle or use other social networks, please spread the word about Phylicia's disappearance.  As influencers in our networks and beyond, we can spread vitriol and fear or we can use our powers for good.  I have a family member who once was a photograph on a milk carton.  Today my family member is an adult.  Let's give Phylicia Barnes every opportunity for the same full life.

Here is the Facebook page where people are praying and sending messages of hope to Phylicia's family http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Pray-for-Phylicia-Barnes/177767702243339

"Then let us all do what is right, strive with all our might toward the unattainable..." - Ludwig van Beethoven