SeanReadsTheNews

WSJ: Pepsi Re-Thinks Successful Donor Program

Today's news was dominated by reporting on global issues like war in the Middle East and political gamesmanship in the U.S. but one story that really popped in today's Wall  Street Journal was Valerie Bauerlein's thorough examination of Pepsi's Refresh Project, in which the soda corporation offered large grants to causes voted on by their customers.

Unlike most programs that count on an audience performing an action, Pepsi's leaders found themselves with too much interest - and Bauerlein uncovered a fascinating study of how a lighthearted contest can be hijacked and transformed against the wishes of the sponsor.

With a promise of $20 million in donations for "refreshing ideas that change the world," Pepsi's Refresh Project drew rabid competition for the prize money—perhaps too rabid.

Community organizers, health interest groups and religious organizations quickly formed alliances that dominated voting. Those alliances picked nominees each month and asked supporters to vote as many times as the contest rules would allow. And when they won, some small groups and grass-roots organizations howled with objections, saying the alliances went against the spirit of the competition.

What's also fascinating is that although the Refresh Project is among the most successful online cause marketing campaigns ever undertaken by a corporation, it didn't help Pepsi fight off dissappointing performance in its core business of selling soda.

Marketing experts quoted in the story argue that the promotion wasn't tied tightly enough to product - instead focusing on softer brand enhancement - so even though 76 million votes were cast, it didn't move the needle on sales.

Bauerlein raises a host of questions for marketers, PR people and philanthropists alike to ponder in her story, while at the same time illustrating the business issue facing the single company.

It's a great story that breaks new ground in covering the social media trend.

 

 

Taco Bell Strikes Back Against Lawsuit: WSJ

Julie Jargon, Emily Steel and Joann S. Lublin report today on Taco Bell fighting back against a lawsuit accusing it of falsifying ingredients in its restaurant offerings with a social media campaign of its own.  Like the Spanish Civil War provided a glimpse of modern warfare fully realized in World War Two, we might be seeing a dress rehearsal for how brands fight back when their critics go viral.

Days before Taco Bell was even served with the lawsuit—which was filed by a disgruntled customer on Jan. 19—news of the allegations that the restaurant chain's taco mixture consists of more filler than meat spread widely on the Internet. Stephen Colbert already has parodied the claim on his Comedy Central show, "The Colbert Report."

Taco Bell, a Yum Brands Inc. unit with almost 6,000 stores world-wide, responded swiftly with a spicy and potentially risky retort to the lawsuit. Its rebuttals include full-page newspaper ads headlined, "Thank you for suing us."

Unsurprisingly, the crisis communications experts in the story who will get paid by companies in this position in the future were unanimous in saying that Taco Bell was right to mount an aggressive defense but my take is similar and I don't do much crisis work.

A few years ago a scamster tried to plant a severed figure in a meal at Wendy's and the restaurant's aggressive campaign calling B.S. on it quickly pushed the attackers back on their heels and contained the crisis before it started.  It also potentially scared off similar extortion schemes.

Reputation is worth protecting and it is good to see companies doing so.

I also have one more question: do any social media besides Twitter, YouTube and Facebook matter?  They always seem to be the only three mentioned whenever any crisis specialist talks about using social media to respond to an issue.

 

NYT: Tobacco Litigation's Low Profile Is News

Barry Meier of The New York Times today reports on a 1998 case by a chain of St. Louis hospitals against the tobacco industry and finds a dog not barking: after decades of losing these cases, the tobacco industry is as rich and powerful as ever.

That settlement, legal specialists said, helped reshape how tobacco companies did business, like leading to an end to cigarette advertising in the United States. But more broadly, they said, the tidal wave of tobacco cases brought by smokers and others has failed to significantly weaken the industry, which continues to generate large revenues, remains a potent political force and has shifted its aggressive promotional activities overseas.

The settlement with the massive government lawsuit against the tobacco industry that established a long-term link between legal smoking and state government revenues made the tobacco industry a duly appointed subsidiary of the Treasury Department, and like the death its products hasten with such efficiency, the tobacco industry is now as certain as taxes as well.

The spokesperson for the tobacco control industry quoted in the article says it differently but it means the same thing:

Looking back on the long tobacco battles, Matthew L. Myers, the president of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, an advocacy group in Washington, D.C., said he believed the cases brought by the state attorneys general had the most enduring impact. But he said even the intention of that deal had been watered-down because settlement-related money intended for antismoking activities was quickly diverted by financially hard-pressed states into unrelated programs like road building.

 

NPR: Is Telecommuting Really Green?

On a day when a segment about working from home seems particularly apropos - here's Adrienne Hill's report on NPR's Marketplace Radio show about whether or not telecommuting makes you greener.  I don't know about greener but it definitely made me more productive today rather than making my way through the snow and stopped busses to Manhattan.

The summary is that it depends. If you have an energy efficient car, a modest commute and a leaky house, it might make more sense to be in an office with co-workers sharing the same heat.  

Hill basically admits she has no story at the end of the segment - since there is no way to know except on a case-by-case basis.  Any other day this would make me upset about the use of scarce reporting resources on a non-issue - but today it seems to make sense anyway.

Amanda Hickman works out of her home in Brooklyn. She used to bike to work, so telecommuting doesn't save any gasoline. And now, instead of going into an office, she heats her drafty brownstone.

HICKMAN: I think it would be a lot more efficient to be off in a space where someone's already heating it and someone's already cooling it, instead of me being camped out in my apartment heating the whole apartment for only one person.

But -- and here's the but -- there's no office for Hickman not to go to. So there's no duplicate desk being wasted, or heat being wasted, there aren't extra computers or phones. And so again, it's complicated. Lame, I know.

 

Brancatelli Reads the News

Joe Brancatelli of Portfolio.com today reports on the best places for business travelers to get news about the places to which they are deployed, a neat summary of global news sources that's worth taking a look at, particularly if you find this blog interesting.

Here's the money quote that he opens the article with:

"The major flaw with the people I manage is that their aren't intellectually curious about the countries they visit," a corporate travel manager at a Fortune 500 company said to me just weeks before the Domodedovo attack. "It's the travel equivalent of sticking your fingers in your ears and yelling 'nah, nah, nah!' They think not knowing is the same thing as not being in danger."

He goes up and down places to get global news dismissing some of the obvious, like the International Herald Tribune, which he finds a hollowed out shell, while elevating the U.K.'s left-wing Guardian newspaper along with online experimental site Global Post, a site I like an awful lot as well even if I don't cover it (often) here.

It's an interesting review for any traveler with many provocative ideas about ways to gather news in the modern era.

NYT's Carr: If Your Meeting Includes Kidde Porn Bullet, You're In the Wrong Room

This David Carr column on the new MTV show "Skins" and controversy over its content, is not the most important business story from yesterday but it's the kind of thing you run into in public relations if you do it long enough: suddenly you find yourself discussing whether or not your client is guilty of child pornography.

No one at MTV, which is owned by Viacom, set out to make child pornography, but make no mistake: the series is meant to provoke. “Skins” — a title that derives from the rolling papers that are used to make the blunts that go with the vodka that washes down the pills that accompany the hookups — is mostly about explicitly teenage characters doing explicit things. In a cluttered programming era, controversy is oxygen, so MTV was undoubtedly happy with the tsk-tsking the show incited in advance.

You know the old joke about how you don't mud wrestle with pigs because you both get dirty and the pig likes it?  There are definitely PR niches where your client is the pig - if he is "the world's biggest patent troll," "or the world's most greedy trial attorney," or sells "the most dangerous gun," having the right people hate you can be an excellent business driver.

Of course, if you are a TV network, and are regulated by the FCC (which MTV isn't) or if aspiring governors such as state attorneys general can figure out a reason to sue you, it can backfire.

The blowback to the show has so far been containable. Taco Bell — owned by a public company that, unlike MTV, is not interested in courting controversy — withdrew its commercials from the show. Fox News hosts have thundered about it, too, but MTV can probably ride that stuff out as long as it doesn’t end up in legal trouble. But should it?

Carr's writing is the real reason this column is interesting so read the whole thing.  I also have it on good authority from a friend of the BBC series that the original is a thoughtful, character-driven exploration of the pains of childhood in any "anything goes" environment.  It isn't surprising that the folks at MTV watched it and came away with this mess.

CNN: Star Trek Food Replicators Almost Real...

Every now and then I post a story just because the subject is so cool.  This CNNMoney.com story by Laurie Segal on 3D printers that can spontaneously generate food is one such event.

It doesn't look like a traditional printer; it's more like an industrial fabrication machine. Users load up the printer's syringes with raw food -- anything with a liquid consistency, like soft chocolate, will work. The ingredient-filled syringes will then "print" icing on a cupcake. Or it'll print something more novel (i.e., terrifying) -- like domes of turkey on a cutting board.

Now ok, it's not the same thing as the old Star Trek replicators that could make a cup of tea out of random electrons but it also points to the automation of high-skill trade work in cake decoration and baking coming sooner rather than later.

In fact, kits based on the academic work profiled in the story are already for sale and drawing customers.

Because it's an academic project, the 3D food printer isn't commercially available -- yet. The Fab@Home project has the blueprints for free online, and dedicated hobbyists can use them to build their own. One retailer,nextfabstore.com, offers an assembled version for sale -- starting at a mere $3,300.

Entrepreneur Jamil Yosefzai plans to be on the forefront of commercializing the technology. His New York City-based startup, Essential Dynamics, is working on a version that can be sold to the first wave potential customers: pastry chefs and tech early adopters.

CNNMoney.com runs this type of story fairly often, it's becoming a niche for them to report on exciting developments in technology and machine design.  It's a fun niche and I hope they do more of it.

WSJ: Bio Story on Grocery Clerk Shows Creativity in PR

Ralph Gardner Jr.'s Wall Street Journal column today celebrating D'Agastino's check-out clerk Lisa Cummings probably happened because he lives in the area, saw her on the job and realized she had a rare gift of making something special out of an otherwise humdrum job.  That does not, however, mean the PR people shouldn't always be on the lookout for those exceptional people who reflect well on their employers.

It would probably be an exaggeration to say she projects a joy for supermarket work; it's more unwavering competence combined with a perennially pleasant disposition. Any Type A personality customer who finds himself or herself on Ms. Cummings's checkout line will quickly appreciate her focus, as well as the absence of interruptions such as when a question between two clerks about the price of a head of lettuce can devolve into a five-minute conversation about their nails.

Stories like this are free to the PR team - all they take is writing down what someone is already doing and finding the right reporter for the story.  Surveys, partnerships, case studies, new service line offerings, product upgrades and the like take more work and generate fewer results.

What are the great stories about your clients that you are missing?

FT's Waters on the Fading Magic of Silicon Valley

Richard Waters, the long-serving man in Silicon Valley for The Financial Times, has a great survey piece on the state of Silicon Valley in today's edition, and he finds the engine of American prosperity wheezing badly despite the well-publicized recent success of Facebook.

In the popular psyche, American technological leadership seems almost innate. It is seen as the product of an ingenuity, a sense of risk-taking and a hunger for the new that could only have taken root in a country as democratic, socially mobile and close to its pioneer roots as the US. But such romantic notions have lately been taking a cold shower.

 Water's viewpoint as a Brit in America gives him proper distance from which to examine what Silicon Valley means to the U.S., how much of its success is tied to our cultural myths and how much is real.  He also is adept at analyzing our own anxiety about China and which countries "lead" in innovation.

The article includes great writing on business growth, sociology, history and the creative process, pushing it beyond a standard thumb-sucking piece on the future of everything.

This is one to read in full.

CNNMoney: Cell Phone Bills About to Jump

David Goldman of CNNMoney has long been this blog's go-to guy on one of our petty obsessions - how much to pay for cellphone service - and today he writes about price hikes coming across the board.

Basically, he writes that phone companies are delivering a lot more services to a lot more people and for that they can charge a lot more money.

The rising prices are intended to help the networks offset the increased costs of delivering apps, the mobile Web and especially mobile video to a rapidly growing number of smartphones. Faster networks, additional frequencies, cell tower upgrades and other improvements are costing the industry about $50 billion a year.

Verizon, Sprint and AT&T are all reducing perks like upgrade credits, boosting prices by extending surcharges for data networks across all subscribers and so on.  He notes that T-Mobile is still the cheapest major carrier but there is a major hole in the story - he doesn't report on MetroPCS and the other no-contract providers and what they are offering.

When last seen, they had the best deals.

From a PR perspective, the phone companies do ok.  Goldman gets in some decent shots at their attempt to deny that surcharges are surcharges and the like but overall their spokespeople were able to get out messages about extended services being the reason for the hikes.  They also benefited from being (reasonably) straightforward about the fact that prices are indeed rising.