The world as it should be

UPDATE: Southwest provided me with a money-off voucher for a future flight. That was the right thing to do.

The saga with Southwest continues. You may remember that they broke something I had in the middle of my suitcase, something packed to a fare thee well, and it was a pretty beefy decorative plate, so to break it took some conscientious effort.

I called and got the runaround and finally got the response that said, rather cold and lawyer-like, check the rules of carriage or whatever: Southwest isn’t responsible for breakage of any kind whether it is in the overheads or in the belly of the plane.

I finally broke down and called Customer Service (did you ever notice that the Customer Service and Complaint lines at most companies are never 800-numbers?) because I was promised I would receive a response from them in 5 business days. At this moment it has been seven.

A woman told me that she personally would corner the e-mailer who never wrote and make sure she called me by end of day. She was in a meeting. Of course. About an hour later, as the hour of closing appeared, I figured I would make a pre-emptive phone call and after a longish wait, got a third person in the Customer Relations Dept. She told me that the woman who was supposed to call me was still in a meeting, and that she thought she would call me before she left for home….

But she could sense that I was ticked off (I told her that I was), so she offered to escalate it to one of her bosses to be sure I would get a phone call tonight. Yeah, right.

It’s now been two hours since I called and it’s an hour past their closing time (which is mis–stated on the web site by an hour: clever). Have I gotten a call from Southwest’s Customer Relations office? From either person?

What do you think?

Yeah, bags fly free, but the real question is: will they actually reach their destination without being trampled?

Ever since AdAge’s Simon Dumenco said the press release was dead about a month ago, people have been weighing in with their opinions. Being the Slow Thinker that I am (more crockpot and less microwave), it has taken me awhile to decide what I think.

I think it is. Or it is about to be. Or rather, it should be. Here’s why.

1. Its very name is an anachronism: the “press” was more or less invented by Johan Gutenberg in the late 1400s, and indeed it was basically a grape press for making wine. (Thus, the natural connection between journalists and booze.) News release or information release might be the better choice of words.

2. The press as we know it is dying, or at least is gravely ill, so the parasitic PR industry that lives off it — as it is currently structured — will go along with it. The whole idea of releasing information by sending a piece of paper via snail mail to a member of the print media is such an out-of-date thought that it’s almost cute. Pre-emptive nostalgia.

3. The idea that the best way to mold public opinion is to send that piece of paper again is woefully out of date. The game has always been one of “tricking” the news media by writing the press release so it emulates a news story — whether by writing or video. That way the PR message gets to the public without being edited: it meets the editor’s technical structure. With social media’s direct connect with customers, this isn’t necessary. Companies can control the conversation directly, leaving the MSM out of it.

4. The press release will be replaced by the “social network release.” This can be done through any number of social media, but the main point is that it won’t be mediated, as with the press release. It will be words, images, and video over multiple channels. Controlling the message and guiding the conversations people have about you will be better than ever.

5. Most companies will still need a specialist to handle this aspect of their public-messaging work, unless you want to do it yourself. With the right person — either inside your company or an outside consultant — you will be more successful than in the past with press releases because you are in control, not the media.

Let’s plan a funeral.

What do you think? Please leave a comment.

“Social media is still so new,” [Jason] Sadler [of I Wear Your Shirt] says. “You might spend a ton of money for someone with a ton of followers or fans, and then get absolutely nothing–it may just be a flash in the pan. You’ll realize that you dropped $100,000 on something that doesn’t last, and just gets lost in the mix. Nissan is not really taking that chance, because it’s not costing them much at all.”

This an excellent point.

Social media is a new and different way of getting your marketing message to your customers and potential customers. Paying lots of money to buy space or time for your messages and/or spending cash to get celebrity posts or tweets is so last century.

If you want to do things the old-fashioned way, or if you like to spend money needlessly, then that’s the way to go.

If you want to get a conversation going about your company, and if you want to control the buzz online, then get to work on your social media. If you can’t or don’t want to do it yourself, hire someone.

I wouldn’t wait another minute.

For more, see this Fast Company article.

Much to my complete surprise, I was not awarded a “genius grant” of $500,000 again this year by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. So it remains on my bucket list.

They picked a bee breeder, a jellyfish scientist, the guy who wrote “The Wire,” a stone carver, and a violinist, among others. They did not pick the owner of News Design School, an institution that brings the light of newspaper design to downtrodden small daily and weekly journalists.

Since 1970, there have been 828 recipients, and I still am not one of them. I need to find out that group of anonymous nominators and see if they even read newspapers. Even the judges are anonymous. Probably not a newspaper person among ‘em. Sheesh.

If you have a business, you know people are going to talk about you. People will share their experiences with you and your customer service. Sometimes it will be good and sometimes not. That’s just the way it is.

Today, this conversation among customers happens online. This means that customers are more likely to be heard, and you get to eavesdrop, if you will, and enter into the discussion. This is especially important if negative information is being shared.

Monitoring the online conversation is one of the many things a good social media manager can do for you. If there is some negative feedback — and there are always some people who feel wronged in their dealings with you — you can intervene and make sure your story is being told as well.

Sometimes you can take the negative feedback and use it to improve your product, service or system. If it is positive, you can use that information as well in support of your overall marketing message.

The main point is that social media allow you to join conversations that normally would have taken place without you. Wouldn’t you rather be a part of the buzz?

I think we can all agree by now that social media are here to stay. After all, Facebook has surpassed Google in activity and Twitter users are way up at more than 145 million. As we move into the social age of media, it is clear that a good marketing program is going to rely less on advertising and more on the buzz and conversations that take place through social media outlets.

This relatively new area of expertise requires that businesses bring someone on board who is savvy in all the mores and folkways, the ins and outs of the field. It is more about keeping people in a conversation about you than it is about buying space or time and sharing your message that way.

Having a strategy for your social media efforts is critical, and thus, who you hire — whether an employee or an outside consultant — becomes very important.

A business needs to find someone good and then give him or her time to build relationships. This isn’t going to happen in a few weeks or even a month or two. There isn’t a magic formula that will shorten the process. You are building a community, not a web site.

Also, be sure to give the person your complete support and give him or her access to top management. Social media truly is a 24/7 kind of job so don’t force the person into a 9-5 schedule. They need scheduling flexibility if you want the job done right.

If you hire an outside consultant to do the work, make sure you are comfortable with his or her brand, with his or her reputation because it is about to become yours, too.

That being said, it probably makes sense to ease into it by hiring someone a few hours a day to take care of the most important social media activities. Find out I can help you build your community.

I’ve reached another milestone in life. It was bound to happen. It’s a biological reality. Doesn’t make it any easier to take. I have been rendered invisible to young women.

Can’t say as I am handsome, never was, but at least women would take a look, check me out. Occasionally a few would even flirt with me, an act that does wonders for one’s ego. No more. Old men don’t have egos.

It’s not because I am married, either. I don’t always wear my wedding ring because it hurts me when I carry a briefcase, which is often. And anyway it never stopped them before.

Now, as I fade away — less hair and what I have is getting lighter and lighter — women tend to look through me. As if I weren’t there. I am a jogger, a customer, a fellow shopper whose cart is simply in their way. They look at the cart, but they don’t look at me.

I guess I have become seen as an asexual being. Trouble is that inside I still feel 23 or 33, certainly not 63. I look at women, even much younger women, no differently than I did in my salad days.

To them, however, I apparently don’t exist. This is the real inconvenient truth. I know I am not missing anything, but it would be nice to not be invisible.

The keyboard is mocking me again. All the words I need are right here, nearby, but my fingers can’t seem to find them. I mean, c’mon — all the letters and punctuation — they are all right here. I just sit and stare with the vain hope that maybe the keys will organize themselves into words. I am going to lie down on the couch again until it happens.

(When we left the story, I had just escaped from The Muse at a muse convention workshop and hit the hotel bar. I thought I was alone, then…)

“Fancy seeing YOU here.” Gads. It was my Muse and some of her cronies who had skipped out on the session about avoiding being assigned to a journalist.

“Uh, I ah….er….”

“Don’t get up,” she said. (I hadn’t moved.) “Barkeep! We’ll take a bottle of tequila over here. Put it on his tab.”

“But….”

“Don’t interrupt, Elwood,” she said. “It’s unbecoming for a world-class author.”

I was stunned. The Muse and her cohorts repaired to a table in the corner while I contemplated what she had said. World-class?

I was trying to figure that one out over my gin and tonic when the Muse appeared at my elbow (I think she is part cat with her stealth).

“Don’t get a big head now,” she said out of the corner of her mouth. “HEY! BARKEEP! How about an ashtray and some matches?”

“This is a smoke-free hotel, m’am,” the man said.

The Muse gave him one of her laser-beam stink eyes. He wisely relented and recommended a “back room” I didn’t know existed.

“Listen, bub,” she said. “I had to say that because I need to keep my street cred among my colleagues. I can’t let them know who I am really working for. They think you are a real writer.”

“But…”

“Now quit interrupting. I don’t have the time, and you don’t have the talent. You need to get to work. Don’t you have ANY ideas?”

“That’s your job, I thought,” I protested.

“My job is to make sure you write, not tell you what to write about,” she said while lighting an unfiltered Camel. The bartender started to correct her, but she gave him another stink eye. He skulked back to his post at the far end of the bar.

“Now why don’t you just whip out that lil ol’ laptop and started tickling those keys like a real writer. I’ve got some partying to do.”

She left me open-mouthed at the bar as I watched her walk back to her laughing harpy friends. I swear there were at least eight of them. Watching her butt while she walked was like watching two bear cubs wrestling under a blanket. She had gained weight.

I got out my laptop and put it on the bar. I ordered another gin and tonic. I sat and waited for an idea to arrive, like an e-mail, from the ether.
(more to come)

The New York Times has decided it’s time to end the speculation and say they are definitely going to a paid model for their web site about a year from now. According to the WSJ, paper execs say that core readers are ready to pay.

The plan calls for a limited number of free reads per month for everyone, then you’ll have to pay to gain access. Subscribers to the print edition will have full access.

The key is to avoid fungibility. Too much of news is fungible, i.e., it is easily exchanged for another similar product.

AN EXAMPLE is wheat stored in a silo from a variety of farmers. The exact kernels are interchangeable — what matters is the number of bushels each farmer has stored, not which individual kernels are his.

Too much of news is fungible, i.e., it can be substituted for by others’ news quite easily, so why pay for it? The NYT, and others who will inevitably follow, needs to create content that is unique, that cannot be found by going elsewhere.

How they do that is up to staff creativity and hard work. But who better to show the way than the Times?

The Times is basing its decision largely on the success of the iTunes music and app store. What is the secret of that store’s success? It’s content isn’t fungible. It cannot be gotten elsewhere.

When readers are cornered they will pay. It will be interesting to see how this plays out.

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