my 2 cents

Viral content and the truth are often mutually exclusive

 

I love this opening line in a story in the New York Times earlier this week...

"Truth has never been an essential ingredient of viral content on the Internet."

How true. 

The article by Ravi Somaya and Leslie Kaufman takes a look at several recent stories that have gone viral in a big way, shooting around the web, propelled even faster by pickup in news aggregator sites like The Huffington Post, Gawker, BuzzFeed and Mashable. These stories, all turning out to be either total fiction or major embellishments of truth, included one about a Thanksgiving feud on a recent airline flight, a letter supposedly from a child to Santa, and an essay on poverty that drew $60,000 in donations before the author admitted it was not exactly true.  (The writer of the poverty story reportedly said she has no intention of returning any of the donations she received.)

How can these false stories get such widespread play online, each garnering views in the millions?  The Times story gives some interesting insights into how and why this can happen again and again.

Many of the online sites don't have fact checkers.  Those that do have people stretched too thin to fact check every item the site reposts.  Even legitimate and respected news organizations like the broadcast networks and CNN fell victim to a clever prank pulled by Jimmy Kimmel a few months ago, where he reported on a YouTube clip of a woman twerking and accidentally setting herself on fire.  It turned out to be a gag by Kimmel's people, but after it went viral and was reported by major media, it ended up with more than 10 million views.

And that's part of the problem.  Lots of views.  The supposed importance of sites is based on how many views they get, which impacts the rates they can charge advertisers.  The battle for numbers of views too often overrides the authenticity of the content they carry.

The editor of Gawker acknowledges in The Times story that there are trade-offs in balancing authenticity with the need to move quickly in this highly-interconnected society where everyone wants to be first with information.  And an editor at The Huffington Post told The Times, "If you throw something up without fact-checking and you're the first to put it up, and you get millions and millions of views, and later it's proved false, you still got those views.  That's a problem.  The incentives are all wrong."

Yes, the incentives are all wrong.  I suppose it's not unlike some media that feed on gruesome murder stories.  Even if the info is off, the media still get the viewers or sell copies of the paper.

I've referred in the past to the internet as the wild, wild west, where there are few rules.  So the caveat remains... Don't believe everything you see online.

 

 

 

 

 

Where we use our smartphones ... Not only in the car

 

One of the areas of specialization in my Public Relations practice is traffic safety.  I've been working in this segment of PR for more than 20 years, since I organized and publicized the first World Traffic Safety Symposium for the New York Auto Show.

The Auto Show work led to a contract for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and then the National Road Safety Foundation, a non-profit that produces safe driving educational programs and distributes them free to schools, police and individuals.  I've also done work for companies that market traffic safety-related products including one I recently started with -- a just-launched cellphone app called LifeSaver that prevents the user from texting and driving.

I know how big and important an issue texting and distraction is.  It's up there as one of the top causes of traffic crashes... just behind impairment. 

A recent Forrester Research study shows that 68 percent of us access the internet from our cars.  Hopefully, not all are driving when they do that, but it's easy to see what a big danger cellphones have become for those of us on the road.

The survey also shows that 64 percent go online via mobile devices in our living rooms; 63 percent in restaurants; 61 percent in the bedroom; 51 percent in the kitchen; 50 percent in the bathroom; 45 percent on public transit.

The restaurant figure shows how addicted we've become to being connected.  We've all been in restaurants where you'll see a group of people at a table -- all looking down at their phones instead of engaging in conversation with their tablemates.  As for the bathroom statistic -- well, I guess going online is yet another way to be productive in the bathroom.  Talk about multi-tasking!

George Simpson, who writes for Media Daily News, has a good column on the subject.  It'll give you a chuckle as you scratch your head and wonder... "What are we becoming?"  Or as Simpson headlines his column:  "Sure signs that society is starting to crumble."

 

 

The PR Person's Challenge -- Getting your Email Read

 

Lots has been written about how to get your emails opened.  A common bit of advice is to use a tempting subject line. But when you send an email can also make a difference in having it opened and getting a response, according to a survey reported by Lucia Moses, writing in ADWEEK.

Getting email read is an ongoing challenge for marketers, and it's a real challenge for those of us in PR who pitch stories to people in the media.  Email has become the preferred method of contact among reporters and producers, overtaking phone calls and even personal contact.  But therein lies our challenge, since an email pitch can get buried in the daily volume of emails, which has gone up by 5.4 percent from a year ago.

I get between 125 - 250 emails every weekday, and I've heard from media people I know who say their email volume can be easily two or three times that amount -- every day.

The survey reported by ADWEEK seems to show that sending an email at night -- after 8 p.m. -- gives you the best chance of having it opened and read within a day.  Emails also fare better on weekends when the overall volume is lower.  Possibly the worst time to send an email pitch is between 8 a.m. and noon, when 40 percent of all emails are sent.

There are exceptions, of course.  If you know the reporter well and he or she normally does repond to your emails, then send it whenever it's best for you.  I always try to be clear in my subject line what the message is about, which seems to help.

The internet, email and social media have made the idea of 9 - 5 work hours obsolete, and I'll often see emails from clients and media people sent in the early evening (between 6:30 and 9 p.m.) and on weekends.  

Of course, regardless of when you send a pitch, it's got to be succinct and on target.  That much hasn't changed, even since the days of telephone pitches and pitches made face-to-face over a lengthy lunch.

 

 

You can't always believe the headlines

 

"Social Falls Short on Customer Loyalty; Traditional Methods Encouraged"

That headline in a MediaPost story this week caught my eye.  It flies in the face of all the hype we've been hearing about the wonders of social media.

The study, which surveyed 5,000 people in the U.S. and western Europe, found that only 18 percent of the respondents felt that their interaction with a large company or its brands via social media would encourage them to buy from that company again.  The number slipped down to 15 percent for social media interaction with smaller businesses like local retailers. 

The report says social media appears to be one of the least effective means of encouraging customer loyalty and other techniques that are more likely to resonate with consumers should get priority attention and budgeting from marketers and retailers.  The other techniques mentioned include a home delivery option, control of channels and frequency of communications received from a company, and a choice of ways to contact the company with questions or problems.

With all the talk about how impactful social media can be when connecting consumers with a company or brand, the survey begs a few questions.  

First, could the survey simply be wrong?  Might the questions asked have been leading, tilting toward desired responses?  The other question is who commissioned the survey and what might they have to gain from a particular set of findings?

Aha!  That might be the problem with this survey.  It was done for Pitney Bowes, whose mailing equipment products like postage meters are threatened by a reduction in pieces going via the U.S, mail as more promotional pieces and even billing is done electronically via email and other digital platforms.

"Sophisticated social media and Web interaction can be time-consuming and expensive and outcomes are difficult to measure," says the report. 

So would our friends at Pitney Bowes have us stay locked into our old methods of interaction, and ignore or avoid new technology?  

I think many marketers and their agencies are getting it right as they experiment with social media and other forms of digital communication, while looking for ways to measure and determine the ROI on the new opportunities that the Web afford us.

We also need to show a healthy skepticism when we see surveys, asking who conducted or who paid for the research, and what might they have to lose or gain by its findings?

Weekend Thoughts

A PR Grand Slam for an Issue of Life or Death

 

We all know the power of talk show queen Oprah, whose endorsement of a book can make it an overnight best-seller.  And we know how much Government can do to push an issue, harnessing seemingly endless manpower and equally endless financial resources.

I was part of a project that brought these two awesome forces together this week in the effort to reduce the death toll from distracted driving by convincing people not to text or use cell phones while they drive. 

Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood calls distracted driving “a national epidemic” that is hitting young people especially hard.  Nearly 5,900 people died last year in distracted driving-related crashes, and another half a million were injured.  A disproportionate number of them are young people, who are the biggest texters. 

I’m writing this on the Amtrak as I return home from Washington, where I was part of this awesome public relations effort.  As I mentioned in a post a few weeks ago, I encouraged one of my clients, The National Road Safety Foundation, to team up with a national coalition of youth organizations – National Organizations for Youth Safety (NOYS) – to create a public service announcement on distracted driving.  We invited teens to give us their ideas for a PSA addressing the issue, and the 16-year old whose idea we used was brought to New York to participate in the actual production of the 30-second spot.  It resonated with the target group of young people because it was created by a young person rather than by suits sitting in an ad agency or a corporate office.

Secretary LaHood has supported the effort from the start, doing TV interviews to promote it, lending his name to our efforts to encourage teens to participate, and then taking the time Thursday to join us in a news conference at the National Press Club in Washington, where he personally thanked the National Road Safety Foundation and introduced to the media both the new PSA and Bethany Brown, the Arizona high school student who conceived it for us.  He also posted the PSA on his official blog and on the Dept. of Transportation’s website distraction.gov.

So that’s our part so far in this massive effort.  The heavy ammunition was rolled out Friday, when Oprah devoted her entire show to making people aware of the dangers of distracted driving and trying hard to convince them to change their behavior behind the wheel. 

She was on all three network news shows Friday morning, talking about distracted driving and encouraging people to take a pledge to make their cars a “no-phone zone.”  Then, her own show rallied people in five cities including Washington, where I was part of a group that went to the Newseum, the museum of journalism, to support the call for no texting and cell phones whole driving.  Oprah’s friend and business partner Gayle King hosted the D.C. event, and Secretary LaHood stopped by to talk by satellite with Oprah about his agency’s full support, which includes pushing legislative and enforcement efforts – 23 states have already enacted no texting while driving laws, and Secretary LaHood is directing Federal funding to support extensive police crackdowns in test cities Hartford and Syracuse.  Experience shows that changing driving behavior takes three components – awareness/education, legislation and enforcement of that legislation.  Look at seat belt and drunk driving efforts.

It’s reminiscent of grass roots efforts some 40 years ago when outraged families of drunk driving victims began groups like MADD and SADD.  It starts with the telling and retelling of some tragic stories of innocent people killed by drivers who were too busy texting or looking at their phones to pay attention to the road until it was too late.  I've met some of these people and heard their stories firsthand and it breaks your heart.

The difference this time is that a media heavyweight like Oprah is personally involved in the effort.  She has the clout and power of persuasion that perhaps simply didn’t exist 40 years ago.  It’s good that she’s harnessing that clout for a good cause.

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Today begins National Youth Traffic Safety Month.  If you have a teen at home, encourage him or her to go to the NOYS or NRSF site to find out more.

Ad Tracking -- Yes or No?

Several weeks ago, a study came out, followed by a flurry of articles in the trades, talking about consumer resistance to online behavioral targeting.  Sixty percent of adults surveyed by researchers at the Universities of California and Pennsylvania said they don't want to be shown ads based on their interests.

That number climbed to nearly 80 percent when the researchers explained how ads are targeted, ie., using information garnered from our actions online.  An invasion of privacy, most felt once they learned about behavioral marketing.

Yet advertising and online marketing experts say behavioral marketing will become more commonly used, as marketers with tight budgets try ever harder to rifle-target their ads to hit the most likely prospects.

Some consumer groups have been pressuring Congress to pass legislation that limits online tracking and especially behavioral marketing.  Right now there are no laws preventing the sale of online data. 

At the same time, other reports show consumers prefer to see ads online that are targeted to their interests.

Can we have it both ways?

Possibly we can, if consumers can be given an easy way to opt out from having their online actions tracked and then used for behavioral targeting.  It could be like the no-call option to prevent unwanted telemarketing calls.

Certainly there will be lots more discussion on this subject, probably after some major abuse of online data gets exposed.  It's bound to happen eventually.

Your thoughts?

Is the Web a place for ads?

Advertising Age last week devoted its entire issue to digital media, an unusual move for the weekly.  Editor Jonah Bloom, in a note to readers, underscored the significance by reminding us that they usually do only two  single-subject editions, like the Year in Review during the slow-news period between Christmas and New Year's.

An article by Matthew Creamer is worthy of note, I think, in this noteworthy issue.  Titled "Think different: The web's not a place to stick your ads," it challenges traditional thinking about online ads.

Has web advertising moved beyond simply banners and click-throughs?  Of course it has.  But how effective is it, really, as an ad medium?  That's the million-dollar question.

A key difference between the web and other media is that the user controls it.   Other media program their space and we, as users, have the simple choice to change the channel, turn the page or shut the TV off altogether.  But users determine what they see online, even within the same site or channel.

Jakob Nielsen, an expert in user behavior who advises major companies on their corporate websites, long ago said, "The basic point about the web is that it is not an advertising medium.  It is not a selling medium, but a buying medium.  It is user-controlled so the user controls the user experience."

Before DVRs, you pretty much had to watch the ads during a show.  Remote controls made it easy to avoid ads way before DVRs, although it's common knowledge that channel surfing has led to man a spat between husbands and wives.

But the web is a whole different story, where it's easy to totally ignore ads.  Even those that try to engage you by some sort of an on-screen game, like a web version of the shooting gallery game where you try to hit the marching ducks, might catch you for a few minutes.  But will it get you to actually read the ad or click through for the real sales pitch?  Very unlikely.

The article talks about paid media vs. earned media, getting into public relations jargon.   What they're saying is a message that is part of the editorial content has a better chance of being read and responded to.  That's one of the selling points we p.r. folks use on why public relations/publicity messages can have more clout than much more costly ad messages.

The article talks about Johnson & Johnson, whose BabyCenter website is cited as a good way to use the web to get a sales message across.  The site is chock full of parenting information, like a magazine, with the J&J branding clear yet subtle and not interfering at all with the user experience.

Banner ads on someone else's site probably don't have the same impact as the overall impression and selling opportunities created by that site.

Nielsen says, "Most of the time, when I go to the web, I go to get something done, and I don't want to be distracted."

In other words, a traditional ad probably won't get noticed.  So why pay for it?  The challenge is to create something -- content -- that people want, where your message or product information can be subtly and logically included.

That's quite a challenge.  But I'm confident we're up to it.