Below the Fold

A Thanksgiving Story Worth Repeating

(The following post originally ran Nov. 21, 2007, and has become a holiday tradition of sorts. For those who have read it before, please pardon the repetition -- and for those who are reading it for the first time, I hope it serves as a reminder of what this holiday, and being human, is all about.) 

LOS ANGELES IS A CITY of fragments, pieces loosely joined yet bound as if against nature. Most people only see L.A. through a windshield – the observer protected behind glass, the observed seen in glimpses if at all. Los Angeles is a place apart and in parts, where everyone lives but no one is from.

It is into this concrete dichotomy I drive several days a week. I’ve done this for nearly a year with no regret, save for the occasional Sigalert that slows traffic even more than the usual crawl. Once this happened by the Staples Center, forcing me to watch the video ad for “American Idols on Tour” more times than should be considered humane.

Almost every day, before joining my fellow commuters on Interstate 10 and 5 for the long slog to  Orange County, I see a homeless man by the freeway entrance. Always smiling, always pleasant, and always with a hand out, as if he’s the operator of an imaginary toll booth. I give when I can, when the stoplight cooperates. This means lowering the window, a risky proposition in a place where people lock their car doors while they are still driving.

For months I saw this man – and then, a few weeks ago, he was gone. Maybe it was the weather, both turning slightly cooler and for a long while heavy with smoke and its unhealthy remnants.

He could be anywhere, doing just fine, but nevertheless I worry and wonder – whether he is safe, whether he found a better onramp, or whether he melted back into the jigsaw world of Greater L.A., another face in another windshield. This is the time of Thanksgiving after all, a time for holidays and families and desires for human connections. So I wonder, I worry, and wait.

The Day after Christmas
This man – and next time I see him, I promise to ask his name – reminds me of another man I met in Atlanta, exactly 17 years ago Friday. He, too, was (at least to me) homeless and nameless, a regular character at the CNN Center. I wrote about him in my book, and the following passage tells the story of our brief encounter:

“Where are you from?” The question came out of nowhere, as did the man. He looked 40ish, wearing a purple long-sleeved shirt, a green jacket-vest, a black hat, and a beard grown from neglect rather than purpose. As we talked, he would continuously sip from an empty Styrofoam cup. I wanted to tell him there was nothing in there, though I’m sure he knew. I just stared at the cup rising and falling from the man’s lips with mechanical precision.

I don’t know what was in the cup before, but based on our conversation, I got the feeling it was more likely vodka than coffee. We talked about life on the streets, and how being homeless is a lot like being in prison – except that in prison you get three meals a day and a warm place to sleep. But that wasn’t the worst part.

“It’s the loneliness,’ he said, taking another imaginary sip. “All the time, loneliness. All of my friends are either dead or gone.”

I was going to tell him how lonely I felt that Thanksgiving, but decided against it. Here was a guy who has endured the same ugly feeling for six years, and I was depressed about one day spent in a warm hotel room with the people I love a phone call away. His cup was empty; mine runneth over.

“The day after Christmas,” he said. “A business is made or broken by how well it is the day after Christmas. Everything is defined by where you are the day after Christmas.”

We had been talking about Thanksgiving, but I wasn’t going to argue. This was his conversation. I was just along for the ride.

I gave him some money as I got up to take my tour, which he accepted but don’t think expected. When I came back downstairs an hour later, I spotted my friend talking to a couple of other street people, and he waved to me as I passed.

He still had his cup and it was still empty. And I felt bad, really bad, because I knew that on the day after Christmas, he would still be there.

I never looked at people or a place the same after that. Everywhere is home for someone – every place has its own ecosystem that functions often despite itself. No matter where we live, we can connect.

Yes, Los Angeles is a city of fragments, the people fragmented. But while the pieces don’t always fit, they do, eventually, come together.

PR Industry: Fall Back, or Spring Forward

My relationship with PRSA – the Public Relations Society of America – goes back to 1994 when I first got into the business. As a journalist, I belonged to the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) and was even president of the University of Missouri chapter, so I was no stranger to trade organizations.

Both groups talked about visionary things. But talking is not the same as embracing or implementing. And after a few years in the PR business, I learned that PRSA, or at least the Orange County, CA chapter, was more interested in giving out awards than preparing its members for the tidal wave that was approaching and eventually overcame them in the late ‘90s, also known as the Internet.

So here I am, about to speak at a couple PRSA events in San Diego, and little has changed. Too many in the industry talk about “social media” as if it’s something that can be harnessed or “owned” by PR, when all around them every type of agency you can think of, from every discipline, is ignoring traditional barriers of what is PR, what is advertising, what is customer service, or what is media itself.

Far too many PR practitioners reduce communications to “tools” – things with which to communicate. The PR industry, by and large, wants shortcuts. It wants technology to take the place of actual engagement, rather than to serve as a means to communicate in new, powerful, personal ways. Ultimately, it seems many in the industry don’t want to talk directly to consumers, but instead do what they’ve always done – talk to third parties and intermediaries to carry their clients’ messages.

So here’s the challenge to my colleagues gathering in San Diego this weekend – stop talking about what you should be doing. Stop trying to protect your industry and start changing it.

We are living in a new time, it’s getting darker faster. In many ways we have fallen back.

And yet, there is still plenty of time for the PR industry and PRSA to spring forward. Let’s not blow it.

The clock is ticking.

There is No Social Media

Media is social.

Conversation is social.

Conversation is permanent.

Technology is not conversation.

A blog is technology.

A blogger is not.

Bloggers are not impressions.

Bloggers can be influential.

Bloggers are people.

People are media.

People are social.

All media is social.

There is no social media.

 

Social Media: Destination Unknown

Way back in early 1990, I spent several weeks preparing a long Sunday piece on the death penalty in California. It was my best work in my then still nascent print journalism career, a story that would make people think. This was ultimate power, at least to a writer.

But when a copy desk editor wrote a misleading headline (in my opinion) and moved around some of the key paragraphs, I blew. I called the editor names I didn’t even know I knew, and threatened to quit if the article ran with his changes. I didn’t mind editing, in fact I welcomed it – however this was editing that changed the meaning, and that was something I couldn’t tolerate.

The story ran as I had wanted (not entirely but close enough); I apologized to the editor and kept my job. I was ready to lose my job, however, over what I felt were my principles, albeit my youth and inexperience certainly led to my acting like a complete asshole.

But the incident taught me something else, something far more important, something I didn’t realize until much later.

Why did I care so much about that story? I never cared about a headline before or about copy changes. But this time the topic was capital punishment, which I had covered in Missouri and remained passionate about since moving back to California.

A few months later, I did leave my newspaper job. I gave up my apartment, packed my belongings into a couple suitcases, and threw them in the back of my car along with my Macintosh computer as I headed out for a three-month journey across the United States to talk to people about the death penalty and write a book.

I didn’t actually have a book deal, didn’t have a job to go back to when I was finished. I didn’t even have half of the interviews lined up that I needed, figuring I would fill in the spaces along the way either by intention or circumstance. But to this day I have never been happier.

Input vs. Output

This experience – and the book that followed, which was published in 1994, three years after my cross-country reporting from prisons, courthouses, family homes and roadside diners – was all due to that earlier story for which I was ready to quit. The story wasn’t my life’s goal at the time, and neither was writing a book.

What I needed was the journey. Not the final words on the printed page, but the experience of writing them and meeting the people who would help and inspire me along the way.

It didn’t make sense that I could leave my job and gain access to Death Row inmates and political leaders without a valid press credential, but I did. It didn’t figure that people would talk to a young reporter with no affiliation and little chance of their stories ever seeing daylight, but they did. In fact, looking back, it all seemed so easy, from the decision to quit my job, to getting my job back, to getting a publishing deal and being on a radio talk show tour.

But it wasn’t easy, not even close. It’s just that when you finally decide to do what you need to do, what you are supposed to do, things have a funny way of falling into place. It’s like turning the final number on a combination lock – everything just clicks.

All of this, believe it or not, brings me back to social media.

Linda Zimmer, a close friend and former colleague, put it best when she told me that social media breaks down into a series of inputs and outputs. The problem for many is that they tend to focus primarily on the outputs – the blog post, the Wikipedia entry, the Facebook widget.

But input is the key. Social media’s power – and the power of all “socialized” media – is in the connections we make and knowledge we gain. It’s in how the outputs are created and the meanings behind the metrics.

Social media thrives on input, not on whether the resulting content and conversation is part of a blog or a Twitter channel. As Linda said, you learn far less from a Wikipedia entry than from the Talk pages and comments about that entry. Input equals insight.

No one knows where they will end up when they start their social media journey, but those who focus on the journey will never be disappointed with where they end up.

Focus on the journey, and the destination will take care of itself.

The Permanent Conversation

“The truth is you never see it coming. The improbable moves us forward.” – Linda Zimmer, August 2007

In the First Web Era – that period loosely defined as after NCSA Mosaic and before MySpace – technology was highly visible. The narrative of the Internet, the Web, the dreaded “information superhighway,” was a tale of atoms moving to bits, a techno time-suck to some and nirvana to others who, sans the ability to woo a proper mate or get a decent haircut, simultaneously hid behind this new technology while creating some of its greatest advances and services.

Theirs was a web of computers and information; a channel for anonymity, where computers talked and people provided data only when required (such as in the form of credit card information.) The Internet was commerce and convenience – and while there were apps like e-mail and Usenet and AOL forums, the Internet was a mostly static infrastructure with no real, ongoing, or even global conversation.

Technology was permanent – but conversation was transient.

Now as we reach the end of the Second Web Era, the web is, more than anything, a “place” – a social construct rather than a technological one. Technology is necessary but in many ways anathema to making the Web work, to connection and collaboration.

Ours is a web of web of actions and ideas; a place for community, where people talk and computers process, providing support only when asked. Technologies, platforms and channels – they are fleeting, from MySpace to Facebook and Bebo; from blogs to Twitter. But sociological imperatives like human interaction and the desire to bond with others like ourselves is as constant and as essential to us as breathing.

Today, technology is transient – but conversation is permanent.

Re-Defining Social Media

The only word in the English language that means what it’s supposed to mean is “word.” Everything is else is created by us and defined by use, perception or time.

Depending who you ask, social media is “any media that’s not traditional or established media.” To some it’s a channel, to others it’s a place. Some see it only as technology. Some say it should be “owned” by PR, others say by marketing.

The truth is social media can be all those things – or none of them. It depends on the context of the question or purpose of the intended objective.

Ultimately, however, social media is defined by social interaction. I mean, the word “social” is right there in the name, yet there are still those who believe that putting a press release on a blog with the comment feature disabled is still somehow “social media.” This may be “sharable” media because of the technology platform, but it’s a long way from social.

Yes, some still just think of social media as tools, but they are shortsighted. I can’t count how many times people have said to me “what’s your social media toolkit” or “isn’t social media just a bunch of tactics.” 

Companies don’t want to blog or be on Facebook – they want to connect with their customers, and if a blog or Facebook is the best way to do that, then great. What’s important is to be with your audience, not the latest technology. The technologies will change, but the conversations will go on, with or without you.

The Third Web Era

Social media is the grail of permanent conversation, the vessel for a Third Web Era where technology does what it’s supposed to do when it becomes ubiquitous – disappear.

In the First Web Era, we needed computers, but computers didn’t need us. That’s all changed – computers need us to survive and expand. They need our intelligence, our data and our conversations. In this Third Era, if we go away, so does the Web.

2009 is the tenth anniversary of this quote by Tim Berners-Lee, father and still patriarch of the World Wide Web:

“I have a dream for the Web [in which computers] become capable of analyzing all the data on the Web – the content, links, and transactions between people and computers. A ‘Semantic Web’, which should make this possible, has yet to emerge, but when it does, the day-to-day mechanisms of trade, bureaucracy and our daily lives will be handled by machines talking to machines. The ‘intelligent agents’ people have touted for ages will finally materialize.”

I believe he was part right. Yes, “intelligent agents” are here and are helping us manage day-to-day tasks like news gathering or auto-loading debit cards. The “Semantic Web” is coming, powered by the still untapped potential of search and delivering a “home page” to each according to their interests and desires, by computers that “learn” and make choices on our behalf.

But the Web today – and the one of tomorrow – is a Web of function as well as emotion, and neither can exist without the other. If technology is the heart of the Third Web Era, then conversation is its soul.

Information exists, but conversation persists. That conversation may take many forms, yet people are talking all the time and they are not going to stop. And if you don’t want to join, you at least need to listen.

The Permanent Conversation is here. Are you?

The End of "Viral" -- I hope

I try to make promises I can keep. This is why my daughter never got for a pony - I figure the decision will either build character for later or help her land a book deal about her horrible childhood, which is cool with me as long as she pays for my retirement (can't count on the 401k anymore.)

Anyway, here's another promise: The next person who asks me "how much does a viral video cost" is going to get nothing but silence from my end of the phone - not because I won't know what to say, but because I will have gone to kill myself (don't ask me how, just suffice to say it involves old episodes of Punky Brewster, Mr. Belvedere, and an ice pick.)

Seem extreme? Okay, perhaps. But it solves both the problem of having to explain the asinine nature of the question for the 100th time as well as trying to live on a dwindling investment portfolio.

Almost every day someone asks me or one of my colleagues for "viral" ideas or "social media" tactics. Just once I'd like to ask someone how much a front page story in the Los Angeles Times costs and then listen to them emit that sigh of quiet desperation I've sounded so many times myself.

How much does a viral video cost? I can't tell you because no such thing exists. Videos aren't "viral," they're videos - fast-moving frames of pixels that form images of cats on skateboards or Chad Vader covering Tay Zonday's "Chocolate Rain." Now if those pictures tell a compelling or funny story, if they elicit emotion or passion, or if the images are relevant to the viewer, well then, maybe, the people who watch the video will pass it around and tell their friends, thus creating a "viral" effect (and even then you often need a kick-start, usually with some paid media, just to get noticed.)

How much does a viral video cost? I don't know, how much does a hit movie cost? How much does a car cost? Maybe instead of asking me for the price of a car, you should ask me where you want to go and who you want to talk to when you get there.

Videos aren't viral - ideas are. Stories are. A crappy idea will still be crappy whether it's on YouTube or Facebook or anywhere else where people who have eyeballs connected to a visual cortex can see it.

Ask not what a viral video will cost - ask what a great idea that connects with your customers is worth. Then, if you work up enough nerve, go ahead ask for a pony, it couldn't hurt.

We Are the Firemen

In May 1993 – the exact date and time escape me – my inner world, the one where thoughts are born, developed and processed, lost its ability to be silent. I since have lived with constant noise, the result of a tumor that, in an ironic nod to God’s comic grace, left me deaf in one ear yet covered in a perpetual blanket of ringing static.

Sometimes it’s not too bad, other times it’s so loud it sounds like there’s a KISS concert in my cranium. But it is always there, never fully abated, never completely quiet. It will never be quiet, and it has been so long I have forgotten what quiet is, what silence sounds like, what kinds of thoughts stillness brings. How much smarter, how less painful the headaches and seizures, how more aware of my environment would I be if only I could hear more – and then, like most people, dial down the volume and hear nothing but thinking.

Rather than go insane, I did the next best thing – I went into marketing. Turns out my decision was less pathos than it was prescience, as I watch my former trade of journalism in some cases melt away, in others morph into a new kind of socially-driven journalism enabled (if not always ennobled) by modern technology.

THE DESCENT OF PRINT alone is not a problem for a our society. But the descent of thought is. And this death of reasonable thinking and discourse has given rise to a ringing in all our ears, a cacophony of “social media” for its own sake rather than the sake of the consumer.

Don’t get me wrong (though I guarantee someone will) – I love technology and Web 2.0. I believe in the power of conversation and the promise of connecting people to each other with authentic communications. But in this new silicon rush we far too often discount what’s gone before, throwing judgment into the intellectual pyre like so many worn newspapers.

In other words, in our well-meant effort to broaden and share our knowledge, are we also destroying the very knowledge and reasoned discussion we so boldly claim to seek?

Because we can connect with people like ourselves, we do. And then we act as if other opinions don't exist -- or if they do, then don't matter. We do this within our social networks, the pseudo social media intelligentsia do it at conferences and on their blogs, and the news media does it by giving us news tuned to whatever ideological frequency we desire.

We jump to conclusions and applaud hyperbole until the slightest chance of digesting an idea is gone. That idea is destroyed forever, lost in the echo chamber of self-important consultants and rash Twitter feeds.

Never before in human history has so much information been available so readily to so many. Yet although we are creating and writing more, we are saying less.

IN FAHRENHEIT 451, RAY BRADBURY’S seminal novel about censorship and intellectual intolerance, a “fireman” was someone who burned books. Well, we don’t burn books per se, but we burn discourse. We don't destroy newspapers, but our actions are killing them off just the same. We are the firemen.

So this is my warning and my plea: don’t get caught up in the social media panacea. Instead, experiment and decide what works for you and your company. Focus on the customer first and the technology second. It’s okay to take small steps, to do what’s best for your business, to embrace new tools at your own pace even if it goes against the “purists” who argue that there’s only one way move forward.

And above all, take time to think, to plan, to discuss and learn. Embrace the unknown and reject those who insist they know it all. Find some silence and make decisions without being surrounded by so much noise.

I would give anything for just a few seconds of mental peace and quiet. Don’t squander yours.

Stop Measuring Social Media

Think about your most important relationships. They might be your spouse, your kids, your parents and your friends. Maybe it’s that teacher from high school who inspired you, or the co-worker who took you under his or her wing.

Now try to put a numerical value on those relationships. Seriously, see if you can. Then take that value and calculate the relationship ROI.

I know, it sounds ridiculous. Yet that’s exactly what companies expect from their social media engagement efforts.

Social media needs to be quantified, so the argument goes, or else it has little value. Everything needs a number.

This is, after all, how it was always done online. A company built a web site, people went to the web site. A brand put up banner ads, and people clicked on the banner ads. Action and reaction in near perfect symbiosis, with results easily exported into an Excel spreadsheet. Moreover, each action began with the company’s goal in mind, and with the expectation (even determination) that the customer would change his or her behavior to fit the company’s needs.

Today, these same companies are trying to do the same thing in a social web context – but an ROI rooted in conversations rather than clicks does not export well into Excel. Actions and reactions are chaotic, not symbiotic. And today, each action begins with the consumers’ goals, their desires and behaviors. Companies need to change their behaviors to befit the modern consumer or be damned.

Of course (contrary to popular belief) companies still have a large amount of control – it’s just that their influence is tempered by the rise of consumer involvement and greater share of voice. Marketing 2.0 is a team sport.

Overall, the web is a now a far more qualitative environment – yes, there are still plenty of numbers to compile, from page views to time spent interacting with content, widget downloads, video views and blog posts, and on and on. But this is only a small part of the value equation. The real value lies in the depth of these interactions and conversations, in the connections that are made between customer and brand. A customer isn’t just someone who clicks on a web site and orders a product, but someone who can tell others about the product and start a fan page, or come to a brand’s defense.

Social media is only “social” if people participate – otherwise it’s just technology with no soul. People are the real “killer app” of Web 2.0, and people don’t have numbers, they have names and voices. And now they can be heard.

So do yourself a favor – don’t measure social media, at least in the traditional sense of measurement. Put away the spreadsheets, the projections, the metrics and the cost-benefit analyses. Don’t count how many friends you have, but rather take a hard look at the value and extent of those friendships.

Just listen. Just participate. And just for once, don’t measure anything except how the experience makes you feel. That’s the first step – and the most important metric of all.

Facebook is the New Corporate Intranet (and Other Things I Want to Mention but Would Rather Not Discuss)

Glenn Beck is an Insensitive Prick – Beck told his national radio audience that “a handful of people who hate America are losing their homes in a forest fire today,” referring to the wildfires that started in Malibu. First of all, one of those people, Steve Dark, is a conservative who loves America and goes to church every week – or at least he did until his church burned to the ground.

So what does that mean, Glenn? Does God hate America, too? Steve and his Malibu neighbors are looking forward to your answer.

Facebook is the New Corporate Intranet – Why not? Create a Facebook Group, set it up as “Secret” – so it’s not visible to search, only invited members can participate and the group is invisible on members’ profiles – and voila, instant Intranet. Members can post, discuss and share information, even upload photos or host audio or video podcasts (and don’t forget the ability to create custom applications.) Simple to be sure, but for some companies simple is good enough. Goodbye HTML, hello FBML.

Social Media is Not Just About a Set of Tools – Will someone please tell this to Ragan and PRSA? Please, before they hurt somebody? It’s often those who profess to know the future that turn out to be the most shortsighted.

Twit This: Twitter is Good for Something – I know, hard to believe, but San Diego PBS station KPBS used the popular micro-blogging tool to keep residents in touch with the latest wildfire news via their mobile phones. If you do crisis communications, Twitter is a great way to spread the word.

I Gave it an Honest Try, and "Cavemen" is Just Not Funny – I wanted to believe, ABC, I really did. But…damn.

The Audience is Still Smarter Than Us (and Generous) – I don’t know if professional photographer Alex Miroschnichenko’s decision to brave the Santiago Fire in Orange County and distribute his images for free was simply a random act of citizen journalism, but it was a significant act of citizenship.

New Glasses Don’t Make You Any Less Bald – Hey, it was worth a shot. At least I still have time to grow a beard and dress up as Phil Gomes for Halloween (sorry, I know I shouldn’t make fun of a guy about to get married, that’s supposed to happen after the wedding.)

 

 

 

Looking Ahead: Content is Where You Are

AS BOTH A CHILD OF and practitioner in the modern “we’ve got you surrounded” age of media, nothing should surprise me. I’m used to message bombardment, from traditional sources like television and radio to more non-traditional sources like shopping cart handles, airport security trays and strategically placed tattoos. Even O.J. Simpson getting arrested again isn’t enough to make me blink.

But as the picture here demonstrates, there is always a new way to reach consumers who long ago either tuned out traditional media, or are so inundated by advertising that they tune it all out.

Advertising paradise has been paved and put into a parking lot. It’s as clear as the lines on the asphalt asking us to watch Desperate Housewives on ABC – these are desperate times for television as well.

But this isn’t about TV or anything else being “dead.” It’s about media companies continuing to change and adjust to a modern world that isn’t going away. It’s about embracing people’s busy lives and reaching them where they are, rather than making an appointment and hoping people show up. Unlike its much older media colleague – newspapers – TV is mad as hell and not going to take it anymore.

ABC has been especially adept at understanding the New Web Order, that your web presence is more important than your web site. As one ABC exec put it, “ABC.com is a platform – and that platform can be distributed anywhere.”

And it is, on mobile phones and iPods (we’re waiting for the inevitable Facebook app, too.) ABC also cracked the code of co-creation, using its Lost message boards to help develop plotlines with the audience.

This is in contrast to NBC’s latest move to remove its shows from Apple’s dominant iTunes store, opting instead to make shows available for free on its web site. The catch? The free shows have commercials while the iTunes shows you pay for are commercial free.

No question NBC’s decision has more to do with money than content distribution. And plenty of people will go to NBC and watch shows for free rather than pay a few dollars not to see car ad after car ad.

I just wonder how long this can last. Ultimately people don’t want to be on your web site, they want to be on their web site, blog, social network, phone, iPod or PDA. The web site is a creature of the ‘90s and is quickly becoming an endangered species, but that’s a topic for another day.

More and more, content today is wherever people are – not where anyone else, including the TV networks, wants them to be.