The power of music in an ambiguous world.

One of the best talks I heard at TEDx Detroit was by Leonard Slatkin, the conductor of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra.  His talk was about preserving music programs in public schools—including his own experience with an influential teacher.  As a liberal arts graduate, I am fully supportive of his cause, though I am pessimistic about whether there is any hope of success.  Well rounded people who can think are what the world needs today.

He made the case for why it mattered that people had music education, even if those people did not go on to be musicians.  This is incredibly important and the idea most commonly lost in this debate.  Education is not strictly vocational.  He cited Alan Greenspan and Condi Rice as examples, among others.

He said that music education was important because it was abstract.  I’d like to build on that, and shift the word abstract to something a little more business-friendly, which is “ambiguity.”

Our world is increasingly filled with ambiguity.  In an artistic sense, we deal with an increasingly abstract environment, one where things are not apparent and not as they appear to be.  Thinkers—people who are prepared to look beneath the surface and find meaning—are the creators the world increasingly needs.

I find this post recently about a 2008 subject on this topic.  This article, which is about the tolerance for ambiguity, says this:

The ability to live in the question long enough for genius to emerge is a touchstone of creative success. In fact, a 2008 study published in the Journal of Creative Behavior revealed tolerance for ambiguity to be “significantly and positively related” to creativity.

So—music education can do one thing for sure: make us feel comfortable with the fear of the unknown.  If we don’t run away, if we stew in the question, then we have a chance at solving the riddle.

There’s even a biological basis for this…

According to fMRI studies, acting in the face of uncertainty lights up a part of the brain known as the amygdala, which is a primary seat of fear and anxiety. That sends a surge of chemicals through our bodies that makes us want to run.

I honestly worry about our culture.  I believe at just the time we are entering a world of unprecedented uncertainty, we are intentionally preparing for a world that is past.

There are, however, many people who get it, and who are committed to a life of ideas and innovation.  Hundreds of them were at Tedx Detroit.

If you are hiring a thinker, you might consider asking them about their arts background.  You might look for someone who was in concert band.  You might look for these and other telltale signs that you are getting an adapter, an innovator and a creator.

Did anyone ever tell you there is No ROI on PR??

If you work in this business, I’m going to suggest that the answer is Yes…people have told you that there is no ROI to PR.  And, despite efforts to develop unwieldy measurement tools, items like preference and influence remain difficult to measure in a discrete fashion.

Today’s news does show us, however, that there is a negative ROI on bad publicity.

Let’s look at Netflix.  This is not going to be a post about the multitude of PR errors Netflix has made, because you don’t need me for that.  See:  The Internet.

For the sake of this post, we’re going to assume they did a lousy job.

I’m going to focus on two outcomes…first, Netflix has lost 600K million customers since their poorly structured and handled price increase earlier this year.  Since their stock value was predicated on a projection of a 1 million subscriber increase, we we heard yesterday that the company has lost half its value….that’s $2b in 8 hours.

This is 100% a marketing failure.  Going back to the 4 P’s, they monkeyed with the price while there are signs that the product is going to get worse as other company’s are signing agreements that will restrict available content.

Most importantly, I think they broke trust with their customers, who I think, by and large, were pretty satisfied with the service.  Their large price increase was never adequately justified, whereas a moderate price increase would probably have been absorbed relatively silently.

The point is this:  here is a clear situation when there was a cost to doing things wrong, to appearing arrogant, breaking trust with your customers and not communicating effectively.  The cost was $2B.

So, the next time someone tells you that you can’t measure the benefits of PR, you have a case study…good strategic PR in this case had the potential to be worth $2B to Netflix.

NASCAR Teaches 9 PR Lessons…

Just a quick study opportunity on one organization that knows how to do retail PR really effectively.  The Tony Kornheiser show runs in the DC area, but has a large national following via podcast, including me.  Kornheiser is also the co-host of PTI.

He is also not a car guy…doesn’t put air in his own tires.  So, when it came to NASCAR, he didn’t get it.  The NASCAR PR people went to work when there was a race in Richmond, and applied a tried and true PR technique…a media tour.

Where you see a number, you will know that I consider it a smart PR move…

This one had some pretty close attention…in fact, the PR Director of NASCAR picked Tony up at his house and drove him to the track.  (1)  There was a police escort. (2)  He got a flame retardant track suit.  (3)  Drivers were incredibly available to him.  He had half hour time blocks with top drivers up until an hour before race time.  (4)  (Try that in the NFL).  He got to attend the driver’s meeting.  (5)  He saw Snooki (nah).  He rode the pace car (6) and didn’t throw up (7).

Along the way, he got a look at why NASCAR fans are so loyal.  For example, not only are the drivers accessible to the media before the race, they interact with fans until an hour before the race—signing autographs, pictures, answering questions.  (8).  There are Q&A sessions in the pits (9).

In short, NASCAR not only illustrated how to convert a media member, but also that it truly “gets” engagement with its paying public.  You might think that NASCAR is different from your company, but I would ask you this:

1. Does your company engage fully with its customers…allowing them to know and interact with employees beyond just their rep?
2. When you show a journalist the cool stuff about your product or service, are you giving them a full and rich experience that is a “Wow?”
3. Are you available to your key stakeholders on their schedule?
4. Are you trying to de-mystify or mystify your organization?
5. Is engagement in your DNA?

Forbes on post-cynicism CSR…

Forbes Magazine recently wrote about CSR, the revolution that it is making in the branding game, and, finally, the role PR is playing in it.

This is well worth a read.  First, it makes it clear the CSR is not PR…and its not.  If you act like it is, then you are just feeding the cynical monster out there and, in fact, making things worse.

No, CSR is not PR…however, if done correctly, it is of great use to PR.

The article cites these specific examples:

Success has been slow but examples abound: Tide for Hope, PepsiCo’s Refresh Project, Stonyfield Farm’s Save-a-Cow program, and Ben & Jerry’s unique ice cream flavors that help raise money for specific causes were all born out of the realization that CSR does not have to be an afterthought, an expense, an outsourced campaign, but should be integrated with both internal change and external communications.

And this is the key point.  If you do CSR and you do it right, which means that you are thinking long term and you are aligned with your values, and those values are aligned with your customer’s values, then it is a very useful branding tool.  Which sounds like a bunch of corporate talk, so let’s clean it up a little.

You care about what your customers care about and you demonstrate it in actions not words and this differentiates you and creates preference for your brand.

How’s that?

The article refers to the “overhaul” of traditional “mindsets” and that is the most important lesson here.  You simply cannot achieve trust with today’s consumers if you don’t change the way you think about them.

I close with a quote from the article, which I cannot improve on:

[The agency in question]  “help[s] clients understand the importance of long term visions, value-based strategies and campaigns that truly align with their brands.”

The Rehabilitation of Robert E. Lee…PR ahead of its time

I found an interesting article in Humanities Magazine by James C. Cobb, a professor at the University of Georgia and a leading scholar on Southern identity.

The title of the article establishes the premise pretty effectively…

How did Robert E. Lee Become an American Icon?

The answer to that question is one part expediency and one part an impressively modern PR battle wage by Lee’s fellow confederates.

We can dismiss the expediency here.  It was the interest of Northerners for Lee to be a hero, because he had urged his citizens to end the war with the North after Appomatox, in stark contrast to other die-hard white supremacists like Jefferson Davis…and it was the in the interest of Confederates to romanticize their “lost cause” in the interests of keeping it alive, so the South could “rise again.”

From a PR standpoint, Lee’s apologists had a tough road to climb.  Lee was the leader of an army that attempted to overthrow the US government, a rebellion that cost the lives of 10% of military aged men in the North and 30% in the South.  

And what was the great principle he was fighting for?  That the South should be free to do what they pleased in a variety of areas, chiefly but not exclusively, slavery.

Let’s have no doubt about it…Robert E. Lee was a man of his age and was pro-slavery.  See this:

The blacks are immeasurably better off here than in Africa, morally, physically, and socially. The painful discipline they are undergoing is necessary for their further instruction as a race, and will prepare them, I hope, for better things. How long their servitude may be necessary is known and ordered by a merciful Providence. Their emancipation will sooner result from the mild and melting influences of Christianity than from the storm and tempest of fiery controversy. This influence, though slow, is sure.

And this:

Although the abolitionist must know this, must know that he has neither the right not the power of operating, except by moral means; that to benefit the slave he must not excite angry feelings in the master; that, although he may not approve the mode by which Providence accomplishes its purpose, the results will be the same; and that the reason he gives for interference in matters he has no concern with, holds good for every kind of interference with our neighbor, -still, I fear he will persevere in his evil course… . Is it not strange that the descendants of those Pilgrim Fathers who crossed the Atlantic to preserve their own freedom have always proved the most intolerant of the spiritual liberty of others?

OK, so slavery is “spiritual liberty” on the order of that sought by the pilgrims.

Today, of course, Lee is revered.  Cobb’s article details this extensively, and I think pretty much anyone would agree.  Robert E. Lee is an American icon, representing, in the words of President Eisenhower:

One of the supremely gifted men produced by our Nation. … selfless almost to a fault … noble as a leader and as a man, and unsullied as I read the pages of our history. From deep conviction I simply say this: a nation of men of Lee’s caliber would be unconquerable in spirit and soul. Indeed, to the degree that present-day American youth will strive to emulate his rare qualities … we, in our own time of danger in a divided world, will be strengthened and our love of freedom sustained.

Yes, he said love of freedom.

Anyway, the real question is, how did this happen?  How was this neat rehabilitation accomplished?

In part, the answer comes from the Southern Historical Society, which was founded by former Confederate soldiers and officials.  The Society, in reality, is no different than a “research institute” founded by the tobacco industry or manufacturers discrediting global warming.  

Cobb writes that its goal was to amass “a formidable arsenal of historical documentation” that could be used over time, in a wide variety of debates and publications.

This tactic would have to look very familiar to any modern PR practitioner, creating documents (or, a “fact base”) in an official context—in books and under the auspices of a purportedly academic setting.

Time has certainly proven this tactic can work—it did for Lee.  Perhaps there are no new PR ideas under the son.

I leave you with this question, though.  In today’s world, how would such a thing hold up?  What if abolitionists had been able to blog and tweet about the reports from the Southern Historical Society?  In the pressure chamber of modern communications, could such a thing hold up?

The answer isn’t clear to me.  You’d like to say no, but I would argue that faux-scientists have done pretty well creating doubt about climate change.  At the same time, tobacco’s message house eventually caved in under the weight of actual facts.

Finally:  why does it seem like the people disputing the facts have more energy than the people who are supporting the facts?