Tired of ALS Ice Bucket Challenge? Let's Keep Some Perspective

By now, the only living things on Earth that haven't seen the ice bucket challenge are the penguins in the North and South Poles. It's a viral phenomenon that has been going on on the international scale for well over a month at this point. You can't open your Facebook, Twitter, Vine, any news website, turn on the TV or even open an email without being reminded that its momentum hasn't slowed.

Of course, as to be expected, this has led a large group of vocal detractors to express their irritation with the cause. Lots of people just do it for the attention. Many don't have any idea what ALS is. People do the challenge but don't donate any money. It's run its course. It is a one-time thing that people will forget about and likely never donate again.

Fine, we get it. Not everyone is a fan. I can even understand that many people look past the fact that it has raised more than $41 million for ALS research. You're tired of it and waiting for the fad to pass. Waiting for stories to stop appearing on the New York Times, USA Today, CNN, Buzzfeed, Mashable, so that your life can just go back to normal and not feel like it is being crammed down your throat.

While listening to NPR this morning on my walk to work, the first story reported on the horrific riots and protests in Ferguson. The next story was about the unspeakably evil acts of ISIL and James Foley. The story after that was on the Ebola outbreak in Liberia, which has gotten so bad that the government has quarantined off an entire village of 80,000 people for fear of the disease spreading further. Next story talked about how Hamas had shot more than 120 rockets at Israel and Israel responded with more than 100 air-strikes in the two days since the 72-hour cease fire broke. Then a story on Russia sending unauthorized trucks into Ukraine, another escalation in the already delicate area.

That's just what was covered in the twenty minutes it took me to get to my desk.

In case you haven't noticed, there's quite a bit of turmoil in the world right now. This summer, in particular, has been filled with enough negative stories to fill an entire calendar year. We're bombarded with stories of violence, political unrest, disease and murder that if you stop and try to digest all of the horror that takes place on a weekly basis, you'll end up like AJ at the end of the Sopranos.

So excuse me if I feel the need to tell all those who are sick of the Ice Bucket Challenge to simply shut up and let it ride itself out of the public's eye. It has been about the only incredibly positive story that we have had over the last few weeks. One month from now it'll be gone. But the crisis in the Middle East, the Russia-Ukraine conflict, partisan politics in the US and every act of rape, murder and general violence will still be around us.

The next time you groan about a story on the Ice Bucket Challenge, just consider the alternatives of what the news could cover. Or what your friends could be talking about. It should give you a change of heart.

Do As You Say And As You Do: Protecting A PR Agency's Reputation

In "An Ideal Husband," Oscar Wilde wrote: The only good thing to do with good advice is pass it on; it is never of any use to oneself.

Sometimes in the world of PR, this would seem to be the mentality we adhere to the most. We spend all day talking with clients about what we believe is the best route for them to take, giving justification after justification for that choice. We look at the situation from every angle possible before making a recommendation. Pros and cons are weighed. Audiences are examined. Every plan is crafted carefully, strategically shaped and efficiently executed.

A penny for our thoughts? Well, a little more than a penny, but we're always happy to share with you what we believe the best course of action is for your business.

Sometimes it appears that we listen too closely to Wilde's words and do not seem to examine issues that face our agency each day in the same manner we do our clients. We are so intent on providing the best possible course of action for them that we will miss out on our own good advice when it comes to how we shape the public's perception of the agency.

Edelman, the world's largest public relations agency in the world (disclosure: Edelman is a big competitor with my own agency, Burson-Marsteller), found itself in a bit of hot water this past week when it circulated a blog on how clients could capitalize on media coverage around Robin Williams' death. As a PR practitioner, I understand what their thought process was, but the quick posting, the sensitivity of the topic and the clearly universal respect the public had for Williams should have been red flags at every turn. Edelman ultimately apologized for the blog post, but the damage was already done. Media outlets and the public soundly condemned the post and Edelman took a beating in the press for a few days.

Couple that with a recent gaffe on the agency's refusal to pledge that it would not work with climate change deniers and Edelman needed a little bit of crisis communications work for itself. Its executives did not adhere to the same advice they provide clients on a daily basis. The internal processes that we urge clients to put in place fell by the wayside and Edelman ultimately took two black eyes in as many weeks.

And while any PR expert wants to catch these issues before they get out of hand, Edelman took the appropriate response and has formed a team to examine reputation management for the agency itself. Executives recognized the missteps they made and are working to correct the issues. Swallowing pride like this and admitting mistakes is a critical step when it comes to crisis management and likely one of the first that Edelman recommends to its own clients. 

I can attest that as an individual who works in an agency, we can easily to lose sight of what is best for it. Following the advice that you give to clients can seem like a no-brainer, but when work is moving a million miles an hour, it can be the first mentality to disappear. Most people probably would think of a PR agency as the last company that would need to work on its external communications strategy, but we are human, too, and make mistakes. 

At the end of the day, agencies must remember that just like we handle for our clients, our reputation management must be considered at all times too. We must employ the same process of of decision-making that we're paid to give to our clients. Otherwise, we lose the credibility we work so hard to develop in their eyes.

Florida State Joins The Ranks Of Twitter Failures

Social media screw-ups happen. So frequently, in fact, that it takes some pretty spectacularly bad ones to even generate news around them. And the one social platform that seemingly causes the most problems for communicators is Twitter. In particular, the dangerous concept of a tweet chat.

So it should come as no surprise that today's lesson in what not to do comes from Florida State who decided that when you have a high-profile athlete who was the center of a questionable police investigation of a potential rape and was recently caught stealing crab legs from a local restaurant, the best thing to do is hold a tweet chat for all to have the opportunity to ask what's on their mind. And while these types of social media activities are likely never actually conducted by athlete, but rather a communications team member filtering the responses, a high-profile athlete like Jameis Winston isn't exactly the sharp-minded athlete you want taking on a horde of trolls.

Sure enough, the entire stream of tweets sarcastically asked about the aforementioned run-ins with the law. It certainly wasn't as big of a failure as some of the other social media debacles I've blogged about in the past (Robin Thicke, NCAA, McDonalds, Walgreens, JP Morgan), but I just fail to see how you decide to relinquish so much control of the conversation when it involves such a polarizing subject.

One easy alternative to a Twitter chat that still gives the audience the impression that it is engaging with the athlete is to simply have them send questions to an email address and do a virtual Q&A for an article to be pushed out across owned channels. This prevents trolls from taking over the hashtag and derailing the conversation. The event can still be promoted the week before across all social channels, but by making the questions private, you have control over what is posted and what isn't for all the public to see.

I get that an email Q&A with the fans may not be quite as sexy as a tweet chat. I also think that there is some argument to be made about giving up control of the narrative sometimes to help your audience shape it. But if I am managing communications at Florida State, I'm going to be significantly more careful with how I use Jameis Winston. Because it shouldn't take a rocket scientist to know that Winston has had his fair share of very negative press to match his positive.

Robin Thicke Falls Victim to Twitter Trolls

I want to preface this post by saying that I don't like Robin Thicke. I think he is a colossal tool who wouldn't understand the concept of sexism if it repeatedly stomped on his balls - which wouldn't be the worst thing in the world for the human race. With my personal bias clearly stated and out of the way, let's all take a second to laugh at how inept he, his team, and VH1 are when it comes to social media.

I have outlined the potential perils of social media in the past, usually when it comes to Twitter chats. I am by no means a social media expert. I don't claim to be one. But anyone with even a lobotomized brain would know that hosting a Tweet chat with Robin Thicke would be like throwing a gazelle to a pack of lions and telling them to play nice.

So clearly the lack-of-brain-trust that pulled together the Tweet chat with the hashtag #AskThicke had something else in mind when they organized this. But, in a move that surprised absolutely nobody, their plans went awry when Twitter users flooded the Tweet chat with questions about Thicke's misogyny, future rape-baiting hits he has planned and generally what makes him such a clown. The team running the chat lost control within the first few minutes.

Some of the best Tweets:

• Is the creepy stalking thing a sick publicity stunt at your ex's expense, or just a thoughtless grab for attention and relevance?#AskThicke
• When you ask "I know you want it", one presumes you are talking about an STD? #askThicke
• What does it feel like to be an icon for sexism, predatory behaviour and sexual assault? #AskThicke

And that's just the tip of the iceberg.

Even though I have outlined some other fails on my blog before, I think that this one has to jump to the top of the list for "worst social media blunders ever."

The moral of the story is this: when you are planning any kind of social media activity, you must consider all of the potential ways it could get out of control. When you open these conversations up to the public, you run the risk of other parties taking charge of the situation. Carefully weigh whether or not the return from the activation is greater than the risk. If it is even close, identify a new strategy.

Blink and You'll Miss Your Career Development

It has been a little more than two years since I started my first day with Burson-Marsteller right out of college. I had held four internships prior to that job, been working during the summers since I was a sophomore in high school and had long been doing odd jobs throughout my life. Little did I know that during all of those summers and those internships, I was reinforcing critical work skills and ethic that would pay dividends down the road.

One of the funny things I found out about internships is that you always feel like you are learning. And you probably are. But most of the time it is getting into the routine of that work environment, tackling the tasks that your superiors delegate, and simply keeping your mistakes to a minimum. They almost always have an end date and when I would reach my last day, I always felt like I grew leaps and bounds as a worker. I never had to worry about hitting a growth wall because I would hit my last day first.

I wasn't wrong for thinking that. All of that investment of time and effort when I was younger has reflected as I continue my journey as an employee. Lately, however, it sure seems like the growing and learning has slowed to a pedestrian pace.

When you are first starting out, everything is new and it is all a potential learning experience. Even the first few months I was at Burson, I found myself gobbling up every new opportunity that came my way, sometimes even to the detriment of my other work as I was overburdened with tasks. But after a few months, those same tasks that were once tantalizingly mysterious had become so mundane that I often wondered if I was wasting my time where I was.

I started to become frustrated with the projects that my managers assigned to me. They were the same projects I was working on this time last year. Hell, some of the projects were the same ones that I was working on the year before that when I first started. How in the world was I going to keep moving up in this world if year after year looked like Groundhog's Day?

As an intern, your starting base is zero. Every lesson, mistake, success, and utter failure is filed away into a repository to draw from the next day. Soon that repository becomes so full that every moment at work becomes a smaller percentage of the total number of influential events at work. The growth seemingly stops and you're left to wonder "Is now the right time to move on?"

The past two weeks I had been working on pulling together a report for one of my clients. It was a recap of the company's biggest event of the year. The report was the culmination of several months of work for the client and for us as agency. Now, I had done reports like these before and practically in my sleep. This was just a slightly larger one and for a more important event.

As I spent an hour of my day today scanning through the report for any errors, I found myself dropping a bucket into my well of knowledge that contained all of my past mistakes. I picked out the errors that I found and sent the report to my director. Usually when this step happens, I wait for an hour and address whatever corrections she has at that time. It is the way that it always goes. No matter how hard I try, there will always be mistakes.

While I waited for her to review the document, I started to think about the whole process of pulling the report together. It required me to work closely with the client, coordinating its global teams, managing a small team, and managing up with those above me. It started to dawn on me that while this was a report that I had done before in the past, the situation wasn't the same.

If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it's probably a duck. But that just wasn't the case this time. Because what it looks like on the surface isn't always what you glean. Career development is funny like that. I was frustrated because I thought that I was stuck in a black hole of monotony. But what I failed to realize is that my job was changing more slowly than in the beginning because my well had finally overflowed and needed to move elsewhere. Every drop became that much smaller of a proportion.

I kept learning at the same rate that I did as an intern. The key is to recognize it, appreciate the growth or the shortcoming, and categorize it for use on a later date. Just like the first time I was assigned a report like this, there was a different set of circumstances than the last time. I drew from those experiences and adjusted accordingly. It looked like a duck, swam like a duck, and quacked like a duck, but it was most certainly something else.

My director emailed me back. No edits. Just a good job and her asking me to send it directly to the client. I sat back in my chair and dropped this lesson into my new and larger well.

Another Day, Another Social Media Screw-up - Delta Airlines Edition

I have taken a look at some pretty terrible social media screw-ups on my blog in the past and every time I write about it, I always think to myself that it has to be the last time that we will see a major brand botch it badly. Enough articles outlining various social media failures exist at this point that we could create an entire Encyclopedia Britannica of what not to do when engaging with the public on social media.

But, thankfully for us, and much to the chagrin of communications managers everywhere, companies like Delta Airlines still exist and somehow find new ways to remind us that social media is always just a little more complicated than it needs to be.

After the US beat Ghana 2-1 on Monday night, Delta decided that this was an appropriate tweet to send out:

Twitter quickly pointed out that there are, in fact, no giraffes in Ghana. This issue could have been solved if the social media team had taken a collective thirty seconds to Google whether or not giraffes were in the country. Here, let me do it for you.

Sure, everyone wants to be part of discussions on current events. We get that and accept that it must be done. But if you are going to do it, then why stray from the safest possible tweet?

The team should have stopped and asked themselves several questions:

• Will adding the image enhance the tweet in any way? 

I know that tweets with images are more engaged with on Twitter, but did Delta really think that would be the case here? Legitimate question - how is this tweet improved with an image? You can't add an image to a tweet every time and expect it to be better. Show some discretion and pick your spots.

• Okay, let's go with an image. What two images represent these countries? 

Gee, I don't know, what is arguably the biggest thing that the average person uses to identify foreign countries? A flag. The country's flag. Why are you making this harder than it needs to be? You don't stand to gain anything really by being part of this, but you sure as heck stand to lose by doing it incorrectly.

• Why are we selecting these images?

Again, a question so simple and, yet, nobody seemed to have asked it. Because if they had, the group would have Googled whether giraffes are in Ghana and decided to go a different route.

If you clearly don't have your ducks in a row, sometimes it is better to just sit a few plays out than put yourself in a potentially compromising position. And that's a lesson that Delta is learning the hard way.

Your Disinterested-In-Soccer Trolling Tweets Are Grating

Clint Dimpsey scored a goal yesterday in the first 30 seconds of the US's World Cup yesterday. I am pretty sure that the sound waves of the exaltations combined with the jumping up and down may have caused a minor earthquake throughout the entire nation. It was incredible. A picture-perfect start for the US that nobody could have predicted.

After screaming like a mad man and hugging my coworkers, I went to check Twitter to see the collective freakout that normally takes place when historic moments in sports just occur. 90% of the tweets I was looking at were some combination of "OMGGGGGGGGGGGGG", "Holy. Shit." and "FKLDAJEFOIWFIJIAJCD9A38RJMIASDF8" (presumably a pocket-tweet mid-hug). Euphoric is the only word to describe what everyone around me was feeling and clearly the sentiment was shared by millions on social media as well.

And the other 10%? Well, have you ever had one of those friends that goes out of their way to be disinterested in something that you care about deeply? The type of people that will sit there and passive-aggressively mutter snide remarks? That, unfortunately, was the remainder of my Twitter feed.

I get it - soccer isn't for everyone. Some think it is slow and boring. Others hate all the flopping. Most just don't understand it.

But the World Cup is every four years and it is pretty easy to avoid it if you aren't interested in it. So is it really necessary to sit on Twitter and be the biggest contrarian possible by subtweeting or blatantly tweeting about not caring that Clint Dempsey just made history? Because if millions of people from a melting pot of backgrounds can be brought together by one month of soccer every four years, the event has to be somewhat important. So it seems like you could probably just keep your opinions to yourself.

And, sure, rooting for the US once every four years in the World Cup is super trendy and most will stop caring the moment the US is out. But isn't that the exact same as the Summer Olympics? Or the Winter Olympics? So if you can enjoy the Olympics, you should at least be able to understand how others can do the same for the World Cup. That's a good enough reason to just keep your fingers off that send button.