The Handmade Diary
OK, so I’ve got a stationary, notebook, pen fetish. If i stopped buying now, I wouldn’t ever need another. My justification is the perpetual fight against clutter and time… It’s great to read about a fellow sufferer…
John, "…having unhappily put up with an unwieldy multitude of diaries, address
books and notepads for years, Mr. Berendt caught the Gutenberg spirit
three years ago and indulged in a little obsessive-compulsive print
project of his own. He printed up all the letters and numbers he would
need to spell out the months and days of the week (no need for K, X, Q
or Z) and sent them to a company that makes rubber stamps to order."
A lovely story from the NYTimes…
The Other Side of Kryptonite
Slowly but surely the other side of the Kryptonite lock picking story is coming out. OK, some of the bloggers got it wrong – nothing new there.
I still maintain Kryptonite handled his terribly. Any crisis can be mitigated through effective communication. The vacuum of silence will be filled by misrepresentation, drivel and poison (I think Schopenhauer said that).
All the interviews reinforce for me is that as a business they responded well (except it turns out the problem had been flagged years before and they did nothing then). As communicators, they did lousy. If they knew about the commentary, but didn’t respond, it’s pretty much the same as not knowing and not responding. No response is no response.
And for the record, about that time I bought a neat new mountain bike. I needed a lock. The blog coverage specifically caused me not to buy their product. If they had communicated what they are communicating now, I might have done so. To answer the question posed by Kryptonite: "here are millions of blogs, but what are the audiences of these blogs?" – it’s me, the bike owner. The interview gets worse, reinforcing further cluelessness about the blogosphere: "We know that lots of teens and college students have blogs and, mainly use them to communicate with friends and family. These are our customers, but are they going to corporate blogs? Not so sure about that."
And then, worse still, they correct the misperception that they only found out about the problem in last year when bloggers started getting into it. Oh no, they knew about it in 1992 – and it would appear they did nothing? That’s meant to inspire confidence?
I had the privilege of working around some of the best crisis communicators in my agency days. I once asked why there were so few case studies on this type of thing. I got an interesting response – post crisis, all you want the focus to be on is how the business is moving forward – you don’t want to get into the mechanics of the crisis, it just casts further light on your problems. A pretty good idea in my book. Seems like Kryptonite is determined to teach us what not to do pre, during and post crisis.
Wikipedia Policy
Transparency matters if you plan to edit and entry that describes you, your company or something in which you have a vested interest. So make it apparent what your interest is and why the edit matters. Remembering that what matters to you, might not matter to others.
Ross comments on editing entries in your own Wikipedia and outlines their policy. Tim Bray has more.
Pegasus News Launches First Site…
TexasGigs is up and running. Congrats to the team at Pegasus. From the site:
"Our advanced technology will deliver uniquely relevant, customized news and information to each of our readers based on where they live and what they enjoy reading most." Pegasus coverage will go down to block level and as wide as the community; among oither features, they promise downloadable dining, entertainment and city guides.
More over at paidContent. According to Steve Outing, TexasGigs will be part of the full Pegasus Dallas site (as yet unnamed) when it debuts.
The model here is a good one for corporates looking to harness alternate publishing models – here a strong editor drives the site while soliciting submissions from the public and enabling plenty of comments, chatting etc… This is very different from other models in which the blog simply exists for folks to post away to, editors be damned.
Donna kindly responded to my piece below on the Kryptonite thing. It’s worth reading the comment – she makes some fair points. In response I’d say:
a lock based on the effectiveness of the lock? Thieves don’t care how
we communicate an issue, they care about whether or not they can defeat
a lock on the street." The answer is yes – but you can’t break the company, the lock and the brand from each other. They are one. That’s why I didn’t buy. Oh, and theives aren’t the audience, bikers are – especially those of us stupid enough to fork out thousands on a new bike. We really care how good the company that made the good lock is. And if you aren’t telling us that where we are reading (aka, blogs) – we won’t find out.
So, here is another thought. Kryptonite is clearly a good, "do no evil" kind of company. Start framing this one positively. Show us how incredibly strong these locks are. Use every opportunity to talk about that. And issue a $1m challenge to anyone who can pick it using a Bic pen. Take it to the market. Explaining the mechanics of the past is of less interest to us prospective buyers than the integrity of the company and product today.
Maybe I’ll get a Kryptonite lock for xmas?
Santa?