Archive for the ‘Media’ Category

In the past few weeks I’ve been asked several times by journalists, “Why Blog?”. The question is a fair one. Most suspect it infringes on work that should be getting done or fun that should be being had. Some regard it as bizarrely self indulgent. Others look on it with a certain suspicion, as if we ‘citizen journalists’ are pulling readers from their publications.

In answering the question let me give you a few caveats. First, I generally don’t blog during working hours – I’m just too busy. Second, my blog is purely personal with a business bent. It’s not sponsored by my employer, Sun – although I could have much more easily and inexpensively taken advantage of our corporate blog platform. Third, this is my second, more successful (by my own terms) attempt at blogging. And fourth, I don’t subscribe to the notion of “citizen journalists” – I’m guided in my writing by neither the professional reporting rigor or writing standards of a working hack. It therefore seems unfair to co-opt the term. With that said and done, here is why I blog…

1. I love to write. Just love it. And this is a great vehicle for doing just that. Pure and simple. I don’t do all my writing here. But I do do some of my worst.

2. I’m intrigued by the unique twist blogging affords the blogger to engage in a dialogue with really smart people. I get to explore and share ideas – and for my time I get a return in the form of emails and comments. The investment is a small price to pay and I get a much accelerated thinking cycle for a much smaller time investment than that available to me via speaking opportunities and the like. My blog is also a forcing mechanism, driving me to think harder about issues and ideas.

3. My blog has become an archive of sorts. I blog to create a little library of ideas, links and content. Better here than buried on my hard disk. Here the links quickly triangulate other ideas and thinking.

4. This is the most effective electronic medium to stay in touch with my team, friends and professional colleagues. I simply point them to my thoughts and ideas. Emails get buried in the daily avalanche. I’m not sure that anything in hard copy can find them in our flexible office environment. I’m also finding that I’m getting thoughts and comments from across the organization. This is interesting. Email scales well vertically. Blogs scale anyway.

5. The blogsphere will only survive if people write as well as lurk. I genuinely believe it is going to transform my profession – communications; and industry – technology. As my big boss says, better to be the windshield than the bug. So, to be the windshield – sort of.

Harry Eyres crafted an interesting piece on writing journals for the FT Weekend Edition a couple of weeks back with the great title ‘A kind of manure kept in a box‘. The FT Weekend edition has become one of my favorite reads. He poses the question ‘Does journal-writing foster a sterile self -absorption that is simply a waste of the writer’s time?’. Good question for those journaling in their Moleskine. Eyres answer is no.

My journals are not intended for publication – in fact they contain highly sensitive material I would not want anyone else to read. But though they are private pages, they form the background to much of the more public writing I do.

Ok, from time-to-time our blogs are a little self-indulgent. But on the web the blog/journal is an open door and fire starter. More than anything, and like Eyres, my blog forms a backdrop to my thinking.

The question that quickly follows “Why blog?” is “What’s the benefit”. I’ll answer that one soon…

Take a look at MoBlog… terrific idea for sharing all those moments captured on a mobile phone. Thanks to Alfie for the heads-up.

I’m wondering if this isn’t also a platform for communicators of all sorts to quickly distribute images from events and other happenings. While we can do this directly to our sites today I really like the idea of the images landing in a community who are, well, interested in the visual over the written. The opportunity to extend the reach of those images will be even greater – a kind of citizen Corbis.

I experienced the power of this when Mary blogged images from our SunNetwork event in Shanghai. Her blog was a much more efficient means for us to get images in the hands of media back home.

I can see the speed only accelerating as we capture images on one megapixel and above phones and beam them directly to the web.

I find all the log-ons to media sites incredibly annoying. OK, it’s a small price to pay for all that wonderful content.. um… yeah…

Seems that the FT could do with some PR help though. UK journalism site Journalistic points out that to access FT press releases you need to, well, register. So much for transparency.

Surely this is a SNAFU they’ll be quick to fix. The very notion that you need to buy the product to get information about the company is absurd.

This isn’t their only PR gaffe of late. Spin Bunny points to an incident in which:

Andrew Gowers made a glowing speech about  the success and planned future success  of the esteemed publication. But then the daft bugger went backstage, forget to take his clipmike off and the whole audience heard him take a call on his mobile.

Amongst the tirade of abuse dished out as commentary on how the meeting had gone, he was heard to dismiss it as the usual load of bollocks and a waste of time.

This is actually one of the things I love about the blogsphere – there is just nowhere to hide.

I don’t watch that much American football – to me it represents the triumph of project management over sport. So it wasn’t much of a surprise to see ABC pulling all kinds of stunts to attract viewers.

ABC Sports apologized Tuesday for an “inappropriate” opening of the Philadelphia Eagles-Dallas Cowboys Monday Night Football telecast involving a sexually suggestive locker room meeting between Eagles wide receiver Terrell Owens and ABC’s Desperate Housewives’ star Nicollette Sheridan.

So, ABC issues an apology – but to who? The dads and teenage boys watching – who probably loved the stunt? Or to all the mothers and women – my guess, but probably not watching the stunt but rightly pissed as the moral ineptitude of it?

I’m all up for creative stunts as a key ingredient in any marketing campaign. I’ve never watched Desperate Housewifes’ but have been subjected to the advertising. I wonder if this isn’t a a misplaced stunt – not only misplaced in terms of audience targeting and timing but also in terms of audience sat – why attract people to a show that they ultimately won’t enjoy…?

Rudy Martzke hits on the miscues well:-

• The skit was carried at the start of MNF at 9 ET in the East when many youths still are watching. That’s 6 PT, when even younger kids might be watching with their parents.

“It was sexually blatant in the family hour,” said Charlotte viewer Will Hawkins, 68, who has a 12-year-old daughter. “It crossed the line. … I turned the whole thing off, and I hope most of the sensible people did.”

• The segment was shown despite NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue’s crackdown on entertainment acts on NFL shows since CBS-owned and -operated stations were fined $550,000 by the FCC for the baring of Janet Jackson’s breast during the Super Bowl halftime show.

There is no question that this represents bad PR for ABC. They were quick to issue an apology – good move. But I wonder if they listened to their PR teams prior to executing the stunt? The counsel here should have been pretty straightforward – “this might seem like a cool stunt but in the wrong slot, targeted at the wrong audience and we’re trying to re-negotiate our contracts… and its really going to offend people… remember that Madonna thing… don’t do it.” I wonder if brand/advertising people actually engaged here – would be interesting to know.

Whether they were or not, this demonstrates the gaping void between advertising execution and smart and sensitive public relations. Unless of course this was all a carefully executed media stunt…. Cuban makes this p0oint – are these simply “apologevents“.

The environment is perfect for both of us. We want as much media coverage of our programming as we can possibly get. You need things to cover. So here is the deal. From our end, we are going to create “Apologevents”.

An Apologevent is where we plan an event that we know we will have to apologize for.  The Apologevent will be designed to entice all the “Im shocked by anything” viewers to call their local stations, their newspapers and of course Inside Edition, The Insider, etc to remind them of how inappropriate the Apologevent was and how shocked they are.