Fedorable | Ethics, bootstrapping and tech in public relations

The last post on Fedorable

Rex Feb 2

This will be the last post here on Fedorable.

I’m leaving this blog, but I’m not leaving blogging. If you want to read my latest rants on social media, public relations or any of the other random topics I’ve discussed, please head over to StrikePad, Match Strike’s blog on web development, where I will be stretching topicality to its limits.

Fedorable was started alongside IvyLees, which would eventually turn into Presskit’n. Greg and I wanted a place to talk about what we were doing, and what we thought about public relations and technology in general.

After Greg died, I decided to continue on with this blog. Since then, I’ve written some of my best posts, even though my time was more limited than it had been previously. Four months later, I’m a bit more clear-headed on the issue. I can blog in one place without feeling like I’m abandoning an old dream.

Some of the posts here, like the one linked above, are particularly dear to me. For that reason, we’ll be merging Fedorable’s content into Strikepad. We’ll also be taking care of redirects and the RSS feed. If you’re a loyal fan, your subscriptions should keep right on working. If you haven’t subscribed yet, feel free to do so now.

You can also keep up with me on Twitter.

Thanks for reading Fedorable. You’ve been a great audience.

Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment

The Tonight Show fiasco will lead to a stronger definition of branding. Here’s why.

Rex Jan 13

conan Conan’s statement that he won’t do the Tonight Show at 12:05 has shaken things up at NBC.

The Peacock’s stance is that they won’t be slugging it out legally because it’s just too much of a headache for everyone. However, after seeing the huge difference in opinion over what The Tonight show actually is, I don’t see it playing out all that nicely. It will either go to court or end with NBC paying out Conan’s full termination fee (or, alternatively, Jay being the odd man out).

Here’s what it boils down to:

Conan: The Tonight Show is defined by its heritage. It must start at 11:30, or it’s effectively not the Tonight Show.

NBC: The Tonight Show is whatever show we air and call “The Tonight Show”

Conan’s contract doesn’t say anything about air time, so NBC feels fairly secure in changing it without any consequences. Conan’s rebuttal isn’t just rosy sentiment; it’s the basis for a compelling brand argument. One that might even hold up in court (For 50 million dollars, wouldn’t you try?).

Is The Tonight Show a culmination of decades of brand-building? Or is it whatever NBC says it is? It’s one of the oldest arguments in branding, and we just might get a chance to see it play out in a high-profile court case.

Posted in Branding | Leave a comment

Happy Holidays from IvyLees and Fedorable

Rex Dec 24

Just posting to say, “Happy Holidays!”

It’s been a pretty wild year (and decade) for public relations. Take these next few days to relax and enjoy the holiday spirit, and most importantly to remember what matters: Friends, family, and good times.

Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment

The Great Facebook Brand Backlash

Rex Dec 14

A couple weeks ago I discussed brand backlash using Starbucks’ recent brand issues as an example. I had planned a follow-up article talking about Facebook’s inevitable brand backlash.

Well, I waited too long, because last week it became all too clear that the Great Facebook Brand Backlash was upon us.

In case you weren’t around, here’s what happened: Facebook rolled out some new suggested privacy settings. It concerned experts. It was a fiasco. It could only be elaborate trickery.

I had heard some rumblings by the time the changes got around to me, on Twitter and on the blogs I read. I took a deep breath as the new privacy screen popped up, knowing a new future had arrived. I could see the big, robotic eye of Facebook watching my every move, subtly manipulating me into buying products or making new connections without my conscious knowledge.

And then I checked a few boxes.

Phew. The fiasco wasn’t really a fiasco at all. Perhaps the only strong argument against the policy is that users might not read the message. Considering that users are forced to read it to continue, and that the message contains multiple check boxes, which obviously imply a decision is to be made… well, I’m loathe to call it elaborate trickery.

The whole thing might be unsettling if Mark Zuckerberg had suddenly changed his position on anything. He’s been rather openly for openness since the beginning. It has been a recurring theme in his open letters to users of the site, and I imagine it will stay a recurring theme. This move isn’t unexpected, isn’t out of line with his (or facebook’s) feelings on the issue, and it isn’t Earth-shattering.

But when you read about it, it will be. Everything they do will be. And that’s the Great Facebook Brand Backlash in action.

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Is the glue of credibility strong enough to hold together a walled garden?

Rex Dec 7

Walls have the same bad reputation on the web as they do in history. They work for a while, usually to someone’s benefit and someone else’s dismay, and then they come crashing down.

A walled garden often serves as a safe haven to rapidly grow a business. In the 90s and early 2000s, we saw AOL expand to near synonymity with the Internet using a walled garden approach. When it stopped working, they faced a choice: Struggle to hold on, or open it up. They chose to keep the walls up, and now AOL is sailing into obscurity, to be quaintly remembered in VH1 specials about the 90s. The new champions of the tech industry now rally behind openness, or at least reluctantly accept it as the only path.

We’re now seeing an attempt at reversing the trend, with efforts spearheaded by Rupert Murdoch to build new walls around a garden that they deem to be too open: The news. They’ve seen walls crumble in the past and they don’t care. It’s not just posturing; they’re serious. They want to build walls (with payment-based entry) around the news.

The damnedest thing is: It just might work.

If enough credible news sources get on board, paying for news online could become the new way we consume news. Naturally there would be holdouts among consumers, but there have always been those who just pick up a used newspaper and read that. Social media and the Internet makes the news age faster, but let’s not forget that it already aged pretty fast through telephones and word of mouth. The biggest problem is getting enough sources under the banner of payment. Unlike AOL’s low quality, keyword-powered knockoff of the Internet, there’s real value in what Murdoch and co. supply.

Is it enough value to hold together a walled garden? I guess we’ll see. If they attain some small measure of success, they could recruit more news sources to their cause, eventually seeing even more success. The snowball could grow large enough to make paying for the news a smart choice for the consumer.

If it saves investigative journalism and the other services that well-paid journalism provides a society, then it just might be worth the price.

Posted in Social Media, Technology | Leave a comment

When it comes to channels, think like a basketball coach

Rex Dec 3

Last night in #prchat20, we were discussing whether it’s potentially dangerous to abandon a channel of communication (in this case, we were focusing largely on Twitter and Facebook, but the thinking applies elsewhere) because it isn’t proving itself to be profitable.

stan-van-gundy-3

I made the analogy of a basketball team. A basketball team has five players who all serve distinct roles in different positions (center, small forward, etc.). Look at any basketball game and usually there will be two or three guys on the team who are making a bulk of the points. (If it’s Cleveland, there will be one guy.)

Any coach would be crazy, however, to play with only these high-scoring players on the court. The three best players in the league would have a very tough time against the worst full team in the league.

If you’re thinking of switching out players, that’s fine. The players represent tactics, not channels. Rather, the positions represent channels. Your facebook efforts might be faltering, like Jameer Nelson during the finals last year, but that doesn’t mean you take facebook completely off the court. You try something else with that position.

Posted in Branding, Public Relations | Leave a comment

Brand backlash: Inevitable but good

Rex Dec 1

What goes up must come down.

Newton gets a lot of credit for this idea, but let’s face it: People were noticing this a long time before he put together a theory about it. And they were noticing it didn’t just apply to physical objects.

Whether it’s the stock market, a person’s mood, or the recent batting averages of a baseball player, the rule applies: What goes up must come down.

When I read a fascinating article Reuters article on the recent brand troubles that Starbucks is experiencing, I found myself repeating the rule in my head.

Starbucks as a brand isn’t failing or dying. It has just been succeeding too spectacularly.

Starbucks gags and jokes were popular for a while. We’ve seen the chain reach ubiquity in a Springfield mall on the Simpsons. We’ve heard comedians crack jokes about how the coffee shop is appearing on every corner. But we laughed, knowing that would never actually happen.

Yet, when Starbucks has to peel back its explosive growth and finally start closing stores instead of opening them, we throw around words like brand crisis and brand avoidance. We herald it as a new trend, when really it’s just the aftermath of an old trend.

Starbucks is a simple example of brand backlash. Its backlash is greater than most, but that’s because its brand is greater than most.

Brand backlash isn’t limited to coffee shops. You can see it in almost any market where brands play an important part.

Take McDonald’s, for instance. It’s the reigning champion of fast food, but also the scapegoat for every problem the industry faces. Supersize Me focuses on McDonald’s. The term Mc Job is based on McDonald’s. Is McDonald’s having a brand crisis? No, it’s just brand backlash, and it’s one of the responsibilities they bear as the biggest and best.

Coca-Cola faces similar issues. When a chain e-mail circulates claiming (incorrectly) that soda saps bone mass, which beverage is given as an example? It’s almost never Pepsi. Even in our financial crisis, we see examples of brand backlash with industries worth of anger being poured onto single companies.

Brand backlash is one of those problems that’s inevitable. It’s a byproduct of success. I’d imagine most PR practitioners loathe having such a problem, even if it does mean they’re doing something right. It forces desperate measures like the ones we’re seeing with Starbucks.

Wendy’s, on the other hand, probably looks at the movie Supersize Me with longing eyes.

Posted in Branding, Public Relations | 2 Comments

On FTC’s blogging guidelines, ‘clearly and conspicuously’ is what everyone should be talking about

Rex Nov 5

It’s been a little over two weeks since the FTC announced they were going to start watching blogs. Since then, there’s been healthy discussion and debate. Bloggers have had pretty much the same reaction as advertisers did when the FTC first came after unscrupulous ads. It’s great. It’s a sign that social media is coming into its own as a “real” form of media.

Except, of course, for the part where everyone seemed to miss the most important snippet of the guidelines: Bloggers must clearly and conspicuously disclose any compensation. To me, the entire argument has completely overshot its landing. The consumer, the one to be protected by these rules, is being left out. Terrible assumptions are being made. No guidelines are being put forth.

What ‘clearly and conspicuously’ shouldn’t mean

There’s a certain gestalt to other forms of media that makes disclosure incredibly easy. This is the fine print at the bottom of a magazine ad or the “Paid Actor” notification in a TV commercial. It’s a package deal with the message right there at the bottom. Even if the consumer doesn’t read it, he or she is aware it’s there.

Blog posts, meanwhile, are like the black guy in a horror movie. Shortly after making an appearance, they’re brutally chopped up. After that, most people just see the head, or maybe the head and a trail of blood, then scream and run away.

There’s no gestalt to blog posts, and especially not to blogs as a whole.

Disclosures at the bottom of posts mean nothing to most users. It’s not like a television ad with extremely small text. Disclosures at the bottom of posts (and especially those that are below the fold) just don’t (and won’t) get read. Much of the time, they won’t be seen.
Disclosures on another page on the blog are simply ludicrous. Any blog with a bounce rate of less than 50% is doing well on attracting users to other parts of the site. Fedorable’s bounce rate is usually around 60%. That means only 40% make it to another page on Fedorable before leaving, and most of those aren’t going to the About page. In the end, only about 3-6% of Fedorable readers click to get there. This is equivalent to TV commercials only having to disclose 1 out of every 20 times they aired.

Sadly, a lot of bloggers are simply planning on putting two sentences on the end of their thirty-page, boring-as-hell About page. The less people who read it, the better. That’s just unfair to the consumer.

Blogging (and the Internet in general) is a different beast. If we’re going to put forth disclosure guidelines, let’s get it right. Here’s my take on ethical disclosure– not so much the when or why, but the how.

Guidelines for ethical disclosure in blogging: The abbreviated disclosure message (v1)

Placement within the blog

Disclosures should be placed after the headline/subheadline but before the content of the post.
Related disclosures must be on the same page as the content of the post. Abbreviated posting (such as listings in a ‘Related Posts’ widgets) do not need to carry a disclosure. The actual text of the disclosure must be on the page, not linked from elsewhere.

Disclosing for the semantic web

Disclosures should be placed within <em> or <strong> tags to signify their importance in the document.
Semantic placement within an article should follow the visual placement (noted above). Disclosures must be part of the page source, and not added with javascript. This is to ensure that users with screen readers or users foregoing javascript have access to a standard method of disclosure.

Abbreviating disclosures

To retain stylistic flow in their blog posts, bloggers may hide disclosure statements with javascript.
In place of the message, a standard, short notification of “There is a disclosure associated with this post” with a Read More link can be used.
The Read More link should reveal the entire notification, which is already semantically part of the document (and not added content from javascript).
The message should be both hidden and displayed with javascript. Messages should not be hidden by default, unless a suitable alternative means of accessing the disclosure is available for non-javascript users.

Style considerations

Disclosure statements should maintain the same readability as the body copy of the article including relative font size and background contrast. Disclosures may be plain, bolded or italicized.

Let’s aim for v2

I think my guidelines work pretty well. They make for the same “grain of salt” effect generated by the fine print in TV commercials. The abbreviated disclosure message as a standard would quickly inform consumers that there’s something else to know, without messing up the overall flow of a blog post. It also covers screen reader users or people who are quickly scanning through the blogosphere to find info about a product.

Of course, I might be forgetting certain situations. I do want to fight for the consumer here, but I also don’t want to leave the bloggers out in the cold. What do you think? What would you change or add?

Posted in Ethics, Public Relations, Social Media, Technology | 2 Comments

The farming game craze, from Harvest Moon to Farmville to Happy Farms

Rex Nov 1

With everyone excited about wizards and vampires these past few years, one would expect magic or brooding bloodsuckers to be the focus of popular social games online.

But nope, look elsewhere: It’s farming, of all things.

A succession of popular farming games has hit Facebook this year, starting with myFarm, with the crowds seemingly then jumping to Farm Town, and now pouring into the mega-hit FarmVille. Despite (or because of) its popularity, Farmville has caught some flak for not being an original idea

I’d argue that farming games are clearly now a genre, but that point’s moot anyway, because in my eyes they’re all following in Harvest Moon’s footsteps.

The predecessor

Harvest Moon, developed by Natsume, was released for the Super Nintendo around the time AOL got the idea to start charging a flat monthly rate. Yes, it’s that old but it was truly a great game for its time. The player managed his or her own farm, growing crops and taking care of animals. There was no social aspect to it at all, of course. In 1996, multiplayer for console games still meant huddling around a TV together with controllers, a feature which Harvest Moon still lacked.

The game was a hit in Japan. There’s been an iteration of the title on every major Nintendo console since then. It didn’t see as much success in the states, a point which gaming publications attributed to a difference in culture. The Japanese public lived an ultra-urbanized life; Americans didn’t, or at least not to the same degree. Therefore, Americans didn’t want to sit around playing a farming game.

Clearly, they were wrong. Or maybe things have changed that much in the past 13 years. Regardless, the Harvest Moon experience lives on, and not just in the latest installment on the Wii. You have to wonder if Natsume looks at something like Farmville and asks, “Why aren’t we doing that?”

Farming in games

Farming plays a part in a lot of games— not just those with crops, tractors and chickens. Gamers have used the term farming for years to refer to any in-game action which can be repeated over and over to acquire items in a game. In any big online game, you can farm for experience points for your character, new shiny weapons, and gold too. Gold farmers do this as a full-time job and earn real money for it. Farming will usually fill a large portion of a player’s in-game time— even in a game that, on the surface, deals with fire balls and acid-breathing dragons.

It’s curious then, that farming games, games that make no effort to hide the farming behind a fantasy gameplay mechanic, are such a hit. It could be that farming games offer the simplest analogy to the non-gamer. They simply say, “In this game, you farm for stuff. Like a real farm.” It’s an easier concept to swallow than “In this game, you kill ogres, which give you a mix of items, gold and character experience which you can collect over time.”

They’re both farming in the gaming sense. Just one is literal. Sort of.

Are farming games pulling in casual gamers? Yes. Are they educating them about gaming in general? Certainly. Will these players get tired of the basic analogy and move on to different games? Well, I hope so. That’d be great for gaming.

Looking elsewhere

Farmville isn’t the only mega-hit farming game, nor is the farming game trend limited to Japan and the United States. Happy Farms, a Chinese online farming game, is seeing exactly two million sign-ups a day.

Why “exactly”? Well, because they had to limit their sign-ups to avoid drowning in a sea of new players. You can read all about it in this interesting article. Here’s the Cliff’s Notes: People are going crazy over this game. It seems to play like Farmville or the others, but with a feature that lets you steal crops from other players. Players remain logged in for hours and hours to drive away potential thieves.

It will be interesting to see if any of the American games copy the stealing mechanic. People are already addicted to facebook; I can’t imagine how bad it could get with virtual eggplants at stake.

Posted in Social Media, Technology | 3 Comments

Welcome to Fedorable, a blog for technology and PR. It's updated by Rex Riepe and Greg Allard, the guys behind IvyLees.