Your Adventure Begins

By Sally Saville Hodge

The Facebook scam machine seems to be kicking into high gear again. Or maybe it’s just that some of my friends who don’t typically waste as much time on Facebook as I do (and thus have been less exposed to the most “popular” ones) recently happened to have some time on their hands.

I saw one of those friends today. He sheepishly told me, “Uh, I’m going to have to change my Facebook password. Got scammed.”

“Yes, I know,” I said a dab smugly. Hard to miss the post on my wall: “OMG! Its unbelievable now you can get to know who views your facebook profile.. i can see my top profile visitors and i am so shocked that my EX is still creeping my profile every hour.”

BitDefender, an Internet security firm, found that the “profile” scam generated more than 1.4 million click-throughs.

Last week, another friend got caught in a different one: “hahah mine is hilarious!!! check yours out See what you’ll look in the future! This cutting-edge technology will show you exactly how your face will look in the future!

A month or so ago, yet another friend was posting at least three or four times a day about the “free” iPad he was testing…that if we didn’t likewise sign up soon, they’d surely all be gone. “Dude,” his friends begged in the comment fields. “You got scammed! Fix it!”

So what are these scammers after? Your personal information. In some instances, your identity. Or to get you to sign up for subscriptions that you don’t really want and can be expensive if you’re not wary. The list goes on…

You like to think you’re too smart to get caught up in these things. But face it. They can be insidious. Personally, I’m not all that keen to see how much more my looks will deteriorate in 20 years. Pass. But I’d love to get an iPad. Free is good. And I’ll admit to a certain amount of vicarious interest in seeing the latest shenanigans of Miley Cyrus or that twerpy Justin Bieber. (Yup, I got caught by the Miley scam.)

It’s all part of today’s brave new digital world. And the chances that you’ll encounter one (or more) are pretty high. Symantec actually analyzed a month’s work of public Facebook posts and found that 21 percent contained a link pointing to a Facebook application. And 73 percent of those were scams or malicious applications.

So what to do? Well, for starters, be aware. Firms like BitDefender, Symantec and Sophos all do a great job through their blogs of staying on top and warning the public of the latest scams and malware. They actually make for interesting reading and if you come away a little paranoid, maybe that’s a good thing.

But also just think before you click. It’s one thing if you’re a 20-something bobble-head and you and your friends actually communicate with liberal dashes of OMG and LMFAOs mixed in. Or with a surfeit of exclamation points. Or with the all caps key on when exclamation points by themselves just won’t do. But is the wording of the post typical of your circle? If so, I’m so sorry, and let’s move on.

Beware of photos with stars (particularly the youth set) in supposedly compromising situations. Of offers that sound too good to be true, since they probably are.  Of…

Well, really, the list is unfortunately endless. Perhaps Symantec’s blogger Candid Wuesst puts it best when he says, “…stay vigilant with any message you receive from anyone in social networks, including your friends. Usually the sensational images or videos are not worth the risk, especially if it involves installing an application.”

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By Sally Saville Hodge

Public relations is one of those professions that’s generally held in pretty low esteem.  Practitioners aren’t quite down there with used car salesmen, but we’re not too far removed when it comes to public perception.

Gimmicky. Shallow. Deceptive. Order takers. Any number of adjectives like these come to mind – perhaps deserved by some (too many?) and reinforced in popular culture through depictions like Sex and the City’s slutty Samantha Jones. A party planner who never met a client she wouldn’t screw. Literally.

Then there are the rest of us.

Those perceptions were all brought home to me (once again) over the last few weeks with two posts by a small business blogger with The New York Times named Bruce Buschel. First, in his You’re the Boss blog in mid-February, he ranted about how PR people made him crazy, citing chapter and verse of all the ill-considered things his teams, hired for the opening of his new restaurant, did and didn’t do.

Two weeks later, he revisited the topic, rebutting, practically line-by-line, one particular response from among the dozens of comments, some pro, some con, that were submitted.

You can read both posts and the comments for yourself, but here are two particular highlights of his thinking, which reinforce the stereotypes that afflict us.

First, advertising was “too complicated, daunting and expensive,” what with all the channels, creative and metrics. Translation: PR’s cheap and easy. Reality: Today’s wealth of channels also affects PR, as positioning strategies are different among them. What works for print may be less appropriate for broadcast and social media is an entirely different can of worms. Plus, you’re not paying to control the message, so success hinges on the whims of individuals, no matter how strong your pitch. It’s less expensive. But it can be just as, if not more, complicated.

Second, his opening date was a moving target.  But a dream team chef and GM plus a winning concept of “sustainable” seafood would be sufficient to generate tons of pre-opening coverage. Hello? Why would someone cover the concept with the proviso “Opening…someday soon”? How long does he expect the “impression” to last? And how much coverage does one restaurant rate – especially before it opens?

Sadly enough, I’ve had clients like this. They have led me to determine some rules of engagement. Some exceptions have turned out fine – great, even – but most of the times that I’ve relaxed them, it hasn’t turned out well. Following them will help you avoid reinforcing those stereotypes.

#1. Determine the prospect’s familiarity with PR and attitude toward practitioners. If he or she knows more than you and considers the practice a necessary (and cheaper) evil, stay away. You’ll likely be micromanaged and underappreciated.

#2. Make sure the client’s expectations align with today’s media realities. Clients may think their offer’s all that and more, but they have to work with you in devising the best possible angles – and understand that no matter how great your expertise, the fine art of placement is subject to human whims.  (Compounded by shrinking newsholes, shrinking numbers of traditional journalists, and shrinking attention spans given the pressures they’re under.)

#3. Ensure you’re agreed on metrics, and that the client is prepared to do his or her part (tracking incoming business or queries) in measuring. Metrics must be more meaningful than impressions or hits – which only serve to reinforce the reputation for superficiality that PR has earned. Look to tangible measures. Even increases in website traffic will suffice, but better yet is a particular action tied to the traffic, like growth in the client’s e-mail list.

What we do can be hard enough without taking on clients that will undermine outcomes and, in the process, share their attitudes with abandon. We shoot ourselves in the proverbial feet often enough without encouraging an open season if we can avoid it.

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By Sally Saville Hodge

There’s nothing so humbling as going from media darling to media disaster, particularly as a result of a creative misstep that could have been averted. Just ask Groupon.

It’s hard not to be aware of Groupon, the deal-of-the-day website that has harnessed the power of the web to allow small local businesses (along with big ones like Gap) to gain broader exposure, awareness, and maybe even a dab of money (after handing half their take over).

In just over two short years, its success has spawned tons of adulating media coverage. As the fastest-growing company EVER. The culture that characterizes it – a blend of smart-ass with anti-establishment. The balls it exhibits – turning down the opportunity to take the money ($3 billion) from Google and run.

Then came its Super Bowl XLV ad, which marked the first stumble for this wunderkind. If you somehow managed to miss the spot, it begins with a plea by actor Timothy Hutton for the people of Tibet before he delivers the punch line: “But they still whip up an amazing fish curry.”

Oh, the insensitivity of it all.

The reality is that the ad was very much in keeping with Groupon’s brand personality, where humor, often with a strong dash of snark, carries the day. The problem is that humor is a very subjective thing. There are times when it’s appropriate. There are times when it’s not. And more people than not are humorless – especially when it comes to causes.

Despite the fact that Groupon has made causes and giving back as much of its business fabric as the snarky language that characterizes its deal descriptions, there was just too much of a mixed message for this commercial to work.

It’s surely a precautionary tale for other businesses, and one that sparks some mental meanderings here.

First, PR is about a lot more than just sending press releases and pitching glowing story ideas to the media. Typically, reputation management falls under the PR umbrella, and, typically, this requires deeper, more strategic thinking about the totality of an organization’s actions and their implications from a reputation standpoint. You gotta love creatives, for example, but they’re looking for impact, and not necessarily the risk that might be inherent to it. I’m betting that when the agency presented Groupon’s Superbowl ad to management, nobody from PR was in on the conversation – if it even has a seasoned PR person on its team.

Secondly, you never know when someone’s going to rain on your PR parade. A crisis doesn’t have to be life-threatening to merit attention as a potential risk to a brand and a reputation. If you don’t have a plan that anticipates and responds to the full scope of crises and the degree of potential damage, it will take you that much longer to recover should one occur.

The fact is that when you establish the kind of track record that Groupon has for success, people are just waiting to catch you stumbling. For a case in point, just look at the anti-Google fervor that’s whipping up as it grows increasingly ubiquitous. By playing it smart, perhaps Groupon can avoid the inevitable.

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