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Sprint Nextel President and CEO Daniel Hesse has his share of problems bringing his company out of the doldrums, but he has a nice asset in the Palm Pre. The Pre, which runs on the Sprint Nextel network, has received solid reviews. CNET gives it 3.5 stars out of five, applauding its multitasking, notification system, web browsing, and - gasp - phone call quality. That's right, people actually make and receive phone calls on smart phones.For comparison, CNET gives the iPhone 3GS four stars. Consumers on CNET actually rate the Pre higher than the iPhone, giving it 3.5 stars to the iPhone's three.
But Hesse sounded like a beaten man when he described it on the Charlie Rose show:
Q: Is the Palm Pre making a dent into the iPhone market?
A: Aaah... It's-it's doing well, but you can almost put the iPhone, to be fair, in a separate category. The Apple brand and that device have done so well, it's almost not... it's like comparing someone to Michael Jordan.
This man needs some coaching. Who would buy the Sam Bowie phone when they could get the Michael Jordan phone?
The iPhone has lots of limitations, and any owner will tell you what they don't like about the device. No real keyboard. Terrible network. Lousy for texting. Promised features (MMS, tethering) not delivered on time (or at all). Terrible network (OK, now you know what I don't like).
Hesse should have access to intelligence about what people like about the Pre, and he should be quick to share it. The Pre is good enough to stand on its own in this kind of one-on-one confab. He should go on offense and tell his story. Rose is not going to grill him about the paucity of apps available for the Pre.
If you were counseling Hesse, what would you tell him?
image sourced from Wikipedia Commons
On July 17, 2009, Dave Carroll's video was the number three search result for "United Airlines."
Good morning class:
For today's lesson, please view this video:
Now, please take note of the number of views on the video (as of this posting, it's more than 1,300,000).
Now, please visit Twitter search and see the traffic:
Now, let's review the ways it pays to "be good":
1. It's a nice feeling.
2. The luggage handlers could take better care of their customers' things.
3. The airline could be nice to the customer, even if it can't admit fault.
4. The airline could let the musician carry the guitar on board.
5. The airline could apologize and fix/replace the guitar.
The airline personnel could be so awesome that it inspires customers to write letters of thanks, prose poems, even songs of praise.
But no.
And this nice young man doesn't have to take it like he did in the old days. He wrote a song. He made a video. He shared it with 1,300,000 of his friends. The message is simple: United breaks guitars. It's a catchy song. In fact, it's still playing in my head.
What's the cost of this incident to United (the airline that breaks guitars)? Hint: it's more than $1,500.
The takeaway: love your customers, when you see them, in the deepest recesses of your organization, and everywhere in between. They were so nice to you: they gave you a job, helped pay for your daughter's iPod, your son's braces, and your home, your car, your dinner.
Give a little love back. Is that so hard?
Class dismissed.
Every so often the news brings us a complete train wreck, the person who can't help but do everything wrong. Today it's South Carolina governor Mark Sanford, who has been discovered having a very public sexual liaison with an Argentinian-woman-not-his-wife. In so doing, he has given us a new euphemism for sexual misconduct: "hiking the Appalachian Trail."Let's count the ways Sanford has screwed up: Having the affair. Talking about it. Lying to his staff. His family. The citizens of South Carolina. Co-mingling business trips with personal trips. Public disclosure of intimate emails. Talking and lying some more. Feigning remorse. Prattling on about his "soulmate." Making the painful observation that he would try to fall in love with his wife again. So much talk.
Some free counsel: keep it in your pants, governor. Shut your pie hole. Try something else, I don't know, how about governing. Succeed publicly and fail privately. Get out of the news, pronto. Keep your schoolboy crushes to yourself. Respect your family. Tough it out.
Be a man.
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| Shut Up, Mark Sanford | ||||
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"You're welcome," long a popular part of daily speech and a polite acknowledgement to "thank you," has died of natural causes after a long period of abandonment by the culture. It is survived by its distant relatives, "no problem," "not a problem," "uh-huh" and "whatever."
While "you're welcome's" birth date is unknown, the phrase first appeared in the 1907 edition of the Oxford English Dictionary. During most of the 20th century, the phrase issued from the lips of the most genteel people in the world.
But in recent years it has been in declining health, abandoned by the keepers of the culture. Even noted linguist Deborah Tannen gave up on the phrase.
"You're supposed to say something that minimizes the pleasure when you do something for someone," said Tannen, a linguistics professor at Georgetown University in Washington.
"No problem" is a clearer expression of minimized pleasure, she said.
"No problem" is a clearer expression of minimized pleasure, she said.
When contacted, "no problem," a night manager at Applebee's in Plano, Texas, expressed little regret over "you're welcome's" passing.
"If I don't seem to care, well my bad," he said. "Just saying."
We've all had one. That moment you wish you could take back. Maybe you were impatient with your child, a colleague, or a loved one. Perhaps you laughed at someone's expense. Or uncorked some profanity in an inappropriate situation.
You know why you did it. You were tired, you had had enough, you weren't really thinking, you had a few drinks, you were just careless. You thought you were safe.
There's nothing new about the one bad moment. What's new is the omnipresence of recording devices and ways to share digital information. So today, your own bad moment can become permanently attached to you. It can go viral. And so, despite a lifetime of almost always doing the right thing, this one bad moment becomes the stain that never goes away.
Actor Christian Bale exploded on the set of Terminator 4, and his tirade has gone viral. The rant occurred in front of a small audience. But the recording has been shared millions of times. On YouTube, you can hear mashups of the rant with dance music and Dora the Explorer. There are currently about 40 videos featuring the profanity-laced rant. One has more than 2,320,000 page views.
"Christian Bale? Isn't he that spoiled hothead? Oh, and I think he acted in some movies, too."
Bale is not alone. Michael Richards had his bad moment. So did Michael Phelps. The pace of these moments seems to be accelerating. A-Rod lies about steroid use. Chris Brown may have assaulted his girlfriend, pop star Rihanna. Squeaky-clean Disney actress/singer Miley Cyrus appears to mock Asians. And that's just from the past few days!
So please, be careful out there. And more importantly: be good. It is true: your true character is revealed by your behavior when you think no one is watching.
A more difficult issue that deserves further discussion: forgiveness. As a culture, how can we forgive people that we really don't know? The viral qualities of a bad moment are far more powerful than those of atonement.
Being a liar is probably the worst sin from a public relations perspective. But right next to lying is hubris, the notion that the rules don't apply to you, that your $#*t don't stink, that you can get away with something wrong through the sheer force of confidence.
Hubris is alive and well in government and business all across the world. Take a seasoned CEO with lots of power and money, stir in a cadre of "yes men," and it will grow like bacteria in a petri dish. You've probably seen it at some place where you work. If you were lucky, you got out alive.
Occasionally, however, you get a special case, in which there's a complete disconnect between bending the rules to suit your goals and totally smashing them. Like when 1988 Presidential hopeful Gary Hart, who was suspected of being a womanizer, said to the media, "go ahead, follow me." (they found him on a yacht named Monkey Business, engaged in ... well, monkey business, with a young-woman-not-his-wife, Donna Rice).
Like when OJ Simpson vowed to spend the rest of his life looking for the "real killer." Or when John Edwards tried to soften the impact of his infidelity, claiming that his wife's cancer was in remission at the time.
And who could forget Bill Clinton, saying directly to the camera, "I did not have sex with that woman."
And now we've got Rod Blagojevich, the colorful governor of Illinois, about to stand trial for impeachment. We've all heard the tapes of his conspiracy to sell Barack Obama's Senate seat, his plans for the op-ed page of the Chicago Tribune, and the cursing. Lots of cursing. That's a mighty big hole to climb out of.
But some people just don't give up. They see insurmountable odds, and to then it's just like walking across the street. Here's some of that hubris:
That's right, he's comparing himself to Gandhi, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Nelson Mandela.
Now Blago is taking his story to the cable news and TV talk shows, sharing his story of persecution, how the trial is fixed, and tossing off bombs like Oprah Winfrey for Senator. The TV hosts share looks of mock concern, but they're gleeful to join in this self-made execution. After all, it's Blago's words that will hang him, not theirs.
What's the take-away for a public relations professional? All you can do is watch and wonder. And inoculate yourself - and your clients - from hubris. Remember that your deeds matter more than your words. And that cameras and microphones are everywhere; showing trumps telling.
We see a horrible accident in slow motion. Here's what Blago sees:
Courtesy of Bulldog Reporter's Daily Dog, here's some familiar material. Let's do better in 2009, please!
It shouldn't surprise you to learn that the heads of the Big Three automakers flew to Washington on three private jets to beg for $25 billion in bailout money. A sensible person would ask: is this on message? Don't people judge you by your actions? Would it be so bad to fly commercial? At least couldn't they jet-pool?
Don't these CEOs have counselors on staff to avoid disasters like this?
Congressman Gary Ackerman (D-NY) noted a "delicious irony in seeing private jets flying into Washington D.C. and people coming off them with tin cups in their hands."
But this is the the U.S. auto industry we're talking about. These guys have built their careers running once-great marques into the ground.
It's hard to understand things like investments and insurance. But almost everyone owns a car. We all have long-standing relationships with automobile brands. We all know something about the auto business. For example, I know that I just replaced the transmission on my daughter's U.S.-made 2003 Ford Focus, conveniently just a few hundred miles out of warranty and a relatively young car at 61,000 miles. I know it cost me more than $2,000 to keep this economy car on the road for a while longer.
And here's what else I know: American cars are not the best. If you want the best, the market can easily sort that out for you. Just look and see what five-year-old cars are worth. According to a current study released by Automotive Lease Guide, the cars that hold their value best are made by Honda, Subaru, Volkswagen and Toyota. The worst? The LIncoln Town Car and the Chevrolet Uplander.
An anecdote to illustrate the above point. Chevy's new Malibu has received very positive reviews. I mentioned it to a friend who was considering a Camry. His response? "Yeah, that might be a good car to pick up off-lease." Translation: if I buy one new I'll get hosed. But if I wait and buy it used, I can pick it up at a heavily depreciated price. At that point, I might take a chance on it.
The Wall St. Journal recently noted that the U.S. automakers just can't catch the leaders. It cited the Honda Civic; the car costs several thousand dollars more than the Chevy Cobalt, and still sells in far greater numbers. But after a few years, more than the initial price difference is recouped in the residual value of the car. Bonus: this comparison does not factor in the Honda's superior reliability and driving experience.
Here's how the American car makers have lost our share-of-mind: they fought against CAFE mileage standards. They did this while drunk on SUV profits, which disappeared rapidly when gas prices took another hike. Faced with almost no strategy for making fuel-efficient vehicles, they have latched onto flex-fuel vehicles. But ethanol is a loser technology, and everyone, except for corn farmers, knows it. And I'm sick of hearing about the Chevrolet Volt. How long before GM gets this potential game-changer to market?
And the most egregious tactic of all? The job bank. As of 2005, more than 12,000 autoworkers were paid autoworker wages to show up at an abandoned K-Mart, to work crossword puzzles, read the newspaper or watch TV. It's a legacy of a 1984 concession the automakers made to auto workers. As their market share grew smaller, the auto companies were forced to keep workers they didn't need on the payroll.
This is part of why Mitt Romney - the son of former American Motors CEO and Michigan governor George Romney - wrote in the New York Times, "Let Detroit Go Bankrupt."
Meanwhile, there are lots of good American cars to buy: a Honda, made in Maryville, Ohio. Or a Subaru, made in Lafayette, Indiana.
The PR lesson in all of this? You can't build good PR - in this case, consensus that the U.S. auto companies are deserving of a massive subsidy - on poor performance. These companies have failed to show that their business model has a chance to succeed. They've showed no humility. Their argument is basically that they're too big to fail.
But fail they will. And guess what? People will still need and buy cars. They just won't be buying those cars.
There's no helping a CEO begging for a $25 billion bailout who shows up in a private jet. The $25 billion, by the way, is to be paid by hard-working Americans who do not participate in the job bank. Americans who won't get a bailout of their own. Some of whom may be paying for a recent transmission job.
