More of Les

The Living Room Guest That Won't Leave

2012-09-12T11:05:00.002-04:00

We’ve finally upgraded to a flat-screen HD TV set in our living room. The new 32-inch Toshiba fits perfectly on the wall between two windows.

We also have another new piece of living room furniture – a 120-pound coffee table! Ok, it’s actually our old, anything-but-flat, 32-inch RCA set, circa mid-‘90s. But we’re kind of getting used to it staying around.

Not that we haven’t tried to get rid of the behemoth.

Right off, my sister’s boyfriend told me that, when he had a similar problem, the Salvation Army was more than happy to come and pick up his set.

Apparently, the Salvation Army marches differently on Long Island than here in Brooklyn.

“I’d like to donate a giant working TV set,” I tell the charity’s representative.

“Great,” he responds. “What do you have with it?”

“Uh, I have the remote control and the instruction manual.”

“No, what other furniture are you donating?”

“Isn’t a large TV set enough?”

“We require two pieces of furniture for a pick-up. You can drop the TV off.”

“I don’t have a car – and it weighs 120 pounds!”

No other charity seemed willing to pick up a TV set in Brooklyn, either, so we decided to give the monster away to a regular citizen.

Having heard that Freecycle was the way to go in these matters, I joined that Yahoo group and posted the following listing: “working 32" RCA Entertainment Series TV set, complete with remote control and instruction book -- but estimated weight of more than 100  pounds!”

Within a day, I’d received three responses. The first two were extremely polite -- “Can I have it please!” and “When can I get it please?” – and the third a bit more direct: “I am interested.”

To each, I replied, “Great, do you have a way to move it?”

And that was my last interaction with anyone from Freecycle.

A while later, doing some more research on the Internet, I discovered 4thbin, dubbed “the ethical e-waste rescue solution.” 4thbin offers to pick up used TV sets in New York City – for a price. "Well," I told my wife, "we knew from the start we couldn’t sell our oversized box. Then, we found out we couldn’t give it away. So maybe it’s time that we pay someone to take it away."

Facing the inevitable -- that nobody would ever watch a TV show again on our still perfectly functioning, but now obsolete old set -- I was now reconciled to happily paying for it to be demolished in the name of a sustainable planet. So I filled out the form on the 4thbin website for a free estimate.

A day or so later, I received an email with the price. My reply: “Ok, what’s the next step?”

And that was my last interaction with 4thbin.

And so this enormous “coffee table” still sits in our living room.

The next step, of course, is to push the set out to the curb (we do live on the ground floor, after all!). Then, inevitably -- regardless of any forecast-- it will begin to rain, forcing us to remove the “It works!” sign taped onto the TV. And the city’s Department of Environmental Protection will undoubtedly ticket us for illegal curbside disposal.

In the meantime, please wipe that coffee stain off the glass top of our table!

Dispatchers & Dispatches: Airlines & Newspapers Meet Their Connections at Gate Greed

2012-09-04T11:31:00.000-04:00

This was the summer when two good friends of ours finally had long-gestating books published -- Dave Astor’s Comic (and Column) Confessional and Bill McGee’s Attention All Passengers. (But please note: Those of you Googling the latter book who don’t know Mr. McGee on a personal level must refer to him as “William J.”! And Amazon insists that Dave's book was published in 2008!)

What are these two books about? Let their subtitles explain.

Astor: Finding Myself While Covering Syndicates, Celebrities and a Changing Media World

McGee: The Airlines' Dangerous Descent---and How to Reclaim Our Skies

While Bill’s book is obviously about the descent of the airline industry, Dave’s has a similar theme -- the descent of newspaper syndication in particular and newspapers themselves by extension. No, I wouldn’t call it a “dangerous” descent – the death of a bunch of newspapers can’t be compared with the deaths of hundreds of airplane passengers.

McGee

But the causes of each industry's decline, as detailed by Dave and Bill, are remarkably similar – the greed of corporate America and its executives. That greed leads to the downsizing of good jobs, to mergers and acquisitions, to the maximizing of profits over the considerations of employees and consumers. It’s no surprise that Ralph Nader appears prominently in both tomes.

While Dave and Bill argue eloquently about how the industries they cover have specific attributes leading to unique corporate arrogance, they would both probably agree that newspapers and airlines don’t have any monopolies in this area. Take trade publishing, for example. Dave’s book – being a memoir of his 25 years at Editor & Publisher magazine before he was, well, himself downsized – also provides a good look at how business-to-business media play the same corporate game.

Astor

Indeed, I met Dave while we both worked at Marketing Communications magazine, and my wife met Bill when they were colleagues at Travel Agent. While Dave then stayed in one place for 25 years, I spent a few years traveling from one corporately mishandled trade pub to another. I covered the TV industry, where deregulation led to the consolidation of TV station owners (comparable to individual newspapers). Combined with the consolidation of content suppliers (as with the newspapers, also called syndicators), this reduced the numbers of both potential readers and potential advertisers, leading to, well, the consolidation of TV trade pubs.

Hey, I could write a book! Hell no, that’s an awful lot of work. I’m sure Dave and Bill were holed up in a cave the past couple of years!

But I could write something under my own name for a change. Or under my first name, at least. And so I have.

(photos by Les)

Influencing the Influencers

2011-08-02T15:41:00.001-04:00

It’s well known that the late Amy Winehouse was heavily influenced by the girl groups and female soul singers of the ‘60s. She, in turn, greatly influenced many artists who burst on the scene after her, such as Duffy, Lily Allen and Adele. But she also left her mark by pulling off a truly rare accomplishment -- influencing some of the original influencers!

Cover songs, of course, are a great indicator of influences. So you would expect Winehouse to cover various oldies she loved (her version of The Shirelle’s Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow is one standout). But you wouldn’t necessarily expect oldies artists to cover Winehouse – or indeed to include any contemporary songs at all in their nostalgia-filled live shows. Audiences attend oldies shows to, well, hear oldies.

Yet, last Wednesday at Central Park Summerstage, “Queen of Rockabilly” Wanda Jackson stopped her show in its tracks with a moving rendition of Winehouse’s You Know I’m No Good. Then on Saturday, at Lincoln Center Out of Doors – during a day otherwise devoted entirely to old girl group songs – Ronnie Spector sang Back to Black midpoint in a show she dedicated to Winehouse.

Neither Jackson nor Spector was pandering to grief-stricken fans. For one thing, the prime audiences for these two shows hardly consisted of Winehouse's crowd. For another, both singers had been including Winehouse in their repertoires since before the singer's death.

Spector, as is well known, heavily influenced Winehouse’s look as well as her sound. Last week, in a touching Rolling Stone tribute to the deceased star, she wrote that Winehouse's "lyrics were so amazing that I couldn't help but sing one of her songs."

But Wanda Jackson? When I was promoting a documentary about this virtually forgotten rock pioneer in 2006 (the film's title eventually became The Sweet Lady with the Nasty Voice), Amy Winehouse was just achieving breakout status and Jackson had released an Elvis tribute album. She was simply not doing new material. But last year, Jackson was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and then released a new album -- The Party Ain't Over -- produced by Jack White of the White Stripes. At White's suggestion, the CD included one contemporary song -- by Winehouse, of course.

Now, after hearing Ronnie Spector and Wanda Jackson do justice (albeit with expurgated lyrics) to Amy Winehouse this past week, I have to wonder what's next. A quick look at the schedule finds Aretha Franklin in Coney Island on Thursday for the free concert we've been looking forward to since last summer. The Los Angeles Times, for one, says Winehouse's voice channeled Franklin's.

Aretha recently released her first studio album in eight years...but Jack White (or an equivalent) wasn't involved. So don't expect to hear her version of Just Friends or Rehab. Just relish her voice and be thankful she's still with us well past that tragic age of 27. That's another way of leaving your mark.

Turner Classic Television?

2011-07-11T13:41:00.012-04:00

Al 'n Yetta by Allan Sherman

For fans of classic TV, like me, these are both the best and worst of times.

Best, because at least three networks – Antenna TV, Me-TV and Retro TV – are now vying for the audience once coveted by the likes of TV Land and Nick at Nite.

Worst, because I can only see one of those channels – Antenna TV – here in Brooklyn, and, well, the show selection is still rather limited.

What's needed is a channel that culls from the entire history of classic television – just as Turner Classic Movies does for that other filmed entertainment genre.

As with older movies, most of today’s audience has no first-hand memories from when vintage television programs first aired. Thus, these shows are no longer nostalgia – they’re history. And as TCM does with classic movies, classic TV needs to be taken seriously.

When Viacom’s TV Land began 15 years ago, that seemed to be its mission. The network even ran one-shot historically significant shows under the umbrella title, “Museum of TV and Radio Showcase.” And we loved their airing of vintage commercials, dubbed “retromercials.” But, in an era when even the Museum of TV and Radio couldn’t stomach the connotation of “old” that came with the word “museum” – and morphed into the “Paley Center” – TV Land soon abandoned its focus of "preserving our television heritage."

Both David Bianculli and Diane Werts over at TV Worth Watching have done a good job of bemoaning the descent of TV Land into the home of tired rerun retreads and derivative reality fare.

That’s a shame, since Viacom – born out of the original CBS Films – controlled one of the richest libraries of classic TV anywhere, at least until the company split in two in 2005, with the old TV shows becoming part of the new CBS, and TV Land remaining at Viacom.

Yes, who exactly owns the rights to what can get confusing in the TV distribution world.

Once upon a time (well, the early ‘90s), MCA Television found a way to monetize its old ‘50s TV shows by incorporating clips from them into its innovative HBO sitcom Dream On. Those old clips now lie buried somewhere deep in Comcast’s Universal Media library.

Other rights-holders are more active in classic TV distribution. Antenna TV, for example, is essentially a 24-hour channel for old shows and movies from Sony’s Columbia/Screen Gems library. Me-TV runs lots of product from the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer catalog.

But what about the classic Warner Bros. shows that practically invented the studio system in network television back in the '50s and ‘60s? From what I can tell, such historic and trend-setting series as Maverick and 77 Sunset Strip haven’t run anywhere since AmericanLife TV stopped showing them a few years back (full disclosure: I once handled public relations for AmericanLife.) They also figured prominently in what was perhaps TV Land’s final nod to vintage TV -- a 50-hour tribute to the 50^th anniversary of Warner Bros. Television in 2005.

Now, guess who owns all those old Warner Bros. shows? That’s right – the same Time Warner that owns Turner Classic Movies! And they’d make a great starting point for a TV-centric equivalent to TCM. This new channel could put TV shows in historic context, support preservation efforts, and, of course, group them together by theme – for example, a month of Emmy-winning episodes during awards season; a salute to Betty White’s 60 years in TV, from Life With Elizabeth to The Mary Tyler Moore Show and The Golden Girls to Hot in Cleveland; or a marathon of the nine episodes of WB’s The Roaring 20’s directed by esteemed director Robert Altman (similar to a sampling of Altman’s Combat! episodes that worked well for AmericanLife).

So, from one who’d much rather watch Bachelor Father (here’s Mary Tyler Moore in an early guest appearance) than The Bachelor any day, let’s hear it for TCT – Turner Classic Television.

Robert Altman directed nine episodes of WB's The Roaring 20's.

It Could Happen Tomorrow...

2011-02-04T12:48:00.000-05:00

During this winter of New York City’s discontent, I’ve occasionally thought back five years – to my involvement in a massive PR push for the premiere of The Weather Channel series, “It Could Happen Tomorrow.” Over the Christmas holiday season, as a strike stopped mass transit for a couple of days, we feverishly worked to promote the upcoming premiere episode – about what could happen if a massive hurricane struck the city.

Flash forward to this past holiday season – mass transit was again disrupted for a couple of days, this time by a blizzard. So were lots of other things, from car traffic to garbage pickups to mayoral approval ratings. And since then, the entire city has seemed to be playing its own version of “It Could Happen Tomorrow.” But let's not forget the key second word of that title – could, not will.

Ok, New York this winter has endured a couple of massive snowstorms, including that blizzard, along with a fair number of smaller ones. And the nasty weather has certainly caused a mess. On my own block, the Sanitation Department didn’t pick up the paper recyclables for some five weeks – corner-to-corner, our sidewalk looked like the remnants of a print publishing empire mixed in with cereal boxes, all laid out on a bed of dirty white carpeting.

Brooklyn, Winter 2011

(photo by Les Luchter)

So folks certainly have a right to be concerned. And we all need to be prepared for any potential storm. But there’s a difference between prepared and pre-emptive, between could and will.

A couple of weeks ago, my niece was all geared up to fly from JFK to Europe to begin a much-anticipated semester abroad. Due to a winter storm “warning,” her flight was canceled more than a full day in advance, yet the “storm” turned into a light dusting.

Earlier this week, I was supposed to have a doctor’s appointment. It didn’t happen because, two days prior, the MD’s office called to say that all appointments were being canceled due to another winter storm warning. The streets were going to be icy and they were looking out for our safety. Well thanks.

By the following day, the storm “warning” had been downgraded down to an “advisory,” but then got transformed into an even scarier “Ice Storm Warning.” (I know all this because I get handy alerts from my pals at The Weather Channel!)

And yes, it was icy that morning -- before the precipitation turned to rain at around 8 a.m. I ran an errand late morning when I could have been on the way to my appointment, and the streets were quite navigable.

What everyone seems to have forgotten in the wake of our giant snowfalls is that weather forecasts, by their very nature, are apt to change. Since when have they been seen as infallible?

For years, I've complained about the "snowmongering" of local media, especially local television news. "Snow is coming," they would blare during station breaks. "Details at 11." Then, if you stuck around, you'd learn that there was half-an-inch expected up in the Catskills, or at least in the infamous "Northern New Jersey." (thanks to my Weather Channel alerts, I can now forgo this process :) )

I always thought I had invented the term "snowmongering" as one of my major contributions to contemporary civilization. But great minds think alike, I guess. I just did a Google search, and "snowmongering" is right there in the Urban Dictionary: "when someone over exaggerates how much snow there truly is...."

These days, snowmongering has extended from the media to the government, private enterprises and seemingly everyone on the block. If there's a flake in the forecast, the entire city starts preparing for a deluge. The departments of Sanitation and Emergency Management issue their own "snow alerts," one of several terrorism-like levels preceding an actual emergency. The local Trader Joe's gets mobbed midday (trust me, it's usually rather manageable at 3 p.m.!) as folks rush to stock their pantries. The hardware store runs out of salt. The kids start praying for another day off from school.

Trust me, I don't take snowstorms lightly. I don’t relish climbing out the ground-floor window to help excavate our front door, as I did in December. All that white stuff isn't fun, unless you're building snowmen or igloos, or sledding, or throwing snowballs (and, quite often, as was the case last week, the snow can be quite pretty). But I guess my college days in Syracuse, where two-foot storms were routine and the city handled the cleanup with a minimum of fuss, has enured me somewhat to the phenomenon.

By the way, the last blizzard to hit New York City before this winter happened about a month after the premiere of "It Could Happen Tomorrow." On Feb. 11-12, a record 26.9 inches fell in Central Park. The snowmongerers had a field day. I woke up ready for some heavy-duty shoveling. But somehow the brunt of the storm had completely missed Brooklyn and even lower Manhattan. We had just a few inches on the ground.

So, it could have happened, but didn’t. Could it happen tomorrow, though?

The forecast now calls for a “wintry mix.”

Let's at least wait for the first flake to fall before falling all over ourselves in panic.

Deliverables: The Main Thing?

2010-12-20T10:23:00.000-05:00

"If you're so obsessed with deliverables, hire Santa!"

That's what I felt like shouting to a recent new client prospect (no. not the woman in the video above!) who could have cared less about my PR abilities, knowledge or experience. All this self-professed "geek" could focus on were "deliverables."

That should have been my clue for to bail out. After all, I pride myself on avoiding corporate jargon in all communications. But the first paragraph of Wikipedia's entry on "deliverables" states definitively that "the word is considered corporate jargon." The Wikipedia writer knows the latter area well, having started the entry with this: "Deliverable is a term used in project management to describe a tangible or intangible object produced as a result of the project that is intended to be delivered to a customer (either internal or external)."

I felt better, though, when I read next: "A deliverable could be a report, a document, a server upgrade or any other building block of an overall project."

Ok, that was tangible enough for me. I proceeded to offer the prospective client a full list of PR deliverables, bullet point by bullet point:

press releases
bylined articles
pitch letters
status reports
clip reports
timelines
media lists
tweets

And so on,. But I wouldn't offer press pickups as a deliverable, Ultimate coverage by journalists is simply out of my control, I explained. "PR is an art, not a science."

In essence, I was asking him to trust me. "I'll provide the maximum effort and you'll get results," I promised, "but I can't guarantee those results in advance."

But the prospective client didn't believe in me that much. He went elsewhere, probably to someone who promised him Oprah ("she must be planning a panel on Internet advertising for her farewell season!") and pickups in Google News and Yahoo (now there's an achievement!).

Perhaps he did hire Santa, a proven deliverer of deliverables. 'Tis the season, after all. But, truth be told, I don't really believe in Santa that much. What I continue to believe in are the intangibles of public relations. Work your media contacts to the max and you'll get results -- your story might not be great enough for The New York Times but you may have enough to deliver some key industry bloggers.

Well, gotta go now. I'm waiting for a deliverable from UPS, and the doorbell is ringing. Happy holidays!

One Year Anniversary

2010-10-13T12:58:00.000-04:00

www.colbertnation.com

Today marks exactly one year since my first posting of "More of Les"!

Anniversaries have long been great excuses for putting out press releases. Clients come to their PR people declaring, "We're celebrating our first anniversary. That's big news in the start-up field!"

"But nobody cares about that," retorts the despondent publicist (me). "Please come back when you have real news. Like new partners, new clients, new products...or at least a fifth anniversary!"

So I won't use the anniversary of this blog as an excuse for a press release. Instead, I'll use it as an excuse for another blog posting.

First, let's see who else is publicizing an anniversary today.

CAPE MAY COURT HOUSE–Atlantic Cape Community College invites local residents to Community Day, a celebration of the five-year anniversary of the opening of the Cape May County Campus, 2 to 6 p.m., Wednesday, Oct. 13, at CMCC, 341 Court House-South Dennis Road.

Not earth-shattering, but in addition to keeping with the five-year rule, it actually becomes news by creating a tie-in with a real event -- like the time my then-client CABLEready celebrated a key anniversary by launching a major scholarship program.

Then, there's this:

Integrated Marketing Summit Celebrates First Anniversary

30 Marketing Experts Coming to Kansas City October 12 + 13
KANSAS CITY, Mo., Sept. 29 /PRNewswire/ -- Top thought leaders behind some of America's most celebrated brands will gather for an exceptional two-day event as Kansas City hosts the Integrated Marketing Summit (IMS) on Tuesday, October 12th and Wednesday, October 13th at the Hyatt Regency Crown Center.

Stop the presses! The Marketing Summit is celebrating the anniversary of its first event! Oh, btw, they're running another one too. And it's exceptional!

Actually, the agenda doesn't look too bad. Indeed, despite the Summit's own press release, PR Newswire's Director of Emerging Media Michael Pranikoff spoke yesterday on the topic, "Forget what you THINK you know about PR....it's a Whole New World."

Sure is. In sports too. Right there in Kansas City, in fact, the Chiefs -- despite losing Sunday -- stand atop football's AFC West. In baseball, the Texas Rangers last night advanced in the playoffs for the first time ever.

But some sports certainties remain. The Yankees win, for instance, and the Pittsburgh Pirates lose (18 straight losing seasons).

So no wonder the only real significant anniversary being celebrated today is in Pittsburgh:

1960 World Series Celebration and Mazeroski Plaque Dedication

PITTSBURGH, Oct. 5 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy is partnering with Pirates Charities on Wednesday, October 13 to mark the 50th anniversary of Bill Mazeroski's home run that made the Pittsburgh Pirates the 1960 World Series Champions. The day will begin at 11:45 a.m. with a public unveiling of a sidewalk plaque honoring Mazeroski for his walk-off home run. The ceremony will take place near the old Forbes Field wall at the intersection of Schenley and Roberto Clemente Drives in Oakland.

Yes, 50 years ago today, Bill Mazeroski's epic home run propelled the upstart Pirates to World Series victory over the Yankees.

While there's long been newsreel footage of this classic moment, the complete NBC telecast of what has been dubbed "the best game ever" was thought lost forever -- until film of it was recently discovered in Bing Crosby's wine cellar. The late great crooner, you see, was not only a pioneer in the recording of radio and TV shows (before him, everything was done live) but also part-owner of the Pirates.

That's why Crosby has a cameo in the original 1951 Angels in the Outfield, which I recently viewed on Turner Classic Movies. It's a fantasy film where the Pirates miraculously win the pennant during another multi-year period when the real-life team was just plain awful.

At this point, I planned to conclude this celebration of "More of Les"' first anniversary with a video or audio of Crosby singing "It Was a Very Good Year," but apparently Bing never sang that Sinatra standard.

So instead, I'll turn to the co-star of Angels in the Outfield, Janet Leigh. At the time of the movie's release, she had just married Tony Curtis, who passed away two weeks ago today. Curtis is renowned in PR circles because six years later, he would star as sleazy "press agent" Sidney Falco in undoubtedly the greatest movie ever made about PR, The Sweet Smell of Success. Like me, Falco ran a small independent shop, but he definitely had a different approach to landing clients -- pushing his way in and then guaranteeing placements in is his equally sleazy abettor JJ Hunsecker's hugely influential newspaper column, as shown here:

Wow, I bet Falco never needed to hang a press release on an anniversary hook. Maybe I should have used his new business approach to land a client or two at ShowBiz Expo this past weekend?

No, wouldn't have worked. I don't know any JJ Hunseckers, thank god.

But I've got my own "column" to fill, and to end. Thanks for reading. It's been a very good year.

It Was a Very Good Year

Radio, Newspapers: Back to the Agency Silos?

2010-10-04T13:05:00.000-04:00

via Tales of Future Past - http://davidszondy.com/future/futurepast.htm

At the OMMA (Online Media, Marketing & Advertising) conference, keynote speaker Arianna Huffington takes pains to note the continued viability of newspapers. She gets seven papers delivered daily and reads them all, she declares.

I glance about. It's around 9:30 am. For the first time in a long history of attending morning business meetings, no newspaper is in sight. And most of the attendees are not teens or millenials. But all are in the ad industry.

Huffington is so old-fashioned that's she's also made a commitment to sleep eight hours nightly -- and she wants to find common cause between right and left political partisans. Not only does she read newspapers, she probably even listens to the radio.

My mind is on that ancient audio medium, because I'm heading next to a big Advertising Week event -- more a rally in fact -- thrown by NYMRAD (New York Market Radio). Radio execs, of course, have little interest in taming rabid partisans (almost entirely right-wing) because that's where the listeners and revenues lie.

The first speaker is former TV star/liberal turned radio talk show host/conservative Dennis Miller who, unlike Huffington, can't separate his politics from the business pitch. Miller''s there to sell radio as an ad medium, but he can hardly utter a sentence without bashing President Obama, Speaker Pelosi or Secretary Clinton. Yet he insists that he's holding back his worst vitriol in deference to what he terms a Democratic audience.

But if Democrats don't listen to talk radio, and media buyers are Democrats, where does that leave the radio industry? During the event's cocktail party, I strike up a conversation with a typical media buyer.

"Radio's not something we ordinarily think about," she admits. "Who listens to radio in New York?"
So I start thinking. Ad folks obviously watch TV. Even OMMA has a Time Warner cable exec on one of its panels. Of course, that's because cable has begun including the Internet in its ad sales mix. But so have newspapers and radio.

Weren't "silos" supposed to be a thing of the past at media agencies, and integrated media now all the rage? Yet if buyers are so obsessed with checking out sponsored tweets and testing the latest mobile apps that they can't bother to pick up a Sunday newspaper circular to see how Target garners store traffic, or turn on the radio to hear how Dennis Miller sells sump pumps (the things you learn at industry events!), perhaps online has become the new TV -- the only thing that really matters now in the ad world.

So while Huffington hypes newspapers and Miller talks radio, I...well, I admit it, I too don't have a newspaper with me during Advertising Week -- I'm getting the news I want via my Blackberry. And I'm not listening to drive-time radio on the way to the conference either -- that's impossible on the subway, for one thing, but I can hear all the tunes I want on my iPad anyway. Who needs radio these days after all? Who needs newspapers?

Oh well, time to stop pontificating and get back to the real world, I've got online advertising companies to promote. Hmm, let's see. That client's story should be just perfect for Stuart Elliott in the Times. That other client keeps pestering me to get mentioned by Mossberg in the Journal. And that book about politics and technology? Well, a radio tour is the only way to go.

Skidoo, Credits? Not So Fast!

2010-09-24T11:09:00.000-04:00

Peggy Olson on Mad Men has been pissed because she didn't receive credit for her work on an award-winning Glo-Coat commercial.

Who can blame her? Commercials have never included on-air credits for the myriad folks involved in their creation, so awards are really the only way for anyone to receive recognition. Compare commercials to their long-form cousins in moving images -- TV and movies -- whose end credits have always allowed interested viewers to know every single person involved in their production, from the actors and directors down to the lowly gofers and shoe-shiners.

Well in Peggy's time, at least. Nowadays, while a few folks still stay to the bitter end in movie theaters, try viewing the end credits to any movie or show episode on broadcast TV or basic cable (except thankfully on Turner Movie Classics). They're squeezed onto the left side of the screen, squished onto the bottom, and/or fly by so fast that even Howard Stephen Berg probably can't capture more than a word or two.

Of course, networks do this so that viewers have less time to change the channel, keeping them engaged in the current parlance. End credits, it seems, can bore viewers even more than the similarly attention-afflicted commercials -- whose agencies have spent the last few years teaming up with broadcasters on all sorts of creative approaches to keep folks tuned in, such as shorter pods, in-show tie-ins and the like,.

Mad Men is a virtual creative lab in this area. AMC, for instance, runs historical factoids about the show's sponsors before and after their spots. And some Mad Men advertisers have now begun naval-gazing. They've become ad-industry obsessed, incorporating the process (albeit fictional) of creating ad campaigns into the commercials themselves.

The creative agencies obviously relish the spotlight Mad Men has thrown onto their profession (although they seem reluctant to move the depiction of the ad creation process into the 21st Century). So here's a modest proposal: toot your own horn with credits!

No, not end credits on the end of a 15-second spot (imagine how fast they'd need to fly by!). Rather, an idea borrowed from MTV, which some 20 years ago took another short-form TV medium, the music video, and slapped director credits onto them.

Wouldn't it be cool to see who directed the current Hotels.com Claymation commercial while it airs instead of via YouTube, where you'll find out it's Rich Webber. Perhaps he and others could become ad industry equivalents of Spike Jonze and other music video directors, who by the time they directed their first features were already familiar names to MTV watchers.

And while we're at it, let's give some on-air recognition to Y&R Chicago! Yes, Don Draper was jealous of Y&R's spacious New York offices earlier this season, but, really (fictionally?), that was 45 years ago. Maybe viewers would get a kick out of seeing that while Sterling Cooper has vanished from the ad game, several of its rivals that Mad Men sometimes mentions are still alive and breathing...and dressed in modern clothes, not as if they're about to attend a John Lindsay fund-raiser.

Unfortunately, for someone in Peggy's position, recognition and credit will always be dependent on the awards process -- and thus with whomever at the agency handles the nomination process. I'd suggest bonding with that person over coffee and a sandwich at Chock Full o' Nuts or the Automat . Or, if credit is so important, moving over to the TV business. In fact, thanks to my presence in 2010, I have evidence that Peggy will soon do exactly that. Her IMDB credits prove it!

Skidoo, Credits? Not So Fast!

Written, produced and directed by Les Luchter

Finding a Needle in a Haystack

2010-08-04T14:41:00.000-04:00

Movies in Brooklyn Bridge Park. Concerts in Prospect Park and Coney Island. Yes, summer in Brooklyn means lots of free entertainment. In 2010, it also means crowds. Very large crowds.

It's bad enough that you can now arrive ahead of time and end up wishing you had brought binoculars to better see The Big Lebowski. Or honed up on your tree-climbing skills for an unobstructed view of The Swell Season.

Turns out that one of the worst parts of being way back in the crowd is being forced to listen to folks around you providing rendezvous directions to wayward friends.

You'd think that mobile capabilities would have made this whole process easier. Maybe people are finding each other easily via texting or social networks. Perhaps there's an app that brings two people together via incredibly accurate GPS. But, scrunched on our blanket in Brooklyn Bridge Park, hemmed in by sweaty bodies, enduring the wafting smell of cheese and bug repellent, my wife and I are oblivious to any of that.

Instead, we hear a French-accented twenty-something guy, who's already appropriated the upper back quadrant of our blanket, shouting in our ear. No, he's talking very loudly into his cell phone: "Walk to zee bock, you'll see a bleu awning on zee right. I'm on zee left een front of zee tall light tower."

I look around. About 2,000 people are in this section of the park, surrounded by five tall light towers, with some 100 people directly in front of each. But, depending on what angle Pierre's friend is looking from, in "front" of the light pole can mean just about anywhere. Like finding a needle in a haystack!

I suppress a giggle and try to lose myself in a book. (By coincidence, I'm reading "Thomas Wolfe's "Only the Dead Know Brooklyn" in the anthology Brooklyn Noir 2. It's 1935, and the locals know how to give directions, with the proper accent: "Yuh take duh Fourt' Avenoo express, get off at Fifty-nint' Street, change to a Sea Beach local deh, get off at Eighteent" Avenoo an' Sixty-toid, an' den walk down foeh blocks.")

But back to the present. The minutes roll by and so do more silly directions in the background. Finally, somehow, Pierre's friend shows up. The brie spreads. Our blanket gets more crowded. The movie starts and I get up on my knees to see over the basketball player in front of me.

In Prospect Park, the crowd is twice as large. We're ensconced beyond the fences of the main concert area. Stage way right, but we would actually see it if not for the portable toilets lined up and taunting us from inside the parameters. Expecting to get real seats, we brought no blanket. But we have room to stretch on the grass. And to enjoy the distant music amidst running kids and scampering dogs,

Then, from behind, we hear the booming voice of a Park Slope dad: "We're in the back, on the left side of the stage, near some bicycles, in front of a tree." I won't tell you how many bicycles are around or how many trees. Or how large an area he's talking about. My wife and I look at each other, and this time we burst out laughing. Rather than wait for the continuing directions, we pick ourselves up, scramble through the strollers, and move to a better vantage point.

A decade or so ago, when cell phones were not yet ubiquitous, we would frequently go to the even more crowded Bryant Park movies in Manhattan. And guess what? Latecomers found their friends. People would agree on pre-established locations, or folks would hold up distinct umbrellas with floppy bunny ears, or pitch posts adorned with colorful pennants.

In today's world of Facebook, Foursquare and Flashmob, gathering people together is the easy part. But Google the terms "finding people in a crowd" or "finding someone in a crowd" and you'll receive a mere handful of results. Pretty strange for a generation raised on "Where's Waldo!"

Anyone with any solutions to this problem, please chime in. Because providing your location via voice over a cell phone just doesn't seem to be the answer.

It's an old joke that men never ask for directions; they'd rather get lost seeking their way. I would venture that they shouldn't give directions and get others lost too, except that giving bad instructions in crowds cuts across gender lines.

In the midst of a throng of people exiting Prospect Park, a sweet feminine voice behind us cut through the chatter: "As you come into the park, you'll see a whole bunch of people leaving. Look for me."

Ok! And look for me when the Aretha Franklin concert gets rescheduled. I'll be in the back surrounded by a bunch of people, a lot of whom have lawn chairs. In front of some trees....

More of Les: The Album

2010-06-11T09:40:00.000-04:00

Turns out if you're looking for this blog and Google the terms "More of Les" and "blogspot," your top result will transport you to a rare record album of that name by Les Elgart and his Orchestra on the out-of-print music blog "Hooked on Stereophonic."

Before this discovery, I knew of neither Les Elgart nor his music. Of course, I immediately downloaded the album, hoping to add an overlooked masterpiece - with a great title - to my music collection. Alas, I was greatly disappointed. "More of Les," the LP version, proved to be passable swing music, but nothing that would have set the world afire upon its release in 1956.

Yes, just as rock 'n roll was catching fire, Les Elgart started one of the last Big Bands!

A sure recipe for failure, you say? Maybe not. For starters, in an ironic twist, one of Elgart's compositions would become a rock institution - he wrote the theme for Dick Clark's long-running American Bandstand (with lyrics later added by Barry Manilow!) And 50-odd years later, the Les Elgart Orchestra is still around - 15 years after the bandleader's death in 1995 just shy of his 78th birthday. I'd love to steer you to a Les Elgart Orchestra show near you, but the last gig listed on the band's website was this past Sunday afternoon at a Vietnamese restaurant in Plano, Texas.

So, as Gary Vaynerchuk might say, follow your passions! There's an audience for what you love, and you'll be able to cash in on it. Even if it means decades of playing weddings and cruise ships.

But I haven't actually come to blogland today to talk about Les Elgart's music. Les Elgart might as well be Les Brown, for all my knowledge of big bands. I'm really writing because "Hooked on Stereophonic" has got me hooked on the "More of Les" album cover pictured above.

The art is a great example of what so many have missed since music distribution switched first to cassettes, then to CDs, and now to online. As the "Hooked on Stereophonic" blogger wrote, the "More of Les" art is both "amazing and obscure." And, I'd add, a good example of a collage cover a decade before Sgt. Pepper.

Seems that when record buyers got "More of Les," they got all sides of his personality. He's serious, he's playful, he's menacing, he's got a childish streak... he's even got a feminine side!

But most of all, he's self-denigrating - having fun at the expense of himself. I like that.

Besides the art, I also like the album's title, of course. And since Columbia Records (and its current parent Sony) has kept this record out of print, and has objected neither to my use of the title nor "Hooked on Stereophonic's" use of the music, perhaps they also wouldn't care if I borrowed the art permanently?

After all, I've been bombarded recently by blog postings, email newsletters, etc., etc., imploring me to improve my personal branding. And visual representation is certainly part of any brand's image. Apparently, this blog needs a logo, and some anonymous record album designer from a half-century ago may just have supplied me with one. Today, I'm sure he or she would be a web designer!

Elvis Presents E! Entertainment Television

2010-05-24T10:39:00.000-04:00

Too bad nobody won this blog's "guess that group" contest a few posts back. One item destined for the prize package was a rare "Elvis" audio cassette involved in the launch of E! Entertainment Television 20 years ago come June 1.

Don't expect the network of Chelsea Handler, celebrity scandals and salaciousness, however, to say anything about the role the King of Rock played in its launch. So I will.

Actually, I said it all two decades ago in a trade magazine called Cable Marketing. The May 1990 issue marked the magazine's relaunch, with a spiffy new design and editorial attitude (we later won an Ozzie Award for best mag relaunch, given by another now-defunct pub called Magazine Design & Production). And, inaugurating a new section reviewing industry marketing campaigns, the spotlight turned to E!

Nobody's put the Cable Marketing archives online yet, so I've typed in the article I penned back then, which follows. In 1990, we included the text of the Elvis song lyrics alongside the article. In 2010, you don't have to read the lyrics - you can hear them through this link:

Market Review
Why We're All Shook Up About E! Entertainment Television

Elvis teased us, but we loved it.
A launch announcement that worked.

This was originally going to be a news story about how Movietime announced its upcoming name change via a masterful Elvis Presley tease campaign to the press and major MSOs. The story was scheduled to go in our "Promotional Showcase" column, but was pulled because we couldn't get details about the campaign from the main source -- Movietime. So we decided to write this review instead.

Sheri Herman, senior vp of marketing for Movietime, feels a news story about the Elvis campaign would convey the wrong impression about the new E! Entertainment Television. We disagree. In the press release delivered to our office by one of E!'s Elvis impersonators, network president and ceo Lee Masters called E!'s attitude "fun, stylish and imaginative." And that's exactly what the Elvis campaign was all about.

The month-long tease began on Valentine's Day with delivery of red roses and a card with the message, "You're in my thoughts" and signed by Elvis. A few days later, a mailgram arrived. It read simply, "Are you ready to get all shook up?" and was again signed by you-know-how. Future mailgrams read "I hope you're as excited as I am" and "Are you lonesome tonight? I'll be with you tomorrow."

Sometime during this process, we also received a full-color postcard with Elvis' picture and the message, "And soon I'll be with you in person."

Finally, there was the phone call: Elvis himself, somehow using his song titles to tell us he'd be seeing us the next day.

And, sure enough, the next morning, we were buzzed by our hysterical receptionist, Bea. "Someone's here to see you," she managed to get out between laughs. We knew immediately who had arrived, and we scurried downstairs from our penthouse digs to meet The King.

There was Elvis, in his blue jumpsuit, sequins aglittering -- accompanied by a guy in dark suit and shades who we assumed to be his combination promotion man/bodyguard/...maybe guardian angel?

Anyway, we all went into the publisher's office where, to everyone's delight, Elvis commenced to belt out -- to the tune of Heartbreak Hotel -- the story of Movietime's transition into E! No, not the Elvis network, but Entertainment Television.

Well, let me tell you. Our parent company, Jobson Publishing, puts out magazines on everything from eyeglasses to beverages to pharmaceuticals. And what do you thing the secretaries and other office help -- yes, even the ad salespeople -- were talking about for the next couple of days? Certainly not the latest lens design, wine cooler or anti-baldness drug. No, they were all abuzz about Elvis -- and full of questions about which cable network was so innovative promotion-wise.

Without Movietime/E's cooperation, we can't tell you how much this all cost, or how many Elvises were sent around, or even who came up with the idea in the first place. We do know something about effective promotion, however, And we're willing to bet Movietime/E! got its money's worth with Elvis. After all, we haven't even the foggiest memory of how HBO first announced The Comedy Channel or how MTV unveiled its plans for HA!

As this month's issue shows, Cable Marketing -- like Movietime/E! -- is itself involved in a relaunch, with our own new logo, graphics and editorial format. Part our change is to run reviews such as this, even at the risk of offending industry suppliers. Masters, in fact, could have been describing the new Cable Marketing when he called E! "vibrant, contemporary and forward-looking."

So, here's to the future, E! Continue the good work. Keep to your vision of an entertainment network, and we're sure you'll make strides. At the same time, we'll keep to our vision of a marketing magazine. But we promise, we'll try to never mention Elvis and E! in the same sentence again.

Alas, E!'s vision proved far more enduring than Cable Marketing's -- Jobson pulled the plug on us less than six months later. But somehow, that editorial encapsulated my world view on PR, marketing and journalism. Indeed, after I went into PR, I framed the article and hung it on my office wall -- until the main protagonist Sheri Herman became a client of our agency. By then, she was president of the ambitious and far-too-ahead-of-its-time (1995-97) American Cybercast, whose pioneering online video shows included the soap opera series The Spot, described here in a now-amusing clip from the syndicated series Extra:

I'm sure that E! also covered The Spot, although no clip has yet surfaced on YouTube. Because as irritating as the network may seem to those of us who take our television seriously, there's no denying that E!'s always kept up with the pulse of the public, not to mention the Kardashians.

So happy birthday E! What were you expecting? Another tongue-lashing?

Heroes and Villains

2010-04-29T11:27:00.000-04:00

I spent several hours this past weekend watching writers perform as singers and musicians.

First up: the Rock Bottom Remainders at the grandiose Nokia Theatre in Times Square, with esteemed authors Mitch Albom, Dave Barry, Amy Tan, Scott Turow and others daring to display classic rock chops on such tunes as Mustang Sally, Gloria and, of course, Paperback Writer.

Then, at the tiny Jalopy Theatre in a remote corner of Brooklyn's Red Hook, pop culture writer David Hajdu promoted his recent book of essays, Heroes and Villains, both by reading an excerpt and playing backup guitar for his wife, singer Karen Oberlin, in a concert of relevant songs. Another musician onstage was critic James Marcus, author of Amazonia: Five Years at the Epicenter of the dot.com Juggernaut.

I ended up at both of these shows as offshoots of my PR work. Looking to see if paidContent had covered news from one of my online advertising clients, I stumbled upon a ticket giveaway for the Rock Bottom show. I learned about the Jalopy event while pitching an author event to sponsor Freebird Books.

PaidContent didn't cover my news, and Freebird has yet to respond to my author suggestion. But they're hardly villains in my mind. In fact, they're more like heroes for connecting me to two great shows.

And those singing and strumming writers? Well, the Rock Bottom Remainders perform for worthy causes (in New York, World Vision, the 92nd Street Y, America's Promise Alliance and We Give Books), and that's certainly heroic. As for Hajdu? Kudos for coming up with a novel approach to book publicity in an era of fewer bookstores and shrinking publisher support!

Last year, The Book Publicity Blog suggested teaming up authors and musicians to draw better attendance at author events. But how much cooler to make them the same person!

Maybe I can convince my author client to take singing lessons?

People Relationships

2010-04-14T14:05:00.000-04:00

In my PR guise, I recently pitched some news to the Android PR Gal, who runs the quite informative (well, for Android users at least) What's Up Android site. I assumed PR Gal was also also a public relations flack..until she informed me that the "PR" in her case stood for "People Relationships."

"I believe there needs to be a new way of doing PR," she emailed, "especially within the context and environments of social media platforms. I like to call what I do building 'people relationships,' in order to establish authenticity and connectedness with a brand, service, product, etc."

Well whatever her PR stands for, she's good at it. Because she sure sold me. People Relationships just has a better ring to it than Public Relations.

And Android Gal is sure good at establishing people relationships through all those social media platforms. Besides her site and her blog, she tweets, she's got a YouTube channel, hosts a Facebook fan site and ...well, you name it, she seems to be on it. Just doing a Google search on her is like taking a tour of the expanding social media world.

And it doesn't stop there. While I'm still working on establishing one personal brand, Android PR Gal has at least three of them -- she's also DigitalFemme, not to mention her own real name. Plus, she apparently has a full-time job too!

Of course, Android PR Gal is just an example -- a good one -- of today's new breed of PR practitioner. Because the "public" in PR finally means just that -- thanks to social media, we're increasingly cutting out "media" as the gatekeepers and instead going straight to the "people." And "relationships" is a more precise term than "relations." After, all, PR folk are no longer just trying to relate info that eventually gets to the public, but to build real links in real time with real people.

So, when the next person asks me what I do for a living, I might not yet be able to say, 'I practice people relationships." But if I say, "I do PR," I'll be ready with a whole new explanation.

The Interns

2010-03-10T13:37:00.000-05:00

My niece is seeking a summer internship in the communications field, so I've been more attuned than usual to the proliferation of intern openings among the employment ads placed by media and PR companies. Indeed, you'd think that many companies are staffed predominantly by college kids working for school credits, a pittance, or just the sheer experience of it.

Undoubtedly, the lack of corporate budgets for fully paid positions during a recession is at least partly responsible for this situation. But why quibble? Internships can be great learning tools for students and employers alike. The more the merrier, as far I'm concerned (and as long as my niece is looking!)

But "Interns Over 40"? Come on now! I'm against age discrimination as much as anyone else who can remember a typewriter, but if I want to do volunteer work, there are opportunities aplenty with non-profits (i.e, Taproot, New York Cares, etc., etc.). I'd have no desire to take work away from skilled workers or internships away from all those college kids who are soon going to find it hard enough to get an entry-level gig.

With so many internships seemingly available, however, here's some advice for applicants: you may want to think smaller over bigger. Yes, here comes an example from my own youth. As a journalism student at Syracuse University (Go Orange!), I coveted an internship being offered by one of the local dailies (Herald-Journal? Post-Standard? Can't recall). I didn't get the spot. Instead, I ended up at a suburban weekly serving East Syracuse and neighboring communities.

I was in the dumps until I found out that the person who beat me out for the daily internship had been assigned -- as interns often are -- to a job nobody else wanted. He got the obituary beat! The poor guy had to call or visit people whose loved ones had just died and ask them for pertinent facts about the deceased. Meanwhile, I was assigned to look through his daily obituaries, note which of the deceased lived in our paper's coverage area, and rewrite those obits for our audience. I figured I'd gotten the better deal!

But I also got my own beat. Oh, did I mention that my paper had hired two interns? The other intern was assigned to cover East Syracuse, and I, once again, brought up the low end of the totem pole. My beat was the village of Minoa. As I remember it, Minoa was about four blocks wide and four blocks long, had a church, a grocery store, a town hall, and a police station. And thanks to Google Maps, I can say my memory hasn't faded. Okay, maybe the town's actually six blocks long.

Speaking of totem poles, the village leaders seemed to spend an awful amount of time at their meetings debating something called "pole barns." Trust me, kids, this is the type of thing that gets ingrained into your subconscious for the rest of your life.

Yet where else but a place like Minoa would I alone have made up 20% of the assembled multitudes at the town council meetings? Where else would a 20-year-old find himself educating the mayor at one of those meetings, when he noticed me taking notes and thus wanted to kick me out, that this was a public event and there was this little thing called the Freedom of Information Act? (No kidding -- you could look it up. It's in the meeting minutes, which must still be stored somewhere in the village archives.)

Yes, my Minoa internship prepared me well for my future work at the weekly Long Island Journal (where, at one point, the mayor of Long Beach stood in an elevator, not realizing I was right behind him, and declared to his associates in quite colorful language that he was sick of the city and would be packing up and moving out overnight -- my first big scoop!) and the Brooklyn Daily Bulletin (yes, there was such a paper - you could look that up too!), into my transition to trade journalism, later to public relations, and all the way to this blog.

I just wish I had an internship to offer someone!

P.S. - Last week's Shop Around contest is still open. Be the first to identify the group singing the Smokey Robinson classic and you win! Interns welcome!

You've Got to Shop Around

2010-03-02T11:34:00.000-05:00

|
Regular readers of More of Les (yes, there are a few of you -- thanks!) may have noticed that this blog recently began including links to Amazon products. Rest assured that this wasn't a hostile takeover.

I had been doing some work related to affiliate marketing, so when the great folks at Google Blogger (this blog's host -- see my full disclosure here) informed me that I could now become an Amazon Associate, I jumped at the opportunity to experience this lucrative world firsthand.

I'd also be providing a service for my readers. After all, each More of Les post is required to include one or more audio or video clips (seriously, it's in my contract!), but the selections often go unidentified (hey, I really have no desire to appear in search results for, let's say, rabid fans of the song featured in my previous posting). So the Amazon links would serve not only to reveal titles and performers, but also allow you, if it's your desire, to purchase and keep your own copies of the featured selection.

So if you buy a particular song for 99 cents from the related Amazon ad, I get a miniscule portion of that hefty price. I've previously elaborated on all the nickels I can earn from Google Adsense, which provides the other ads surrounding this prose, so the extra Amazon income would be like icing on the cake!

Alas, Amazon has noticed that none of you have yet to make any purchases. They've sent me an email, its subject line imploring me to "Start Making Money" with a few suggestions of "quick and easy steps" to improve my sales.

For example, I can add one of several Amazon widgets to the blog or even turn the entire thing into an Amazon store!

Frankly, I think the More of Les site is already a mite cluttered, packed with everything from video and audio widgets (with Hulu and Dizzler providing fine services respectively) to my Twitter feed, your comments, and those aforementioned Adsense ads all over the place,

So no, More of Les won't become an Amazon store portal. Plenty of deserving non-profits (i.e., my favorite radio station, WFUV) will happily take a cut of your purchase price on any item if you would just access Amazon through them. That's how I'd suggest you do your shopping, after checking out comparison shopping tools, of course.

Today, when even yours truly is a seller, it's more important than ever for buyers to shop around. Oh yes, for this post, I deliberately selected a version of the Smokey Robinson classic, Shop Around, that's not available from Amazon. So there's no ad down below identifying the artist and asking for your 99 cents.

But, as a lover of promotional marketing, I'm going to use this as an excuse to run my first contest! The first reader to correctly identify the artist not only proves his or her Internet deduction skills, but wins a specially selected audio or video prize -- and becomes the first More of Les affiliate partner!

The Waiting Game

2010-02-16T10:53:00.000-05:00

I've been thinking lately about rejection. No, not on the personal level. Rather, the types of rejections received by freelance writers when querying publications, anybody when applying for jobs, and PR pros when pitching journalists. Or maybe I should say the lack of rejection.

Because in today's busy, busy, busy business world, that's what seems to happen most often. You hear nothing back at all. You wait...and wait...and wait.

And that's a shame, since email should be making the rejection process so easy. After all, nobody anymore needs to type a letter on a sheet of paper, fold it, stick it in an envelope, and mail it. Or even just print a page from the computer and feed it into a fax machine. All anyone has to do is compose an email and hit "Send."

I can hear the snickers now. There's so much email coming in. There's no time to open each one, hit "Reply," type a short message or even just paste a form letter into text, and then hit "Send." It's so much easier and faster to just hit "Delete."

So I've devised a solution -- all that's needed is a techie to develop it. Instead of hitting "Delete" or "Reply," let's add another option to the email toolbar or pull-down menu: a "Reject" button.

When "Reject" is pushed, a pre-written form letter will automatically be sent to the original sender. For journalists rejecting PR folk like me, this could say something like, "Sorry. Can't do your story now. Go pitch it elsewhere." The pitchee is saved from having to endure even more emails and phone calls. The pitcher can move on to the next target.

For editors rejecting freelance writers: "Your idea is excellent but doesn't meet our needs at this time, etc.."

For HR execs rejecting job applicants: "Your qualifications are impeccable, but we have decided to go in another direction."

Sounds crass, but sure beats the waiting game.

Into the Woods...

2010-02-01T11:11:00.000-05:00

"J.D. Salinger worked in PR briefly. Maybe that's what drove him into the woods for 40 years." When I saw that tweet last week from Mark Ragan, I realized that I'd been somewhat in the woods myself. Not 40 years obviously, just a bit over 40 days since my last blog post.

But as with Salinger (and here my comparisons with the literary great will end, lest I be a classic phony - as far as I'm concerned, when you write a work as great as The Catcher in the Rye, or Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, you have the perfect right to live the rest of your life as you goddamn well please), just because I've been in public seclusion doesn't mean I haven't been writing. That's often the hidden side of public relations, even if PR might tend to drive you a bit crazy.

So, in addition to the occasional visible tweet, I've been busily penning press releases, bylined articles, speaking proposals, promotional letters, academic action plans, conference agendas, you name it. Just nothing with my name on it.

But a group of my friends were talking the other day about how Jane Austen couldn't publish under her own name during her own time (a personal shout-out here to Ann Henrendeen, whose distinctive take on Austen, Pride/Prejudice , has just been published by HarperCollins) and how Mary Anne Evans was forced to become George Eliot.

Oh, to live in the 21st Century, when you don't even need a HarperCollins to get published (though it certainly helps); at the very least, anyone can write essays and distribute them via blogs.

JD Salinger didn't tweet, blog or Facebook (is that a verb?). I doubt he even emailed. Indeed, in the 2002 flick, The Good Girl (not to be confused with the current TV series The Good Wife), when Justine (perhaps Jennifer Aniston's most ambitious role) tells the Holden Caufield-inspired character (played by Jake Gyllenhall), "you're not very social," he replies, "I'm a writer." (see clip below)

So with Social Media Week (an attempt to get social media fanatics socializing in person rather than virtually) beginning today in six cities worldwide, I'm going to honor the memory of Salinger and his most famous character by hunkering down and writing, writing, writing. You'll hear from me again when I get out of the woods.

Playing by the Same Rules

2009-12-16T10:42:00.000-05:00

The FTC's new blogger rules have been in effect for a couple of weeks, so I'd like to affirm that I'm abiding by them.

"Bloggers who make an endorsement must disclose the material connections they share with the seller of the product or service," the agency states. I found that quote through Google, the greatest Internet tool ever (full disclosure: Google owns Blogger, which publishes and hosts this blog for free).

OK, I stretched things to make a point: the new guidelines are open to wide interpretation.

For one thing, they apply only to "bloggers or other "word of mouth" marketers." Talk about semantics!

The difference between a blog, and let's say, an online newsletter is often in the eyes of the beholder. Indeed many online news sources can also be received in blog form. Take the many wonderful newsletters at MediaPost (very full disclosure: I have provided editorial services to MediaPost in the past, for which I have received compensation, and my wife currently works there, also in exchange for cash payments).

The point is that the average Internet user, having found something through search, often does not distinguish -- or care -- whether it's technically a blog post, a newsletter writeup or a newspaper review. So why should the FTC make such distinctions?

After all, scores of smaller trade magazines and community newspapers (think restaurant reviews) have run editorial in exchange for advertising (or meals) for many decades (not-quite-disclosure: I've worked for a couple of the former, but this is definitely not an endorsement of such practices, so they shall remain nameless). It's how such publications managed to survive, even when there was no recession underway.

Today, amidst the overall advertising downturn, these media outlets are moving online. You could argue that the FTC should be totally fair to other online journalists and force these print publication offshoots to also provide full disclosure. But why should they be forced to change their longstanding policies?

When I worked at such publications, I fought voraciously against providing special editorial favors for advertisers. But there's a difference between press ethics and freedom of the press. The former is something journalists and publishers should strive to achieve; the latter is guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution.

So, rather than government regulators, let's depend on ethics: of individual bloggers to do the right thing, and on advertisers (and yes, PR folks like me) to make sure of it. For bloggers who instead violate the public trust, the Internet provides plenty of tools for people to spread the word about the violators.

In any case, I vow to continue abiding by full disclosure. So any advertiser who would like me to endorse something, please send it along :) Tis the season, after all!

"Oh, publishers are such interesting people;
It could be press-titution, I don't know.

Ting-a-ling-a-ling, advertising.
Ting-a-ling-a-ling, circulation,
Get that payoff, keep those readers;
What a headache, what a mess.
Yes, publishers are such interesting people;
Let's give three cheers for freedom of the press."

- written by Vern Partlow, late 1940s

Don't Think, TWICE...

2009-12-02T15:04:00.000-05:00

Yesterday, a half-hour after receiving a “Breaking News” email from TWICE magazine announcing it had been sold, I received another email with the subject line, this time all caps, declaring “TWICE CES DAILY CLOSING.”

The logical conclusion? With the sale concluded, the new owners had decided to close down the magazine's daily editions at CES, January's giant consumer electronics show. But, lo and behold, the email was actually letting recipients know about an ad closing deadline!

I wanted to tweet that second email immediately as an example of how a poor subject line combined with poor timing can have unforeseen circumstances, but discovered I couldn’t do that. (If there’s an app for tweeting emails, I don’t have it.)

I wish I did, because a few hours later. at a launch party for a new virtual time travel world Next Island, David Post, the game's founder and CEO, informed me he head seen news that TWICE was shutting down. Unlike me, he hadn't had the time to actually open the second email! After I explained what had transpired, David pointed out that neither of us should have been receiving that email to begin with, since we aren't potential advertisers.

Who knows how many other folks on TWICE's email list also think the publication has shut down, or at least that it won't be publishing at CES next month? Perhaps whomever's in charge of crisis management at the magazine has been caught amidst the usual turmoil caused by an ownership change -- but it's now been about 28 hours and I'm still waiting for TWICE to send another email to its list that would clarify the matter.

Storing My Stuff...

2009-12-01T13:05:00.000-05:00

(lyrics and audio of "Computer Chanty" by Dr. Seti can also be found here)

So-called Cyber Monday got me thinking not about online shopping but about the seemingly infinite capacity of cyberspace.

Urban dwellers with bulging closets, who once sought out physical storage centers for their precious belongings, are today apt to move as much stuff as possible into the digital universe instead.

At this point in time, this mainly means media memories -- stacks of records, tapes, snapshots, slides and the like. Personally, I'm on a painstaking, multi-year (perhaps multi-decade??) mission to digitize all my old media, starting with audiocassettes and photos, and then moving on to vinyl and finally video.

This requires lots and lots of digital storage space. So last year I added an external drive to my Mini Mac in order to store all the music and photos. But, after my Mac's hard drive died a few weeks ago, I began getting really worried about the external drive crashing, too. Especially after Walt Mossberg in The Wall Street Journal wrote about external drives' prevalence to do just that.

Taking Walt's advice, I decided it was time to enlist an online service to back up my music and photo files. The industry calls this SaaS (Software as a Service), part of the cloud computing explosion where everything's done in cyberspace rather than on your own computer. So I headed off to the clouds.

First, I paid for Carbonite, downloaded the Mac version, and discovered it would not work with non-Intel-based Macs. I asked for a refund.

Then I went to Mozy, contacted customer support to make sure it would work on a Power PC-based Mac, downloaded the software, and then spent several days trying unsuccessfully to get it to upload my files. Again, I asked for a refund.

I bypassed Walt's third and final example -- SugarSync -- and decided to try Crashplan instead. It's still backing up my files after several days, so I don't know if it will actually work in the end. But Crashplan offers 30 days free, not even requiring a credit card upfront, so if it fails at least I won't need to ask for a refund!

That, by the way, is the best kind of cyber shopping!

As God is My Witness...

2009-11-24T22:59:00.000-05:00

I was going to write about turkeys masquerading as SaaS online storage solutions, but decided I'd rather just offer the above classic of TV comedy (if not radio promotion). Happy Thanksgiving!

Failure is Not an Option...

2009-11-17T10:12:00.000-05:00

At WebbyConnect NYC last week, Steve Wax, managing partner of marketing firm Campfire, stated his companys' business philosophy: "The Greatest Success Comes from Failure."

Not everyone can afford to fail, though, which may be why the far more popular phrase (662,000 Google results vs. two) is "Failure is Not an Option," used by the very best business brains, as shown in the clip above. And why most of us prefer to say that we learn from our mistakes, rather than that we succeed from our failures.

I discovered a couple of my own mistakes during that same WebbyConnect confab. As BermanBraun's Lloyd Braun was about to extoll the virtues of MSN's Wonderwall (it scrolls horizontally, not vertically!) and other examples of branded entertainment, I checked on this blog and discovered that nobody was reading my latest post, Survival of the Couch Potato! Why? The explanation had to be that I had posted in the evening and then sent out my social media notifications in the early morning -- while my audience is basically a 9 to 5 crowd.

So I've learned from my mistakes. This is being posted at a decent time (just ignore whatever time it says below -- Google's Blogger, my host, has apparently decided I'm on the West Coast, and I'll let them have final say in the matter).

As for failure, the day after WebbyConnect, my hard drive died. Thanks to the great work of the folks at Tekserve, the problem was fixed by the next day. I'm still waiting for my greatest success.

Survival of the Couch Potato

2009-11-10T20:08:00.000-05:00

So TV isn’t dying after all! In fact, it turns out that Americans are watching more TV than ever, according to Nielsen.

The average household now watches 20% more television than 10 years ago, when the first Internet pundits had already been predicting the death of the older medium. Oops, did I say 10 years ago? Let’s go back 20 years, pre-Internet, to George Gilder’s book Microcosm: The Quantum Revolution In Economics And Technology, which actually included a chapter titled “The Death of Television.” "In an age when computers will be responsive to voice, touch, joysticks, keyboards, mice and other devices,” Gilder wrote, “television is inherently passive, a couch potato medium.”

Old dogma dies hard. Just a day before Nielsen’s latest report, TG Daily ran the following headline: “AMD Claims TV Couch Potatoes are Dead." Bad timing aside, Jonathan Seckler, senior manager for the computer hardware company more formally known as Advanced Micro Devices, declared, “Television is a fad and the end of television can be seen. Entertainment has become much more visual [sic] intense. People do things now with all that video. People take entertainment with them and don't just go home and watch what happens to be streaming through the air at that time. You can see the end of couch potatoes."

Except that Americans have an awful lot of couches. And they have more TV sets than ever, so where there’s a couch, there’s bound to be a television. They have more channels to choose from than ever. They have high definition pictures. They have on-demand services. They have DVRs, the ultimate time-delay device. All this means that nobody ever says anymore, “There’s nothing on TV.”

Note also that primetime viewing is actually flat from a year earlier. The average family no longer plops down in front of the master TV and watchew together anymore. Household members come in and out all day (or night) and construct individual TV schedules based on their own lifestyles.

And the Nielsen numbers don’t even take into effect the TV shows being viewed on Internet screens via Hulu and its ilk, or on iPods, or on mobile devices.

Credit for at least some of the increase in TV viewing must also go, ironically perhaps, to the promotional power of Web tie-ins and social network buzz.

Of course, social networking and Internet use are also up in American households, often being done at the same time as TV viewing. The former activities provide the interactivity that the Gilders, Secklers and other pundits have been expounding on over the years. And, judging by the continuing failure of interactive TV schemes, the TV set provides the passivity that Americans seem to take as their birthright.

What's My Line?

2009-11-04T11:02:00.000-05:00

At a Freelancers Union workshop I attended last year, Smart Networking guru Liz Lynch stressed the importance of a strong opening line when forging strategic relationships.

But am I a freelancer? A consultant? A small business? All of the above? Or one of dozens of other possibilities?

Earlier this year, doing PR on behalf of IAC-EZ, which provides online bookkeeping services to freelancers and the smallest of small businesses (three or less employees), I wanted to reach journalists who might cover trends involving the company’s target audience. So I began tracking relevant keywords.

Some journalists were indeed covering freelancers, consultants or small businesses. But I needed to add entrepreneurs and home-based businesses…self-employed, sole proprietors, independent workers, contract workers and independent contractors…even microbusiness, solopreneurs and homepreneurs. And I know I’ve forgotten a bunch.

As I pondered how to define my line of work for my line of introduction, the classic TV game show What’s My Line? came to mind. Looking for an appropriate video to lead off this post, I settled on the above clip from the very first episode in 1950 – due to its tidy tie-in to the World Series later that year, the only one to feature the Yankees and Phillies until this fall.

But while Yankee great Phil Rizzuto made sense to me, the celebrity panelists did not. Gossip columnist Dorothy Kilgallen was present. But not long-time panelist Arlene Francis. Certainly not Soupy Sales! And who were those three other, rather boring men?

I began to investigate. One panelist was soon-to-be-blacklisted poet Louis Untermeyer. Two were named Hoffman, although unrelated: Harold, a soon-to-be-scandalized ex-New Jersey governor – and Richard, a soon-to-be-forgotten neuropsychiatrist.

Unlike his fellow panelists, Dr. Richard Hoffman has earned no Wikipedia entry. His lasting claim to fame, based on my initial Google search? Appearing as a panelist on the first three episodes of What’s My Line?

But surely he must have done something to merit that slot. So I dug deeper, discovering that the press called Dr. Hoffman a “Park Avenue” psychiatrist, meaning his clients were rich – and often famous. Indeed, Dr. Hoffman was sort of the Dr. Phil of his day. He made the society pages by attending fancy parties. Decades before Lorraine Bracco on The Sopranos, he treated famed mobster Frank Costello. Other clients included actress Gloria Swanson and novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald. He was “resident psychiatrist” on a network radio series. He wrote books and contributed to Reader’s Digest.

He also provided expert testimony at celebrated trials, including what, pre-OJ, passed as the “Trial of the Century”– the 1930s case against Bruno Hauptmann for kidnapping and murdering Charles Lindbergh's baby, where Dr. Hoffman testified on behalf of the prosecution. But, once Hauptmann was convicted in that New Jersey-based case, guess who led the fight to overturn the verdict. Yes, the state's governor at the time -- the other Hoffman on the What's My Line? panel! (A tale of two Hoffmans, foreshadowing Abbie and Julius and yet another “Trial of the Century” some 20 years later!)

For whatever reason (lack of posthumous PR perhaps?), Dr. Richard Hoffman and his life's accomplishments have faded into obscurity. Fame, of course, can be fleeting. But so can entire occupations. And not just neuropsychiatry, which long ago split into psychiatry and neurology.

Watch the complete episode of the first What’s My Line? and you’ll see that the first two contestants were a hat check girl and a diaper service executive. But fashions change. Soon, men would stop wearing hats, and babies would go disposable.

As for the third contestant before the mystery guest? Well, veterinarians would seem to be forever.

So will the current trend of independent, self-employed, freelancing, home-based, entrepreneurial consultants prove as enduring as the family pet – or is my line destined to follow Dr. Richard Hoffman into history’s footnotes?