In both the marketing and academic worlds, you tend to meet a lot of people. Sometimes, those meetings lead to long-standing relationships. Occasionally, you even meet someone who truly excites you or gives you hope. That’s how I felt when I met Nick Gilyard.

A few weeks back, I was asked to speak to speak as part of a “Career Linkages Panel” organized by the Potter College of Arts and Letters at Western Kentucky University. Being a WKU alum, I spoke about my experience as a Hilltopper, where that work took me, and what I do today. Not surprisingly, the event gathered a small but dedicated group of students, some of the “cream of the crop” at WKU, and they asked a lot of good questions about what a student should do with a degree in the humanities when, so often, there’s a feeling that the humanities simply don’t lead to solid career options, a particular concern in our season of a turbulent job market.

When the event was over, I was told by one of the organizers that there was one student in particular who wanted to speak with me. I grabbed some hot chocolate and a Rice Krisipie treat (proof that WKU knows how to treat its guests) and sat down with Nick. And Nick, armed with a notepad and an array of questions, proceeded to ask me about my career and my life as a student–and lay out his own life-plan-in-development.

I soon came to realize that this enthusiastic and prepared young man was a freshman at WKU, standing in stark contrast from the upperclassmen who joined him in attendance. Rather than trying to think through what to do with the degree he was about to graduate with, Nick was trying to think about how he framed his WKU experience from the beginning and how he should build his undergraduate program in a way that would best prepare him for his future career.

Nick came to WKU from Miami Gardens, Florida. At Nova High School, he was one of the top-ranked debaters in the country through the National Forensic League. Gilyard is a member of The WKU Forensics Team. The forensics team is a nine-time National Forensic Association national champion and the only team to ever win both the NFA’s national title and national debate title, as well as the American Forensic Association’s title, in the same year (which it has done on five separate occasions).

It was debate that brought Nick to WKU, but he had quickly decided that public relations would be his career and that, to distinguish himself and blend his passions with his career, he was going to double-major in WKU’s popular culture program (as far as I can tell, one of only two Bachelor’s degrees in popular culture studies offered in the nation). And, given my own background in media studies and work at a PR agency, he asked a variety of questions about how to build his work at WKU from the beginning to get the most out of his college experience.

I was floored. Not that I don’t often meet inspired college students, but Nick was a freshman on a mission. A few days later, I received an invitation from Nick on LinkedIn (as our conversation included an in-depth discussion about ways social media allows students to interact with academics and professionals in ways few take advantage of) and an email follow-up.

If Nick retains this type of passion, I can only imagine what he’ll have to bring to the public relations field. His focus is matched by his desire to understand the world more broadly, to bring something to his work beyond just knowing how to “do” PR. I hope that he will be a source of inspiration to his peers at WKU and beyond. I know he’s certainly inspired me.

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This past week, my wife and I went to see Buried, Ryan Reynolds’ latest flick about a truck driver in Iraq in 2006 who is attacked and kidnapped by someone who wants a ransom from the U.S. government. What I expected was a suspense film appealing to our collective human claustrophobia. I got that, but I ended up with something I didn’t expect: a film about customer service. A fair warning: in this analysis, spoilers abound.

For those readers who may not be familiar with Buried, it’s largest point of promotion was that the film only physically stars Reynolds. The entire 90 minutes or so are spent with Reynolds’ character, Paul Conroy, trapped inside a coffin, buried beneath the ground. We see no flashbacks or fantasy sequences. The film just begins with Conroy waking up inside the coffin.

He does, however, have a phone. And that phone ends up being Conroy’s only way of communicating with the outside world and to try to find a way out of his predicament. In other words, we have an individual with a problem that needs to be solved: the perfect premise for a customer service film.

In his case, the problem that needs solving is that Conroy is buried beneath the ground somewhere in Iraq, with no way to escape or to tell people exactly where he is. And much of the drama is developed through Reynolds’ various efforts to get in touch with entities to resolve his issue. Let’s examine the various customer service interactions Conroy has, and the communication experience he has with each of these entities:

1.) 911 Emergency Response: One of Conroy’s first reactions is to call 911. Understandable, perhaps, given how ingrained that response is in our heads. He ends up connected with a responder in Youngstown, Ohio (not sure why it was routed to that 911 center in particular, and neither was Conroy or the responder). To her credit, the woman he is connected to seems to be thinking on her feet. He tells her that he’s locked in a coffin. She asks him if he’s in a funeral home and questions why he got in the coffin. Conroy, disoriented, is not that helpful at explaining his situation, and we can imagine the woman is trying to work through whether his call is a prank while still trying to take him seriously. When she finally hears him say that he’s calling from Iraq and understands his predicament a bit more, the responder says, “The country?” before offering to connect him to the sheriff’s department. Conroy hangs up at that point. Considering how out of context Conroy’s call would be (since we the viewer have been watching him trapped inside a box, but that reality would not be easy to catch onto sitting in a cubicle in Youngstown), she handled herself well and tried to think on her feet. However, once she got a better grasp on what his situation was, the customer service rep might have admitted not knowing what to do to help him but have pledged to quickly use the greater resources she had at her disposal (Internet, a landline phone, etc.) to find someone to address his situation, since both Conroy and the responder know that the county sheriff wouldn’t do him much good.

2.) 411 Directory Assistance: At one point, Conroy decides to contact the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Not having their number handy in the coffin, he calls directory assistance and gets the typical “city/state” questions. He is asked which city, to which he explains that it doesn’t matter to him and that he is stuck in an emergency. The operator, needing him to pick an option, calmly reiterates the list, angering Conroy. Before the operator connects him, we hear an exasperated, “You don’t have to be rude.” Again, perhaps the customer service deserves a B-. In this case, the operator has no idea of this man’s predicament, and Conroy is not in the frame of mind to think about the situation from the operator’s perspective. Considering the situation, the operator is helpful. However, the comment of exasperation from the operator came from the operator’s lack of empathy with the situation a caller might be in, likely due in part from the very short nature of the operator’s interaction with callers.

3.) The FBI: My movie memory gets a bit fuzzy here (and I will be happy to update this section if any enterprising readers can help fill in the gaps), but Conroy’s call starts off not seeming so promising. The predicament he finds himself in is obviously not one that the Chicago field office regularly gets calls on, and he gets routed to an office. The gentleman he talks with likewise doesn’t seem very helpful nor very empathetic at first but ends up connecting Conroy to someone at the State Department. The person at the State Department is quite rude to him at times, keeping standard lines about not paying ransom, and doesn’t demonstrate much compassion for Conroy’s plight but is helpful, giving him a number to call a special agent stationed in Iraq who helps with hostage situations. On the one hand, it’s impressive that Conroy gets successfully routed to the right place (and that the State Department already has information flagged on Conroy from his employer; more on that later); on the other, her tone and lack of compassion only aggravates Conroy more.

4.) Dan Brenner: From the beginning, this hostage specialist seems to be the first person who deeply cares about Conroy. He works his way through Conroy’s frustrations, is stern with him when he isn’t listening or isn’t helpful but also compassionate and understanding. Dan is never condescending and takes seriously Conroy’s concerns and criticisms throughout their conversation. He expresses regret when he can’t, for instance, pay the ransom, and he is honest with Conroy about his likelihood of being rescued and tempers optimism with realism. Crucially, when Conroy presses that he bets Dan doesn’t care about the people who have been kidnapped, he assures him he does and names one person in particular who really connected with him. When Conroy asked how that person ended up, there’s a pause, and Dan says that he ended up safely back home with his family. The conclusion of the film reveals, however, that this reassuring story was actually fabricated only to placate Conroy. On the one hand, we might say the representative was doing all he could to keep Conroy calm in a bad situation. On the other, his lack of truthfulness might be read as another sign of corporate obfuscation.

5.) Conroy’s Employer: The definite service villain of the film, however, is Conroy’s employer. When he first contacts the company to tell them of the attack, he is grilled as to why he did not follow protocol and call the emergency number. Then, after having no luck with the receptionist, he is connected to the voicemail of Alan Davenport, an HR specialist. Later, in perhaps the most sickening scene in the film, Davenport calls back, presumably to offer support for Conroy. Instead, he ends up recording Conroy, telling him they had reports of an inappropriate relationship with a female employee (claims that are never resolved one way or another in the film), and telling him that he had, in fact, been terminated immediately, meaning the company had no liability for the situation he found himself in, could not be held liable, and would not have to pay out any applicable insurance claims. Davenport forces an hystical Conroy to acknowledge that he had heard these claims and ignores his calls for distress. One reviewer said this HR experience for Conroy is “so evil that we in the audience may desire to overthrow capitalism.”

Perhaps director Rodrigo Cortés didn’t want to promote Buried as a customer service film, but I’m thinking the film may be a sign of a new genre in development. After all, we’ve seen customer service outrage drive spreadability online, and everyone can empathize with a poor experience in dealing with “customer care.” Over the past year, I’ve had the pleasure of getting to know Emily Yellin, author of Your Call Is (not that) Important to Us, a history and analysis of the customer service in the United States. Yellin tells me that, everywhere she goes, everyone has a customer service story they passionately want to share…and the many customer service professionals working in our country today similarly have stories of outrage to share.

In the past few years, we’ve seen folk heroes emerge such as Mona “The Hammer” Shaw, who, in 2007, destroyed a computer and phone at a Comcast office with a hammer after having her customer service issue ignored on repeated occasions by the company. On the employee’s side, who could forget Steven Slater’s rise to prominence earlier this year after he delivered a rant to a belligerent passenger on a JetBlue flight upon landing, grabbed a beer, and bailed on the flight through the plane’s emergency chute. And then there’s the famous incident between director Kevin Smith and Southwest Airlines back in February, when Smith was denied his seat in a tussle over the airlines’ obesity requirement. (Perhaps Smith is already working on film ideas for this fledgling genre?)

So to any Hollywood types that might be reading: will there be more customer service flicks to come? Are there others in the recent past that join Buried as the pioneers for a new genre?

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On Monday, Oct. 18, at 2:04 a.m, I received an email from Chevron Investor Relations. I wasn’t awake then, but at 6:15 a.m. or so, I read the release. The claim–that Chevron was taking direct responsibility for the mistakes they have made and included quotes like this one: “For decades, oil companies like ours have worked in disadvantaged areas, influencing policy in order to do there what we can’t do at home. It’s time this changed.”

Such candid transparency seemed too good to be true. And, as many readers probably know by now, it was. I realized after looking through the release’s links that, while the design of the press room they mentioned quite closely mimicked the Chevron site and linked back to various Chevron sites, the URL was a bit different. Further, I went to the actual Chevron corporate site and looked at their press room. Turns out, Chevron was kicking off a campaign that the fake site closely mirrored, but the existence of a much less risky “We Agree” campaign on what seemed to be the legitimate corporate site for Chevron assured me that a hoax was at play.

At the time, not many reports had been filed about the middle-of-the-night email. A couple of sites had already picked up on it as legitimate news. I emailed the example around to the team at Peppercom and went on about my day. And, ever since, the news has really exploded about the stunt, revealed to be the latest project of the controversial Yes Men.

The Yes Men have a long history of pulling stunts that dupe people as a way of drawing attention to a legitimate event. In the U.K., they purported that Dow Chemical was going to pay reparations totaling $12 billion for the chemical disaster in Bhopal by posing as a spokesperson from Dow on the BBC, sending Dow stocks down tremendously. In the U.S., hoaxes have included staging a press conference from the Chamber of Commerce and claiming to have reversed the Chamber’s policy on climate change, as well as posing as HUD to announce that housing projects which were sitting vacant would be re-opened in New Orleans.

Not surprisingly, many initially picked up on the hoax. Even Fast Company initially reported the Yes Men press release as legitimate–and later issued a mea culpa, with credit given to the elaborate lengths The Yes Men went to. I had a chance to get some comments on the hoax from Dave Samson, General Manager of Public Affairs for Chevron. Samson said, “In reality, I believe these pranks only serve to marginalize those groups who engage in such deceptive behaviors.”

Yet, hoaxes have a deep history in our culture. Back in August, I wrote a piece about our fascination with figures like P.T. Barnum, Andy Kaufman, and World Wrestling Entertainment’s Vince McMahon who constantly blur the distinction between fantasy and reality. The WWE has been known for having Vince McMahon the character die on screen, only to issue a “legitimate” press release to further purport McMahon’s demise. Back in 1835, The New York Sun ran a series of articles from a purported scientific study which had discovered life on the moon. While, as the series went on, it became obvious to many readers it was a work of fiction, the Sun never openly admitted that the story was not legitimate.

Another hoax of this sort happened last year in the U.K., after Tory MP Chris Grayling made a comment comparing Moss Side in Manchester to the Baltimore depicted in The Wire. A blogger named Alex Hilton decided to “produce” a response from the Baltimore Mayor Sheila Dixon, creating a replica of the mayor’s site and ultimately getting “her” comments picked up by The Guardian in the U.K. and The Baltimore City Paper.

I’m fascinated by these sorts of performances and firmly believe they play a crucial role in our society. Not only might they bring major issues to public consciousness in the sort of way that will make people talk to them, but they also serve as a constant warning not to take any report we read at face value, to always be questioning. By demonstrating that journalists are human beings that can be duped as well, these elaborate stunts encourage readers to be more discerning and journalists to double-check sources. In a digital era where a much wider portion of our citizens have access to publishing tools, these sorts of performances will become increasingly commonplace, as it puts publishing tools in the hands of activist groups who would not have had them before while also playing to our longstanding love of roleplaying and tricking one another.

However, while these hoaxes can drive public attention to crucial issues, I am concerned when “regular” non-profit organizations get involved. Just as politicians rail on “the system” when running for office only to become much less productive once they are part of it because it’s hard to get their colleagues to work with them, NGOs/advocacy groups have to be careful at what cost they receive their attention, especially if progress ultimately requires the groups to sit down together. That working relationship might be damaged considerably if a company feels an attack on them was “unfair.” In the case of Chevron, accusations of “greenwashing” from the outside might feel like steps of realistic progress on the inside.

Samson said about the “We Agree” ads, “The campaign is designed to identify and highlight common ground on key energy issues, so we can move forward in a collaborative and intelligent way. Most businesses know they will always have their critics, but I think many companies would choose to engage with people who see benefit in having a meaningful dialogue versus those who simply resort to worn-out rhetoric and stunts.”

Obviously, groups like The Yes Men feel that the “deceptions” of their actions pale in comparison to the “deceptions” they perceive from the corporations they are impersonating, and they have expressed just that sentiment many times in the past. NGOs seeking to advocate for change within industries, however, cannot afford to take such an antagonistic approach and actually hope to work with people at those companies to ultimately make tangible progress toward change. In short, in my mind, we gain a lot from groups like The Yes Men who get the attention of the greater public directed toward issues they should pay deeper attention to. However, perhaps even more important is having parties dedicated to evolution and making change happen in the incremental steps it always takes, perhaps benefiting from the efforts of these “revolutionary” moves from groups like the Yes Men while offering to work with companies on a concrete way to move forward.

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It’s beginning to look at lot like. . . Halloween! In 2009, we looked at the top costumes inspired by YouTube videos top costumes inspired by YouTube videos. This year, we are expanding our scope and recommending the top five social media-inspired costumes. Let us know if you dare to dress up like any of these digital characters – or if you have others to add to the list.

Old Spice Guy: One of the most talked about social media campaigns this year was certainly the Old Spice Guy who created unique videos in response to Twitter @-replies. To achieve this look, fellas, grab a towel and, well, that’s it. Now you are the best smelling man in the world for Halloween.

iPad: This costume may not be the most comfortable, but it will make you the most sought after trick-or-treater (at least among early adopters). To create your own iPad, just grab a tall and wide – but thin- box, cut out holes for your head, arms and legs, and have Kinko’s print out a life-size version of this image for the front.

Foursquare Player: In 2010, local-based social networking took off thanks to Foursquare. This Saturday night, consider going out as a Foursquare player by wearing your most competitive-looking athletic apparel – including sweat bands, of course – carry around a red rubber ball, and hand out different badges to your friends.  If you like this costume idea, give us a shout out!

Mark Zuckerberg: ‘The Social Network’ is one of the top movies in the country and we are expecting Mark Zuckerberg to be one of the top costumes this Halloween. To get the look, throw on a gray GAP sweatshirt, fill your pockets with money and wear this lovely cut-out mask prepared by our friends at Gawker. With this costume, it should be easy for you to make friends.

Happy Halloween!

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This fall, I am working on wrapping up the manuscript for a book called Spreadable Media, a collaboration with MIT Convergence Culture Consortium. In short, businesses are looking at how content that circulates ultimately makes money for the company, returns some “ROI,” whether in compensation or in promotional value. Audience members often aren’t circulating that content for any sort of monetary reason whatsoever. That does not mean that there aren’t many obligations between sender and receiver according to non-market logic: if a friend gives me a gift, all sorts of obligations come along with it: an obligatory thank you, perhaps reciprocation of a gift on a special occasion for them, an obligation to keep and use the gift, etc.

These two logics necessarily co-exist. But it doesn’t mean there isn’t significant tension between them at times. For the purposes of our book project, we look at how the sharing of media content often brings these two forces in conflict: the content creator or brand which is looking to make money or protect its intellectual capital, and the audience, which is using media content to build social ties. As companies enter social spaces primarily governed by non-market logics, then, they must be careful not to try and turn a “gift” into a commodity, to take situations governed by non-market logic and directly build a business model. This is a tension inherent in Web 2.0 logic, where a variety of platforms are built from the labor of audiences, audiences which are often not doing what they do (conversing with friends, sharing things, etc.) in ways governed by a market logic. As we’ve seen, when a business model can coincide and not interfere with these user activities, the two logics can fit well together. When they don’t–for instance, when companies try to overly commercialize a social network site–the business plan often falls apart.

I’ve been thinking in particular about how these conflicts crop up offline as well. I grew up in a Baptist church, where my father was a deacon. Most Saturday nights when I was younger, we would go to our own church or a churchsomewhere else in the community to listen to a gospel singing. Often, my grandmother would come along, and we would listen to a quartet perform for a couple of hours in a little country church somewhere. While I didn’t realize it at the time, there was a fascinating struggle between market and non-market logics at many of these gatherings. The church was primarily governed by non-market logic. There was no cost of admission. Generally, these bands were not paid to sing at the church. And no concessions are sold at a church gathering.

However, most gospel quartets made money on the side by recording cassette tapes of their most popular songs and selling them to churchgoers. Since a crucial tenet of the teachings of Jesus Christ advise separating the church from market logic, however, these transactions were considered unfit for a church sanctuary. (For those of you who are Christian or who have a Christian upbringing, you might remember the story of Christ overturning the tables of moneychangers in the temple.) This particular conflict between market and non-market logics has long been a key point of consternation for churches, but these little country churches generally struck a balance: cassette tapes could be sold by groups on church grounds, as long as it wasn’t in the sanctuary. Some required a table to be set up in the parking lot or yard of the church. Others allowed for sales to be made on the porch. A few even allowed it in the lobby of the church (particularly important during winter months).

Most interesting of all, however, was the “love offering.” Churches did not pay groups to sing, but the audience would take up a “love offering” for the group who came to sing. A collection plate would be passed around the congregation, and many would anonymously drop a contribution, not all that unlike the model used by street performers. The love offering was often presented as a spontaneous happening, but of course everyone in the congregation had come prepared for the moment of the love offering and probably had made sure they had they the appropriate cash quick at hand. And the love offering was also a point of potential contention, as the non-market logic of the moment collided with financial compensation.

As these gospel quartets traveled across a regional territory, some became noticed to the point of getting gigs down across our Kentucky border into Nashville. Sometimes, those groups started charging an up-front fee to come sing at a church, a decision which led to a great deal of conflict among the church community. Other groups who didn’t start charging an up-front fee nevertheless began to develop a reputation for primarily going to churches who had more “love to give.” Smaller country churches would never have any luck getting them booked for a Saturday in their sanctuary. Several decided that, when a group reached that point, they had let their “worldly” concern with money come in the way of their calling to sing by God. In other words, compensation was fine as long as it was optional (in the case of the love offering) or supplementary (in the case of the cassette tapes).

More recently, these tensions have continued to play out among the Christian music community. As Christian music has become increasingly shared online for free, the industry has faced a dilemma. By market logic, such “piracy” has traditionally been considered theft, and industry spokespeople have framed file sharing in moral terms: that church people should know that “Thou shall not steal” is a central tenet of the Christian faith and that the choice to share religious music without compensating its creator is doing just that. Others not only have seen major increased in their popularity because of their music circulating (a story that we all know and one that points toward how letting content circulate through non-market logic might eventually return monetary profit as well) but even argue that it is impossible for Christian music to be “stolen.” After all, few religions place a higher premium on proselytizing, so–these people have asked–how is it possible for someone to “steal” the Word of God? If, as many gospel/Christian music fans believe, singing is a calling from God to help spread the word about Christian faith, how can it ever be bad for people to share that music by whatever means they want.

Those Saturday night gospel singings taught me many lessons that it seems brands have yet to learn. Tension between market and non-market logic peaks in these moments when the business model behind content creation comes into conflict with the purposes people have for sharing that content. Whether in a religious setting or not, applying business terms to a relationship-based transaction can truly be “sacrilege.”

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Communicators have long known that one of the most crucial ways to activate an idea in people’s imaginations is to find a relevant way to discuss it and present it to them. I remember a colleague telling me that the makers of TiVo had him when they said, “Pause live television.” That single concept made real what DVR technology had to offer him. As another colleague once said to me, much of what marketers do is create powerful metaphors that make a product, service, or brand immediately intelligible, to get at its heart and communicate its meaning efficiently.

It’s especially frustrating when you see a brand or movement that should have that sort of immediate connection with people, yet something is lost in translation. And, today, I think there’s a major disconnect from a branding and marketing perspective with what I would consider a key professional role in the world: the midwife.

It wasn’t that long ago that it was quite normal for children to be born at home, out of necessity more than anything else. Even a generation ago, one of my parents was born at home, and such occurrences weren’t considered an oddity. Today, though, I’m amazed that “home birth” is considered some sort of activity for alternative lifestyles. What’s more, midwives have seemingly been pushed to the fringes of our society more often than not.

The Business of Being Born points out the ways in which midwifery was demonized and questioned alongside the dawn of the modern delivery process, shown to be the purview of quacks and witch doctors rather than legitimate experts who know how to assist a mother through labor in a natural setting with few complications. The Business of Being Bornis a polarizing film, I realize, but its points about the un-naturalization of the mid-wife profession that has happened in our country was hard to dispute.

Today, that concept of the mid-wife as being somehow unnatural or foreign has seeped so deeply into our way of thinking, it’s amazing. When my wife and I were choosing a professional to consult with for our pregnancy, we were looking for someone whose offices were close to ours in New York City. We actually chose a mid-wife from our insurance list by accident. However, once we started going to her, we decided that we particularly liked the idea.

However, many friends and family demonstrated great concern. They were somewhat assuaged that we planned to deliver in a hospital and that our mid-wife consulted with a doctor in situations of any complication, but there was this feeling nevertheless that the only way my daughter would appear in the world would be through some sort of medical intervention–as if children weren’t born before medical licensing boards came along.

Of the most surprise to me was that some family members in Kentucky seemed shocked and even concerned. As I said, it wasn’t that long ago in these more rural areas where home births and experts who could assist in the community were the norm rather than the exception. Perhaps one reason the idea of a mid-wife seemed incomprehensible to some of our family and friends here in The Bluegrass State was because we really aren’t that far removed from a time when travel was a concern, when people couldn’t as easily make it to hospitals, and when mortality rates were higher because of those inefficiencies.

But, whatever the reason, the un-naturalness of the mid-wife seems to have formally taken hold. As I was thinking about the topic, I saw that there is no mid-wife available here in Bowling Green, where I live. The closest professional here in Kentucky would be a drive to Louisville. Meanwhile, many who prefer a mid-wife drive to Nashville instead.

The irony that only urban hubs now host mid-wives is massive. It’s like only being able to get good barbecue or diner food in a city while small towns are now full of fast food chains, ironic of course because the city restaurants are based on what the small towns used to have. For midwifery, this has causes outside of the branding of the profession. For instance, medical malpractice insurance makes it very hard for a mid-wife to function in a rural area without a steady stream of expectant mothers to work with. But it seems that the largest issue of all has been a lack of demand and a belief now that the natural way to deliver a child is in the hands of a licensed physician.

The biggest hurdle to overcome is that many have painted midwifery in extremes: as only for parents who completely oppose medical intervention, almost as eschewing all that modern medicine and technology has given us. Yet, in our experience with Emma, my wife chose to take medication to help induce labor after being a week past her expected due date based on the counsel of our midwife and eventually also chose to have an epidural. But the midwife knew that our goal was to have a vaginal delivery and, despite constantly warning us that it might not happen and encouraging us not to rule out surgical intervention if there was no other way, she assisted alongside us for 18 hours. Once she arrived, she never left our side. She took naps by the nurse’s station and didn’t hover, but she had no other place to be. And knowing that made every step a little less nerve-wracking.

Many are battling these extreme notions of what a midwife is or does. Advocacy groups for midwives are quite active, and the rise of young mother movements amidst the growing influence of mommy blogger communities have given voice to pushing back against a culture of Cesarean sections, of excessive use of medical intervention, etc. But, to me, the battle will not be won until midwives can be positioned not as some new fringe “hippie-mother” movement but as a longstanding and natural part of the human experience, as part of rather than threat to the modern health care industry.

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By Sahana Jayaraman, Pepperdigital

Last week, Gap Inc., a company headquartered right in my very own back yard, announced a new logo nationally.  On Monday (four days later), Gap Inc. announced it will be keeping the same old logo it’s had for the past 20 years. From these announcements comes a new digital case study for us to observe and learn from.

Moments after the first announcement about the new logo, consumers and designers across the world were criticizing the company’s decision and the new logo’s move away from prep to a modern look and feel. Gap’s Facebook fan page was lit up with inquiries about the change, forcing Gap Inc. to explain the new logo online and in the media. The company’s president, Marka Hansen, joined the conversation, posting a blog post on Huffington Post, stating that Gap Inc. was rethinking its logo to be more in line with a sleeker and more contemporary image, but, in response to swarm of backlash toward the logo, would “engage in dialogue” online and “crowd source” feedback from customers to create an improved logo together.

When I read this, I thought, what a brilliant idea! The buzz is already there in the media and when new logo version 2.0 is announced it will get even greater attention because it was created by Gap Inc. fans. We’ve seen other successful crowd sourcing stories over the past year or two; Vitaminwater created Connect, its new flavor launched earlier this year. And, companies like Toyota Prius solicit concepts and ideas through their forums to consider in their next model. It is an effective strategy to connect with your audience and build brand affinity indeed.

Gap Inc. however, learned a unique and valuable lesson on how the internet can help shape brand messaging. By exposing its brand strategy online and participating in conversations with its consumers, the company was able to quickly listen and gauge sentiments toward its previous logo (the blue box with white font) and realize that it carries a tremendous amount of weight and fandom. So much that Gap Inc. would be shooting itself in the foot if it continued to move forward with the logo change.

The news was first reported in Advertising Age: “We heard the message loud and clear. We have no plans to use the new logo going forward” said Louis Callagy, a spokeswoman for the retailer. “It is clear we did not go about this the right way. In the future, she said, the company will make more of an effort to “engage with the online community.”

The biggest lesson this speaks to is that social media can reveal brand flaws, but it can also help improve them. More importantly, it can be used advantageously to offer brand marketers precious insight that can work to guide major brand decisions as you are making them.

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I’ve been reading an early draft of Carol Sanford’s new book on moving beyond corporate responsibility, tentatively titled The Responsible Business. Sanford has spent her career helping organizations understand how to serve all stakeholders–not just thinking about same-quarter ROI for shareholders, but instead about all the parties who have invested capital into a business–customers, employees, partners, communities, and even Earth itself. Carol writes about how crucial it is for companies not to think of the community that its employees are part of and where the company conducts business as another group to be messaged to or handled, but rather a source of creativity and inspiration, a sounding board and constructive critic, and–most importantly–a key factor in the initial and ongoing success of a product or service.

Her points were on my mind as I spent the weekend here at home in Bowling Green, Kentucky. I feel a strong kinship not only to The Bluegrass State but particularly to the city, and I have spent some time thinking through why. Beyond my own personal ties to the area, it seems that Bowling Green has developed a strong sense of place, a feeling of energy as Western Kentucky University continues a massive period of growth–a revitalization of the historic downtown area thanks to the efforts of many community partners and a fantastic Bowling Green Area Chamber of Commerce that has made its new offices a crucial part of the downtown revitalization, earning the distinction of being the American Chamber of Commerce Executives’ Chamber of the Year. (Full disclosure: I worked for the Chamber’s annual magazine each summer while I was an undergraduate at nearby WKU and as a grad student at MIT, because I believed deeply in the city’s unique culture…and because I needed a paid writing gig.)

However, there’s one large Bowling Green corporate citizen who seems to deeply understand the importance of this sense of place to the point that they have spent the past few decades working with Bowling Green to create a collaborative identity based on their presence in the area. As some of you may know, Bowling Green is the home of the Corvette. The Corvette relocated its production to The Bluegrass State in 1981, after previously having been made in Flint, Michigan, and St. Louis, Missouri. Since that time, the Corvette has become a deep part of Bowling Green’s identity, and the car’s Bowling Green production has become a key element in the production of this General Motors car.

Case in point: in 1994, 13 years after the Corvette plant opened, The National Corvette Museum opened in Bowling Green, not far from the production facilities of the car. The production plant likewise welcomes a significant amount of tourism, hosted on its own site. The plant and museum have become the center to Bowling Green’s regularly hosting Corvette owners who take their cars “back home” to where they were created, culminating in the annual National Corvette Homecoming, an event which started the same year the Corvette relocated to the city three decades ago. The local Corvette Club, Corvettes Limited of Bowling Green, Kentucky, meets each month at the museum, and there is a National Corvette Caravan planned every five years to Bowling Green.

Many of these initiatives were planned by area or national Corvette enthusiasts. Initiatives like the Corvette Museum were projects of passion for people in the community. In the process, however, General Motors has dedicated its resources to supporting these many Bowling Green-area initiatives and to be a contributing member of the area. They have opened their plant to deeply encourage tourism to the area surrounding Corvette culture. And they have made Bowling Green a key part of their corporate development story.

The partnership has run so deep that, when Bowling Green secured a Minor League Baseball team a few years ago, the decision was ultimately made to name the team The Hot Rods, based on how crucial the Corvette is to Bowling Green’s business identity. And, since then, Kentucky has officially named the Corvette its Official State Sports Car. A publicity stunt? Perhaps. But such publicity is based on a deep and long-standing partnership that reflects the reality of how important Bowling Green has become to Corvette culture, and how important the Corvette has become to Bowling Green’s culture.

Just recently, we saw an example of how crucial the deepness of this relationship has been. Over the summer, rumors began to circulate that General Motors was going to relocate Corvette production to Michigan. A Lansing television station picked up this speculation based on comments from the UAW. There was some concern in Bowling Green, and the discussion was covered locally, but the rumors were immediately quashed by General Motors, who said there were some discussions of various car productions at a Michigan plant, but “Corvettes are born in Bowling Green (, and) nothing in the foreseeable future changes that long-time fact,” according to this piece on AutoBlog. The news story seemed not to cause significant concern in Bowling Green, precisely because of how deeply this relationship runs. The GM spokesperson, David Caldwell, also said to The Bowling Green Daily News:

This is a very unique group of people and facility in the sense that they are very valuable to the specialty manufacturing that a great sports car like the Corvette requires. [ . . . ] It’s a specific and unique and highly skilled operation there that obviously has proven to do a very good job for a long time.

In the comments section on AutoBlog, a discussion broke out of why it matters where a car is created. One reader asked what existed in Kentucky that made it any big deal to move the facility. Other readers quickly jumped to answer, posing everything from bourbon to more serious answers, such as the qualified workforce that’s been developed around Corvette development. While skepticism abounded, reader GalaxieSun wrote:

When GM shifted production of Saturn and allowed other cars to be built at Spring Hill, the majority of Saturn loyalists protested, and justifiably so. The rest, as we all know is history. To take Corvette out of Bowling Green would be dramatically worse. You can say what you want about unions, but none of them wants to damage a brand, and in that light the one thing they should consider is how significant the plant at Bowling Green is to the Corvette brand. And yes, it is a brand, unto itself. [ . . . ] Moving production to Lansing wouldn’t signal the end of the vehicle, yes we know that, but it would take a lot of the heart out of the Corvette brand. And getting that back could be next to impossible to accomplish.

Elsewhere, a Corvette fan said things such as that the move “would probably be the dumbest thing that GM has ever done.”

At a time when GM has been in such rough shape as a corporation and when Corvette sales have suffered as well, the iconic status of the Corvette brand and the passion of Corvette enthusiasts remain in place, and the local pride and community development Corvette has generated in the Bowling Green area is a crucial part of that story. Many brands could learn from how this mutually beneficial relationship has developed and how it positively impacts both brands. And, from a Bowling Green perspective, here’s hoping that there aren’t any changes in Corvette or pressures from GM as a whole to forget about the deep equity in Bowling Green and among Corvette enthusiasts that have made the place where Corvettes are developed a fundamental part of the brand’s story.

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Yesterday, I watched Facebook’s story unfold through The Social Network. Not only is the film a current historical look at one of the most successful social network sites to date (Sept 26, 2006 is when Facebook became available to anyone – that’s only 4 years.), but it also provides an inside look at innovations in technology and how technology changes the game for business.

For any brand that uses social media, a Facebook presence today has become one of the most basic building blocks. Initially, the widespread adoption of platforms like Facebook forced companies to evolve to keep in touch with their customers. But it was less about Facebook the platform than  facilitating the sharing of opinions and content.

One of the most brilliant insights came out of Mark Zuckerberg’s Facemash scene where he processes what made people share the Facemash site  (see the 2003 Crimson article with the outcome of Zuckerberg’s Ad board reprimand at Harvard here). He realized that it wasn’t about a platform that provided pictures that made it worth passing along, but that the pictures were recognizable friends, connections, roommates and colleagues to the student community using the site. Not only was it relevant content, but the affinity toward the content that compelled people to share the site.

What made a site shareable was one of many insights in the iterations and evolutions of the platform that ultimately became the Facebook we know today.  This brings me to the next insight that casts a light on why social media is difficult for brands to get their arms around – they’re never finished evolving or innovating.

Mark Zuckerberg’s character makes an analogy of social media platforms to fashion. The connection? (I paraphrase) “Fashion is never finished…just like fashion, the site will never be finished.” The takeaway here is that the entire online space is constantly evolving, and, for a site to stay “fashionable,” it must stay relevant.  In the context of websites and networks, this means continually evolving features that provide value and facilitate the sharing of information that’s compelling to their audience and community.

Finally, Shawn Fanning’s character, played by Justin Timberlake (founder of Napster, now owned by Best Buy) summed up innovation best in the film when he stated that he “..didn’t care if Napster made money, but what he’d done is change the model of how music was distributed…” (again, I’m paraphrasing). The spirit of innovators are often more about breaking conventions rather than playing by the rules.

Fact of the matter is, there are lots of smart people out there who are passionate about evolving technology and are constantly outthinking each other and businesses and how to make information accessible.  As the space continues to evolve, we’ll see more and more consolidation, fragmentation, specialization, innovation and iteration. Rules?  What rules?

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As a child, my favorite birthday party ever was when I turned eight. My mom willingly packed 10 screaming kids into her Ford Windstar and took us to Magic Castle, a renaissance-themed recreational facility in Ohio with trampolines, batting cages, a climbing wall, video games and unlimited pizza; it was an eight-year-old’s paradise.

As an adult, I prefer low-key birthday celebrations, usually with a small group of friends going out for dinner. I tend to follow the philosophy that says it’s the people you are with, not where you are that counts (yes, I think that is a Dave Matthews Band lyric).  So when I read this article about Nick Cannon’s birthday plans, I found it hard to relate.

The New York Post reports, “Nick Cannon is looking to make a killing on his 30th birthday — reps for Mariah Carey‘s husband have sent out a mass e-mail looking for corporate sponsors to pay $25,000 for three tweets from next month’s bicoastal bash.”

OK, I get it. In today’s world of ‘My Super Sweet 16,’ over-the-top birthdays are becoming more of a staple than a spectacle. But if you have pay checks coming in for your albums, movies, and television hosting gig – not to mention you are married to a pop star who has sold over 200 million albums – do you really need to turn your party into a cash cow?

Aside from Cannon’s bold move to bring on birthday sponsors, I’d like to pose a larger question. Are three tweets from a B-level celebrity worth $25,000? Moreover, can we really price the value of a tweet?

I’m sure we could come up with a formula that would calculate the value by looking at messaging, sentiment, audience reach, influence, etc. But the truth it, it doesn’t really matter – if the offer is out there, someone will pay for it. Just as a number of brands like Pixar and Starbucks have shelled out the $100,000 for promoted tweets, it’s a logical next step for brands to start paying key influencers to tout their messaging online.

While it seems like paying for tweets will dilute the organic discussion online, I won’t fight it – as long as the brands and the paid influencers are transparent. While Nick Cannon may seem like a total sell-out after this open call for birthday sponsors, I do appreciate his full-disclosure.

So here’s to you, Nick. Happy birthday.

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