Truth.

So the good people at babble.com have a micro-controversy brewing.  It doesn't come anywhere close to being a crisis, but as the crisis PR guy who knows more than a few of the players involved, I think I have something to add.

First, by way of background: there's this dad blogger on babble (to protect the innocent, we'll call him "Godzilla") who does a great job promoting his blog/business, tends to push the envelope on marketing, and writes a few emotional feel-good pieces that he hopes provide inspiration to his readers.  These pieces get a lot of attention because a) they're well written and b) they're heavily promoted. 

Then there's this other dad blogger (let's call this guy "Megalon") who has had some not-so-great interactions with Godzilla and makes some reasonably credible assertions that at least one of Godzilla's feel-good pieces was a hoax.   Then Godzilla promotes this series he wrote about being rescued from a mountain, Megalon (and some others) think it's over-the-top, and a sliver of the parenting community breaks into full-blown navel-gazing  "what are we as a community" mode.  Godzilla tells this story about how he owned a mattress business or something, Megalon does the self-deprecating "don't drink and blog" thing, people take stuff way too personally, and hilarity ensues.

Liz Gumbinner, as usual, has a great perspective and kinda brings us back to earth a bit.  From my perspective, there are really two things to keep in mind as bloggers "go pro."

First, there's nothing wrong with promoting yourself and your work as creatively and aggressively as you want.  The market will decide when you've gone too far. The purpose of marketing isn't necessarily to make you feel all warm and fuzzy about a person or a topic.  The purpose of marketing is to influence you on a decision or action.   Sometimes the warm and fuzzy approach works.  Sometimes it's more effective to make people uncomfortable.  Sometimes it's even more effective to annoy people into doing something for you just so you'll go away.  In a 20-year career in politics and PR, I've been called a sell-out, a fraud, a communist AND a fascist, a racist, a hypocrite, a sycophant, and a sleazebag.  (And that's just from my friends.) "Professional" blogging is competitive, and the formulas and business models that actually make money compel you to be provocative and annoying - both in content development and promotion. 

Second, and more importantly, there's this: if something you write and promote isn't completely true, you should say so. It's not good enough to say "even if it's not completely true, that's OK if people get value from it. Even if it's "based on a true story." Even if it's a feel-good piece with a politically-correct social message.  If you state that your blog is your business, you are writing something designed to influence people in some way, and you have a financial interest in the impact of your content, you should be held to the same standards as any other business.   And if you're promoting your content in press releases, the default expectation is everything you're promoting is truthful.  Further, I see this responsibility as an individual one.  If I mess up, it reflects poorly on my employer, my partners, my colleagues. I'm responsible, not them.

Parables and fiction can teach wonderful lessons and have meaningful impact if they're well written.  But the more "true" a story is, the more force it carries.  There are so many examples of this it's impossible to count them all.  The most basic example I can think of is the Bible.  People who think the Bible is a literal record in which every word is completely true take the Bible much more seriously than those who think it's a collection of stories that highlight a good guy with some semblance of accuracy.  And those folks take the Bible more seriously than those who see no evidence that anything in the Bible ever really happened as written.

There are many more contemporary examples with a lot at stake.  Liz mentioned the tale of Amina Abdallah Araf al Omani. You can flip the argument by looking at the climate change "debate." There's a reason critics of climate science aren't putting up much of a fight in peer-reviewed academic journals but are investing heavily in popular consumer media.  The story's facts aren't changing.  But their impact changes dramatically if people don't believe the facts. 


I'd love to know other people's opinions on this. 

#sciencegirlthing: the PR guy's take

FINAL UPDATE AND THEN (MAYBE) I'LL LET THIS GO: It's great that the science/science comms community is stepping up with some references to role models, as the EC asked.  As important as that is, however, it's not the only thing we should do.  We have to remember that the primary audience for this campaign is not scientists, it's girls in the EU ages 7 to 13.  If I were a smart science person, I'd start reaching out to the advertising community - I'm a fan of my pal Liz Gumbinner, though (and this is a plug for my colleagues) the amazing team at Strawberry Frog would probably rock on this.  They focus on cultural movements, and that's exactly what we need here.


UPDATE II: An official word from the EC science comms spokesman:

#sciencegirlthing aims to attract women to science. Launch video distracting from that.It has gone. science-girl-thing.eu
— Michael Jennings (@ECspokesScience) June 23, 2012

This is a good move.  I also like this:

OK scientists, we've heard you and we want to keep hearing you: Help us build a list of #realwomeninscience: twitter.com/#!/EU_Commissi…
— European Commission(@EU_Commission) June 22, 2012

I've read that the campaign's target audience is girls age 7 to 13, or at least they held 5 focus groups of girls in that age range for something.  That's younger than the "millenials" category.  Looking at the video though, I still think it misses the mark for the audience.  The ad firm will likely look at its research methods.  Either that or I weep for the future.


UPDATE: The European Commission pulled their video (though it exists elsewhere).  Smart to eliminate that distraction.  Now they should focus on what their target audience thinks is important and demonstrate the relevance of STEM.  They'd be smart to ask the many critics of the video to participate.

The Twitterverse 'sploaded over #sciencegirlthing, a new campaign intended to encourage girls in the European Union to pursue careers in science, technology, engineering, and math.  They include some good profiles of women in STEM, but they also have this:

and I find it interesting that within minutes we learned that the ad firm that produced it also did this:

Scientists, especially female scientists, are not pleased. And the damage control begins, and frankly it's not good:

Lots of comments on #sciencegirlthing vid. 45 seconds of fun for launch to grab attention.Not central to main campaign.
— Michael Jennings (@ECspokesScience) June 22, 2012

This video should be pulled immediately. It distracts from the central purpose of the campaign. It shouldn't be pulled simply because it's silly and offensive to many female scientists. It should be pulled because it's clear the video won't appeal to its target audience - millenial women. Millenals care about contributing to something greater than themselves. They don't like stereotypes.  They want to know that what they do produces results - quickly.  Makeup and glamour and all that are fun, but they're not what dominates your life. Millenials don't expect to be in a single job their whole lives.  Millenials want to know why whatever it is you're selling is relevant to them - in a meaningful way.

This video reflected none of the well-established research on what the target audience wants.  Instead it just re-purposed the strategy selling the smartphone app that lets you "take pictures of yourself" with soccer babes.

I think the EC went to an ad firm, and said, "we want you to make science sexy."   What they should have done is asked millenial women what was important to them and then tried to make the case that careers in STEM would help them achieve that.

This stuff isn't hard, people.

You want role models?  try #realwomenofscience.

So I wrote a piece in PR News...

If you have a subscription you can read it here.

I compared the work of Honda and Toyota as they used social media to launch their most popular models in 2012 - the Honda Civic and the Toyota Camry.  Both companies have had challenges in recent years, and 2012 is an important year for both models.

In comparing the two I used data from Social EQ, a model developed by my company, APCO Worldwide. Social EQ's model uses opinion research to help determine what "Social Informants" - that's the name we give to those uber-users of social media who influence the online discussions the rest of us have all the time - consider to be an effective social media presence for a company or organization.  Since the Social EQ team already reviewed the 40 "Most Admired" companies as rated by Fortune Magazine, we already had a good snapshot of Honda and Toyota.

Both companies basically got middling reviews when compared to the other most admired companies.  They both have decent, easy-to-find online content, but Social Informants want more direct access to the people who work there when they have questions or feedback.  I notice that both companies are trying to do just that, but in different ways.  Honda is trying to strengthen its reputation with its customers by starting a grassroots-y YouTube-driven original music video contest.   Toyota is rolling out the model - quite literally - via webcast and trying more direct outreach to leading voices in different online communities, like my good pal Tim Hurst at Earth & Industry.

The Social Informants initially gave Honda a slight edge over Toyota when the Social EQ team did their research, but I have to say I like what Toyota did with the Camry a bit more than what Honda did.  Honda was creative and fun, but Toyota was more direct and did a good job identifying online community leaders.  Bottom line I think both companies deserve credit for trying new things but I think Toyota closed their social media gap with Honda a bit here.