Author: "Doctor" Phil Bernstein

A New Press Release Tool Treats The Symptom…

… but perhaps not the underlying problem.

My friend Rita Radostitz recently sent me an article from David Henderson’s blog. Henderson, a PR consultant and former CBS News correspondent, writes about David Meerman Scott’s new Gobbledygook Grader. The Gobbledygook Grader is an online tool designed to ferret out “gobbledygook, jargon, cliches and over-used, hype-filled words.”

Copy your press release, paste it into the Grader, and Scott will email you a report and a grade.

Helpful, says Henderson, but it may miss the point:

…press releases are generally not focused on providing legitimate news but rather are infused with meaningless promotional hype that few people care about. Press releases are today less about giving the media something to report and more about promoting something. Today’s press releases have become sales flyers.

If your company has news of genuine interest, and you want it covered, Henderson has some good suggestions in the last paragraph of his post. Read the full post here.

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Got a question? Call Phil Bernstein at 503-323-6553.

Domino’s Meets YouTube, and The Result Isn’t Pretty

It used to be that the damage a couple of stupid restaurant employees could do was limited by geography: only folks in store’s local area would ever find out.

The rise of YouTube and its bretheren means that any idiot with a camcorder and an internet connection can now broadcast to the entire world — and undo the positive results of years of good marketing.

This week’s example: Domino’s Pizza. Recently two North Carolina Domino’s employees filmed themselves doing something very bad to a pizza.

In videos posted on YouTube and elsewhere this week, a Domino’s employee in Conover, N.C., prepared sandwiches for delivery while putting cheese up his nose, nasal mucus on the sandwiches, and violating other health-code standards while a fellow employee provided narration.

The two were charged with delivering prohibited foods.

By Wednesday afternoon, the video had been viewed more than a million times on YouTube. References to it were in five of the 12 results on the first page of Google search for “Dominos,” and discussions about Domino’s had spread throughout Twitter.

The damage to the Domino’s brand was swift, and significant.

The perception of its quality among consumers went from positive to negative since Monday, according to the research firm YouGov, which holds online surveys of about 1,000 consumers every day regarding hundreds of brands.

If you thought that you didn’t have to talk to your staff about how their social media activities can affect your company’s reputation — around the block and around the world — read the full story, gather your employees, and discuss.

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Click here to learn the shocking truth about Phil Bernstein

Click this link to subscribe to Portland’s Finest Advertising and Marketing Blog.

Request your free copy of Phil Bernstein’s white paper, The Seven Deadly Advertising Mistakes and How to Fix Them here.

Got a question? Call Phil Bernstein at 503-323-6553.

New Era Makes a Marketing Challenge Go Away… Almost

The Sunday New York Times has a look at American Idol contestant Adam Lambert. Lambert is…

1. Widely rumored to be gay, and

2. Widely considered a favorite to win the competition

Homosexuality has always had a significant place in the arts, but because the vast majority of the marketplace is straight, those in charge of marketing gay artists have often tried to hide those artists’ sexual identity. The article, while focusing on the “is he or isn’t he” speculation, also shows how far we’ve come from the days when

…studios forced Rock Hudson into bogus relationships with women and obliged gay actors “to lie from morning to night.”

In 1959 Liberace, the camp artifact best known, as one critic wrote, “for beating Romantic music to death on a piano decorated with a candelabra,” sued an English newspaper for libel for implying in print that he was gay… When asked on the witness stand whether he was homosexual, Liberace emphatically told a judge: “No, sir! I am against the practice because it offends convention and it offends society.” He won the suit and damages and then, much later, was named in a $113 million palimony suit by his partner Scott Thorson.

It’s worth noting the Boston Red Sox did not field a black player until that same year: 1959. Fifty years later, race doesn’t even register when the Most Valuable Player results are announced — but we still haven’t seen a gay Major League Baseball player come out during his playing career.

A previous American Idol runner-up,  Clay Aiken,  came out publicly — several years after his turn on the show was over. A half century after Liberace’s lawsuit, Adam Lambert can compete effectively in the most mainstream music competition imaginable, and allow the media to speculate as much as it wishes.

But he won’t quite let himself take the final step. The choice may be his, or his handlers’, or the show’s.

We’ll know that sexuality has ceased to be viewed as a marketing problem when a contestant comes out before the  votes are cast — and the New York Times doesn’t care.

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Click here to learn the shocking truth about Phil Bernstein

Click this link to subscribe to Portland’s Finest Advertising and Marketing Blog.

Request your free copy of Phil Bernstein’s white paper, The Seven Deadly Advertising Mistakes and How to Fix Them here.

Got a question? Call Phil Bernstein at 503-323-6553.

Unhappy Customers Don’t Need the Internet to Hurt You

I’ve written several times on the ways that the web has given consumers unprecendented influence on how companies are perceived. An angry customer an internet connection can tell his side of the story to thousands by posting it on a blog, a consumer forum, or the company’s own web site.

I’ve done it myself — hello, Superbookdeals!

Some consumers are still doing it the old-fashioned way. In the Oregonian’s “Complaint Desk” column, Laura Gunderson tells the story of David Haskew, a cable customer in Cornelius, Oregon. Haskew was unable to resolve an audio problem through the company’s regular channels (he chose not to name the company when recounting the story)

Finally, after seeing one of the company’s trucks drive by, he got an idea. That afternoon he knocked a sign into his front yard saying, “An unhappy customers of (mystery company name) lives here”. Maybe, he thought, an employee would see the sign and get the message to a big shot.

Sure enough, he said, an executive called within 48 hours. A service call was scheduled and, 10 minutes later, the problem was fixed.

So today’s lesson is simple. Yes, you should closely monitor web chatter about your company. But don’t forget to look for lawn signs.

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Click here to learn the shocking truth about Phil Bernstein

Click this link to subscribe to Portland’s Finest Advertising and Marketing Blog.

Request your free copy of Phil Bernstein’s white paper, The Seven Deadly Advertising Mistakes and How to Fix Them here.

Got a question? Call Phil Bernstein at 503-323-6553.

Does Radio Work For Health Care Recruiting?

You already know that I’ll say it does — I’m a radio salesman. So ignore me.

Listen to Brandon Byars of Kaiser Permanente here in Portland.

Brandon is Kaiser’s Manager of Recruitment Services and Workforce Planning, and he uses radio advertising — K103 and other stations — to drive traffic to their website and hiring events.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDlgAKzGTEw]

There’s a nationwide shortage of nurses, and good ones are hard to find. Kaiser Permanente has been able to hire more than 40 nurses with radio as an important part of their recruiting effort. And they’re still hiring.

Thanks to my colleague Ann Culhane for the video — and for putting together campaigns that work for Kaiser Permanente.

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Click here to learn the shocking truth about Phil Bernstein

Click this link to subscribe to Portland’s Finest Advertising and Marketing Blog.

Request your free copy of Phil Bernstein’s white paper, The Seven Deadly Advertising Mistakes and How to Fix Them here.

Got a question? Call Phil Bernstein at 503-323-6553.