Mutually Inclusive PR

Backlash Against Crayon's Second Life Launch

The claim that new marketing company 'crayon' was the first new company to launch in Second Life raised some eyebrows and hackles among the virtual world's denizens.

The backlash against the launch was as much about a community feeling invaded by corporations that threaten to suck the creative life out of the online world as it was about the semantics of the claim, set against the history of Second Life's three years of creativity and development.

Jason Pettus, editor of a magazine about Second Life says it best in a comment on company president Joseph Jaffe's blog:

"I think there are a lot of people worried right now about the potential 'MySpaceization' of Second Life; of the entire thing becoming just a glorified environment for corporate advertising, and with the creativity and innovation that has usually defined the grid suddenly having to take a back seat. I think marketers entering SL would do themselves some good thinking about this issue, and asking themselves, "So okay, how do we impress -those- people?" I think RL veterans will find a lot of resistance melting away for their new SL companies, once they start answering this last question more."

Jaffe's post in response to the backlash:  A Learning from Second Life

"Coming through the launch process, I'm learned a pretty important lesson. Opening up a storefront/presence in Second Life is not dissimilar to a Wal-Mart opening up in a small town.

"Let's leave it at that."

The critics are right that crayon's claim that it's "the first" to do anything in Second Life comes off as hubris in the eyes of people who have put in years of very uncorporate hard work building a new online world. Having been pummelled by their neighbours in their first week of operation, I suspect the crayon folks will do a bit of reaching out to those who were offended, and will get on with serving clients from their virtual head office.

I'm not a Second Lifer, so I don't claim to have special insight into the online experience there.  Steve Hall, another blogger who knows very little about Second Life, suggests the backlash would be better aimed at clueless corporations than at a startup like crayon.  As Steve points out, most of their work will probably be to help their clients connect with social media communities and others far outside of Second Life.

Backlash:

Second Life Madness - Mimi Harris, Eastwikkers
A Gallery of Lies - Urizines Sklar a.k.a. Peter Ludlow, The Second Life Herald
Backlash Week - Ed Lee, Blogging Me, Blogging You
Fucktards in Cyberspace - Peter Ludlow a.k.a. Urizines Sklar, in The Strumpette

Response:
Marketers Will Not Destroy Second Life - Steve Hall, AdRants

crayon's launch news release

Disclosure:  I'm virtual pals with a few of crayon's founding employees.

See also:  Second Life Backlash Continues

Tags:  crayon, socialmedia, promotion, publicity, secondlife,marketing

Scrabble - Why Do I Bother?

Gak.  Somebody in Massachussets scored 830 in a Scrabble game (best score ever).  He pwned his opponent, who only got 490.

I think I've been within several touchdowns of 490 in my day, but the years of study that would get me above that number is mind boggling.

Kelley has been playing Scrabble against the computer for the past couple of years, and she has left me in the dust.  I can keep up with her if I play an incredibly anal game, not giving up any openings. But what's the fun of that?

Maybe I should go back to chess.  At least with chess you can play pretend with the pieces, if you get bored...

Stefan Fatsis does a blow-by-blow of the record-setting game for Slate.com. Image by Jason Katz-Brown.

Link via Ian Ketcheson's del.icio.us page.

My Canada.com E-mail Account Is Active Again

Anyone who had their e-mail to my Canada.com address returned undelivered, please send again to  eggertson (at) canada.com,  or to  eggertson (at) gmail.com.

Canada.com cancels free e-mail accounts for anyone who doesn't visit their site regularly, so I got turfed.

For $10 a year, they now promise not to cancel my account if I don't log on regularly.  And I get a whopping 100 MB of storage (how can you tell these guys aren't even trying to compete with Gmail and Yahoo mail?).

Online Meeting Place for Arts Groups and Pros

The arts is supposed to be one of those areas where plucky artistic types toil away in poverty and obscurity for years until their brilliance is recognized.

That's still true for a lot of actors and other artists, but the business of running the culture industry is complex.  Theatres and publishing houses, galleries and film companies need to be run professionally, with outside help, when needed.

CultureConsultants.ca, a new site aimed at Canadian arts groups and the consultants that serve them has launched, with funding from Ontario's Trillium Foundation.

It looks like an online dating service for consultants and arts groups, with some other information posted.  It will be interesting to see if the site also has an interactive component.

The site is managed by the Association for Cultural Executives, based at the University of Waterloo, and has five years of funding from Trillium, which is part of the Ontario Ministry of Culture. News release.

Venture Profiles Red Paperclip Guy

CBC's Venture is profiling Red Paperclip guy Kyle MacDonald and fiancee Dominique Dupuis Wednesday October 25 at 7:30 p.m.

MacDonald is pretty busy writing a book about his year-long publicity campaign, based on trading up from a red paper clip to a house.

The Venture crew spent some time in Kipling, Sask., with the couple, and show MacDonald in action, schmoozing with the likes of Corbin Bernsen, who was part of the trade up to a house.

I have a ballpoint pen available for trade, by the way.  I'll consider any legimate offer...

Tags:  redpaperclip, saskatchewan, promotion, publicity, venture,blogs

New Additions to my Podcast List

New additions to my podcast subscriptions this week:

Diggnation - I heard you're not hip if you're not tuned in, so watch for me to be much hipper next week...

The M Show - John Wall's weekly 10 minutes of news, talk and information, with a tech bent.
APM - The Story - Dick Gordon's public radio show now via podcast.
The Money Clip - I'm curious to see how Scotiabank talks to consumers about mutual funds.
Managing the Gray - C.C. Chapman on new media for marketers.
B.C. Conversation on Health - I subscribed to this one because I work for the Health department in Saskatchewan, and want to follow's B.C.'s public consultation process.

Deleted from my list:
The Signal - I really liked Jos Whedon's Firefly TV series and Serenity movie, but this podcast is WAY too earnest.
Xbox Live's Major Nelson Podcast - Occasionally cool, but I don't want to sift through an hour of chat for five minutes of interesting things.
Slate Explainer Podcasts - There's something about having someone explain the background of something in excruciating detail that gets boring really fast.

PR Briefs - News Items October 21, 2006

1. Edelman, PR Ethics and Social Media - the Next Steps- Steve Rubel - Info on Edelman PR's response to controversy about its fake blog tactics on behalf of Wal-Mart.
2. Edelman Admits to Two More Flogs - Shel Holtz - Richard Edelman acknowledges that his PR agency has been involved in two more fake blogs.
3. What Is Edelman Doing? - Richard Edelman reports on what his PR firm is doing to ensure more openness and transparency around social media efforts and word of mouth marketing.
4. PR people, start using your common sense when it comes to disclosure - John Wagner   A review of the disclosure in the Wal-Mart / Working Families for Wal-Mart situation. Wagner suggests more disclosure would help reputations without negatively affecting the ability for PR people to be involved in helping organizations tell their stories
5. Managing Client Expectations: Your Public Relations Firm Must Operate in the Open - Dan Keeney   The PRSA calls for companies and their PR firms to disclose sponsorship of organizations, and avoid fake grassroots campaigns. So let's stop talking about breaches of etiquette, and talk about lapses in ethics.
6. 10 Signs of Life from the News Release - Kevin Dugan   A wrap-up of recent activity in the news release distribution business, and innovations in social media news releases.
7. How to support the troops and not necessarily the war - Rob Cottingham   Voicing opposition to political and military decisions doesn't necessarily mean you have disrespect for the soldiers who risk their lives.
8. Gesundheit, iPod - Rob Cottingham   Apple forgets to apologize after shipping iPods with a virus.

Edelman's Conflicted Role Led to Silence

When the large public relations firm Edelman went into a protective silence instead of engaging its critics over a pro-Wal-Mart blog, it reminded me of HAL, the computer in 2001, A Space Odyssey.

HAL was just doing his job.  But we learn in the next movie (or book, for Arthur C. Clarke fans) that HAL's psychotic behaviour was a natural reaction to being given two contradictory orders by its programmers.

Edelman has repeatedly stated it wants to uphold transparency and honesty in its word-of-mouth marketing and social media activities - both for itself and on behalf of clients.

Compare that to the military, man-the-barricades mentality that is ingrained in the corporate culture at Wal-Mart. Add a prevailing attitude in U.S. politics/marketing/culture that if you just repeat a lie long enough, the public will accept the lie as truth.

It's a very typical situation where the client doesn't want to operate in the real world because the rules of behaviour are inconvenient.

The public relations agency's job is to educate the client and show them how they can gain from behaving in a less anti-social manner. There are many, many compromises to be made on both sides before that kind of transformation can take place (if that's even possible).

The blog was one of those compromises, and president Richard Edelman has acknowledged "the cross-country tour that Edelman designed" was done in a way that violated the agency's stated principles.

His apology was a good step toward clearing the air.  I attribute the fact that it took him several days to respond to the criticism of bloggers to the HAL syndrome.  It's hard to respond to complaints about your actions when you're just doing what the client wants.

See Shel Holtz's Edelman and the One-sided Conversation, and a few dozen other posts - IR Daily, twopointouch, Open (finds, minds …, hyku | blog, JD on EP, Marketing Begins At Home, Joe Duck, PR Squared, Scobleizer, The Post Money Value, Blog Business Summit, Message, Publishing 2.0 and A View from the Isle (links via Techmeme).

Update:  Edelman's internal investigation has turned up two more fake blogs.  Surprise, surprise - both related to Wal-Mart.  That just reinforces my impression that the client is driving this particular wagon.

Tags: communications, consulting, marketing, edelman, agencies, walmart, blogs

Rewarding Images

  How to cross the street in Brooklyn 
  Originally uploaded by gillicious.

You stay subscribed to some blogs just because you like to be surprised by whatever the person might do.

I came across Gillian Gunson on Flickr, and have subscribed to her blog Gillianic Tendencies for a year now.  Lots of discussion of her cat, her job, her hair.  Lots of self-portraits and angst about her cat, her job, her hair.

And a bright personality that shines through it all, keeping me coming back.

This week I was rewarded with this photo from her recent trip to New York.  Not your average tourist...

Photo by mmonk.

R.I.P. Lister Sinclair

I didn't even know there was an Ideas show before Lister Sinclair until the last few years.  Whenever I tuned in, he was always the voice of the CBC Radio show that was willing to examine thinkers and their thoughts in detail.

News this morning of his death brought to mind his gentle, whimsical voice.  There's still a tribute to him on the Ideas website, put together when he retired in 1999.

What I liked best about him was his willingness to share his interest in a topic without presenting himself as smarter or better-read than his listeners.  (Which is different from playing dumb.)

Ideas will play a tribute to him over the next three nights.  9 p.m. on CBC Radio One.  I'll try to catch it.  I want to hear if they play some tape from his earlier days as a playwright and actor.