The big hullabaloo the past few weeks was a snark tweet about ConEd and the “intern” handling the Twitter account.

Interns don't run the social media accounts of major corporations, especially not in the middle of a communications crisis.

I will gladly die on this hill, as a senior social media staffer who has worked late into the night writing apology tweets one by one from a brand account. https://t.co/0KLy2WqCIL

— ella dawson (@brosandprose) December 28, 2018

This, naturally, caused a few tweet thread responses that social media executives are not interns, and then another tweet that the current social media executives are the CCOs and CMOs of the future.

Adding to this spot-on tweet: social media managers know the following about your company:

-Marketing
-Comms (especially crisis)
-Creative (graphics, imagery, photos, video)
-Branding
-Industry trends
-Customer service
-Create/maintain passionate user base

Future CMO/CCOs https://t.co/MyBCp7O7Yk

— Matthew Kobach (@mkobach) December 29, 2018

But to mangle the quote from Pogo, I have seen the enemy and he is us. The reality is that if there’s a perception problem in social media in the bigger business and media world, it is our own fault. We can go along the whole connotation and denotation path, but the current connotation for social media is that it is a young person’s career, and that a lot of things are handled by interns (or the work is low-level enough that it could be handled by an intern).

And you know what? The connotation isn’t far off from reality. To loop it to public relations and communications, there’s an issue there that we don’t have a seat at the C-suite table, at the executive level. Social media has the same issue, there’s no seat (or limited seats) at the grown-up table, and a good part of that is the snark of social media.

Yes, the snark. In our circle jerk of social media (advertising and trade) media, and social media people themselves patting themselves on the back for the creativity ... well, the tone is less than executive-level professional. Yes, the executives might love the engagement and the sales funnel from such snark and creativity, but are they going to point to it and say “yes, these are the future CMOs and CCOs for our corporation”? Likely no, they want the gravitas of the (potentially, okay really boring) analytics group or advertising folks. You know, the traditional and staid careers in marketing that know how to be buttoned-up and present.

But back to Pogo. About 15 years ago, a junior social media person wrote that social media was the purvey of young people and that older people - and I was eventually called out, along with friends - were not fit to do social. Forget the communications aspect, the crisis components, the strategy and tactics that are learned from experience ... social media was/is a young person’s game and those old people don’t know what they’re doing.

And that “social media is for the youth” mindset continues on in both social media and in corporations. Gotta know the latest tool, talk to a college kid! Not sure what to do on the social channels, hand over the reigns to the intern! And yes, people might want to dispute that this is the problem and reality, but we are reaping what we sowed.

What’s the solution? Better jobs - meaning jobs where the pay is commensurate with the experience, and the experience is aligned with the responsibilities. More analytics - too much of social is “gut” feelings, and that means nothing in the sales funnel. We might want to claim that we aren’t beholden to data and numbers, but those are what drive business and cash IS king in corporate America. More gravitas - yes, certain accounts need to be snarky (well, need is a strong word) but it is about speaking to your audience. But it is also about knowing which platform is the right one for which audience (that seems to be a losing battle in the era of automation). And knowing not to be a copycat account that does make it look like it’s just an intern doing the work.

And organizations like Social Media Club and SocialMedia.org are pushing forward to try to bring an aura of professionalism to social media; but organizations need to realize that social media is like community relations and other communications and marketing - with a few caveats, it’s real-time and now one of the first engagements a customer has with a brand.

A version of this post was originally published on Social Media Club's Blog.

I have been working in public relations for the past 20 years. Part of that time, I have done work in crisis communications, having been called on for crisis counsel with an online influencer/star, working with a consumer-packaged goods company on messaging and plans, and others that I will not even vaguely identify.

There's a lot of smoke right now in the technology world, and there are more fires that will soon need to be put out, on the rampant sexual harassment for which women are now coming forward. Today's New York Times article was both shocking and yet not surprising - especially as I read friends' and acquaintances' names in the article. And the NYT is not the type of publication that goes to print based on one or two accusations. They had a half dozen women willing to risk their own reputations, and two dozen more with whom they confirmed stories behind the scenes. That's why this is both smoke and fire, and we will see many more articles.

Based on what I have noticed in the past, many of these companies have junior PR people who have never had to deal with a crisis. They don't have the background or training, and typical in today's PR world, they just do what their bosses tell them to do and neither question nor push back.

Today's article was preceded and followed by Medium posts, tweets and corporate statements by identified people and companies. But all were off on their timing, and all were off in a way that makes clear to readers that they were trying to contain the story or change the dialogue.

Putting out a Medium post hours before the New York Times runs its story was an attempt to change the story from "I have been caught" to "I have chosen to 'confess'"; but it fails if the post has no explicit mention of the woman/women or incident quoted in the Times. Publishing a company blog post to put out a statement about changes claiming the CEO had stepped aside months ago, on the day of the article, is a terrible strategy that calls every word before or since into question. And for some of the accused, their silence speaks volumes.

Where were the apologies? Where were the non-apologies -- the usual "I'm sorry if you were offended"? Where were the apologies to the families, the wives and the children to be putting them through this as well (is that another issue in how tech treats women, that the wives are afterthoughts?) Overall, the public reactions by people and companies called out in the Times give the impression that, as claimed by the article, this is a well-known practice in tech and the article is not a revelation but a temporary annoyance. We just need to let it blow over.

Of all the apologies, it is interesting that it was the lead of Binary Capital who did apologize to his family but at the same time, there was something insincere about the apology - especially coming after the first statement that was more attack and denial than ownership.

By contrast, look at what crisis handlers do when a politician gets caught philandering. The apology tour begins with an apology to the wife and family, usually seen standing at the politician's side, for putting them through the airing of dirty laundry. To leave off the people closest to you shows a lack of empathy, or an entitled sense that they signed up to be put through this.

This might be a watershed event for technology and the VC community. As the second story to break the past few weeks, the growing list of statements from the VC firms involved show more attachment to the status quo and concern for what the other VCs think than a desire to see change or do the right thing for the people affected. "We should have done more" and "we regret the oversight" are woulda, coulda throwaway lines.

Based on good crisis communications, an apology - and there needs to be more ownership and apologies - is a necessary start. But if it is just more lip-service and messaging, and is not tied to a major break from past behavior, it means nothing and nothing changes.

Technology companies love April Fools’ Day (too much). The marketing, public relations and other departments seem to invest good time, money and (some) creativity to their efforts to fool customers and the public into thinking some outrageous thing is real. Or to get the laughs.

Rarely are the April Fools’ Day jokes funny, even with all the effort. So why do it all? Well, maybe for the lulz but also it seems to get media coverage and brand awareness.

Think about that: it is for media coverage and brand awareness.

We see companies ranging from startups to established Fortune 100 companies all attempting to pull off an April Fools’ joke. I even saw a tech reporter’s Facebook update noting that he was pitched multiple April Fool’s Day jokes on embargo. On embargo.

Why are PR people pitching these stories? Why are those same PR people not pushing back and saying no? Don’t PR people have much more important stories to pitch for their companies/clients than such unoriginal and not creative crap? Really, at the end of the day, are we not better than this?

But let us ask a possibly even more important question: in the era of fake news, is it smart to be pitching fake news to business and technology reporters?

We are in the middle of a time where technology journalism keeps seeming to take a hit. It's a time when VCs are attacking journalists and stories on Twitter and making claims of hidden agendas or hit pieces, merely because good journalists are actually investigating and exposing bad companies and bad players.

On the flip side, as it was put to me recently, all technology news now seems fake. Tech media are writing shallow technology stories and not digging into deeper issues.Or, maybe worse, the push to publish and be first is causing them to outright miss the real stories and the bigger picture.

On that note, the technology and business press would better serve the readers by skipping the April Fools’ stunts this year, and not give corporations the press they desire. Yes, I understand that the April Fools’ stories get clicks and readers, the wonderful click bait … but in this new era of fake news, shouldn't we all strive to be better?

As the PR person, just say "no" when the marketing people come in with their “great” idea for stunts and jokes. Because, if we are being honest, the ideas are not that creative or clever and we do more harm than good pitching them to reporters.

And no, this is not my April Fools' Stunt - this is too serious a time to joke.

Photo copyright: grgroup / 123RF Stock Photo

July 2, 2003.

That’s when I started this blog. I have been writing - off and on - for almost 14 years now. When I started, there were a handful of public relations bloggers and social media was not yet a term. Yes, some of us were doing online PR (remember that quaint term), and some were already doing digital work and coding.

We were a pretty close-knit group, with not much drama or jealousy, and mostly egos were kept in check. What we did was try to learn from each other and help each other out. I still talk to many of them and think of them as friends.

During that first year, the focus of the blog changed. I started with the issues of starting my own firm but grew really bored with that, and focused on the issues I was seeing - and still see - in the industry. And that industry has expanded to be social media marketing, marketing communications, communications and more.

Or is that the lines have become so blurred in all the practices out there, that they are all bleeding into each other.

Also, during the past almost 14 years, I have seen many in that original group stop writing and blogging, wholesale delete their old blogs, or just move on. The deletion makes no sense to me, it is like being afraid of having your past views and thoughts held against you; I pretty much stand by what I have written, even though some of it is embarrassing as shit, because as a professional and a person, I have grown and evolved. Or I believe I have.

This space has gone through a Blogger template, to a custom-one designed by Josh Hallett, back to a basic spartan Blogger template. But as I started blogging again this year because the same issues seem to come up again and again, I have gone in with a new redesign.

Here is the new look. I hope you like it, but it is also a rebirth or refocus for me to consciously make an effort to blog at least twice a month; originally it was weekly but hey, I am nothing if not realistic.

There are a lot of things I see out there that make me scratch my head and wonder why we are seeing and writing about the same crap, the same issues, for the past 10-plus years. Friends joke that I should just republish old posts, because I wrote what is being said now by others … but five-plus years ago.

It is an oddity that our industries do not seem to learn, that the large agencies are stagnant and afraid, and clients are looking elsewhere. And that there is an overall lack of understanding of just what is public relations.

So I am back. And I am writing. And I am hopefully getting people to discuss things, or at least having a few friends read what I write. Enjoy the new journey.

When I first started this blog, I would do what seemed to be the de rigeur thing to do for a blog: write about how others were doing it wrong.

I had a full series that ended after a few posts - the Clueless Train, based on The Cluetrain Manifesto. If you search for the posts, you will be amused by the Technorati tags. The irony here is I never fully bought into the manifesto as it seemed to crap on public relations and dismiss what public relations did for a company, but I digress.

Anyway, I started doing what I believed (and still believe) social media bloggers and writers should all do: I did research and called up companies. You know, fact check. And grow up.

And when I called out others for spreading wrong information, fake information, dare I say alternative facts and fake news - I was told that “I’m not a reporter, Jeremy, I’m a blogger.”

Or as I call it, the laziness of wanting to be a pundit without doing actual work or thinking.

In other words, I grew up and matured and remembered what goes on behind the scenes. And having watched people go on the offensive against Kryptonite (for doing the right thing, just not the extended audiences) or against FedEx (it still boggles my mind that I was the only journalist or “journalist” to call up FedEx for a comment) or Red Lobster (ugh, shut up) or Wendy’s (she’s too snarky!) or any other brand that is doing a good job and jealousy rears her ugly green head… .

The problem is that social media punditry seems to be built on Monday morning quarterbacking. And seeming to willfully ignore that it is about the message (or messages) and not the medium. Sorry, pundits, social media is not an end-all, be-all but it is more about the messaging being on point and right for the audiences. That means any platform (gasp, television or radio or others).

If you have worked on the agency-side, you know the planning and strategies that go into a program, you know that you take the bullet if the program goes badly - we go down for the client, and you know that there are things you just cannot talk about.

If you have worked in-house, you know the processes for approvals, the voices that you strive to recreate in social to give your brand a personality and try to reflect the corporation as a whole.

And you know if things go badly, you fix on the fly and prepare for the crisis or crises that are coming from consumers.

The fake crises, though, are the ones that are brought up by others in our industry. You know, that whole professional courtesy thing seems to go out the door when it is easier to go on the offensive against someone else’s creative. And yes, we see it in the advertising trade publications all the time - and pointing out really bad campaigns is necessary, especially if they fall into the sexism, misogyny, racism or the sort.

And I get it; I did it too. It is easy to be snarky, but then I grew up. Meaning I am still snarky (just look at this post) but I know what goes into the campaigns and managing social. I know what it takes to find voices - a different tone for different platforms - and how hard it is to manage and find that right balance. Do I think and know I can come up with some better campaigns? Yes, but I also know I am not creatively bankrupt and immature enough to think across all generations. Or is that called both young at heart and old?

I rather have the attacks on colleagues in the industry than the viral ones I see against small, local businesses. Oh, you pundits who do this, you’re so better than them it is amazing that your egos are able to fit into anywhere you go. The reality is social is not easy, most local and small businesses do not have the budgets to hire professionals - or if they do hire someone, they’re a “professional” that has not explained the true costs and issues with social that likely learned from some online course that taught them nothing.

Instead of making the industry a better place, though, it is easier to attack others. Yay, go social.

The next time you see this happen - and we all see it happen - channel your Eddie Murphy from Raw.


Ask what they have done lately, ask what campaigns or work they have done. Or are they just too busy doing the speakers' circuit to have any idea what it is like in the trenches and on the front lines?

Back in January, Jeremiah Owyang posted about the need for a Presidential tweet crisis contingency plans. This spurred a good number of (threaded) comments on my Facebook post, and I noted that I had pitched a SWAT team at a PR firm, but nothing ever happened with the idea (good idea 10 years ago, even better one now - and with better tools). And a few of the comments noted that most PR people nowadays do not have crisis communications experience or skills, especially the startups with young “senior” practitioners.

Yes, I know, I need to blog more often and faster since others are having these conversations now … when I was having them in early January.

And, in an informal survey of friends, those that are qualified to have plans noted that they do not have a social media crisis plan written out, nor the talent or bandwidth on the social team to be able to write one that would actually work.

That makes sense to me - not a good thing, but it makes sense. The skills and soft touch for crisis are a dying skill, and on social things get blown up so fast and quickly, it IS hard to separate and not take it personally. Having operated an early Twitter account for a corporation, it is hard not to take it personally when you’re called a liar, get hate on the brand and worse. (The better fun is leaving and watching the contributions get Orwelled - but that’s the PR life!).

But back to Twitter. I have been bearish on Twitter for the past few years, looking at it as a necessary evil for brands and public relations. Necessary as it is nothing more than a customer service tool for brands - especially consumer - as consumers move to Twitter to bitch and complain and expect immediate response. Necessary for public relations because the latest generation of media loves to be on Twitter in a ego-gratification world where they believe their tweets are important and should be read (yes, there is a whole other rant there, and part of why I would like to see Twitter just die and go away).

Now, it is even more important or a necessary evil for brands because you never know when it will be your turn in the spotlight. And as has been noted by others out there, everything is political now, and while politics is personal, everything is personal too. And having that social crisis plan in place should save some headaches, heartburn and gray hairs.

Brands are now personal, are personalities and people have a connection to them. And personalities are brands, with people following some like they matter. So brands - especially tech companies that have been beating their chests on changing the world for better - are being called out to take a stance in politics, and that leads to another crisis or two or three. And personal brands are being called into question and on the mat for not necessarily taking a position.

Everyone has a right to express themselves in their own way on social, and just like it is not their place to tell me what I should or should not be posting, it is not my place to tell them what to post or not to post. Social has ruined most discourse between people - and that was before this election - so I will keep my friends all over the spectrum and listen to what they have to say. Until they go on ad hominem attacks.

Social has devolved into a tiring experience for people with all sides being draining, and leading to many (including me) taking Facebook off mobile. I have even been off Twitter for the most part because it has become such a cesspool of politics and attacks, that I am just following and focusing on things that are related to work (yay B2B enterprise technology) and not posting anything on my Twitter accounts.

But back to the original point: in a time where almost anything and everything is devolving into a crisis - including Presidential tweets - and other issues on news out there, it is best to have a fully updated and polished crisis plan that includes traditional and social strategies. Those range from the traditional press release, prepared messaging for all the platforms that are written in those platforms patois. Every platform has its own voice, and audience and you want to write and speak in that voice.

That is the key here: crisis work is about planning and preparation. In the days of yore with the traditional news cycle, you had time to plan and respond. In a digital world, that time to plan and message is gone - you need to be immediate and that is where planning is key and having the experience sets apart crisis from CRISIS. Plus, the timeline is accelerated on everything, including the share of mind for people. The public gets upset immediately, but also moves on faster to new things.

Plus, crisis usually starts in places that a company least expects it. With the focus on social selling and employee engagement, every single employee is now a representative of the company. We have seen crises started at the lowest level employees at fast food restaurants that blow up through social. And we will see more and more crises start with employees sharing their personal political views - personal is political, political is personal - and the corporations and businesses needing to clean up the messes. What we have seen so far are corporations firing those employees, but is that really the best way to solve the issues?

Even with the best crisis planning and execution, the key thing is to make sure that the people in charge actually listen and understand the counsel, and are supportive of what needs to be done.

Sometimes, though, nothing is the best strategy in social as social is a short-attention span theater, and people over-react. Plus, well, lesson number one should always be “don’t engage trolls.”

Since the beginning of this blog 13+ years ago, I have hammered on one thing consistently: as professionals in public relations and communications, the collective group has to go above and beyond the conventional blogging or social media norms to act above reproach and set standards.

This call to establish better standards never really caught on, as the desire to be the first to publish was – and still is – more important than the whole truth. I argued with others in this industry that as professionals in public relations, we have an obligation to allow our fellow industry colleagues to get facts on the record before making claims or debating issues in public forums.

The fact that I wrote about this 11 years ago and things still have not changed is just sad. Back then, FedEx Furniture was all the rage and FedEx was vilified in social media dialogue. I called up, and interviewed the communications person at FedEx and got the full story from both FedEx and the furniture builder. Plus, I was the only person – blogger or reporter – who called FedEx. Everyone else, including morning television shows, just went with what was being said online.

It was not hard to do; after one quick email to FedEx, I got a response and an interview. And I think – no, I know – we have a responsibility as contributors to this industry to always strive to get the full story.

Now, there isn’t one week that goes by without a declaration of a social media fail. Whether it’s the “digerati” making statements on social or blogs, or reporters from marketing and advertising news sites, everyone is quick to proclaim that Brand X totally fucked up.

This weekend was no exception. People got their knives out for Red Lobster (full disclosure: I did email them with a question but have not heard back).

The quick story: Beyoncé dropped her new song, Formation, on Saturday with a line about going to Red Lobster (in a not family-friendly line). Red Lobster didn’t immediately respond on social, and then when they did respond 8 hours later, it still wasn’t good enough for the crowds. The company was in a no-win situation, because no matter what they did or did not do, the “wisdom” of the crowd would say they did wrong.
 
I mean, we must know better than Red Lobster’s own corporate marketing or social media team because we’re so much smarter sitting in our coffee shops and not actually in the trenches. And that is the issue with these posts and declarations: it is 100 percent conjecture. Armchair QB’ing is fun, it is way too easy, and it is usually wrong.

Think about your work at the start-up, consultancy, agency or wherever you are. How would you feel or react if someone came out to attack your work, usually commenting little more than “FAIL,” and then say how they could do it so much better than you? It’s easy to INTERNET RAGE, and give your two cents without full knowledge or a backstory.
 
And there’s the issue. Amongst all the hoopla around Red Lobster screwing up, I have yet to read anywhere a statement or comment from Red Lobster about the situation. All these people writing articles and social posts have no inside knowledge of how Red Lobster handled this internally. One post, which I will not link to for traffic, made conjectures about the agency (who may or may not have been involved) and the corporation.

The reality of it is that Red Lobster is a corporation that is owned by a private equity group. In corporations, there are processes in place for these types of things – and social media, along with the mass public that uses it, tends to lead to short-term issues and “crises”. When you work with large brands – either internally or through an agency – things take time. Issues are looked at from all sides. All the pro’s and the con’s are weighed before decisions are made – which is never fast enough for the demands of the “digerati”. When you work for large corporations or clients, things are different. When you are just a someone blogging or commenting on Twitter or Facebook, you are really just showing that you aren’t in the game.

Now, I do not want to ignore the elephant in the room that people have been dancing around. And it is a big elephant, as this is a great example of the lack of diversity in public relations, marketing and social media.

The Beyoncé song touches on many issues in the POC community, and #BlackTwitter is a huge and strong movement on Twitter (one that Twitter still does not seem to embrace, and one I said they should in AdWeek). Was the response delay a cultural issue? Maybe. Is there a need for more diversity in social media, marketing, public relations and the like? Absolutely. It’s a need that exists now, and it’s a need that existed since even before I started in the industry.

Do I think a lot of the complaints about Red Lobster on both sides were not fully addressed as it was broken down by color lines? Very much so – and it was an issue that most people seemed to dance around.

I have no answers nor solutions for that. I want to look at this whole thing from one lens: people condemning Red Lobster have no idea what goes on inside the corporate office, or in the thought processes of a corporate team. It is easy to scream FAIL, but without being in the Red Lobster offices, you have no idea what went on. All the rest is pure conjecture.

Next time you get ready to attack a corporation or brand for its processes, realize you just do not know what goes into them. If you want to attack for a lack of cultural awareness, that is a different issue that the whole industry needs to address.

On Thursday, right before the start of the Fourth of July weekend, Reddit let go of its communications person, Victoria Taylor. Beyond running communications - or as part of running communications - Taylor appeared to run point on the iAmA (Ask Me Anything) subreddit.

In such a tight-knit community as Reddit is, there's no surprise it turned into a shitshow with various subreddits going dark in support of Taylor. And not surprisingly, it also turned into blaming Interim CEO Ellen Pao for Taylor being let go, although there's no proof it was Pao or someone else who made the call.

Gawker has a good run-down with time-stamps of the whole debacle, including a statement from Pao sent by a PR executive, Heather Wilson. Who happens to be an executive vice president at Abernathy McGregor, a crisis communications specialty firm. And the firm has been working for Pao since her sexual harassment lawsuit against Kleiner Perkins.

So let's put that all together: traditional crisis communications firm is working with the interim CEO for a large, vocal, often controversial / free-speech debating community and lets go a well-liked communications employee hoping that the Fourth of July long weekend will hide the news.

Because that IS a traditional public relations trick. Got bad news or bad earnings? Release on a Friday! It's such a well-known trick that even The Atlantic wrote up a story on how ... it doesn't work anymore. That old PR trick just doesn't do it for clients anymore.


Should this be surprising? No, not at all.

The news media moved into a 24-hour cycle years ago with the Internet and social media. With social media and the Internet, communities popped up and cover everything and anything, and with the ease of publishing there are tons of niche news sites and news can be broken anywhere.

The PR industry is a bit slow to follow, but with its current love affair for all social things, it realized that the cycle isn't what it was, but nonstop. Being in-house PR counsel means always being on, always have the phone available. Doing crisis communications means always having that phone on, and email ready for situations that pop-up. This isn't new but for some reason it seems like it is.

With Reddit, there was no reason for its executives to think that the news of a well-liked executive and community member who handled one of its most popular and mainstream subreddits could be hidden. And, it's beyond obvious that neither Reddit nor the PR crisis firm had no plan in place for when it all did blow up. Come on, that's Crisis Communications 101, and for Reddit to ignore it is quite amazing - plus, for Reddit not to have its finger on the pulse of its own community is quite mind-boggling too.

Are there exceptions to the rule that you can't hide the news anymore? Of course, there are. In tech? Release bad news the same day Apple makes a product announcement. I've seen that done a few times recently, and while the news doesn't disappear it is overshadowed. But news isn't going away, and bad stuff bubbles up.

For the ironically challenged, I purposely published on Fourth of July (Happy Fourth all!!). And yes, I chose a dog giving that look because it seemed fitting.

Photo by Henry Faber.

As we all get settled into watching the series finale of Mad Men, let's take a look back at the half-season: the good guys of Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce (SCDP) have been bought by the evil machine of McCann Erickson.

And almost immediately, I started to see marketing and communications professionals on Twitter and Facebook adamantly scream their need to be contrarian (read as slow and followers, those late to everything and never on top of things) and claim that they'll never join Ello.

Which is great. We need more followers in the public relations, social media and overall marcom industries. We don't have enough original thinkers, and it's better to have followers that will not bring counsel, strategy, original thought to clients but rehash old and tired ideas or just knee-jerk follow directions from clients even if they know they're the wrong directions.

If you can't tell, that's sarcasm. To proudly proclaim that you're not going to join a new communications/social network platform to be contrarian shows an inability to jump into new ideas, or try out new things. As marketing communications professionals, you want to be one of the first on a platform to see if it will do anything (most of the time, no) or if it's something that you need to get clients onto, or at least start to monitor.

Are these the same people that said Twitter was stupid (probably) or that Snapchat was just for sexting (um, projecting much?) or that Facebook is dying (always, it's dying - it's almost as bad as the annual PR is dead meme) or that PR should never pay bloggers (how'd that work out for the firms?). Are these the people that are going to miss out and be late to the next platform, or aren't really grokking that privacy is the next hot thing, eg, Snapchat, Secret, Whisper .... (yes, they are.)

There is a middle-ground that seems to be missing in marcom, and a healthy skepticism. Too often, the industry is all or nothing (remember the hype that oversold SecondLife internally at agencies, and the firms/people too weak to push back on the ideas?) and not enough middle ground. So this anti-Ello stream is just pig-headed and wrong without actually being on the platform and playing around.

Now, there are tons of issues about Ello that make it seem like a really fast to burn-out star: nothing mobile (yet), less a Facebook killer and more like the bastard child of Instagram plus Tumblr, the adamant claim of no advertising (remind anyone else of Tumblr?)

On that last point, Greg Brooks has a great point (posted on Facebook):

Positioned as the anti-Facebook, their manifesto reads as a thing born in the fever-swamp mind of an untalented freshman Lit major. So very, very many Big Ideas(tm)(r)(c).

I'd like to say back to Ello:

I don't mind my social network being funded by advertisers. I understand their motives, they understand my browsing habits. It works. Commerce isn't evil -- it's the most effective force ever devised for pulling people out of poverty. 

You claim audacity, beauty, simplicity and transparency. But what's transparent about allowing fake identities? What's beautiful in asking users to pour personal information and relationships into a site with no long-term plan other than "trust us"? 

Simple, I'll give you -- the whole thing does seem simple. 

Ello aspires to be a place to "connect, create and celebrate life." But if that's all it is, then the party won't last long. People -- and companies -- that only focus on the lofty often end up sleeping in bus shelters when things go south. 

I may or may not be a product. But I'm certainly not gullible.

Yes, Ello has been greatly hyped with a great launch (almost seems, well, calculated to take advantage of anti-FB sentiment, like it was done by professionals...) but that doesn't mean it is or isn't worth the time to at least check it out, just don't immediately buy the hype (another issue in PR/SM).

It's a new shiny toy, and to ignore it in the PR/SM space shows a lack of understanding basic tenets in the industry and for your clients. Ignoring it is almost as bad as the "I'm dropping Facebook for Ello!" crowd. It's not an all-or-nothing thing, it's about testing out new platforms and having informed opinions.

Melancholy. That's probably the best word to describe BlogHer 14; it wasn't just me, but in talking to the women I've become friends with (around the world) at BlogHer, many of the veterans came to say goodbye to what has been an amazing 10 year ride.†

My first BlogHer was the second year. I could't convince work to pay for it, or to allow me to skip work on Friday (amazing how the agencies wouldn't really grok it for a while - or still, for some struggling with social media and paid/earned media) but I went down to San Jose on Saturday and was allowed in (thanks Jory, I never forgot that). I came with a bit of a chip on my shoulder - check out the snarky T-shirt on (thanks Irina for the photo!) - but lost that pretty fast.

But what was more important was that I sat down and talked, and discussed and met with a group of women (and very few men) and had no problem listening and talking. And engaging. And finding out what people were thinking and doing in this new blogging space that could change things.

Interestingly enough, many of the other man at the conference that year couldn't do that without being condescending and holier than thou, or without just being awkward around women. They couldn't just be there and talk.

Through the years, I've had fun adventures at BlogHer.

I got to be on the yelling end of a discussion in Chicago where another PR person made really stupid comments about his favorite Mom bloggers - who all happened to be white - so the woman next to me turns and yells at me about PR being blindly white. And she's right (not me, of course) and it's still that bag. But if it weren't for that woman and panel, I wouldn't have met Mocha Momma or KimchiMamas/CityMama.

Another fun time was when a social media person - who played it as if she'd always been at BlogHer, even if it was her first one - got so annoyed with me that she called me an outlier. Not to cast aspersions to her intellect, but she probably was trying to use Malcolm Gladwell theories on someone that might be an outlier, but in a more positive way ... as someone who had been involved and saw what was really going on in social media that was more than just public relations, digital marketing or affiliate marketing.

So whatever happens next to BlogHer and the conferences - if they go smaller, a la BlogHer Pro, BlogHer Food, BlogHer DIY (I pitched that one years ago) - BlogHer will still have the first mover advantage of putting together an amazing conference to help women grow, learn, network. The fact that the number of first-timers grew year-over-year is a testament in itself.

After my 8 years of attendance, BlogHer10 might just be my coda on the conference. But going out on a high-note as "I Am BlogHer" (thanks Jessi!) and acknowledging that my blog has always been tilting against windmills in PR and SM (and usually losing) was a nice gift to me.

Pick up the fucking phone.

NB: I'm testing out Upworthy-style headlines for my posts. You like? 
NB: There's likely going to be an uproar about ethics and such from organizations that purport to represent PR. Ignore them. Those groups don't do PR in a real world, but in their own little fantasy worlds. The sky is probably pink there and there's only black and white, no grays.
NB: If you don't know what Bridgegate is, and you're in PR, you're really depressing and should learn to read all news. Here's a link.
NB: FUD always works. Always.

My blog-iversary was July 2.

Nine years of semi-blogging on this Blogger platform that I pretty much refuse to leave, even though I have jspepper.tv to do something with (the eventual idea was to aggregate everything on one page but my About.me page does that well enough anyway). Plus, hard to replace SEO for 9 years.

In the 9 years - yes, 9 years, longer than most other people besides a handful of others - I have seen people come and go. I've seen the "popular" bloggers in public relations turn to social media advocates, and then fall to the side of less importance because they, well, never stuck out their necks on issues or just followed trends. I see the new group of SM bloggers that have risen to the top - some are cream, some are artificial, powdered cream - and while the cream is imparting wisdom, the powdered kind is glomming onto hot topics and rehashing others' posts, with no original content or thinking.

I've also seen the original group of PR bloggers just say fuck-it-all and give up on PR and SM blogging, and start following their other passions. And, well, most of the time I don't blame them. That small group was relatively close, meaning we'd talk and share ideas and information and while somewhat competitive, were a community. Yah, that's pretty much gone nowadays except with a few good people. But that is how media works, and at the end of the day, blogging and social media are ... just media.

So with the past 9 years, what has stayed consistent has been voice. While the focus and topics have varied a bit, the voice has always been the same: saying things that others want to say, but don't. For better or worse - and I'm at least cognizant that it has helped and hurt my career - it's who I am, and pretty much what you see online on Twitter or on the blog is who I am in the real world.

And if you have met me at one of the many Mom conferences I've attended, you've seen that in person. I'll say what I'm thinking, somewhat filtered, but still saying what needs to be said. As one long-time BlogHer and real friend notes, the people that don't like it are the ones that just aren't comfortable with themselves, and that's their problem.

At least that straight-forwardness has lead to a speaking situation. I'll be in Atlanta in October for the Aiming Low Non-Conference, talking about what it's like being straight-forward. It's something that more people should probably do in the space.

So what's next for the blog? It's not like I write that much here, but I do get yelled at by people to write more (yes, I could name drop, but it's not my style) and that what I have to say needs to be said. And, I do want to keep pushing the envelope in PR and social media so need to finish and write more. That's pretty much my promise to the possible audience I have here (although I still write just for a handful of friends).

And there are a lot of posts that will be the usual things that no one is really saying. So what's in the queue and just need to be finished? Things mocking the #PRDefined as an exercise in why PRSA is irrelevant; how community has become a nonsensical term, and abused by people; the battle between "fuck you, pay me" and "hell no, we won't pay" and; how PR has lost its way.

And of course other things that pop up, and need to be addressed.

Will I write these things? I'm going to try, but with all the other things out there - like work - and wanting to blog more on my food blog, it is a challenge to find time for a life/work balance, that includes blogging.

But, well, shit needs to be said - and very few people are saying it publicly, and that's part of the problem. I'll stir it up again.

Hopefully for another 9 years - and maybe on an updated look.

So this weekend, I went to Target to buy some stuff - you know, essentials like orange juice and Pop-Tarts - and pick up some Missoni for Target socks.

Yes, I knew there was a run on the Missoni products, but I figured I was safe with socks ... but nope for both Targets (they're 1 mile away from each other, don't ask).

Credit to Target - they did an amazing job with the pre-launch; they were in men's and women's fashion magazines, there was a great buzz built up for the launch.

PR issues for Target - they were wiped out of products almost immediately, and the website was unable to sustain the traffic. And there are close to 35,000 Missoni for Target products on eBay ... and reports of 44,000 at the beginning so people were just buying to sell, and not buying to wear or use. And that's not even taking into consideration the possibility of products hoarded by employees ... .

Questions that this leads to - is it really just a one-time event, and there are no more Missoni for Target products to be sold? According to the stores, that was it. And the website was totally wiped out too. Why weren't there limits placed at the stores for what people would buy, how many they could buy, and, well, the sizes? It's obvious that people were grabbing and buying, especially with all the XL sizes on eBay. And will other top-tier designers avoid Target because they will wonder if their products will be pushed to eBay almost immediately (likely no, because it's about money paid out).

So the reality is that while the public might be upset and annoyed that they didn't get what they might have wanted (I wanted socks, even though I don't wear shoes), Target made money and the stock did rise. For shareholders, and communications employees, that's key. The crisis with the run on goods to re-sell on eBay and the crashing of the site are just blips.

But it's going to take time to repair some of those relationships ... and yet, at the same time, create more demand for the next big designer (so expect a bigger run for the goods). You would expect the company to address the issues on Facebook - actually, there are a lot of issues it seems like they need to address - but it's just a bit of answers and probably not as much as they could/should be. Of course, with a large company like them, it's hard to address every issue. But the anger and disappointment on the page is quite palpable.

All in all, though, it's a push on whether Target will have any long-term issues. People forget, profits went up, and life goes on.

Google+: it's the hottest thing in social media since, well, the last hottest thing (is that Empire Avenue or Quora or something else I'm missing?) But like all hot things, you get burnt if you jump in to fast.

Now, we already had the Google+ social media posts - to the point that most of them are just drafting on a hot news item. Are most of them newsworthy or, well, necessary? No. Hell, some of them have just been based on the announcement.

Okay, here's the skinny: Google+ has launched, and a land rush of social media and PR people - and technology pundits - got access. And they're claiming that Facebook or Twitter or the both are dead. And then we see a commotion about brands, and what are brands going to do and when are brands going to get on Google+, blah blah. And that's the thing - while there might be some value for businesses and Google+, thus far it's too early to tell what it might be, although a good explanation of what brands might be able to do is from Forbes.

But let's take a ride back to yesteryear and look at a little site called ... Second Life. Back then, the PR people (and digital, since we weren't calling it social media yet) were pretty hot for SL and getting brands there. Unfortunately, there was little thought put into it and it was a huge hype machine. Now while I did recommend SL for certain projects - for a large furniture chain, I recommended putting one location in SL and be able to buy virtual furniture for your home, as well the real furniture for your real home - it made sense as it fit into the community. Brands jumped in, and got burnt, because they didn't get that SL was (and still is) a community and you can't force your way in. That seems to happen to much of social media, nowadays: no understanding of the community aspects.

Looking back at the 8 years of blogging (and now social media - well, take that back 15 years to Usenet and enthusiast site days), there are a few things that become evident: nothing really changes, but everything changes.

One of the things that's become very obvious recently, though, is the death of transparency. Well, maybe dying or dead is a bit hyperbolic, but transparency is fast becoming a thing of the past as more and more people push their own agenda and conveniently ignore transparency for their own goals. You can see it on Twitter, on Facebook - especially Facebook groups - on Quora, and naturally on blog posts. It's a not-so-hidden agenda that comes out after 2 or 3 tweets, or an "innocent" question in a Facebook group or Quora that leads to a "miraculous" answer that is the person's own company or client.

Transparency used to be a big issue for bloggers. Well, at least for the public relations bloggers. One of the first bigger discussions of it came about because of character blogs. Many people, including Steve Rubel (whom I argued with about the issue) and Robert Scoble (who used to be a Moose) felt that character blogs were bad things. Character blogs weren't fully disclosed, they weren't honest or transparent. This mainly came about because of the launch of the Captain Morgan blog and the "controversy" it created.

(As a side-note, I would have linked to the discussion on Steve's blog ... but he's killed his original blogs. Beyond raising questions on the issues of dead links across the web, does the full deletion of a blog and its archives smack of the dismissal of transparency? Does it fit into my whole view of the death of transparency?)

As the years passed, it seems amusing that this would be an issue. We have characters on Twitter and Facebook and while we know that they are not real, we accept them as the entertainment they are and applaud brands for engaging their audiences - the right audiences - in any way you can reach them. Nobody would attack Jack In the Box as lacking transparency because it's understood that it's a brand talking to its fans, engaging on Facebook or Twitter.

Me? I looked at the situation with meh, and that we (the PR bloggers and other early bloggers) weren't the audience, but it was for college students (of legal drinking age, naturally). And did they care about transparency when it came to a character? Not really, it was just something fun.

I was - and still am - hyper about transparency. Call it the egalitarian in me, or the Libra. Back in the day, too often I would see people tout articles on their blogs as "amazing" or "great insight" and then click through to see ... it was self promotion. My point-of-view then, and now, is that it's not hard to tag a blog post as self-promotion, or even a Tweet with #me or some hashtag. The question on transparency there then and now is if it's a great article because the person is in it, or would be a great article that they would have posted or Tweeted without the quote. My guess is the former ... hence my calls for transparency or honesty.

But this all seems quaint - as transparency disappears. I'm not talking about disclosure - the FTC holy grail - but transparency. Dare I say it, but does transparency not matter anymore? Is it - gasp - dead?! And while I think many people do care about transparency (well for others, not themselves), is it a low priority issue for us as we have, well, real life things to worry about (work, personal, love, etc). Transparency, in the scheme of things, is a small issue many of us don't have the time to process.

The world was much easier when it was just PR people that were concerned with this (it's not ironic that the Morgan blog was done by an ad firm - if memory serves). We could debate the issues in our academic way, and come to an agreement that while transparency is important, we all can do it in our own way (which never really works anyway).

And because we all had the background in PR, the transparency issue wasn't an issue that we took lightly - now we would accuse one another of not being transparent or disclosing things, but it was still pretty much above the board. As an aside, I know someone is going to comment that my view on transparency is in contradiction to my view on whisper campaigns - which isn't true. You don't need to be nontransparent to whisper - in fact, it's better to be upfront that this is for company X.

But yes, that is where public relations has always been above the board: we tend to be transparent with the public and press for our clients. We share news and information, and tell the story. As opposed to other marketing practices.

Lately, though, I am starting to see too many PR and SM people trying to be clever or subtle while fishing for information ... and doing it just to get a client mention or have others do work for them. Not very transparent. Or posting tweets about a client article ... with no disclosure it's about a client. Public relations is losing its center, forgetting it's the storyteller in the marketing mix - but with transparency - and is just becoming bullhorn with no thoughts in social media.

But this is also not surprising. With the flattening of social media - the barrier to entry is pretty much non-existent - we see many practitioners come from a background of anything (real estate, retail, unemployed with no discernible skills), and not really grasp the basics of marketing or public relations. Not fully understand the need for a fully transparent conversation but the view that "engaging" is all it is, no matter what tactics need to be taken. And with that, we get a lack of transparency but hits and mentions coming to the forefront in social media.

The death of transparency is one of the downsides of social media; it happens because no one speaks up anymore about the issues and the need for transparency, and happens because the general public might care, but doesn't have the time to obsess over the issues. But for too many in social media, it's about getting paid and that's it. No thought on transparency or anything else, just the ego.

You note that CSR is different than managing for stakeholders - and that if managing for stakeholders is done well, we can just drop the CSR movement. What exactly do you mean by that?

If we are fulfilling all of our responsibilities to customers, employees, suppliers, communities, and financiers, and creating value for them, what does it mean to ask "are we socially responsible". Oftentimes CSR can serve as an excuse not to fulfill those baseline stakeholder responsibilities, or it serves to apologize for, rather than prevent harmful consequences. Take care of stakeholders and CSR takes care of itself.

While there is a major difference between the two, why does CSR have such a high public relations value? Are companies engaging in CSR for the right reasons, or is it just PR games?

There are many reasons that companies engage in CSR. Some are good reasons and some not. I resist the temptation to comment on all companies, or to reduce a complex issue to a simple motivation.

While managing for stakeholders DOES include employees - and making it a better corporation for them - how does that extend to employees being ambassadors for the brand? What is their duty in managing (or in CSR)?

Surely you want to run your company so that your employees believe in what they are doing, and are willing to say that they believe in it. If that is being an ambassador for the brand, then its a good idea. More generally we need to think about, as my colleague Andrew Wicks has argued, what makes a "responsible stakeholder". After all if companies have responsibilities to stakeholders, don't stakeholders have a responsibility to companies?

Especially this month - Earth Day month - companies all tout their green initiatives, and many feel forced. What would stakeholder theory change that companies wouldn't have to PR and tout their efforts for one month (be it Earth Day or breast cancer month in February)?

Again…this is a matter of taking one's responsibilties seriously…as many companies do. It is the old story about business that only profits and shareholders count, which give rise to questions like this. Businesses create value for their stakeholders. Many companies take that seriously. Its not a matter of "just PR" etc. It's quite real. It's the business model.

Is CSR a real viable business solution that dovetails with stakeholder theory? There are companies that are doing it to just check off a box on a list, but does stakeholder theory make it more viable, make it more aligned to business goals?

Stakeholder theory is about the business. It is also about ethics and responsibility. WE have to learn not to separate these ideas, as the old story does.

With stakeholder theory, it seems like the cost of any program is okay if it brings value to the community or employees, while most CSR has an underlying increase sales premise. How can stakeholder theory improve the bottom line?

Absolutely not…Business is about creating value for financiers, customers, employees, suppliers, and communities. Their interests need to go in the same direction. Stakeholder theory is about finding ways to put these interests together, not break them apart as your question assumes.

If you're in public relations, you've already heard about Googlegate. Simply put, Facebook hired Burson-Marsteller to conduct a FUD whisper campaign about privacy and security against Google.