So you’ve probably heard about the Sarah Silverman fiasco at the TED conference by now. If not, here’s the recap: Silverman, who is notorious for her outrageous kick-ya-in-the-teeth humor, was asked to give a speech at TED, the well regarded org known for its brainiac and celeb-packed conferences. She accepted, showed and delivered a typical trademark talk, trashing an array of things – among them Sarah Palin’s recent rant about the word “retarded.” Silverman used the word as much as possible and said a number of un-PC things, including that she’d like to adopt a retarded child, but only one who is terminally ill because she’s “awesome like that” – and plus the kid would then have an “expiration date.”

Crass? Of course. Offensive? Surely some listeners thought so. Unexpected? Not so much if you’ve ever heard Silverman open her mouth before.

Chris Anderson, the TED organizer who invited Silverman to speak in the first place promptly tweeted about how “god-awful” she was. A Twitter-based ruckus between Anderson and Silverman featuring a bizarre side battle between Silverman and Steve Case (Case jumped in to defend Anderson) then ensued. The media hopped on the bandwagon shortly after and buzz and press coverage about the incident spread.

Love Silverman or hate her, my question is this: What was Anderson thinking when he invited her to speak in the first place? It sounds like she delivered material right in line with all the other material she usually delivers and he was taken aback?

The net-net from a communications standpoint seems to be a basic lesson: Do your homework before you hire a speaker. Keep “good” company, or at least know the company you keep.

What happens when one of the world’s biggest – and arguably best – brand marketers loses control?

I recently read a fascinating case of a product launch gone wrong. Or rather, more accurately, not gone at all. Here’s the story:

According to P&G, the new Dry Max diapers represent the most substantial product improvement for Pampers — the consumer packaged goods giant’s biggest global brand — in 25 years. Company executives thought Dry Max would be lauded as the iPod (or should I now say iPad?) of baby care due to its improved performance, thinner profile, and reduced environmental impact, among other attributes. Instead, the diapers got slammed by a group of critics who treated it more like the new Coke.

What happened?

Due to the complexities of roll-out logistics, the company put the new Dry Max diapers into the old diaper packaging in some markets over the summer without alerting customers to the change. This was two months before the Dry Max launch, which was slated to be P&G’s biggest marketing campaign EVER. Consumers in the early markets who felt blindsided by the change reacted strongly – complaining the new version felt stiff, papery and cheaper, and caused more leaks and rash – and they spread the negative word online to markets that had yet to receive the diapers. There were hundreds of posts on both pampersvillage.com and on diapers.com, among other places. As a communications exec and a mother-to-be, I have both a professional and a personal understanding of the sway online consumer opinion can have, especially when it comes to kids’ products. Parents trust other mothers and fathers and make buying decisions accordingly.

Some of the Dry Max critics were incredibly active. For example, one dad posted on 75 sites and wrote more than 50 posts on pampersvillage.com alone. Pampers proceeded to remove the reviews on its site as it switched to new ratings system. Predictably this caused a significant outcry, so they reinstated the posts and P&G is now addressing consumers who’ve complained on an individual basis.

A woman who started a “Bring Back the Old Cruisers” fan page on Facebook said, “We could move on and just buy the Target [Up & Up] diaper [which she said is now better]. But the principle is that they’ve slipped this inferior diaper into the existing packaging without notifying the consumer.” Several consumers who hadn’t even tried the diapers joined the Facebook page because they felt P&G was being deceptive by making the change without announcing it.

The communications and marketing lessons here all come down to a simple truth: It’s a new world. Evangelists can morph into detractors overnight if they’re not properly educated and nurtured. If you don’t actively engage in conversation, the consumer can and will take control and you might not be so happy with the outcome. We’ll never know how the marketplace would have responded to the innovation if P&G had actually educated consumers about the changes and their many benefits before slipping the new product into old packaging.

P&G believes the tone of the discussion will change when it turns on marketing support starting this month, and it very well may, but there’s no question that they’re starting with an unnecessary deficit. article

As the Federal Trade Commission drafts new rules on bloggers’ disclosure of sponsored content, BlogHer, the community of thousands of influential female bloggers, is in the midst of its fifth annual convention in Chicago.

We attended BlogHer in 2006 on behalf of our client WeightWatchers.com. The debate about the precarious relationship between trusted information sources and marketers with dollars aimed at garnering positive product reviews was percolating then and it’s raging now. (Incidentally, WeightWatchers.com was paying to attend the conference and exhibit, but they weren’t paying bloggers for posts.)

Days before this year’s conference kicked off, Elissa Camahort Page, the community’s co-founder, told AdAge that disclosure alone is insufficient. Her network is advocating that bloggers create a separate section of their blogs for reviews based on freebies, perks or outright compensation.

We’re members of the Word of Mouth Marketing Association and we’ve always been proponents of transparency. Camahort Page’s new proposal’s an interesting one. Ultimately though, which of the many proposals on the table is adopted doesn’t matter as much as continuing the lively dialogue. It’s important that there’s real forward movement on the establishment of best practices and policies – something both bloggers and marketers desperately need – especially since this world is evolving so quickly (next frontier: sponsored tweets).

Publishers, like mommy bloggers, have a right to monetize their work – how else will they survive and thrive? But they also need to retain their credibility and authenticity. We’re hopeful that as the industry moves towards consensus on these issues we’ll strike a satisfactory balance.

In our 24-7, constant communication society, we want real-time feedback and instant gratification. Sometimes though, what we want and what we get are two different things. Occasionally that’s not such a bad thing.

A recent client experience proved this point. Last fall we met with executives from Context-Based Research. We learned that the ethnographic research firm had partnered with its sister marketing communications agency, Carton Donofrio Partners, to conduct a study on consumer behavior during the economic crisis.

Excited about the scope of the research and its obvious news value, we told our client that we suspected the study results would yield substantial media coverage. We also speculated that the coverage would happen immediately, given the timely nature of the research. At least we were half right.

In December, when the results were ready, we issued a press release. The impending holiday season notwithstanding, we hoped the interesting findings would generate interview requests. But only one journalist bit. We were disappointed, but not deterred. We recognized that though the marketplace may not have yet been ready for analysis of the recent meltdown in December, that would probably not continue to be the case.

Over the next four months we issued four more communications, each focusing on different aspects of the study and targeting different groups of reporters (culture, economics, retail, and political journalists). Five communications about one study is a lot, but the research was compelling, broadly applicable, and, given the recession’s anticipated trajectory, it had continued news value.

In the end, our (and our client’s) patience and persistence bore fruit:

-Context executives were quoted in two New York Times articles in March. One article ran on the front page of the paper, the other was on the cover of the paper’s “Week in Review” section.

-The Baltimore Sun ran a feature in April. (The reporter told us she’d held onto our December press release.)

-The New York Post, the Omaha World Herald, and several other publications ran articles referencing the study and quoting executives from Context and Carton Donofrio Partners. The New York Post piece ran in December, while the Omaha World Herald didn’t hit until April.

-Money Magazine ran a substantial piece in its May issue quoting Dr. Blinkoff, Context’s founder, as did the Financial Times.

-A retail reporter at the Associated Press and a personal finance reporter at USA Today turned to Dr. Blinkoff as an expert source for pieces they were developing.

-An association interviewed Dr. Blinkoff for an article in their membership publication, then asked him to deliver the keynote at their upcoming conference in November.

-A literary agent called about turning the research into a book.

All in all, the coverage amounted to critical exposure and yielded new business leads for the firms. The lesson we learned: Though patience and persistence can feel outmoded in a Twitterized, hot-for-a-day news environment, sometimes it pays to take the slow road.

The endless string of newspaper collapses is threatening to throw me into a depression.

The Rocky Mountain News published its last issue two weeks ago. Both the San Francisco Chronicle and Seattle Post-Intelligencer may close. Earlier this winter the four parent companies of The Chicago Tribune, The LA Times, The Minneapolis Star Tribune, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Philadelphia Daily News and The New Haven Register said they’d be filing for bankruptcy.

As entrenched in new technologies as I am (social media is part of nearly every campaign we create, I’m facebook obsessed, and my iPhone’s become an appendage), I must confess: I’m a gal with a four paper-a-day habit. I love the physical experience of reading the newspapers – seeing the information laid out, sorting through sections. Clearly this proclivity may soon be nothing but nostalgia.

I’m an optimist though, and the reality is I’m much more concerned about the news itself than the paper it’s printed on, so Larry Kramer’s article in The Daily Beast intrigued me.

Kramer argues that the news industry – not the newspaper industry – is viable if the producers of news would listen to their customers and give them what they want.

“And guess what, they want news” – whether it be via “television, newspapers, BlackBerries, cellphones, magazines or web.”

Kramer sees a window of opportunity, “Consumers are just learning all the new ways they can get news and are still figuring out what works best for them. There is still time for those of us in the news industry to work with them and find out at the same time.”

This squares with what our clients at Context-Based Research Group found when they conducted an anthropological study of people’s news consumption habits on behalf of the Consumers are struggling with news fatigue. Interestingly, the research also revealed that they’re yearning for in-depth stories.

Kramer’s article which, interestingly, ultimately endorses a model that resembles a wire-service approach – divorcing news gatherers from news outlets – appealed to me because it takes an action-oriented tone and suggests there’s something that may be done before it’s too late. His call for newspapers to stop doing the Sisyphean task of selling something to people that they refuse to buy sounds right, even to this newspaper addict.

Regardless of what the new model is exactly, it’s clear that finding a new incarnation and proactively implementing it is imperative for us all – news consumers, producers, and communicators alike.

A recent tale of communication gone wrong caught our attention.

When Jason Roe, an Irish freelance web designer, found a glitch in Ryanair’s online flight booking system, he wrote a post about it on his blog. The flaw resulted in a $0.00 price quote on the flight he was booking (though the system didn’t actually allow him to obtain the free flight). Instead of acknowledging the problem, or attempting to correct it, a Ryanair staff member posted a response to Jason’s blog, which read, “jason! you’re an idiot and a liar!!” A pretty bizarre way to react, we think. A number of Ryanair staffers chimed in with equally tactless comments. The debate among the airline and blog visitors ran 400+ comments long. What’s worse though is an official Ryanair spokesperson later confirmed the comments came from staff members and reinforced the company’s low-road approach by saying, “It is Ryanair policy not to waste time and energy corresponding with idiot bloggers and Ryanair can confirm that it won’t be happening again.” Wow. Talk about counterproductive. It seems the entire Ryanair team needs a lesson in social media interaction as well as general customer communication.

What the exchange did get Ryanair though is attention – which may be what it’s seeking if we judge by the company’s strange threat just a few days earlier to charge passengers for bathroom usage on its planes. (That story grabbed headlines across the globe.) Is any PR is good PR? While we know there’s a place for controversy in PR, we don’t think so.

Interestingly, at our previous agency, we represented one of the top airlines in the country when a glitch on their web site allowed users to book a trip from Chicago to India for a small fraction of the actual price. This was the pre-blog era, but frequent flyer sites jumped on it and suggested people take advantage before it was fixed. More than 100 people did just that. Going against our counsel, they originally told customers they would not honor the low fares. When every major media outlet began to cover the story, they quickly reversed their position during an appearance on the TODAY show.

When companies make mistakes, they fare better (pun intended) by admitting it and doing the right thing for affected customers, thereby turning potentially negative exposure into good PR.

Public relations, like every job in the world, has its plusses (creative, people-oriented) and minuses (media list maintenance, anyone??), but on the whole it’s a pretty terrific career, if you ask me. The best thing about the gig though, in my opinion, is the opportunity it affords us to further the efforts of people making truly notable contributions and achieving amazing things through their work and in their lives.

I was reminded of this the other day when I got a call from an old business associate at Kaplan Publishing, (a division of Kaplan, my former employer). Our exchange went something like this:

“We’d like you to take on a project.”

Me: “Great! Do tell.”

“Well, it’s a new book we’re publishing by Sherwin Nul…”

Me: “Dr. Sherwin Nuland?!”

“Yes!”

Me: “Hooray! Tell me everything!”

I’ve always been a big reader and I became a fan of Dr. Nuland’s, a surgeon at Yale turned writer, when I was in college. I returned home from school after my freshman year and discovered his groundbreaking book, “How We Die.” (I didn’t have to look very hard to “discover” it since it won the National Book Award and was on the New York Times bestseller list for 34 weeks.) My dad, a surgeon like Dr. Nuland, and a voracious reader like me, read it that summer as well. I remember thinking the author was a master storyteller and being surprised that I could care so much about science writing – (though it goes well beyond science writing, of course). Plus, I was grateful that the book helped spark some meaningful conversations between me and my father, a man of few words.

Fast forward fifteen years and I’m on a conference call with Dr. Nuland (who has now published 13 books) talking about who we should invite to a media luncheon in celebration of his upcoming book, “The Soul of Medicine,” which is a Canterbury Tales-esque non fiction narrative about humanity, ethics, and the relationship between doctors and patients. He reminds us not to forget his old friend, Charlie Rose. Meanwhile, all I can think is: how GREAT is this job???!!! I don’t get star struck often, but consider me struck.