We don’t talk much about the celebrity endorsement/marketing side of PR here on Media Bullseye–mostly because I tend to think that celebrity endorsement, while presumably effective considering its widespread use, tends to play into a stereotype of PR that I generally don’t care to reinforce. (That PR=publicist.) It is also an area that I think may be overrated, when examining the benefits versus the possible risks–celebrity endorsers have on occasion made rather large splashes in the water during their falls from grace.

The use of the celebrity promoter persists, so I have to assume that the attention garnered must be demonstrating results in some real way. And by “real way” I’m talking dollars of products purchased, not fat clip books showing numbers of mentions, or help us all, definitely not AVEs.

Enter the most recent high-profile celebrity endorsement: Paula Deen. While most people I know are well aware of who Paula Deen is, for the uninitiated, she’s long been a fixture on the TV “Celebrity” cook scene. She has published several cookbooks and had her own Food Network TV specials, and the “trademark” of her dishes is that they are loaded–really loaded–with sugar, salt, and fat (usually butter). The woman deep-fries lasagna, and serves a “brunch burger” that is a burger topped with bacon (of course) and an egg served on two glazed donuts instead of a bun, for heaven’s sake. I’m not a fan (I’m Team Bourdain), but clearly she strikes a chord with people as she’s very popular and her cookbooks sell well. She’s also an American success story, as she was near-penniless at one point and has worked hard and achieved success.

She is also the new celebrity spokesperson for Novo Nordisk, the pharmaceutical manufacturer of diabetes medications, including Victoza, a medication to treat Type 2 diabetes. Deen disclosed last week that she was diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes three years ago.

And this is where I start wondering what Novo Nordisk was trying to achieve in selecting her as a celebrity endorser. Deen has, for years, been publicly unapologetic for the nutritional stats of the food she prepares, and apparently continued to promote the same cooking style after her diagnosis. She’s also admitted that she’s been a smoker for 50+ years (and made this announcement on Dr. Oz’s show, wherein she asks for his help to quit, so good for her on that point). If we look at the role of the celebrity endorser as an Influencer, who is their target audience? If we look at the role of the celebrity endorser as an Aspirational figure, does Deen match that role?

Thus far, the loudest criticism has surrounded her decision to disclose her condition only after she secured what we can guess was a fairly lucrative contract to promote a pharmaceutical product. I’m of the opinion that the diagnosis is hers and she has the right to disclose it or not.  I do think that there are ethics questions surrounding her decision to continue to promote unhealthy food after she was diagnosed–obesity is a risk factor for Type 2 diabetes–but more to the point of this post, there are PR ramifications for all of these decisions. I don’t think I’m alone in this, as Deen’s PR representative of the last six years has quit, allegedly over Deen’s decision to endorse the drug.

It just leaves me wondering, again, are celebrity endorsements really worth the trouble?

Sometimes things just seem so right, so correct, so intuitive that we don’t even bother questioning whether the underlying assumptions are valid. But assumptions can be dangerous. Could this be true for the significance placed on the role of influencers in public relations work?

Of course, we can all think of someone who has had some level of influence on us, thus the underlying assumption that the power of an influencer must be true.

But it’s worth taking a step back and looking at some competing views on the subject. What if influence doesn’t really matter that much?

Malcolm Gladwell’s Tipping Point first popularized the role of the influencer in marketing, although I’d make the argument that identifying people who can persuade certain audiences far predates the publication of that book. Politicians and lobbyists have long known the power of securing the backing of someone prominent to further their cause. Does this necessarily transfer over to purchasing habits, what one eats, what one wears, and what films one decides to see? Do “influencers” really cause a “tipping point” for an idea or product, causing it to go mainstream?

Researcher Duncan Watts says no. I first came across his ideas in a Fast Company article titled “Is the Tipping Point Toast?” that ran in 2008. In the article, Watts asserts that highly connected people have no real role in the spread of trends at all. To those of us who spend a lot of time examining the role of influence, especially the role of influencers online and in social networks, this is close to heresy.

So Watts sets out to prove his theory that information is spread through far more democratic methods than the reliance on “super-connected” people. His experiments continue to show that what we all know about influencers–or actually what we all think we know about them–is wrong. He recreates Stanley Milgram’s “small world” experiment, but he does it online and comes up with different results. Milgram’s experiment had the same three people passing nearly half of the letters on to their final connection in Boston, leading to the conclusion that these were highly connected people. Watts’ experiment had very different results, and his explanation is that Milgram’s sample size of 160 letters was too small.

More telling is another experiment Watts conducted that is described in the article. He set up a computer simulation of a rudimentary “society,” and watched how trends spread. Repeatedly, the “average Joes” were just as likely to kick off a trend as were the simulation-specified “influencers.” When an influencer sparked a trend, it did have more reach–so one point there for the role of influence. But the fact that the influencers weren’t the ones to kick off every trend is an important point. Watts suggests “this is because a trend’s success depends not on the person who starts it, but on how susceptible the society is overall to the trend–not how persuasive the early adopter is, but whether everyone else is easily persuaded.”

This, to me, is a very interesting point and one that cannot be easily glossed over by marketers or PR pros or anyone else who is staking the success of a campaign on identifying influencers. If people aren’t ready to pay attention to something it doesn’t matter if your identified and targeted influencer has a great Klout score or a million followers on Twitter, the trend won’t stick.

I’m sure that Watts has his detractors, but I think there is a lot to digest in the Fast Company piece. Here we are, nearly four years later, and we’re still up to our eyes in analyses of online influence tools, arguing about the merits of deals and perks and trying to assist clients through this murky water.

What if we’re all concentrating on the wrong thing?

It is not often that one finds sage communications advice in the sports pages of the local newspaper. But that’s exactly what turned up in an online column by the Boston Globe’s Peter Abraham yesterday. After writing about potential candidates in the search for a new Red Sox manager to replace Terry Francona, he concluded this way:

 ”One suggestion for the Red Sox: Make your candidates available to the media when they come to town for interviews. It makes sense as an evaluation tool. A big part of being manager of a team like the Red Sox is having the ability to be an effective team spokesman twice a day for 162 days and all of spring training. There’s not much point in hiring a manager who can’t deal with the media. That only leads to trouble.”

That’s great advice for the Red Sox Ownership Brain Trust, but it is also a valuable point for communicators and hiring managers in other fields. In fact, there are several useful lessons in this brief paragraph.

Being a communicator is a special skill. Just because someone has excellent business acumen and superior leadership skills does not mean they make for a good spokesperson. If you’re hiring someone to be CEO or other leadership position and media interaction is vital to the role, make sure you know how that person will perform. Unlike the Red Sox, you may not be able to trot them out in front of your own media constituency since your job search may be more private, but you need to test them in some other way during your process, perhaps in a mock press conference environment or by studying their performance in previous similar interactions.

Know which skills really matter when you are hiring. One would think that the next manager of the Red Sox needs to be baseball savvy, with knowledge of how to win big games. And he does. But the Red Sox, along with a handful of other major league teams, exists in a brutal media environment with a 24/7/365 spotlight and no tolerance for failure. Abraham recognizes that the manager of the Red Sox is as much a media punching bag as an on-field general. It isn’t always obvious what you need when you hire someone, so think carefully about it in advance.

Find creative ways to evaluate necessary skills. Putting a job candidate in front of the media during the hiring process isn’t exactly the most obvious way to make an employment decision. But in this case, it would surely benefit both the Red Sox and whomever they eventually bring on board. Rather than running your own job candidates through the typical interview gauntlet, try to find real-world situations to put them in. Don’t give a basic writing test, but rather try to create a scenario similar to what an actual employee might face. For instance, when I was first hired as an intern on Capitol Hill 20 years ago this month, my first assignment was to take 30 minutes and write a 1 minute speech for the Member to deliver on the floor of the House. It was a creative way to test my ability to learn an issue (passive loss tax rules, if you’re interested) and then write a speech under incredible time pressure. I guess I passed — or at least I didn’t fail too miserably. In any case, think about your own hiring decisions in a similar way.

Communications matters in far more jobs than most people think. Sure people know that it is important to hire managers who can communicate internally. (That’s not to say that it always happens, of course, but you won’t likely find someone who says a manager doesn’t need to be a good internal communicator.) But far too often external communications skills are overlooked. This makes things more difficult for the professional communicators in an organization because to be truly effective they must work with other leaders in other departments to get the word out. A great public relations strategist who can’t give a good pitch can be a liability. A good business product manager who can’t speak effectively at important industry events can be a liability. A non-profit leader who can’t speak effectively to groups of donors can be a liability. You get the point. Communications matters and we all need to work to help those who are outside of their comfort zone in this area within our organizations to get better at it.

Now, hopefully the Red Sox will take Peter Abraham’s advice and hire a great new manager. Meanwhile, we can all take his advice, too.

There’s been another storm a-brewin’ in the social media realm for the past few days. A number of food bloggers were invited to a dinner with “celebrity chef” George Duran, at an underground restaurant named Sotto Terra (“underground” in Italian). Underground restaurants have been a bit of a trend over the past few years in food circles and in the dining scene–they are basically temporary restaurants that have a more “supper club” feel to them. There is an air of exclusivity, and the fact that bloggers were invited to one with a celebrity chef isn’t *too* outside the realm of logic.

What transpired is where things got a bit wacky, and why this is being written from a PR and social media/blogger outreach perspective. After some aperitifs and noshes, the diners were seated and presented with dinner…which was lasagna, and dessert, which was some sort of mixed berry pie. The lasagna and the pie were part of Marie Callendar’s frozen meal line. The whole thing was filmed, to be used for commercials. And when this was disclosed, the bloggers were annoyed/irritated/angry.

There are a few things that went wrong here, so let’s start with the most important one: someone, or multiple someones, violated the number one rule of PR (not just social media) which is know your audience. I’m sure that the objective here was to have delightfully surprised foodie bloggers who would then express a desire to serve Marie Callendar’s lasagna to their families since it tastes “restaurant quality.” But taste isn’t the only component for many, many people who object to processed foods. They object to the salt, the preservatives, the food colorings. Not taking this into account was the first mistake here. When I worked in politics, we spent time on the “persuadeables.” You don’t sink time into trying to convince someone who has an established and firm position. These foodies were not “persuadeables.” ConAgra/Marie Callendar’s never had a chance with several of these bloggers, and someone should have known, or suspected this.

The next mistake was the setup, and this is a bit more complex. The concept of a blind tasting with a big reveal is a standard, it seems, in food marketing. After all, isn’t this what we’ve seen for years on television? Switching out the regular coffee for some freeze-dried instant, or the Coke vs. Pepsi taste challenges? In almost every post I’ve seen about this (including the post I put up on my Facebook page) someone has mentioned the Pizza Hut commercials where people were served pasta in some restaurant and were told “hey, it’s Pizza Hut!” So why was the response of the bloggers so…negative? I have a theory here that may or may not be the issue, so I’m going to throw it out there and see if anyone comments on it. The difference here is that the bloggers have built a reputation for themselves online. They’ve been very clear about their food parameters. They’ve staked a personal claim on what they believe, in a very public way. This wasn’t for them a harmless “reveal,” it was an embarrassment; an intentional challenge to what they’ve built a reputation advocating made all the worse by the fact that they had been encouraged to involve their blog audiences. Words used by bloggers in attendance were “hoodwinked,” “sham,” “setup,” “tricked”–you get the idea. Maybe we are all more earnest now, and wouldn’t be able to film the decaf coffee crystal ad switch in this day and age. Or maybe there’s something else going on here. I don’t know, but there was a definite and negative reaction to the method used, and in particular the subversive element of getting bloggers to involve their readers.

It has been suggested that the whole ruse, the underground restaurant, etc. didn’t meet the transparency needs of social media. I’m not entirely sold on that argument. I think there is a place for some surprises and reveals in social, but they have to be very carefully thought through. Some people do like surprises, and I think it’s still useful to keep positive reveals in the toolbox, but this goes back to the first point: know your audience.

A final thought: PR pros, expect a LOT more questions when you extend invites to bloggers to events. A recurring point in several of the posts on this subject was the amount of time involved–getting there, hiring a sitter, and so on. Bloggers are going to want to know a great deal about events in advance of agreeing to attend; you won’t be able to get away with less-than-clear explanations in the future.

[Sidebar/Off Topic: Chef Duran has a minor branding issue himself, I think. A few posts refer to him as a Food Network chef, and others say TLC. I haven't watched either in a long time, so my reaction upon seeing him in the photos was "oh, the guy in the canned tomato commercials."]

[Sidebar/On Topic: The SNL skit at the end of the Food Mayhem post is worth watching.]

There is a lot of very interesting, thought-provoking content over at Social Media Explorer. It’s in my RSS reader, and I regularly check the site for discussion fodder for the Roundtable podcast. One of the more recent pieces on the site, written by Stephanie Schwab, has rolled around my mind for days now. (It’s not that weird, I tend to obsess about topics during my 40-minute per day commute. It’s decent thinking time.) Stephanie’s post, titled “Bloggers are promotional partners, which is bad for PR” sets forth the case for treating bloggers as paid partners rather than pitching them, as PR pros pitch journalists.

I have a number of thoughts concerning this approach, and they essentially fall into these two categories:

• There is a difference between a blogger who is working for a paid professional site and a blogger who has a personal blog, even if that personal blog has a substantial following/readership (and even if that blogger is making money from site advertising).

• Payment from a brand changes the nature of the relationship. Changing the nature of the relationship from earned to paid media has implications for PR–and bloggers–that should not be discounted out of hand.

The Blogger Distinction

In making the case that bloggers should not be treated as journalists by PR pros, Stephanie does not make what I think is a rather important distinction: there are very real differences in the types of bloggers out there. The easiest and most important of these distinctions for the purpose of this discussion is that some are paid professionals and others are blogging from a personal perspective. The distinction does not evaporate even when a blogger “makes it big”/hits the A List, etc. To me, it makes sense to treat bloggers at any of the Gawker properties as media, and the same holds true for sites like TechCrunch and Mashable. The line between what is a news site and what is a blog becomes blurrier by the day. Making a pronouncement that all blogger outreach is partner promotion seems to overreach and ignore the fact that there are plenty of blogs out there that should be categorized as media, and thus would be more appropriate to pitch in a conventional fashion. Many newspapers now have blogs–those bloggers should be treated as journalists, because, well, they are.

The most notable aspect of this distinction perhaps boils down to a definition of professional versus personal/hobbyist blog. Before anyone takes offense at that (there are plenty of personal blogs that are professionally done), I have one, and only one criteria for this: does the blogger draw a salary from someone else to post on topics?

A basic question of “who–if anyone–is paying this blogger to write?” might be a good place to start. If the answer is “no one,” PRs should carefully consider their approach. Many of these folks are starting to feel used, and no wonder. Read the comments on the post for some eyebrow-raising behavior on the part of some PR pros–for example “asking for anchor text links in the post”…asking bloggers to travel without seemingly consulting a map and realizing that it will take the better part of a day to get there, etc. (Let’s not even get into the off-topic pitches that continue to be a problem in the industry. That just needs to STOP.) These are bloggers who often have built an audience, enjoy blogging, but are not earning anything for their efforts. Their time is worth something–and PRs should realize this and take it into consideration (and not just offer product as payment).

The Payment Problem

I used the word problem because this is the point that leads me to believe that we are possibly at an impasse. If we assume: a) Personal/hobbyist bloggers who are approached by PR pros should be paid in some way for their work; and b) paid work is not earned media, then c) really this isn’t the province of public relations: it’s paid advertising. Subtle advertising, but advertising nevertheless. It’s kind of like the pages of advertisements in my cooking magazines that have recipes and stories in them. It *looks* like just another page in the magazine, but it’s paid advertising (which is clearly stated in “Advertising Supplement” or some similar language).

And this means something, to both the brands that will be paying and the bloggers. There is a reason that PRs view earned media as good coverage: the perception of the potential for bias is less. We need only look at another comment left on the original post to see how this can seep in, even unknowingly:

“[...] I think that some bloggers feel under pressure only to write good things, as it seems ungracious to criticise your host and/or so as not to jeopardise the next freebie.”

That’s the rub. That’s why paid does not equal earned media. It isn’t so much the perception that someone has been outright “bought” by the payment (such as getting paid to write a review, ick), it is that they might modify their opinion in favor of the brand even if only out of a sense of politeness–and not jeopardizing future work. So there is the impasse; bloggers who are not paid professionally deserve to be paid for their time, and the attention they bring to a product through exposure to their audience, which has been built over time and with much effort. PR pros are working hard for their clients, who have engaged the PRs with the expectation that the coverage will be earned media–they already have paid advertising in place.

What’s Next?

I am not in possession of a crystal ball, and can’t imagine I’d even have the power to effectively use one. My guess is that there are several possible outcomes.

• Outcome one: PRs turn this paid, promotional outreach over to advertising, and they continue to work with the media-level bloggers described earlier in the post. Lines between paid and earned media are more clearly delineated.

• Outcome two: PRs meet blogger expectations for payment. As this practice becomes widespread, blogger audiences will see more disclaimers about payment. With that, there is potential for loss of message efficacy. As this drops, the business value of blogger outreach drops, and so does the money dedicated to blogger outreach.

• Outcome three: PRs and bloggers continue to try and work their way through this, with PR pros making a concerted effort to understand and respect blogger time; and bloggers try to understand that PR pros have different objectives than advertisers.

My final note: you know who I think does this really well? Ree Drummond, aka Pioneer Woman. She does giveaways on her blog because she thinks they are fun, and she likes to spread the word about products she’s passionate about. So she’s the one to  purchase the products for the giveaways. She’s also the one instance that I can think of where I’ve purchased a product recommended by a blogger (an eye shadow, if you must know). There’s a high level of trust between her and her community. I don’t think that’s incidental in this situation.

Last Monday, I attended a PRSA “refresher course” titled Essentials of Public Relations. Although I’m up to my eyes in PR pretty much every day as it is one of the major markets we serve as a monitoring tool, it’s been a while since I was a full-time practitioner on behalf of clients. So I like taking these types of refresher classes every so often–to see what’s changed and what remains the same.

Of course, social media is now a constant in these types of courses. What struck me, and what I have remained stuck thinking about, was the role of research and how the shifting sands of social media fit into the PR picture. Research is critical to PR programs. You need research to properly design a program, and the validity of your measurement and analysis depends on good design.

Social media presents a problem. Participants are a self-selecting population, first of all. Then, we see posts like this one, showing that 20,000 people on Twitter–let me rephrase that–only 20,000 people on Twitter–are responsible for fully half the Tweets. Throw in the number of people on Facebook who keep their information private, and social media sampling starts to look a whole lot murkier. I’ve seen it suggested that social media will someday replace focus groups, and I cringe a bit. A lot of people are on social networks, but does it really follow that this population is a statistically valid one from which to sample?

This raises the question as to what kinds of decisions companies are making based on social media content. There was a bit of a kerfuffle online last week when sales figures showed that Pepsi lost its number 2 position behind Coke in soft drink sales to Diet Coke. The culprit, a number have speculated, was Pepsi’s decision to forgo traditional marketing and throw their lot in with the Pepsi Refresh project, an ambitious social media program. Ultimately we may never know what led to the slip from #2 to #3. Maybe it was the focus on the social project, maybe not.

We’re still in the sorting-out phase in social media. Let me be perfectly clear: I do NOT think social media is a fad. Monitoring to find and address content critical to your brand, positive or negative, has a proven track record. You need to do it. Addressing customer concerns is another given–mostly. (There are still–and may always be–people who feel as though they are just venting online and may find it creepy to have a brand respond to a mention they considered a toss-away comment.)

From there, things get a little less clear. The point of companies is to sell stuff, I think we can agree on that. Where social media fits into that picture is still a work in progress–does a person with 200 followers on Twitter who makes a passing mention of eating/drinking/wearing a product result in additional sales? What has the company gained by knowing this information? Is it actionable intelligence? Can a company extrapolate any additional information out to a broader audience by knowing about this Tweet? Does micro-targeting an ad or a coupon to this person make a difference? How soon will this person get bored with this social channel and move to another one, then another?

People have limited numbers of hours in their days. It is not just possible, but probable, that the intense participation in networks like Facebook and Twitter will level off in time. Twitter already is well on its way to being an information stream rather than a conversational tool. People have repeatedly indicated that they don’t think “liking” a company on Facebook should give the company license to turn their feeds into marketing walls.

When I worked as a lobbyist, I witnessed a number of epic battles on the Missouri House and Senate floors and in committee rooms over the words “a” and “the.”  As in, “a” cause of a workplace injury or “the” cause of injury.

These two little words carry a great deal of weight. The idea is to treat social media as “a” source of customer information, not “the” source of customer information. “A” communications outlet, not “the” communications outlet. “A” path to addressing consumer complaints, not “the” path to address consumer complaints.

Media Bullseye Editor Chip Griffin recently interviewed Peter Shankman, founder of Help A Reporter Out, to talk about why he started a simple email list that turned into a
blossoming enterprise. Shankman explains who uses HARO and why and even discusses some upcoming feature enhancements he has up his sleeve.

(click here to listen to the 13 minute interview)

Yesterday, we were presented with one of the oddest PR outreach strategies I can recall. Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich decided to forgo attending that pesky impeachment trial going on in Springfield, and instead decided to drop in and chat with the ladies on “The View,” allowing Joy Behr to tousle his strangely-famous hair, and beg him to do his Nixon “I am not a crook” impression (which, I suppose thank heaven for small favors, he did not do). This followed his morning appearance sitting across from Diane Sawyer on “Good Morning America.”

I suppose the governor is feeling somewhat persecuted in his home state, but that doesn’t really explain what he hopes to gain from this rather unusual strategy of ignoring a trial and instead going to the national networks. When you consider that the audience for these shows is predominantly made up of people outside of Illinois, what could possibly be the objective for this outreach strategy? It certainly isn’t endearing him to those largely responsible for deciding his fate. To use a much overused phrase in PR: he doesn’t appear to be “taking things seriously.”

This is the curious pathology of some in the public eye. When cornered (usually by actions of their own doing) they attempt to charm their way out of a situation. It rarely works.

The governor’s potty mouth, his clear and unequivocal statements concerning the matter in which he finds himself in hot water, and his apparent blatant disregard for the process going on in Springfield all contribute to what appears to me to be a total lack of understanding of the seriousness of his situation.

Taking his case to the talk-show circuit doesn’t appear to me to be helping his case–it seems more baffling than anything else. If it’s an attempt to garner more favorable press, I have to wonder if there is really much difference in coverage that implies: “the governor has done something that is likely illegal” to coverage that implies “he’s completely off his rocker.” While it does change the subject matter of the coverage, is that really an improvement? That strategy might work for off-balance Hollywood starlets, but shouldn’t we expect more serious treatment from elected officials? Or is changing the topic of the coverage sufficient in an effort to develop a more sympathetic persona while looking to the likelihood of the event of a very public criminal trial?

It is perhaps a result of our more interconnected society that a governor feels the need to go beyond the borders of the state that he represents to mitigate the damage done. As local coverage is now accessible worldwide, perhaps the damage control needs to be also.