The largest and best-funded animal activist group in the U.S., Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), announced today that they were joining forces with one of the more visible animal activist groups, the Doris Day Animal League. This follows HSUS mergers with the Fund For Animals in 2005 (founded by author Cleveland Amory) and the hiring of leaders of two other activist groups.

What does this mean for PR professionals? The HSUS is solidifying its position as the largest and most powerful animal rights group in the country with an annual budget of $103 million (double from last year) and 400 employees. Their in-house litigation team has more than 40 active legal cases in state and federal courts. Add to that the 180,000 members and supporters of the Doris Day Animal League, along with the legendary actress' media attraction, and you have a powerhouse organization that will be a formidable voice on any animal welfare issue in the world. If your company or organization is involved with animals in any way (food, clothing, testing, farming, hunting, pets, etc.), expect that this group will come knocking on your door sooner or later, and you need to be prepared.

It has the potential to be the world’s biggest party line. Or to kick word of mouth into hyper-gear for instantaneous communication. It’s a novel idea called Pheeder, a service that allows a person to broadcast short messages via cell phones to what could be an infinite universe of friends and acquaintances.

Given the ubiquity of cell phones and text messaging, Pheeder could be the perfect audio connector for today’s massive mobile buzz culture. The service provides voice mail pings to mini social networks on everything from a local pick-up game of streetball or impromptu house party to blog-like stream of consciousness on world events.

Pretty simple the way it works: You dial the Pheeder number, record a message and direct the service to the list or community you want to reach. Seconds later everyone in your group has a voicemail from your personal “phonecast” via VOIP. Think of it as a mini podcast with built-in distribution. Because users opt-in to receive a “pheed” or pass it along to friends, there’s limited spam potential.

By going audio, Pheeder takes social networking text-based services like Dodgeball to the next level, opening up opportunities beyond what bar your buds are gathering at.

Consider the options for this new form of blogs, or phone blogs -- or as I like to call them, “phlogs.” There’s great upside for PR and marketing types in leveraging this kind of user friendly syndicated opt-in service.

Imagine your company has a hot new upgrade coming out for its popular handheld device. Pop yourself into a service like Pheeder and you can let your loyalists know the good news and how to get the feature by driving them to your website or retail partner.

Say you have a product recall and you want to let customers know about the issue. Record a 60 sec. vmail from your CEO explaining the problem and assuring consumers your company cares about its customers and is doing everything it can to address the issue with specific steps people can take.

Or how about internal comm’s, reaching a remote and mobile workforce with messages on everything from quarterly earnings to new market direction to company pep talks?

Lots of potential in the world of politics as well with political marketing. Some pundits see it as the ideal opt-in answer to the irritating automated phone messages you get from Dubya on election eve.

No matter how you slice them, what makes phlogs so compelling in this era of WOM and authenticity is their permission-based quality. The antithesis of brand spam and junkmail. You only get it if you say you want it or it comes from a trusted friend.

Phlogs are a chance for brands to become that trusted friend, to speak the language of buzz in the latest medium of social networking.

Environmental activists have done a good job of scaring much of the U.S. population into thinking that drilling offshore for oil and gas will automatically lead to oil slicks lapping onto pristine beaches of Florida, the Gulf Coast or East Coast. Surfers in California publish blogs weekly warning of the dangers of offshore drilling.

And it's worked. Drilling on our Outer Continental Shelf, waters within 200 miles of our coast, has been off-limits to drilling since the early 1980's because of Congressional and Presidential bans. However, drilling could start just 50 miles off the Florida coast very soon .... by China and India, which have bought leases from Cuba, which had those rights under a treaty signed with the U.S. in 1977.

So drivers in China and India might well see a drop in the price of gasoline soon as a result of their new oil supply, while American drivers won't get any break since American companies aren't allowed to drill offshore. And do we think that the Chinese or Indian companies will be more responsible in preventing oil spills than American companies would be? No. Seems like a lose-lose situation to me that needs to be communicated more effectively to allow our own oil and gas companies the opportunity to help our own country be more energy-independent.

On this day of remembrance for our nation, I've been struck with how we as a society now commemorate major events in America's history.

I won't address the topics of terrorism, the politics of our government's prosecution of the "War on Terror" nor will I share my personal memories of 9/11 here. There are many better places to look both online and off for dialogue on these topics.

Instead, I'd like to explore – just briefly – how we as a society are remembering 9/11 from a communicator's perspective, and examine how new media channels and technologies are changing the way we look back, as well as forward.

In the years following major milestones in our country's history – be it the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the assassination of JFK, or the landing on the moon—we’ve traditionally looked back and commemorated these events by sharing our personal experiences with one another (largely verbally and in person), and by replaying the public records of these events, primarily the stories which dominated the popular media channels of the day.

Do you remember the early days of space exploration through the skillful reporting of Walter Cronkite?

Or the well-known footage of the President's motorcade that fateful day in Dallas in 1963?

Or the newspaper headlines of December 8, 1941?

When I compare the way we've historically looked back at major milestones with how we're remembering 9/11 today, I see significant changes being fueled by the new ways we're sharing information and communicating as a society.

The Internet and digital communications channels have made our collective memory of watershed events more vivid and more long-lasting.

Mainstream media now makes it easy for citizen to relive events. CNN offered a full day of its 9/11 broadcast feeds to online subscribers of its Web-based video channel “Pipeline” today. Users can logon and watch minute-by-minute as the events unfolded 5 years ago from their desktops.

Consumers are playing a more active role in remembering, too. Indeed, many of the most riveting images and videos we recall from that fateful day in September came from citizen journalists—the real people who found themselves thrust into one of the most significant world events of a generation. Armed with portable video cameras and photo-enabled mobile phones, those on the ground helped form our collective consciousness. And, of course, the then-nascent bloggers found themselves sharing their experiences from Ground Zero with a worldwide audience through the click of a mouse.

The speed and ease by which historical events can be shared and relived is amazing. Truly, the Internet has transformed the way we remember into a sort of “digital consciousness” stored on hard drives, web sites, blogs and photostreams which will live in perpetuity.

For professional communicators who manage the reputations of organizations, this societal memory has far-reaching implications, too. Companies who find themselves in the midst of scandalous events – be it accounting irregularities, products malfunctions, etc. – find it harder than ever to move beyond missteps and erase the collective memory of society in today’s digitized world.

Our founder, Al Golin, talks a lot about trust. In the future, it will be increasingly important for companies to consistently build trust with constituents through honest dealings and socially-responsible business practices. In our digitized world, past sins may be forgiven but they’ll never be forgotten.

So too will we never forget the horrible events of 9/11/01. They’re only a click away and embedded into our “digital consciousness”.

My son Tommy turned six months old yesterday, and much like the blogosphere, he seems to be growing at an unimaginable rate. He’s not crawling or walking or talking yet, but he is very plugged-in.

• He has his own Web page—so grandparents hundreds of miles away can see the latest pictures from his photocast.

• He has his own software—a program called AlphaBaby that flashes a shape, letter or number on the screen of my Mac when he taps (slams his baby fists on) any key. AlphaBaby includes age appropriate colors and sounds that will follow him through newborn to toddler developmental stages.

• He seems to know what a cell phone is—at least he smiles wide and bright whenever I talk on it—maybe he prefers my professional voice over my baby voice. How soon until Firefly offers phones for infants?

I’m probably going to buy an iCrib. This product aimed at the “new-parents-will-buy-almost-anything” market is a dock for an iPod that includes a multi-colored nightlight and timer to help soothe baby to sleep as he listens to custom built playlists--Tommy likes the Beatles, Orbital and Sufjan Stevens.

As he grows—and I race to keep up with the ever expanding interactive landscape—I can’t help but wonder when the little guy will pass me up.

How soon until he is nuts over a video game that looks like the holograms in the original Star Wars? When will I demonstrate parental uncoolness by naively asking about the hottest kid trend? What age will he be when his knowledge of technology passes mine? I’m guessing about age 10.

Regardless of what future embarrassment I may unleash upon my son, one thing is for certain: Today’s iBaby generation (let’s roughly define it as those born from 1999 to 2014—the babies of Gen X’ers) will be more plugged in—and even less aware of it than even today’s most cutting-edge techno-geeks.

And it won’t be about MySpace, YouTube or SecondLife. By the time Tommy is five, those sites could be as passé as a cell phone with a cord or my old ColecoVision. The iBaby generation will grow up with tools that some of us fumble with today. Technology will be more pervasive—which also means it will be less a shiny new tool and more a normal part of every day life.

The realities of atomization and social networking won’t be a trend for iBabies--it will be how they live and communicate. The ever present use of multi-tasking technologies will be as natural to them as their great-grandparents dialing a rotary phone.

Why should Tommy buy a record when he can simply get the songs he wants and criss-cross genres of his own choosing? Why would he watch an entire 60 minute news broadcast when he could get just those video bytes that match his tagged preferences delivered to his hand-held plasma Nintendo DS5?

The iBabies being soothed to sleep on customized playlists of Beatles and Sufjan on their iCrib are being reared into an era where they will choose from deconstructed multiple messages over various electronic mediums at blink speed—and they will be too plugged-in to tolerate it any other way.

By Lydia Lee, Shanghai
Chapter on Media – This is not a 5-second delay country

We all hear about censorship in China, but to see it first-hand is an eye opening and chilling experience.

Last June 4, I was traveling to Guangzhou, one of the so called first-tier cities in southern China. While resting in the hotel room, I came across the CNN channel, which by the way, is only available in 4 to 5 star hotels in China, as well as through a few illegal satellite providers whose penetration rate in China is miniscule. One of the headlines of that day was the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square, which every year is only commemorated overseas and never in China. As the commercials ended and the cameras returned to the anchor’s desk, as soon as she pronounced “Today marks the 17th anniversary of T-i-a-n-an…” the screen went black. The screen remained black for the next minute and a half, before returning to updates from the then-upcoming World Cup news.

Most of the people in the US are aware of the 5-second delay that resulted from the Janet Jackson incident. That 5-second was created not to censor, but to avoid any inappropriate on-screen behavior to be shown. Yet the one that I experienced in Guangzhou is censorship to the fullest. I learned that the government has a department with people watching TV 24 hours a day with their fingers poised over the “off” button. That finger will come thundering down onto that button when any negative words are uttered on air about China.

When I shared this story to my Chinese friends, they seemed indifferent, as this is part of growing up, of living in China, watching state controlled TV for the last 50 years and learning not to trust them. When I ask where they go for “real news”, the internet is by far the best choice, although access is also limited. Just last week, the Chinese government shut down an outspoken website apparently because of the reported killing of a villager trying to stop a demolition of his home by the local officials. The government has even started monitoring and controlling blogs. The phrase “Big Brother is watching you” actually means something over here.

Yet life goes on in China. Ordinary people’s lives are not really affected by censorship, as there are other things to worry about – tagging along with the economic boom, corruption, Beijing Olympics, etc… From their perspective, life is not so bad even if they don’t get real news.

You might ask: “How does this macro-situation affect a PR professional?” Well, the answer is to play by the rules and always be alert on new media policies. Try to align your messages with the government’s missions for the wellbeing of the society. This might sound a bit corny, but for a country with 1.3 billion people, stability is key.

China is not a 5-second delay country. This is a country that can afford to delay more than 5 seconds for the sake of stability.

Crossover sensation, crossover sound, crossover star, etc, etc. Almost every week there is an article or a news segment on how pop culture from one country is “crossing over” to influence pop culture in another country. But quite frankly we live in an era where the cultural exchange is never-ending and thus the term “crossover” is no longer relevant in our marketing vernacular.

As communicators we need to make a conscious effort to better convey the “cultural fusion” that is taking place all over the world. Globalization and increased multiculturalism is creating a greater inclusiveness, especially when it comes to entertainment. An inclusiveness that we need to start considering in our strategies, initiatives and messaging ... that’s if we want to be relevant to the future multicultural mainstream!

Take a look at some recent examples of cultural fusion:

Colombia’s Shakira Gets Fans Dancing on her U.S. Tour
India’s Aishwarya Rai is a huge sensation in Dubai
Korean Male Celebrities are the Most Popular for Women throughout Asia
Argentine Cable Network Adapts U.S. TV Hit Desperate Housewives
US TV Network Debuts Telenovela Format from Latin America
India’s Bollywood Films Are More Popular in the U.K. Than British-Made Films
Puerto Rico’s Reggeaton Sounds Take Over the U.S., Europe and Japan

It looks like ad agencies are catching on to the power of authentic communication. On Wednesday, September 13th, the Wall Street Journal reported that this season's premier of the popular reality series "America's Next Top Model" on the CW network will feature a new kind of commercial they have dubbed a "wrap." A wrap is essentially a two minute segment that airs during commercial breaks but looks like part of the program and features a celebrity spokesperson discussing trends and tips on topics the audience of 18 to 24 year old women are interested in. For example, a TV personality might talk about the latest hair styles with another female guest. The first 90 seconds will be general discussion while the last 30 seconds will weave in a demonstration of a specific product like Herbal Essence shampoo.

Does this sound at all familiar? The answer is obvious to those who work in PR. It is exactly what PR people have been doing for years -- using credible spokespeople to deliver a product message in the context of an interesting interview.

The only difference here is that the segment is being paid for and in this case it costs about one million dollars for production and airtime.

Maybe the cost of these "soft sell" ads will be too high for traditional marketers and this experiment will fail. But it is still a disturbing trend to see ad agencies buying what PR agencies have delivered for years. It makes it clear that the traditional boundaries between our disciplines are fading and that PR people are going to have to be even more innovative in the future if they want to hang on to their place in the marketing mix.

My favorite summation of the blogosphere's backlash potential comes from Steve Hayden. “If you fudge or lie on a blog, you are biting the karmic weenie,” says the ad guru. “The negative reaction will be so great that, whatever your intention was, it will be overwhelmed and crushed like a bug.”

It’s no secret that to hoax, hype or otherwise misrepresent and manipulate is just bad mojo when it comes to the blogosphere. The denizens of this world have zero tolerance when it comes to being punked.

And yet the roll call keeps growing for blogosphere blunders that we can all learn from. A few recent examples:

The blogosphere went after one of its own recently when a contributor for the blog site Joystiq pumped up an impending video game industry announcement. Having teased his readers that there was big news a comin’, only to have it turn out to be a standard vendor announcement, Robert Summa found himself taking a chomp of that karmic weenie. Joystiq faithful went fully ballistic when they realized the news was average industry fare and called for the blogger’s head. They first got a written apology from Joystiq, followed by the abrupt firing of Summa.

Next up, those happy go lucky kids from Facebook, the high school-college social site. Smelling manipulation on the wind when the site issued “stalker-like” syndication tools for info swapping, Facebook members staged a full-scale revolt with on-line petitions, anti-Facebook coalitions and threats to ditch the site for eternity. The site’s CEO responded with a blog to members asking them to “calm down and breathe.” (!!!) That didn’t go over so well and Facebook subsequently launched privacy controls to block user info from being shared.

Then along comes the outing of LonelyGirl 15, the teen queen who built up a following in the millions with 2-3 minute videos posted on YouTube talking about her “real-life” angst. As her popularity grew, so did suspicion that she could be a fake, a viral abomination. It was the crisp editing, music overlays and soap opera pacing that eventually did her in. Oh, and the IP tie-back to a talent agency didn’t help either.

Sensing the blogosphere was preparing to open a can of whoop wrath on Little Miss Lonely, her creators revealed her secret and made a ham-handed plea for understanding in the name of art. The guys behind the site -- a few non-descript 20-somethings, one of them an unemployed filmmaker, another a lawyer -- said they made up the pubescent and the storyline in the spirit of creating a new “art form.”

BS! screamed back the blogosphere. Though many had long realized they were being played and took the hoax in stride, nearly everyone had issues with the creators’ excuse for telling the apocryphal tale. People have called for everything from LonelyGirl boycotts to her on-line suicide.

What’s all this mean for the world of PR and marcom? Simply that the karmic weenie remains in full force across the blogosphere.

The people who built up this word of mouth hotbed do not suffer phonies well. They seek out fraud between the lines of text and in the IP addresses of those who post. They can spot manipulation from a mile away. And they don’t want to have anyone exploit them by trading on their personal data.

Try even nibbling around the edges of the karmic truth and your company or client will pay the price, left to make public and painful reversals of strategy or inauthentic excuses like those above. The damage to a brand in such cases is much greater than any potential upside associated with playing the blogosphere.

So if you’re tempted to pull one on the blogosphere, proceed with caution. Or just don’t proceed at all.

The annual meetings of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund are currently being held in Singapore. For the tiny city-state of Singapore, the meetings are a big deal – about 16,000 delegates, journalists and representatives from NGOs (or what the World Bank terms “Civil Society Organizations”) are attending, making it one of the biggest international gatherings ever held there.

The Singapore government pulled out all the stops to ensure a successful event: millions of dollars were spent beautifying what was already a pristine city (with blooming flowers in pot plants everywhere); hundreds of brand new BMWs chauffeured delegates around town; and a public campaign urged the republic’s four million citizens to smile at their visitors. In accordance with Singapore’s much praised standards of efficiency, the event has run like clockwork. To ensure the meetings weren’t disrupted by protests from activists, the Singapore authorities also made it clear that the country’s long-standing ban on public demonstrations would remain in place during the events.

So far, so good. But then the government went a step too far and decided to prevent 27 NGO activists, who had been accredited to the meetings by the World Bank, from entering the country. The reason given was “security concerns”.

The result? The World Bank accused Singapore of reneging on an agreement to allow activists in, made three years ago, when Singapore was chosen as the meeting venue. And the majority of the 160 NGOs accredited to the meetings, comprising a total of 500 delegates, decided to boycott the event.

In unprecedented criticism, World Bank president Paul Wolfowitz said the move had done “enormous damage” both to the Bank (which has been trying hard to cultivate a softer image and build better relationships with NGOs around the world) and to Singapore … “a lot of that damage has been to Singapore and it’s self-inflicted.”

The stinging rebuke and the outrage from NGOs became the focus of attention for the thousands of journalists attending the meeting. Despite the urgings of government ministers to look at the “big picture”, the efficient logistics of the conference were overshadowed by stories about the “repressive” and “authoritarian” nature of Singapore.

Two days later, the Singapore authorities partially reversed their stance and said they would allow 22 of the 27 banned activists into the country. But for most observers, this was a case of too little, too late.

The lessons from all of this? Little things count for a lot in the PR business. The 22 banned activists might represent only a tiny fraction of the total attendance in Singapore, but the symbolism of the banning overshadowed everything else.

Additionally, in today’s world engagement with stakeholders - no matter what their politics or attitudes - is critical to any successful PR campaign. Not to do so is a risky business – as Singapore has found out to its cost …

Submitted by Andrew Pirie

Well, well, well...sometimes validation comes from the strangest places. Maybe I've just been watching the PR flack's "Director's Cut" of the classic flick, Miracle on 34th Street, where in a fit of charity and bonhomie Macy's starts sending customers to Gimbels, but I was gratified to read that Fleishman-Hilliard just recently stumbled upon an insight that GolinHarris discovered, documented and has been tracking for four years now, since 2003:

When it comes to business earning its stripes as a good corporate citizen, Americans believe that the litmus test and job #1 is how a business values and treats its employees!

Preposterous you say? Well, if you don't take my word for it, then take Fleishman-Hilliard’s and the National Consumers' League, as reported by the Grey Lady herself in a business story slugged, “Corporate Conscience Survey Says Workers Should Come First,” (NYT, 31 May 2006).

Here's the wood: "Far more American consumers consider the way companies treat their employees a good indicator of their social conscience than their philanthropy.”

Isn’t that interesting.

GolinHarris' annual "Doing Well by Doing Good" corporate citizenship survey discovered way back in 2003 that "how a business values and treats its employees" is one of the top two drivers of corporate citizenship, right up there with "ethical, honest, transparent and accountable executives and business practices," so sayeth nearly two-thirds of Americans.

More importantly, "how a business values and treats its employees" is no random blip on the corporate citizenship radar screen, a reputational UFO of little consequence to the traffic controllers of corporate social responsibility, charitable giving, strategic philanthropy, cause marketing, community relations, issues management and SarOx compliance.

Quite the contrary: The trend is significant, stable and sobering.

The chart below is a trend analysis from all four GolinHarris "Doing Well by Doing Good" corporate citizenship surveys...including a sneak peak at our just completed and - ssshh - not yet released 2006 study.

"Values and Treats Employees Well and Fairly"

2006 (5,000 Americans)

Importance: 69% - Rank: 1 of 12 corporate citizenship drivers

Excellent/Good Brand Performance (150 brand average): 48% - Gap: -21%

2005 (3,500 Americans)

Importance: 66% - Rank: 1 of 12 corporate citizenship drivers

Excellent/Good Brand Performance (108 brand average): 51% - Gap: -15%

2004 (1,000 Americans)

Importance: 64% - Rank: 2 of 12 corporate citizenship drivers

Excellent/Good Brand Performance (75 brand average): 52% - Gap: -12%

2003 (500 Americans)

Importance: 61% - Rank: 2 of 12 corporate citizenship drivers

Excellent/Good Brand Performance (30 brand average): 54% - Gap: -07%

Gee, think there’s a pattern here?

Not only is "values and treats employees well and fairly" consistently at the top of heap in importance, but Americans perceive business performance as anemic. . .and weakening year to year!

And if I were a betting boy, I'd double-down on "values and treats employees well and fairly" continuing its upward trajectory as more and more businesses begin to rethink, rework and retreat from the "Social Contract" that - arguably - has been the engine of American economic prosperity since World War II.

I know it sounds counter intuitive to place "values and treats employees well and fairly" to high in the Maslovian corporate citizenship hierarchy of needs because we’re conditioned to think in artificial boxes and silos of “charitable giving,” “strategic philanthropy,” “community relations,” “issue management” “EHS/sustainability,” “corporate social responsibility” and “cause marketing” -- not the holistic and integrated character of the brand’s reputation, value proposition, and stakeholder relationships that GolinHarris advocates.

That's why in this year's corporate citizenship survey we decided to push the issue front and center. We asked all 5,000 Americans if they agreed or disagreed with the following statement, allowing them to position themselves on a 10 point scale of "Very Strongly Agree" to "Very Strongly Disagree."

"A company's relationship with its employees is fundamental to a company's corporate citizenship.

Agree 73%

Strongly Agree 42%

More Agree than Disagree 30%

Mixed 22%

Disagree 05%

More Disagree than Agree 03%

More Agree than Disagree 02%

So, as we think about the Next 50 Years of Public Relations, let's not accept the old "RCA Victor" dog look that 9 out of 10 of our clients give us when they eyeball "treats employees well and fairly" high priority topic for discussion developing in corporate citizenship strategies.

(Perhaps some of you are old farts like me and can remember the venerable RCA Victor logo of the dog tilting its head in befuddlement upon hearing his master's voice bellowing from the victrola's horn).

But then, I'm just the numbers guy, pledged to confuse and confound through obfuscation and obtuseness through the fine art of lies, damn lies and statistics.

What say ye PR practitioners, professionals and pundits?

Did Fleishman-Hilliard award GolinHarris a supreme compliment and prove that old saw, "imitation is the greatest form of flattery" in concluding "far more American consumers consider the way companies treat their employees a good indicator of their social conscience than their philanthropy," or do we both have our statistical heads stuck way up in that place where the sun don't shine?