I’ve been busy preparing for the launch of Social Media Crisis Communications: Preparing for Preventing, and Surviving a Public Relations #Fail, which will be available for purchase on April 16, 2013. I’m so excited about it finally going on sale. The book title says it all… it is a go-to book on crisis communications giving you real world examples and a blueprint to manage your organization’s social media programs when social becomes unsocial.
Here are some items, which caught my attention this week:
Twin Sisters Separated at Birth Find Each Other Using Social Media – The power of social media was shown with the example here. Social psychologist Stanley Milgram tested the idea of the six degrees of separation concept with his small-world experiment in the 1960s. The concept of six degrees of separation is that people on average are six steps away from being connected to each other throughout the world. Think of the party trick Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon. According to Facebook’s own data team, in 2011, the number of degrees between its users appears to have shrunk from 5.2 to 4.7. This means that the distance between two random people on Facebook is now five connections. Social media is showing how every small the world is becoming and we connected to each other we are.
The following items caused a great bit of discussion among my peers (and I’m glad for it):
Slim-Fast Wants Dieters to Look Good Doing the Reverse Cowgirl – If we judge this campaign purely from the marketing and advertising standpoint, it is clever and well-done. It does cut through the clutter and hits to the heart of why most people diet in the Western world… for vanity reasons. But yet, what is it saying? I’ve got mixed feelings about it. While I think it is clever, I also think it is enforcing negative stereotypes and promoting dangerous dieting.
What I find interesting is that Unilever is the same organization with Dove’s Real Women campaign highlighting the beauty of women regardless of what they look like as well as Comfortable in Your Skin, the male version. And there is a funded self-esteem program for girls in Girl Scouting by Unilever. Slim-Fast and Dove aren’t similar brands selling totally different products so they don’t necessarily have to have common values… it just made me wonder since all things seem to be connected today crossing over. What are your thoughts?
Can Marketing Break the Grammer Rules? – That’s a really good question. Can marketing and advertising break the grammer rules? Often what sounds and looks good isn’t correct. Advertising often plays by different rules from the rest of us. I’m on the fence if that’s good or bad; however advertising has great influence on popular culture then in turn has an affect on people. I’ve had my rant here.
Lots of things to ponder… see you same place and same day next week… And I hope to my US readers your taxes are done…
