Jelena Woehr

Jelly Belly delivered some real-world karma when they sent Matthew a hilarious letter and free jellybeans in response to a decade-late confession. Matthew copped to a jellybean theft that’s haunted him since childhood, and someone authorized to use smiley faces in corporate email cashed his refund check and kindly removed Matthew from the FBI’s jellybean thief watch list. In return, Jelly Belly gained a pile of Reddit karma (the invisible kind that comes from self-posts) when Matthew, under pseudonym BoldArch, posted the saga to /r/funny. 

What would have happened if they’d just written back to return Matthew’s $3.12 check and explain that Jelly Belly sells wholesale to stores, and that these stores calculate for a certain amount of shrink when ordering?

(Photo from Flickr user Steven Lilley, licensed via Creative Commons and discovered through Yahoo! Image Search’s “labeled for reuse” filter.)

Not a front-page Reddit post from a satisfied Jelly Belly customer, that’s for sure.

It’s risky to have a sense of humor when you’re representing a corporation—any corporation. It’s much easier to talk in corporate-speak, use dollar words when a five-cent one would do, and cultivate that vague veil of intentional, slight misunderstanding that discourages customers from treating the anonymous customer service representative like another human being, much less a friend. 

But organizations that empower customer care representatives to laugh with customers (when it’s warranted, and when the customer has first demonstrated a sense of humor) can give us all the warm fuzzies, like Jelly Belly just did, in a way that dense corporate jargon never will.

How can that happen?

It has to start from the top. At Name.com, my real-life office neighbors, where new acquiring owners Demand Media showed that they’re keeping the fun in Name’s brand, by appearing in a YouTube video poking fun at boring new corporate overlords. 

When the corporate suits make fun of themselves (for real, not in some hellacious “team-building exercise” where employees “roast” a boss who sits through the whole thing seething), everyone in the organization receives permission to laugh, too. Laughing with the boss begets laughing with each other begets laughing with customers. (Plug: My boss laughs at herself as marissamayr.tumblr.com)

It has to be safe. Sometimes you need to backpedal on an attempt at humor that’s gone bad. Most organizations won’t ever suffer from the level of backlash that The Onion got recently for a terrible, terrible joke about a child star, but, then again, most organizations don’t have a brand based entirely on biting, somewhat offensive humor. Regardless, a sincere apology from the company, like The Onion’s genuine mea culpa, should be accompanied by education for the offender—not a pink slip. Harsh consequences are only appropriate for folks who intended to do harm, who don’t understand what they could have done better, or for repeat offenders. If Kit McCoy had recently seen a teammate fired for an honest attempt at humor gone wrong, he probably wouldn’t have laughed with Matthew, and Jelly Belly would have missed out on the kind of organic marketing money really can’t buy. (Unless, of course, money DID buy this and Matthew is a plant… /r/karmaconspiracy)

It has to be recognized. I don’t know for sure, but I bet Kit McCoy’s boss over at Jelly Belly is the kind of guy who makes sure Kit knows he appreciates the extra effort, even when it doesn’t make the front page of Reddit. If customer service only gets noticed when wait times spike or a customer complains or somebody screws up, your customer care staff is going to focus on not screwing up, not on being awesome. (Plug2: My mentor has a pretty awesome book out on being nicer that can help your organization create a culture that rewards nice.)

It’s that easy. Make it okay to laugh internally first. Educate and train when mistakes happen; don’t condemn or shame. And make sure you’re in a position to notice greatness. 

And voila… you’re setting up a culture where these amazing moments of connection happen, where both customer and employee are real, human people laughing together at something that really is funny. Even if you never make Reddit that way, you’ll still collect plenty of the other kind of karma.

tommypenner:

Tumblr-Yahoo

Meta-meta. (CLICK DEM SIDEWAYS ARROWS READERS ALL THREE OF YOU.)

We’ve all been disgusted by the corporate un-pology, a useless gesture that serves as the business equivalent of “I’m sorry you feel that way.” Today, The Onion dished out some poetic justice with a sincere, humble apology for a seriously offensive mistake. I nominate “Onion-pology” as the corporate communications world’s new antonym for the un-pology: “A genuine corporate apology made by a named individual who is truly sorry and prepared to take action to prevent a recurrence of the wrongdoing for which an apology is due.”

That said, I very much hope The Onion won’t punish its social editors severely for what seems to be more a policy failure than a personal one. Calling a nine-year-old girl a “c***” is absolutely out of line and you don’t have to be a humorless schoolmarm type to know it. Some of the funniest people I know were among the people most outraged at The Onion’s Twitter transgression. However, I can certainly see how an Onion employee, accustomed to pushing boundaries and offending celebrities, would have a lapse of judgment while working alone on Oscar night without a clear social media policy that spells things out like “Do not attack children or use vulgar words to describe them, period.”

Yes, that should be common sense. Yes, it is for most of us. But most of us don’t work in an environment that generally rewards being no-boundaries, no-holds-barred offensive. An apology was deserved. The apology rendered was refreshingly sincere. But I hope nobody loses a job over it.

Is there a more contentious issue in the social media world than age? Recently, the debate ignited again, and it seems every social media observer or business commentator felt moved to have their say.

On one side of the ring, you have the unsuspecting Cathryn Sloane, pilloried for her ludicrous contention that no social media manager should be over 25. Among the thousands of responses to her post were many along the lines of “11 Reasons a 23-Year-Old Shouldn’t Run Your Social Media,” by Hollis Thomases. Oddly enough, although Sloane was ridden out of social media town on a rail, Thomases didn’t get too many “Atta girl!” comments, either. The fickle Interweb strikes again:

Yet, over in the pro-youth corner, responses to Sloane were awfully similar:

It looks like, no matter which position you take, wading into the Great Age Debate is a sure way to lose the respect of everyone you love, while simultaneously being labeled an ageist bigot. (So, what do I do? Wade into the Great Age Debate. I’ve never been accused of having excellent self-preservation instincts. Must be the immortality of youth.)

Seriously, though: Let’s talk about this from a vantage point two steps farther back from the issue. It’s awfully hard to do that, though, because this is just about the most personal thing we could talk about as an industry.

For the older social media managers in the room, the suggestion that their job should be given to a greenhorn intern is disrespectful, embarrassing, painful, and suggestive of the deeply wounding presumption that a person loses his or her value with age. That’s something that can’t be minimized. Many older people have lost their jobs due to age after 30+ years of excellent performance, and few of them can prove it in a court of law in order to recover damages.

But—and here’s where I get a little personal—I hope that my older friends can recognize that the conversation is just as emotional for young people, in a way that it wouldn’t have been when you were young. You grew up at a time when a person could reasonably expect to follow the plan, work hard, and be rewarded for it. Today, young people can’t have expectations, period. We can’t expect to have a job, and for those with jobs, we can’t expect the companies we work for to exist, much less employ us, in ten years.

Yes, you had the fear of a Russian nuke blowing us all to bits and (for men) the fear of being drafted to deal with, but if you lived to adulthood, you figured you’d be able to afford a home and family. Today, the “Recession Generation” doesn’t even feel financially secure enough to commit to a car payment. So, please forgive us if we’re a little protective of our space in an industry that grew up as we did, one of the few transformative and innovative things to appear during the dark years after the dot-com bubble burst. 

OK, but how old should social media managers be?

Like most inflammatory subjects and ferocious debates, this one can’t be answered with an absolute. Rather, the answer is something much more difficult to quantify in a blog post: Common sense. Hire a social media manager whose skills, temperament, and experience are conducive to superior on-the-job performance, and who seems to understand the brand.

I fell into the world of social media management as 19 with a handful of college credits and a work history including “cashier” and “door-to-door canvasser.” Did I know what I was doing? No. But I had strong communication skills, Twitter was still new enough that anyone who understood it could make a decent sideline out of explaining how to create an account and compose a tweet to companies, and the employer was a startup eager to hire a kid with writing chops who would work cheap and learn fast.

I made mistakes, I had to Google basic pieces of knowledge, and I didn’t advocate for social media as more than a traffic driver. But I did drive traffic. Up to half the whole site’s organic traffic per month, by myself. And I did learn. I learned how to manage a forum, a corporate Twitter account, a Facebook page, a chat room, a company blog, a community, and my own working time. I prioritized, studied, learned, and grew with the company.

Unfortunately, that startup took the same nosedive many did in 2008, and ultimately we parted ways. But, at 21, I left that job with a set of social media skills that many people twice my age didn’t have. And that many people twice my age did have. Because the point of this story is, it’s the skills, not the age.

It’s also attitude. Social media is a fundamentally embarrassing thing, and a discipline in which even the best people make mistakes. It moves fast and it exposes every negative experience anyone has ever had with the brand you represent. You have to drop the ego and listen to things you don’t want to hear. Social media takes the confidence of a cocky marketing/PR person, but he or she must also be a selfless and genuine customer service representative. It takes an advocate willing to push back when someone asks social media to do something that would damage the company’s relationship with its audience.

That said, social media isn’t hard work. Digging a ditch or picking tomatoes for twelve hours is hard work. Social media is a delight, because it provides constant interaction and instant reinforcement. Because it’s such a delight, lots of people want to work in social media. Therein lies the root of the who-to-hire dilemma. 

I’ll be the bearer of bad news: Age, experience, Ivy League education, or anything else, will never equate to a magic formula that inoculates you against poor hiring. You just have to hire well, make the tough decision to call, “Next,” if you’ve hired badly, and try to do (as Brain would say to Pinky) the same thing you do every day: Try to put the right people on the right projects working toward the right goals to hit the right benchmarks to take the company in the right direction.

(Plug: If you’re looking to start on that path, reading Ask A Manager every day wouldn’t hurt. I’ve been a fan for more than two years and learned more than I can even put into words.)

tommypenner:

I already lost this picture an shaken downs she sided Shenzhen did rid shells pang dj doable GPS is ensue she did smells d fuck.

THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU STEAL MY BOSS TOMMY

Audio from my talk with the amazing Peter Shankman, in which I attempt to keep up with a presenter who has more energy than a tree squirrel on intravenous amphetamines, more charisma than at least 65% of the Kennedy family, and more fans than a tourist trap shopping mall in Tokyo.

Unless you’ve trained in an ancient meditative discipline that allows your eyeballs to filter out all news featuring chart-topping commercially manufactured “artists” who team up with Walmart, you probably know that the Internet made this happen:

That’s recording artist “Pitbull,” holding a baby in Kodiak, Alaska, where Internet pranksters sent him by gaming a Facebook contest sponsored by Walmart and Sheets. The concept: Send Pitbull to the local Walmart with the most new Facebook likes during the period. The prank: Vote for the most remote Walmart imaginable, sending a popular hip-hop artist to perform in a store that sells bear repellent, among other unique products.

Embarrassing a mainstream performer and a big corporation, with a real-life narwhal tie-in (they live in the waters of the Arctic Circle) — what could be more tailor-made for the young, snarky denizens of sites like Reddit? Except, pranks don’t work quite so well when the target is all class, like so.

Pitbull went to the Kodiak Walmart, had by all accounts a great time, and turned the whole thing around to portray himself as an artist who will go anywhere—anywhere!—for his fans. (This was, however, his first appearance in Alaska.) The Kodiak Walmart staff even made Walmart look fun and welcoming, stuffed grizzly notwithstanding:

Instead of ignoring the prank or getting angry, Pit not only acknowledged the Internet’s bit of fun, but actually invited the prankster to accompany him to Alaska:

As a result, Walmart—perhaps the most despised company on the social Web—and Pitbull, cursed with too much popularity for any hip young techie to ever admit to liking his music, came out smelling like roses. Walmart and Sheets enjoyed more publicity than they’d ever have gotten solely from Pitbull’s existing fan community, and the Kodiak Walmart is now Facebooking with an audience of nearly 65,000 (something like six times the town’s population), most of whom are unlikely to “un-like” the store post-contest.

The Internet, outsmarted by two favorite targets, dusted itself off and gave Pit a few well-deserved words of praise.

On YouTube:

Well done Pitbull. I can’t stand your music but goddamnit I respect you.

And:

it’s kinda hard not to like this guy, even though i’m not a fan. like robert pattinson. good sport, class act.

Reddit:

…Well, he kind of beat the Internet on this one. Nice job, Pitbull, nice job.

And:

Indeed, he was pretty classy and a good sport about it, I don’t understand why people hate him.

Who’da thunk it? We all just learned something from the guy who wrote these lyrics:

Mami got an ass like a donkey,with a monkey Look like King Kong, welcome to the crib 305, that’s what it is With a woman down here the s*** don’t play games

Well, then.

Of course, the same social Web that spawned the Pit-pranking movement also could be credited with inspiring his class-act response. Behold, one of the oldest and most-reiterated of memes:

Truer words were never spoken, little tufted puffin.

Haters gonna hate. Sometimes they’re gonna mess with your brand, and once in a while, that might go viral. Be ready. When you seek attention from social media, you could get more than you’re expecting. Roll with it, and show your haters some love—like Pit did by extending an invitation to the prankster—and you might just come off thinking that a little trolling was the best thing that ever happened to you.

Don’t get mad. Get free brand exposure.

tommypenner:

Do you think they’ll notice? #vimeo #tumblr (Taken with Instagram at Tumblr HQ)

This is what happens when my buddies work for my former boss…. #shenanigans.

kateordie:

Sometimes I have the time and patience to get from an idea to a fully fleshed-out, penciled, inked and coloured comic.

Sometimes I don’t.

Damn straight, though this isn’t going to make any misogynists change their minds, of course. 

I talked recently about some planning ahead that you can do to prevent an angry rant you’ll one day regret from appearing on your blog, but what do you do when you’re mad, you’re in front of the computer, and you feel the urge to type?

Ideally, angry time should be spent on the phone with a friend, or in a hot bath, with all your WiFi enabled devices powered off in the other room. But sometimes that’s not realistic. Sometimes you have a deadline and can’t power down. Sometimes what made you angry is on the computer, and you’re right there with your fingers on the keys. What then? 

1. Journal it somewhere private. I like Biblionica, a little-used tool intended for ebook writers, which lets you create private “publications.” It feels like blogging (though there’s no multimedia support) but without the audience.
2. Read PassiveAggressiveNotes.com for a while. Not only will you get a laugh, you’ll be convinced you really, really don’t want to be that person, and you’ll go delete the “Why some people need to really learn to just let things go before they lose a friend” draft from your Tumblr.
3. Post on r/unsentletters. With a throwaway account and all even remotely identifying details (including about the situation rather than the person) removed. There’s also r/MMFB, if you want comments to be a little more tightly moderated. (For non-Redditors: These are subcommunities within Reddit. Account creation is easy.)
4. Have an email argument with yourself. Everyone knows the old “write an email to the person pissing you off and then don’t send it” trick, but you can turn it from a venting exercise into something to laugh about later if you send the email to yourself, then reply as if you’re the other person. (Or maybe I’m the only oddball who enjoys this? I also sometimes play both sides in chess… not Scrabble, though, that would just be silly.)
5. Vent on Omegle. Again, anonymize everything, of course. If you don’t mind clicking through a bunch of “A/S/L?” to get to someone who’ll talk.
6. Be a compliment fairy. Someone else is having as bad a day as you are, and they’re probably keeping it off the Internet, like the smart individual they are. Try sending a random compliment to someone you haven’t talked to in a while. Or, if you’re on any of the various dating sites, send nice messages to random people who are way too far away from you ever to actually be potential dates. “Hey, I know you’re in Iceland and I’m in the US, so this is just a compliment and not a come-on, but I just wanted to say that your pictures make you seem like an incredibly fun, vibrant person, and you have great taste in music!” 
7. Work your ass off. I know, I know. The last thing you want to do right now is think about work. How could you think about work after what s/he just did/said/forgot/etc.? But if you really try throwing yourself into a project you’ve been neglecting, you may find that anger makes you more productive. The best revenge is a life well lived, after all.
8. Use Written Kitten. If you’re NOT one of those “anger makes me work better” types, stay on task with this simple text editor that will reward your writing with a new kitten photo every 100 words (or whatever you set it to).  Remember to save your work!
9. Shop into your savings account. Retail therapy works. Weirdly enough, it sometimes works even if you never get the stuff you wanted. Try filling a cart on your favorite shopping site, going to checkout, and then just putting that dollar amount into your savings instead of hitting “buy.”
10. Write a list of 10 things to do online instead of blogging angry. Hello, there, reader who knew this was the punch line and just skipped to #10. Seriously, though, read the other nine. They might be useful someday.

Ann Romney co-owns a horse.

Apparently, this is a gross betrayal of the American middle class. Unlike, y’know, George Bush’s expensive ranch that he sold as soon as he didn’t need it to bolster his Texan image. Or Barack Obama’s love of golf. Or Cindy McCain’s drift racing vehicles. Or John Kerry’s $7,000,000 yacht.

Look, I get it: Dressage isn’t the most accessible sport. There are few Cinderella stories in dressage. A poor kid with nothing but a ball can’t become a champion dressage rider practicing day in and day out at the neighborhood court. Most successful dressage riders are European, snotty, and so uptight they might fire a groom if a plastic bag blows down the barn aisle on show day. Even other equestrians make fun of “dressage queens.”

However, before we burn Ann Romney at the stake as an out of touch, upper-class trophy wife, let’s take just one gosh-darn second and get our facts straight, shall we? A little fact-checking follows:

It’s not Ann’s horse alone.

Ann co-owns Rafalca with the wife of the mare’s rider and trainer, Jan Ebeling. Upper-level dressage horses are expensive to buy and maintain. A great rider is an extraordinary athlete who likely does not earn enough to fill a stable with his or her own Olympic-level horses. Ann has apparently been friends with Jan’s wife for some time.

Mitt didn’t take a tax deduction for the horse’s upkeep.

He reported $77,731 in “passive losses” from the venture, but took a whopping $50 tax deduction.

Rafalca won’t be earning big bucks in the breeding shed after the Olympic Games.

Some champion horses become prized breeding stallions after retirement. Even the Salon article cited above suggests that Rafalca might be eligible for this lucrative activity. Unfortunately, she’s a mare, making it rather difficult for her to inseminate, well, anything.

It’s not horse ballet.

Dressage is descended from cavalry maneuvers that saved human lives for the thousands of years during which warhorses could make or break an army. Horses require 10+ years of training, in general, to reach the upper levels, at which point they may only have a few years of athletic ability left in which to perform at this level. Although musical freestyles have become popular, such as this famous performance at the World Equestrian Games (a video that was posted excitedly on Facebook by some of the same people I’ve seen mocking Rafalca), dressage is at its core a set of unforgiving and specific movements that must be performed by a 1,000+ pound animal in perfect harmony with a rider. It’s not easy, it’s not always pretty, and there are definitely no tutus.

Look, I don’t like Ann Romney either…

…but I don’t like her because of the stupid shit that comes out of her mouth when people are recording, not because she has an expensive hobby. Even Bill Gates, a man whose philanthropy is legendary and whose principles once led him to set mosquitoes free during a TED talk to force the wealthy to experience the helplessness felt by poor people in mosquito-infested areas prone to malaria, has $17 million invested in just two paintings.

Rich people can understand that not everyone is rich, and they sometimes even vote the right way on fiscal policy. John Kerry has an awful lot of money, but I don’t doubt that, had he become President, he’d have supported asking people of his own economic class to do their share for their country. If Mitt and Ann Romney are tone-deaf snobs who turn up their noses at the working class, let’s talk about how that affects Mitt’s policies and what those policies could mean for our country. An expensive horse would be the least of our worries under a Romney presidency, and Rafalca should be the least of our worries during the campaign season. 

This is Pamela Geller.

Pamela is what you could call a “fringe” blogger, someone who has a few devoted fans, but otherwise attracts quite a bit of outspoken loathing. She’s a political commentator so far from the center that even many conservative bloggers eschew any association with her. What can that do to a person, over time? Well, just take a gander at this bit of madness, proofreading failure, and general meltdown:

Media ia a propactvisit arm whose one goal – shape the news, change the ness, even live about the news to advance a collectivist, pro-sharia agandena. How else culd an unqualfied, bitter Ameria hater hold the eat in the Obama office.

Yes. A public figure, published author (and I’m not talking about Kindle books or self-publishing; she’s with Simon & Schuster!) and political commentator posted that, verbatim, under her own name. There’s more where that came from.

The mardcore Hama scruops in thr US HAMAS CAIR, MSU,MSA, ICNA are doing thr Htiler stompin jig to get these conter terrorim messures removed so that devout Muslims can roam freeem to plan the next 911.

But that’s not the point. The point is, even if you’re not someone who even high-profile conservatives describe as a “hate group leader,” even if you’re not as alone in your views as Ms. Geller is in hers, even if your focus is way, way, way less controversial, you, too, could have a very public, ugly meltdown on your blog and get way more attention for it than you get for any of your best work.

You should probably try to prevent that.

I suggest a five-step plan:

1. Know that it can happen to you. Don’t laugh at her without first taking an inventory of the mistakes you could make. Do you drink? Do you occasionally feel down? Are you occasionally tired and a little judgment-deficient? Do comments sometimes really grind your gears? All those things are pretty normal, but any of them can lead to a blogging meltdown.
2. Know when it probably would happen to you. What impairs your judgment the most? Whether it’s a fight with your spouse or a wild night on the town, figure out which experiences leave you at less than your best in terms of common sense.
3. Turn off your devices when that happens. Even when you’re sure you’re fine, don’t blog when something on your list of “judgment-impairing experiences” has just happened to you. Turn off data connectivity on your smartphone during the bachelorette party. Go to bed, not to the computer, after an “I hate you!” moment with your teenage child.
4. Use scheduling and buffer posts wisely. Get into the habit of scheduling any post that’s not huge, breaking news for at least a couple hours after you draft it. If possible, schedule it for the next morning. Reread it one more time before it goes live.
5. Have one good friend who will tell you the truth, right away. Ask a close buddy—preferably a fellow blogger—to read any possibly controversial or overly emotional posts before they go live. Ask them also to subscribe to your feed, read new posts ASAP, and be completely honest with you if they see anything you really shouldn’t have put out there. You can’t really retract something once it’s live, but you can pull it down and apologize for the error in judgment.

Excuse me while I put on my snooty boutique owner hat:

If you have to ask, you can’t afford it.

Now, I’m going to have to channel your parents for a moment, next:

If you have to tell me how mature you are for your age, you’re probably not.

Everyone who’s ever tried online dating:

If you tell me in your profile that you “hate drama,” or “don’t get jealous” or that you aren’t like all those other girls/guys, you’re probably EXACTLY like all the other girls/guys.

Every hiring manager ever (something I learned from Ask a Manager): 

If you have to tell me you’re the perfect candidate for the job, you’re probably not getting an offer.

Every actually competent social media professional who has ever used Twitter:

If you have to put “guru” or “ninja” or “expert” in your profile, you’re probably just another jackass who knows how to use hashtags, sort of, and expects companies to throw money at you for it.

Has my point been adequately driven home yet? Sorry about using a sledgehammer, but it’s a bit of a shock to me that there are still so many individuals and companies in the world who haven’t figured out one simple thing about branding, something so basic it should be tattooed on the inside of the left eyelid of everyone who’s ever worked for a brand management team:

Show before you tell. 

And its cousin, for tattooing on the right eyelid’s inner surface:

If you’ve shown, you probably won’t even need to tell.

That means you, companies whose email newsletters and completely unrelated press releases are full of blurbs about your extraordinary, amazing corporate culture.

Culture is not what you tell the world that your company is. It’s what you do, and what you show the outside world that you do. Culture is healing any defects from the inside out, getting your house in order, creating effectiveness, productivity, ownership, and passion, and then bringing the inside out in your branding.

Culture is hard to do. The companies doing the best job of nurturing an extraordinary culture tend to be that way because they benefit from leaders who are genuinely passionate about some aspect of The Way Things Should Be, so much so that their beliefs trickle down into every aspect of the organization. Think Steve Jobs, the man so passionate about great design that he lived without furniture rather than buy a household item that was “just” a useful object. Think Tony Hsieh, who freely admits that he’s regularly teased for his “social experiments” at Zappos—social experiments that have created a culture so unique and different that Zappos doesn’t need to tell anyone about it, because people who don’t work for Zappos are lining up to ask Zappos to show it to them.  

Culture is something that everyone, everywhere fucks up from time to time. Culture is a fragile, living thing that a single damaging incident can change permanently. Culture can be managed and guided, like a trellis guides a vine, but the limbs that grow in directions you don’t expect may ultimately produce the best fruit. 

Extraordinary culture is so rare, and so valuable, that if you have it, you’ll never need to talk very much about it.

If you find that you need to talk about it, and wonder why nobody seems to be beating a path to your door to do a glossy magazine profile of your cutting-edge workspaces and thriving company culture, look inside, not out. Send fewer press releases about your culture, not more. Jargon less, and listen more. Listen to the jangling, off-key note that strangers hear when they walk in the door and notice the contents of your culture don’t fit the label you put on the can. Find the problems inside, heal them, and then listen again — this time, I bet you’ll hear people talking about how great you are, and you won’t even have to be the one to kickstart the conversation. 

Justin Combs worked hard in high school to improve his football game and earn a 3.75 GPA . He recently received a $54,000 merit-based scholarship to UCLA, where he’ll play football.

In April, Forbes named Justin Combs’ dad,  Sean “P. Diddy” Combs, the wealthiest artist in hip-hop. Some say the family should return Justin’s scholarship, arguing that Combs should pay for his son’s education and taxpayer money should go to students with greater financial need. Other say Justin Combs earned the scholarship through his grades and athletic ability, and deserves to keep it.

What do you think? Should the Combs family keep, return or donate the money? Should students with wealthy parents have access to merit-based scholarships and financial aid? via @CNN_Blogs

My $0.02: Every young person deserves the validation of earning a financial reward, whether it’s $7.50 per hour as a cashier or a $54,000 merit-based scholarship. Justin Combs started life with certain privileges, and I’m not going to play “poor little rich kid” with this story. This young man is extraordinarily financially fortunate, and with that good fortune should come a sense of responsibility to his fellow man.

At the same time, Justin isn’t entitled to the fruits of his father’s business success. If Sean Combs decided to leave his entire fortune to charity and refuse his son a penny after the day Justin turns 18, that would be his right as a father and an individual. In fact, some would call it the kindest thing Diddy could do for his son. 

There’s nothing like earning your first dollar. Or your first fifty-four thousand dollars. A famous father doesn’t change the human brain so fundamentally that earning something for oneself carries no special satisfaction. This might just be the first opportunity Justin has had to see his hard work achieve an earned reward, rather than receiving financial gifts based on his social class. Good for him, and I hope he’ll return the favor in the future by taking steps to help less fortunate young people achieve the same academic and athletic success.

whenatyahoo:

TED was accused this week of “censoring” a talk addressing income inequality. After an aggressive social media backlash, the organization was forced to explain why they hadn’t publicized this particular speech—turns out it just wasn’t very good, and even TED’s liberal-leaning audience didn’t receive it well.

What’s a better story? “Organization unable to give extra publicity to every speech declines to feature talk that got lukewarm reception,” or, “Organization claiming to support intellectualism and thoughtfulness instead busily censoring talks that promote controversial concepts?” Obviously, the latter is more interesting—more tweet-worthy, more infuriating, and a much better subject for a press release.

When you hear a story about an organization with a good reputation behaving shockingly, astoundingly badly, stop before you retweet and compare the known facts to the known spin. In this case, the only known fact was: TED didn’t post a talk about income inequality. Could there be other, less salacious reasons for that? When you think of it in that light, the “scandal” seems dubious, since the speaker produced nothing whatsoever to support his claim that the talk wasn’t posted because of its topic or slant, rather than because of its quality or value.

Too often, tempests-in-a-teapot on the Internet end up only damaging the innocent. In this case, TED has taken a mild hit to its brand, but, more importantly, people who are talking seriously about income inequality may be perceived as reactionary and irrational. Shame on the speaker who decided his talk’s publicity needs outweighed the value of his chosen cause.

My state legislature is currently—as I type this—debating civil unions. Again. For those outside of Colorado, here’s a one-paragraph summary of the recent drama:

Civil union bill passes the Colorado Senate. Passes three committees, with one Republican on each voting for the bill. Speaker Frank McNulty adjourns the legislative session to avoid letting the bill get an up-or-down vote on the House floor, though not before Republicans (who hold the majority in Colorado) filibuster their own proceedings. Governor Hickenlooper calls a special legislative session to consider the bills left on the calendar due to the early adjournment. McNulty reacts by reporting to special session as instructed, but assigning civil unions to the “kill committee,” comprised of the legislators most obedient to the Speaker. Debate in that committee is happening now, and the bill is expected to die there.

So here we are. Again. Once again, the hearing is packed with people on both sides, and once again, gay parents testify to what civil unions would do to protect their children. Once again, people claiming to be on God’s side will testify as to why it’s important to deny those children—kids who didn’t choose their same-sex parents—those protections.

Here we are again, waiting to see these families crushed when, as expected, the “kill committee” does its job. And here we will likely be again next year, hoping that those families will finally be made something-resembling-equal under the law. 

Two of the best people I know have two mothers each: One of my best friends and one of the best managers I ever expect to have. Both of them are already adults and made it there without the same protection that children of opposite-sex parents get. Both will watch their mothers age. I pray they don’t have to also watch them cope with the indignity of a healthier partner funneling end-of-life decisions through her son as a go-between because the law won’t grant the healthier woman the right to make decisions for her ill partner, just because that partner is a woman and not a man.

That matters more than whether or not at some tenuous time in the future this blog post offends a potential client, a possible employer, a friend, or a family member. 

Your support for civil unions matters more than your Google results, too.

Barack Obama is on the record. Joe Biden is on the record. And if you support, at the very least, almost-equal rights for families headed by same-sex partners, you need to be on the record for it, too. Even, and especially, if you don’t look like a supporter. Especially if you’re straight, older, religious, a family man or woman yourself, and the people who oppose even almost-equal rights will otherwise assume you’re on their side.

So, I have this cephalopod obsession.

I’m not gonna lie: It originally had nothing to do with inspiration or innovation, and everything to do with the fact that, at age 13, it was hella cool to prove an original hypothesis (“Cuttlefish will respond to human mimicry of their tentacle positions, using our ten fingers to imitate their ten tentacles”) by signing with the cuttlefish living in the Monterrey Bay Aquarium. Smitten by cuttlefish and their willingness to interact with a human being, I started consuming everything I could read about cephalopods.

Since getting into social media, communications, and marketing, I’ve adopted the class Cephalopoda as a totem of sorts—there are three in my cubicle, and I had custom cephalopod-themed thank you cards made via Etsy, which I send mostly to business contacts. Only recently did I sit down and really think about why I like to be surrounded by cephalopods as I work. As it turns out, they’re a pretty good metaphor for marketing in the rapidly changing world of high tech and digital media.

1. “Cold” or “Deep” Intelligence

Why don’t we think of the octopus as intelligent or emotive, like dogs or cats? Research on the Giant Pacific Octopus (some of it’s quoted here, and I’d be happy to forward the PDF sent to me by a leading researcher if anyone would like it via email) suggests that the culprit may be the “cold” intelligence of the octopus, as it contrasts with the “warm” intelligence of mammals. Octopodes are problem-solvers who are enormously intelligent; research even suggests they’re probably conscious. They might conceivably be smarter than humans.

But until recently, nobody was studying octopus intelligence. Why? Because we don’t relate to how they express their intelligence. Their worldview—that of a predator who must continually solve the problem of getting food on the ocean floor—is enormously different from our own, leaving little time for the gregarious and affectionate disposition we relate to in our mammalian pets. We’re stuck in our own perspective, with the priorities inherent in living as a social primate, and for thousands of years we failed to notice the intelligence of some of the most interesting animals on Earth. How much have we failed to learn about the ocean as a result?

Marketers and corporate communicators often fall into the trap of forgetting user experience when users’ priorities, life experiences, and the way they express their needs differ enormously from what’s visible on our side of the screen. How much are we failing to learn about how users or customers experience our products as a result?

2. Cuttlefish and Color-Blindness

Cuttlefish are beautifully colorful animals, changing their colors and patterns in response to environmental stimuli, including humans and other cuttlefish. But they don’t see their own camouflage in the same way we do. In fact, they’re color-blind. It turns out that, instead of color vision, cuttlefish have polarization vision—and the best such vision found in any animal species so far.

So, when cuttlefish communicate through altering the visuals displayed on their skin, we can’t see what they see, and they can’t see what we see. The message they’re sending is in polarized light, but the message we receive is in color. Communication still happens, remarkably enough, but not only are we speaking different languages, neither of us is biologically equipped to learn the other’s language.

In marketing, some of the biggest goofs come from a message sent in one language that’s received in another; take Groupon, for example, which recently sent a message in the language of startups—a message that excused a major mistake by blaming it on the newness of the company—without considering that it would be received in the language of investors, people who trust kinda-sorta-important matters like their retirement savings to the ability of companies to have their shit together by the time they go public, no matter how new they are. Anyone who’s worked for a startup speaks “Oh shit we did not just do that, did we?” but anyone in communications for a publicly traded company, even a startup, also needs to speak “Yes, you just did that, you morons, and it may mean my 401(k) is worth $10,000 less than it was yesterday.”

3. Humboldt Squid Turn Global Warming into World Domination

There won’t be a lot of winners in the animal kingdom if global warming continues. Especially not in the ocean, where a warming world could change just about everything most species rely on to obtain food, habitat, and other resources. The Humboldt squid, however, is already winning big. Its population is exploding, to the point that some areas have removed fishing limits for these squid entirely.

Why do squid win when the other guys lose? For one thing, the Humboldt squid eats most of the other guys. It’s not dependent on krill or fish populations to survive; whatever’s in abundance, the squid will learn to feed on it. Even other cephalopods might fall prey to these indiscriminate eaters. So, when any outside force throws the competition’s habits out of whack, Humboldt squid show up to decimate the remaining population. That benefits them twice: First, they get a meal, and second, they’re reducing the number of predators remaining to eat tiny Humboldt squid babies. 

Marketing in a recession is a lot like living in the ocean during a period of global warming. If you’re a salmon, and in the business of swimming one way, spawning one way, and eating just a handful of things, you’re in trouble. If you’re a Humboldt squid, you’re dining on the salmon. Can your marketing plan “feed” on whatever remains abundant when times are tough, or are you dependent on a single source of success? How many markets do you “swim” in? The next time the economy contracts, will you be in the squid’s position, or the salmon’s?

textsfromhillaryclinton:

A submission from Secretary Hillary Clinton.

Original image by Diana Walker for Time.

thewhitehouseproject:

Today is The Girl Scouts 100th birthday, and to celebrate (aside from eating a questionable amount of Thin Mints) I’d like to talk about girls in the media —teenagers, specifically— because they are our future leaders- a promising generation that could achieve gender parity for good. But…