Strategy+Art = Influence

Multitasking Lowers Productivity

jackhardy — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 01:09:21 +0000

It seems clear that drivers using cell phones are distracted. This is an argument that seems justified and is backed up by insurance industry statistics resulting in new laws across the country. However, have you stopped to consider what the impact of multitasking is on your overall productivity? If you consider that manner in which our routines, meetings or study habits are interrupted by the long-held belief that multitasking allows us to get more done–and more quickly–I think it’s worth discussion. Consider the following blog entry by Peter Bregman, a CEO consultant writing for the Harvard Business Review. http://blogs.hbr.org/bregman/2010/05/how-and-why-to-stop-multitaski.html
I’ve decided I’m going to follow his example and avoid multi-tasking for a week and see what results. What are you willing to give up?

Citizen Rights to Record the Police

jackhardy — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 00:27:49 +0000

Given the recent discussion of the legality of recording your local police officers in action, I couldn’t help but think of some high profile cases and a few lesser known stories. Charges were dropped against Emily Good, the Rochester, N.Y. resident who was arrested and charged with obstruction of governmental administration while filming police officers conducting an arrest from her front yard last year. That doesn’t change the fact that she now has a police record. Read the article and then watch the video and tell me what you think about whether you are willing to risk an arrest and jail time even when you know you are in the right.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/forum/story/2012-02-07/police-video-tape-crime/53001432/1

The Man Who Lived On His Bike

jackhardy — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 00:15:07 +0000

Publicity with video clips is a strange beast. Engaging video clips can capture imagination, tell a story, persuade, inform, offend–you name it and there is a reaction to fit any example. From a PR perspective, these are great opportunities to share and reach a large audience, particularly if it “goes viral” and it has millions of views. This particular video is particularly entertaining, but for 2-3 minutes. If there is a cause or a reason that the producer created this piece, it’s lost on me other than for pure entertainment. Take a look and tell me what you think:

Man Lives on His Bike

The Hacker Way

jackhardy — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 23:46:30 +0000

In the wake of the anticipated $5 billion Initial Public Stock Offering (IPO) for Facebook, a revealing portrait of founder Mark Zuckerberg’s management and company philosophy is found in an open letter to future stockholders found here: http://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2012/02/01/text-of-mark-zuckerbergs-ipo-letter.html?page=all

The letter is alternatively forward thinking and snarky. Perhaps his mantra that “done is better than perfect” symbolizes his engineering-focused rule of computer programmers. Their stated company code to break it down and reinvent, otherwise known as the “hacker way,” seems troubling because of what it does not say. I did not find a long-term philosophy about building a great company. Perhaps this is an archaic business philosophy in a world where get-rich dot-com companies come and go. As a potential investor, I did not find anything reassuring about the company’s attempt to protect consumer privacy or to provide a long-term return on investment for shareholders. Does this sound like a nurturing place to work or one in which confrontation rules and no-holds-barred engineering trumps the value of the people who work there. What do you think?

Advertising & PR = Persuasion

jackhardy — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 12:53:21 +0000

Clients often ask what is the difference between advertising and PR. The short answer is advertising is a paid message that you control. PR is unpaid, sometimes referred to as “earned media.” What both of these unique disciplines have in common is summed up best by one word: Persuasion.

Ultimately, you want people to feel, say or DO something when you communicate with them. Something I learned not only in the classroom at BYU, but over years of experience is that clients expect results to their bottom-line. Whether you use advertising techniques or PR, top management realizes that both disciplines are very powerful–albeit a necessity in today’s world.

Thanks BYU!

Consumer Appetite for Media Insatiable

jackhardy — Tue, 12 Apr 2011 19:32:04 +0000

Just read the recent Arbitron study that revealed the average person spends 1 hour and 21 minutes more each day consuming media than in 2001. This increase over the last ten years means that literally every spare minute of your time (is there really such a thing as spare time anymore?) is spent consuming content from the Internet, radio, television–literally absorbing new content. The reason is because of the proliferation of digital devices, namely smartphones, that enable 24/7 access to information that we are consuming during the time we normally take public transportation, wait in lines or offices. Smartphones, social media and online radio are the enablers of this behavior. It’s good news for content developers since it appears there is an ever increasing audience and appetite for all things digital. I only have one question: when was the last time you had a conversation with the person next to you at the grocery store, waiting room or bus stop?

A Day Made of Glass

jackhardy — Tue, 15 Mar 2011 18:58:37 +0000

My mantra of everything going Digital, Mobile and Video could possibly have another word added: Glass. I just ran across this use of corporate video, originally created to persuade large businesses to invest in the large glass conglomerate Corning,Inc. that proves that a compelling story–and futuristic applications can turn into a YouTube viral video:

If that’s a future version of an Apple iPhone, I want one!

Charlie Sheen: The Ultimate PR Crisis

jackhardy — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 17:40:39 +0000

In more than 20 years of professional PR counseling, I’ve yet to tell a client to utter the words, “No Comment” to the press. It’s akin to saying, “I’m guilty” or “I have something to hide” in the world of public perception. However, today, I am coining a new term, “Pulling a Charlie Sheen,” which leads me to my inevitable conclusion. If I were Charlie Sheen’s publicist–oh, that’s right, he just quit–I would tell him to simply keep his mouth shut. Whenever he does open it, he inserts his foot. Many American’s enjoy watching celebrity meltdowns on television or listening to their rants on talk radio – heck, even media sites like TMZ.com make a business out of provoking celebrities to anger in ambush interviews and paparazzi style photo opportunities. As a public relations teacher, we’ve enjoyed discussing the escapades of Charlie Sheen for the purpose of examining what not to do in a crisis PR scenario. It was actually a midterm assignment for my students. His story has all the earmarks of a disaster in the making. In fact, I would go so far as to say it is a disaster every day. What more do the students say? I will give every student in class 50 extra credit points if any of their blog comments to this post gets picked up by a national news outlet before our final exam on St. Patrick’s Day, March 17. Sorry Charlie! Coincidentally, a USA Today article here http://content.usatoday.com/communities/entertainment/post/2011/03/charlie-sheen-this-could-be-my-final-interview-/1 quotes him as saying that yesterday’s radio call-in rant could be his last. I nearly fell out of my chair laughing in disbelief. If you believe that, I’ve got a great at-home drug rehab program for you.

Twitter Your Career Away

jackhardy — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 14:46:07 +0000

The power of words used on a social media platform have proven to be a destructive force for one journalist. According to Nir Rosen, a liberal freelance journalist who recently wrote about the Egyptian government overthrow, a series of unfortunate comments he made regarding Lara Logan, the American CBS correspondent who was sexually assaulted in Cairo resulted in him losing his job at New York University. In an article for Salon magazine http://www.salon.com/news/egyptian_protests/index.html?story=/mwt/feature/2011/02/17/nir_rosen_explains_twitter_controversy, he defended his reasoning and offered an apology. Ultimately, the irony is that the same people who read his questionable Twitter posts are not likely the same people who read the Salon magazine article. Another version of this news is rather shamelessly described in a very different opinion piece written for American Thinker magazine here: http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/02/risky_business_lara_logan_and.html. In my opinion, there is little doubt that Twitter has the same power to incite a mob mentality. At a minimum, such short “tweets” can cause both misunderstanding and misbehavior on the part of the reader or the writer. In America, the freedom of the press allows both of these written articles to exist without government censorship or recrimination, however, public opinion via the Internet certainly appears to be more abrupt and career limiting.

Lara Logan, CBS Journalist

Inflammatory News Stories or Journalism

jackhardy — Thu, 10 Feb 2011 15:03:48 +0000

Why do dead birds fall from the sky? Should you care? Seems like the news media likes to find connections in odd occurrences that continue to plague our country. The media it seems, loves a crisis or at least stories of animals dying en masse. Why is this news? It is certainly odd, one of the criteria for newsworthiness and it seems like there are an abundance of these events happening. This commentary on the recent avian news http://wp.me/pmsUw-1G suggests that this might be a case of human lemmings pushing each other over a cliff. View this video and then add your comments: http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7211633n