Kicking Babies

As you have probably read, Johnson & Johnson (J&J) is suing the American Red Cross (ARC) for using its trademarked red cross without authorization. You can read J&J's press release here. Apparently, J&J has owned the for-profit rights to the logo and the ARC has owned the non-profit rights for ages. The trouble apparently started when the ARC started licensing the symbol to merchandisers as a way to raise more capital. Mike Masnic at Techdirt has a nice take on the situation from a PR front.

Obviously, suing the Red Cross is not an action that is going to endear you to the public. But given that negotiations failed and the legal wants to press ahead, J&J's PR folks seem to have rubbed the rough edges off of what could have been/might be a spikey situation. In addition to the normal crisis communications/legal PR program, they created a blog to communicate their position to the ongoing conversation: http://jnjbtw.com.

You got to love to tone of the post: "You're Doing What?" Be sure to read the comments. Again, admire J&J's willingness to let people savage them on their own blog. I love the one where a nurse describes her elderly mother calling J&J "a bunch of puppy kickers."

Google's 20% Policy

Kind of a busy day for a Tuesday in August, here in DC. I did read a very interesting blog I'd like to share about the guy at Google, Chris Wetherell, who had the original idea behind the Google Reader. To me, this is a great example of creativity in action and the kind of innovation that Google's 20% policy is driving.

Nardelli is back for more

Shifting gears (!) a little from my normal topics, I was interested to read about Bob Nardelli accepting a management post at Chrysler. You may remember ole' Bob as the guy who, while CEO of Home Depot, pissed off the shareholders by refusing to answer questions during the annual meeting and (more importantly) generating flat returns on the stock price. Known as an operations guy at GE, he mis-extended Home Depot into the wholesale market and lost traction again Lowes. After getting fired for all that, it was revealed that he had negotiated a nice $210 million severance package for himself.

All in all, not the greatest PR a guy could get. People spent the better part of a month flagellating the guy. I just assumed he'd buy a house in the Hamptons and do whatever really rich people do: sail a boat, marry a younger woman, whatever...don't get me wrong, it's not his fault Home Depot agreed to this monstrous severance package, he is certainly entitled to enjoy the fruits of his "labor".

But you have to give this guy credit, here is today at a press conference talking about his plans for turning around Chrysler. Quite a bold move for a guy with a bulls eye on his back. Of course, now, the only shareholder he has to deal with is Cerberus, a private equity firm.

Here is the Wall Street Journal's take on the deal:

Widgets

I've been doing a little research on widgets. Yes, you read that right. Widgets are the little pieces of code that can be easily shared among various social media sites, networks, blogs, etc. A widget can be merely a bit of static content, a functionality, a dynamically generated feed, or practically anything else you can think of. Apparently, the widgitized web is going to be the future of the online experience.

So, like I said, I've been doing a little research and a little experimentation. I've added two widgets to this blog on the left hand side: one neatly allows my dear readers to send me a complimentary text message to my cell phone, the other is a non-standard, but Google based search box that allows me dear readers to search for their favorite content on the site. I found both of these widgets at WidgetBox.

Of course, my fear is that too many widgets will lead to too much clutter. I've always been a believer that the key to an enjoyable web experience is a clean, uncluttered, easy to read screen. Mmmmm. So what are your thoughts? Too many widgets, just the right amount, or not enough?

(Next: Jeff Twitters!)

Measuring Influence

I found this post by Roy Young on MarketingProfs (How Many Are You Reaching and Who Are They?) that I found interesting. I talk with a lot of marketing professionals about public relations. Often, the subject of measurement or benchmarks arises. Most often, the discussion revolves around traditional PR output like releases, case studies, placements and analyst reports. However, I always tie a proposed PR campaign to a company's sales goals, profitability target or overall valuation.

To me, whether or not you achieve the business case is the only true measurement of the effectiveness of a public relations campaign. Anything else smacks of insider navel gazing.

Now, marketers have spent a lot of time quantifying paid media for good reason. It's much easier to generate good data for a media buy or a direct mail campaign. It's easier to make a direct connection between one's actions and the movement of the needle. Certainly, one of driving forces behind the massive investment in online advertising over the past few years, has been the huge reams of data it generates.

However, as the online advertising machine bumps up against user generated communities, it becomes harder to draw a cause-effect relationship. As Roy says,

...for emerging media, you may have to be satisfied with qualitative measures of impact. At least for now. After all, if you have two readers of your blog, and those two readers have the first name of Steve (Balmer and Jobs), your blog may be far more influential than another blog on technology with thousands of readers.

Food for thought on a Monday morning!