Too Fat To Fly?!?!?!

I’ve been following the “Too fat to fly" story on Southwest pretty carefully over the past few days. And it’s funny, sad, interesting and ridiculous – all at the same time.

As you probably know, a Southwest pilot asked the movie director, Kevin Smith, to leave a flight Saturday night, claiming Smith was too large - and insisting that he buy a second seat on the airplane.

Southwest has a well-established policy of asking people deemed too large for their seats to purchase a second seat.

For the past few days, he’s directed a social media assault against Southwest, with tweets about the incident flowing minute-by-minute. Here are two back-to-back tweets he sent around 5 p.m. ET Monday. I put them together as one sentence.

“Everyone’s so scared to admit to fault/fuckup, for fear of getting sued. In front of y'all, I say this: I'll never sue @SouthwesternAir, no matter WHAT facts may emerge. I don't want any @SouthwestAir $$$, I want south western justice! You should get that, as you guys are Texans!”

Southwest jumped on the issue fast. By Sunday afternoon, the airline had addressed the issue on its blog, Nuts About Southwest. “First and foremost, to Mr. Smith; we would like to echo our Tweets and again offer our heartfelt apologies,” Southwest spokesperson Christi Day blogged. “We are sincerely sorry for your travel experience on Southwest Airlines.”

According to Day, Southwest attempted to call Smith to apologize personally.

Day explained the incident in the blog post; Smith spent Monday insisting that aspects of the blog post are untrue. For instance, the blog post said, “Mr. Smith originally purchased two Southwest seats on a flight from Oakland to Burbank—as he’s been known to do when traveling on Southwest.”

Outraged, Smith said on his Twitter page that he does not regularly purchase two tickets on Southwest and, if even if it were true, slammed the airline for sharing personal information about a customer.

This whole Smith incident is a problem for Southwest that could last longer than the usual whiplash-inducing news cycle. Here’s why:

1. Smith is a movie director. He’s got a big voice – and he’s listened to very well. To note is that me has more than 1,500,000 followers on Twitter. I don’t know Smith, but one thing I know about Smith is that he’s pretty influential. He talks. People listen. Furthermore, since he is a movie director, it’s conceivable to think Southwest could become the butt of jokes in Smith’s future movies.

2. Smith is promoting a movie, right now. That means every reporter he speaks to will ask him about the incident. Judging by Smith’s reaction to the incident, he’ll be very happy to respond.

3. Smith is social media savvy. The airlines is praised often for its social media chops. And rightly so, the company has tackled many high-profile PR problems with its blog. However, Smith is an avid Twitter member with more than 1.6 million followers. Southwest has slightly more than 1 million followers.

4. Smith is representative of two-thirds of America. According to the Centers for Disease Control, 67 percent of U.S. adults, older than 20, are overweight or obese. (I don’t know how much Smith weighs, (in fact, I have not read a single article talking about his weight) but in 2008, Smith told The Los Angeles Times that he planned to take a break from directing to lose weight before it compromises his health.)

5. Smith received a personal apology from Southwest. This is probably the biggest strike against the airlines. How often does the company personally apologize to all the other people it asks to buy two seats on Southwest flights?

It’s an interesting story from many aspects. You may want to follow Kevin on Twitter @ThatKevinSmith

Rules of Social Media

This last week, we won a new piece of business for a client that wants to get into social media. While very satisfying to win the business, we put a lot of time and energy into educating the client. And to be fair, social media is more difficult to understand than media relations.

Media relations = asking a reporter to write good things about your client
Social media = something completely different and depending on who you ask, you'll hear differing opinions as to what it really is. Watch for my next posting which will talk more about social media

But in the interests of not getting overly academic in this blog posting, I just wanted to dispel some common internet marketing myths - each of which were instrumental in us winning this new piece of business:

1. Internet marketing is expensive—You don’t have to spend tens of thousands of dollars to start building a profitable online presence. There are several inexpensive things you can do right now to immediately grow your online presence and to attract targeted traffic to your website.

2. You need a flashy website to be successful—While a flashy website might make the designer pat himself on the back, these designs rarely lead to an increase in sales. Sure, a professional-looking design is important, but what really makes a quality design is one that adheres to web usability best practices, contains simple navigation, and is laid out cleanly.

3. Internet marketing isn’t good for B2B services—Over $650 billion was spent on online B2B transactions in the U.S. alone last year. Spending continues to grow in spite of the recession. If you offer services to businesses, a strong online presence is essential to your success.

4. High search engine rankings mean high sales volume—Getting decent search engine placement is only half of the battle. What you do with that traffic is what’s really important. Your landing pages need to be designed to maximize conversions. Otherwise, visitors will just click the “back” button on their browser as soon as they land on your site.

5. Social media is a waste of time—A growing number of companies are finally starting to see the light, realizing social media marketing isn’t just a passing fad. When done properly, social media marketing is an effective way to increase brand awareness, build links to your website, learn more about your target audience, and enhance your credibility with consumers.

6. Once I achieve good search rankings, I can stop trying—Wrong. Just because you have top search engine placement for your keywords doesn’t mean you can take your foot off the pedal. The search engines are constantly changing their algorithms and updating their results to provide their users with the most relevant results possible.

7. Quantity of traffic is all that matters—Traffic stats are what the snake oil internet marketing salesman almost always hide behind. They show clueless clients how they’ve exponentially increased the traffic to their site, convincing them that they’ve done their job. Here’s the thing: anyone with even the slightest knowledge of internet marketing can increase traffic to a website. That’s not what matters. What matters is the quality of the traffic you attract. What’s the point of tricking a bunch of people into viewing your website who have no interest in your products or services? Quality of traffic and conversion rates are far more important than quantity of traffic.

To our new client - welcome aboard. It's now 1:49am - and I am signing off for the day

Tiger - You're making me sick!

You know, this whole Tiger woods things makes me want to throw up. There’s no question that he is a brilliant golfer and really does own the sport, but an icon he isn’t. I would argue that he’s more machine than human. He was raised with golf clubs in his hands – and cursed/ threw temper tantrums whenever he got pissed off. That’s not cool – and I don’t care how old he was when he did it.

So, he dominates the sport – so do many other people dominate sports – except they behave like human beings, not animals. They overcame real adversity and they created followingS of real people. For this, I need look no further than Jackie Robinson, Jim Thorpe, Bill Russell, Babe Didrickson, Muhammad Ali, Jesse Owens or Rocket Richard. Those people behaved like humans, not like machines and certainly not like animals.

He’s had brilliant PR people behind him at every step of the way – and to be fair, they have excelled and putting the spin on a tawdry and sordid Tiger, more concerned with being an egomaniac than with being a husband, father or a positive role model. A role model – he is not … just ask the folks at Accenture who (rightfully) pulled their sponsorship, again (rightly) claiming that he was not the right person to represent their brand.

Woods is a shill, nothing more or less. He works for anyone who will pay him. He'll peddle watches, golf balls, automobiles, consulting companies. But not anymore. Nada. No-onwe wants him anymore, not even the women with whom he philandered

Let’s talk about the results of what he’s done. Face it, having an affair is not cool. It just is not – and especially when you are as high-profile as Tiger was – he was sure to get caught. Not only was he caught – he was caught with his pants down. And I don’t feel sorry for him in the least. I feel sorry for his soon-to-be-ex-wife and his family. For Tiger? Nope!

And he has disappointed children all over the world who looked at him as a hero. Having grown up in a sports oriented environment, I know the value of heroes – and being married with 2 kids, I am sensitive to kids needs too.

I want to help my kids find heroes in sport – but will have them stick to figures like Tony Dungy, Marc Trestman, Jean Béliveau, Otis Grant or Clara Hughes.

Remind your children that when Hughes won her gold medal in Turin in 2006, she immediately donated $10,000 to Right to Play, the charity that attempts to help African children through sport.

If Tiger Woods was to donate a comparable portion of his personal fortune, it would come to $200 million or more.

But he won't do it. That is one reason he's not a hero. Never has been, never will be. Because for openers, if you're not a hero to your own family, you're nothing.

The Thin Wallet

So, I met my friend and poker buddy Ori for lunch last week at a great Sushi place called Maison Du Japon, (http://www.maisondujapon.ca/). So, when it came time to pay Ori decided it was his turn. I’ll pay next time, no problem.

So out of his pocket, he took his wallet (or lack thereof). It really was his credit cards, health insurance card, drivers licence, birth card and a few other non-descript cards and some cash, held together by a blue rubber-band. It was actually quite refreshing to see Ori’s non-wallet – and likely the fist time I had ever seen a wallet (or lack thereof) like Ori’s.

Now it’s not that Ori is some kind of urban bum (au contraire). He actually is really sophisticated, maybe even urbane – but that’s his style. He wanted something thin that would be as unobtrusive as possible, and that’s good thinking. Nothing could indeed be thinner than a non-wallet.

So, what’s the notion of simplicity got to do with PR? Actually a heck of a lot, and it is coincidental that I noticed this just last week. You see, I meet with a lot of companies, all looking for complex PR solutions. And there really is no such a thing. Simple is best. It works and it generally is less expensive than complex. Now, I’ve just gotta get these complex thinkers to think simply (and believe me)

Oh, one more thing - Ori, I may be getting rid of my wallet too … simple is always better

Education Is Good

So I am talking with Sophie Boyko yesterday (http://www.sophieboyko.com). We met at a seminar given by Tim Rooney (http://www.rooneyearl.com) in September. Sophie, an interesting lady is likely an excellent sales trainer in addition to being an entrepreneur.

So during our phone banter, while driving (sans Bluetooth) we were both comparing notes as to what's been happening since we met. I had seen U2 and am seeing Roger Hodgson this weekend. Sophie had seen Kiss ... ALL great bands.

Then the topic turned to business of course. I started talking blogs and Sophie started talking hiring ...

Turns out Sophie is interested in starting her own blog and I am interested in hiring. So we made a bet with one another.

By the end of this month, Sophie will have her blog up with at least 2, 300 word entries and I would have made the ideal candidate a job offer.

We'll meet for lunch toward the end of this month (the non-performer pays) and compare notes. Track our progress at this blog, or Sophie’s at blog.sophieboyko.com.

Social Media Myths

I came back from a hard business pitch a few days ago. It was tough, but I know we are being seriously considered to implement and run what hopefully will be a hard hitting social media program. The potential client was (before we pitched them), very afraid of social media.

Here’s some points we made in response to their concerns

Concern One
Employees will waste time with social media.

Point
Some large corporations block their employees from accessing the internet altogether. Others try to block employees from accessing personal e-mail or social networks such as Facebook or Twitter during office hours. In May 2009, there were some 34 million smartphones in North America. That's a lot of internet access available - everywhere -- and employers can't stop their employees from accessing the internet on breaks, at lunch or in the bathroom

Workers value and need internet access – and its value is far greater than the threat of lost productivity. Companies can make policies and rules about personal use of the internet, but blocking it during work is just stupid.

Concern Two
Haters will damage our brand.

Point
“What about the haters?” is what I say. “What if people say bad, mean, nasty things about our brand?”

Well, be honest with yourself, there may be things you need to change about your brand, and in that case, thank them sincerely for letting you know what they are. Then – make the necessary changes.

If you have built an online community that includes people who don't hate you, that community will defend you and handle any problems with respect to people that you think “hate” you.

Concern Three
We'll lose control of our brand.

Point
Reality is that every person with a computer has the tools to make their opinion about your brand heard by others. They're already talking about you. You can no longer be in absolute control of your message.

Your workers are talking about you in closed Facebook groups to keep you out so they can talk about you in peace. Your customers are e-mailing, using Twitter and Facebook, and – the evergreen -- calling their friends about their experience with your brand. You don't have control. You might as well join the conversation. At least that way you can influence what is being said.

Concern Four
We're scared of giving away corporate secrets or that information on social networks will affect our stock price.

Point
Nonsense. If you don't already have a social-media policy, you should create one now. If you don't trust your employees to talk to customers, or to represent the brand, you have issues far greater than looking at social media. You don’t need us … you need to look at your hiring and training practices.

Concern Five
We’re scared we’ll be sued.

Point
Oh puh-lese. Change your meds!

When is a cold drink hot?

So, I am sitting at the Second Cup at Bathurst and Lawrence. I look at the menu, and specifically at the "Iced Sensations" menu board. My eye falls on a moccaccino, under the heading "Iced Europeans". I order it

It's pretty normal to think that I would be in for something cold I would think. Not!

A minute or two later the attractive server hands me a piping hot drink. Huh? It smelled delicious, but not what I wanted

"But", I said. "I ordered it from the menu reading 'Iced Sensations'". Too true.

You see, it's really confusing.

The server was really helpful and when I explained myself, she well understood.

Hastily she took it back and made me what I wanted (an iced moccaccino). Now that's service with a smile.

Although I was confused, and for a while I had problems logging onto the wi-fi here, I will be back.

And if you're wondering if I was imagining it, I would invite you to visit the Second Cup on the north-west corner of Bathurst and Lawrence streets in Toronto. The drinks are good, the servers are friendly and the location is right.

Bottoms Up, as I drain the delicious iced drink from my cup. I'll be back!