Communications Line # 48 of 21 June 2007

Communications Line # 48 of 21 June 2007

Wild Child News Maker

Media coverage of the court appearance of the Millie Elder, Paul Holmes’ adopted daughter on drugs ands receiving changes illustrates an interesting point about what constitutes news.

This is from Tuesday’s Herald, “During the court appearance, Judge Avinash Deobhakta prevented filming or photography, saying he could not see anything unique about the case besides the fact that Elder might be connected to someone else in the community.”

And that is the point – news wise. It’s not a case of some 19 year old model who featured briefly on Deal or No Deal being in court on drugs charges. Millie is news because she is Holmes’s daughter. That’s the news judgment. I don’t defend it, but I do confess that I was more interested in this case than in the squalid domestic affairs of the Lion man from Whangarei of whom I had never previously heard, haven’t ever seen and didn’t (and still don’t) care about. That also led the TV bulletins. In both cases we are being asked to join in someone else’s misery and family torment. Frankly I can pass. (And no Paul, not all parents of teenagers know what you are going through, as you boldly but falsely claimed).

Seven (or so) questions about Mercury

Two things have emerged from Muliaga/Mercury saga. One is that the public are not buying the line that Mercury (or its contractor) “killed” her. Tragic though her death is, there are still too many questions so far unanswered for people to assume a strict cause and effect between cutting the power and her death. Public judgment has been reserved until the facts are in.

The second is that when power companies (other than Mercury) stood up and defended their practices the government backed down on its threat of tighter regulation. The PM seemed bent on using Mrs Muliaga’s death as a way of showing compassion for the poor, empathy for the plight of Pacific Islanders in Mangere (it’s just coincidence that it’s Taito Field’s electorate) and to demonstrate (by her attendance at the funeral) that this is a caring government. Whatever the motives or the outcome, the rhetoric has stopped, and voluntary compliance with the code over termination of power is still in force.

The situation is susceptible to the seven questions formula that used to be popular among Japanese companies about why things go wrong. Applying this approach also shows where the gaps in public knowledge are. For example:

1. Why did Mrs Muliaga die?

Because the power was turned off on her breathing machine.
2. Why was the power turned off?

Because the bill was not paid.
3. Why was the bill not paid?

Not clear. Did the family not have any money? Not clear.
4. Could anyone have helped them pay the bill?

Perhaps, but there doesn’t seem to have been any contact with Work & Income, the church, Samoan groups or anyone else.
5. What did the family do after the power was turned off?

Reports vary. They prayed. But the family didn’t take the mother next door to reconnect her oxygen machine; nor did they call an ambulance, their church, neighbours or friends, and they didn’t take her to a hospital.
6. Did the company know about the oxygen machine?

Apparently not. Why? No one told them. Why? Because no one knew to tell them and the company didn’t know to ask.
7. Would knowing about the oxygen machine have made a difference?

Presumably so. Mercury would hardly have cut off the power knowing that a person might die? (The harshest critics of the company might disagree here)

Become Consumer-centric

The Muliaga affair is evidence of the breakdown of traditional communities according to Dave Bassett of the Wellington brand agency BrandNew (http://www.brandnew.cc). This is both an opportunity and challenge for brand marketers. The solution, he thinks, is in companies becoming ‘consumer -centric’. His article on the subject was published in the DominionPost today and is also available on the home page at www.johnbishop.co.nz

New Business Paper

The NZ Herald is abandoning its weekly business magazine The Business, currently published on Mondays in favour of an expanded weekly The Business Herald, which will be a 32 page supplement published on Fridays. This will put them head to head with the National Business Review, which has also announced plans for a colour magazine supplement aimed at rich people.

Ambush marketing bill goes too far

If you looked at the TV news on Tuesday night, the story on this bill was all about streakers (TV likes pictures of naked people), but that is only part of the story. Clive Elliott, an Auckland barrister and IP specialist, writing in LawTalk, says the government’s Major Events Marketing Bill risks making ordinary people into criminals and potentially infringes their right to freedom of expression.

The Major Events Marketing Bill is currently before a select committee and is an important part of the government’s strategy for the hosting of the Rugby World Cup in Auckland in 2011. Existing protections under the Fair Trading Act and copyright, trade mark and passing off legislation would be replaced by a new regime.

“Proponents of the bill argue that the benefits to the country (from events like the Rugby World Cup ) are so great that well established principles should yield to the new order. I have some sympathy for this view. However I believe that we still need to be careful that we don’t implement legislation so broad that a range of decent people end up falling foul of the pretty severe civil and criminal sanctions proposed.”

On Tuesday it was announced that the Commerce Select Committee would recommend a five kilometre exclusion zone around Eden Park where only advertisements from the World Cup’s major sponsors would be allowed.

Ambush marketing normally refers to practices that enable parties who have not sponsored an event or paid for an association with it to capture some of the benefits of the event for their own brand, product or service.

Mr Elliott asks whether selling sausages in Sandringham Road as a fundraiser, or selling car parks (as Kowhai Intermediate School in Mount Eden does on match days at Eden Park) are caught by the ‘association’ provision.

The activities would normally be legal and acceptable, but what happens, he asks, if a person at the car park or the barbeque is wearing a Tui T shirt when the official beer sponsor is another brewery. Or if the wearer is being more provocative; for example the T shirt says “Official Sponsor – yeah right” in the familiar Tui mode.

He notes that the Bill of Rights “does not get so much as a mention” in the ambush marketing bill. “If reasonable and relatively innocuous conduct is prohibited, there is potential for ordinary members of the public to break the law without knowing it.

Obama girl

Hillary Clinton is still the front runner among Democrats as their candidate for President, even though she would lose to most of the Republican front runners, the latest polls show. She has a lead of between 11 and 13 per cent over Obama in the primary races, although Obama would beat more Republicans than she would in a head to head presidential race.

Hillary is also the "creepiest"candidate in the hunt for the White House, a new Forbes magazine online character poll has found. A full 15 percent of Americans say Clinton gives them the creeps. No other active candidate comes close to Clinton, who's taken hits from pundits for getting shrill on the speaking stump and making people's hairs stand on end. (Source: LBN 19June 2007)

Meanwhile Obama has his own problems having to apologise for chararacterising Hillary as an Indian from the Punjab, and for an unauthorized video – Obama girl – see it on YouTube at http://youtube.com/watch?v=wKsoXHYICqU

NCEA Communications failed strategically

Whatever else might be said about the NCEA,(and there has been plenty), I have long believed that the introduction of NCEA failed as a piece of strategic communication. Leave aside the features of the scheme and the claims of dumbing down and the like. Recall what life was like before it. We had a merit based assessment regime with external exams.

The educational community, academics, teachers, the professionals and quite a number of parents developed a consensus that this system was inadequate for a number of reasons. Exams were stressful and the results were arbitrary. Also the system did not adequately recognise achievement, particularly by the moderate to less able students.

The answer was to switch from merit based assessment to a standards based system, where achievement of all kinds was recognised. Fine. That was the solution to what the educational community saw as the problem. But here’s the point. Most of the rest of us, particularly parents didn’t share or own the problem, and when we were presented with the “solution” we had to come to grips with the nature of the problem, as well as the solution as well as the implementation (about which there were a large number of concerns anyway).

No wonder that acceptance of the NCEA was hard to come by. If people don’t see that there is a problem (or can’t be shown it convincingly) then they are unlikely to accept any solution particularly one that clearly had flaws as well.

The other aspect of the system that has always intrigued me was that the introduction of NCEA represented a fundamental shift in philosophy and priorities from a focus on the better than average and the higher achieving student to the less than average and the lower achieving student. I do not say that this is wrong; I simply observe that those whose schools and whose careers are about fostering the best are hardly likely to be cheer leaders for a system that denies them a chance to shine. Of course that could have been addressed simply by having something on top of the NCEA that adequately catered for the highest achievers. For whatever reasons we have never really had that: hence the rush to Cambridge or the Baccalaureate or some other international system.

I see the recent changes to NCEA as instituting what should have been the system in the first place. And if we had done it right initially, we would have avoided six years of anguish and at times, bitter antagonism. It may be over simplistic to see the difficulties and strife associated with NCEA as a problem solely of communications. However, if the case for change isn’t or can’t be made properly before the change is introduced, the promoters of change can hardly be surprised that there will be strong reactions from those who have to undergo the change and suffer its consequences. That’s simply lesson one in any change manual. People have to own the problem in order to own the solution. With NCEA that never happened as least as far as most parents were concerned.

Pray for “True Religion”

Parliament's daily prayer is to stay in its present form after a survey of MPs, despite calls for it to be abandoned, rewritten, made secular, or made interfaith. There is one phrase in the prayer that has received very little attention, but its presence tells a whole story of its own. The phrase is “the maintenance of true religion and justice”.

What is ‘true religion’ and how did that phrase get in there? It dates back to Elizabethan times where all matters religious were intensely political.
Historian Catharine Davies, writing about the Reformation in the time of Edward VI, says “The defence of order was the defence of true religion. Church and state were in that sense indistinguishable.” She notes that “true order entailed the establishment of true religion and justice under a godly king and magistracy.”

In reality true religion was a reformed church (known as the Anglican Church), with the English monarch, not the Pope as its head, determining its own particular doctrines. Anglicans don’t believe in transubstantiation, and compared to Catholics, they place much less emphasis on the role of the Virgin Mary, and on the importance of intercessionaries (like priests) to help people communicate with God.

With England under attack and threat of attack variously from Spain, Ireland, Scotland, and France during this period, Anglicanism and English independence was the same cause. Catholicism meant religious subordination to Rome and political subordination to France or Spain, or to Catholic powers generally. So “true religion and justice” was an affirmation of both religious and political independence. The earliest reference the Parliamentary Library could find for me a few years ago was in a prayer used by MPs in the 1580s. The phrase, ‘the maintenance of true religion and justice’ is still in the prayer used in the House of Commons today.

Who does media interviews any more?

Celebrities and other powerful media favorites more and more insist on dealing with the press via e-mail only, this month’s Ragan Media Relations Report says.

Forget the lunch with a media contact to get media coverage for your executives. These days, the executives are likely to do everything via e-mail, reports Washington Post media writer Howard Kurtz. “ … in the digital age, some executives and commentators are saying they will respond only by e-mail, which allows them to post the entire exchange [on the Internet] if they feel they have been misrepresented, truncated or otherwise disrespected,” writes Kurtz. “And some go further, saying, ‘You want to know what I think? Read my blog.’”

Being misquoted or having quotes taken out of context encourages executives to insist on email exchanges, and it may help journalists by getting responses from people who are otherwise unavailable. But there is nothing like a conversation, preferably face to face to pick up the nuances and to “feel” the sincerity and integrity of the person being interviewed. In large societies that may not still be possible. In New Zealand it should be.

The Press Release is dead

The Press Release is dead says Silicon Valley journalist Tom Foremski illustrating his point with a graphic of a bloody dagger sticking into a grave site with the tombstone marked press release. All very gothic but about as scary as a Roger Corman movie set.

He sets out to demolish the press release as we know and hate it today. “Press releases are nearly useless. They typically start with a tremendous amount of top-spin, they contain pat-on-the-back phrases and meaningless quotes. Often they will contain quotes from high level executives praising their customer focus. Press releases are created by committees, edited by lawyers, and then sent out at great expense to reach the digital and physical trash bins of tens of thousands of journalists.”

He goes on to propose supplying the journalists with the material (but not the spin) to allow them to build their own story. “ Provide a brief description of what the announcement is, but leave the spin to the journalists. Provide a page of quotes from the CEO. Provide a page of quotes from customers, another from analysts, if applicable; provide financial information in many different formats. And provide many links inside the press release copy, and also provide a whole page of relevant links to other news stories or reference sources. And tag everything so that I can pre-assemble my stories. The tags would be things like: recent share price, founders, first quarter revenues, analyst quotes, etc.”
See http://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/mt/archives/2006/02/die_press_relea.php

Does anyone do this in New Zealand PR?

What’s a phone for?

We use mobile phones to keep in touch with a wide range of people. Right? Apparently not, according to research from Stephana Broadbent, a Swiss anthropologist for Swisscom, that country’s largest telecoms operator (Economist 7 June). Her finding: “a typical mobile phone user spends 80% of his or her time communicating with just four other people.”

And we use different communications technologies in distinct and divergent ways. “The fixed-line phone “is the collective channel, a shared organisational tool, with most calls made 'in public' because they are relevant to the other members of the household. Mobile calls are for last-minute planning or to co-ordinate travel and meetings. Texting is for “intimacy, emotions and efficiency”. E-mail is for administration and to exchange pictures, documents and music. Instant-messaging (IM) and voice-over-internet calls are “continuous channels”, open in the background while people do other things.

And here’s the real kicker. In Europe anyway, the most advanced users of telecommunications technology are migrants. “A family of immigrant workers from Kosovo living in Switzerland has installed a big computer screen in their living room, and almost every morning they have breakfast with their grandmother back home, via a webcam. Dispersed families with strong ties and limited resources have taken to voice-over-internet services, IM and webcams, all of which are cheap or free. Migrants, not geeks are the “most aggressive” adopters of new communications tools, says Ms Broadbent.

Regulation, electricity, emissions, KiwiSaver and airlines

Two weeks ago I was at a conference on regulation and competition. Be still my beating heart; it’s what passes for excitement in Wellington. The experience was utterly unreal: the economists were more interesting than the lawyers.

To see the economists fault the regulation of competition see http://www.johnbishop.co.nz/writer/articles/art0805071.shtml

And the usual suspects are upset about the government’s process for developing emissions policy. http://www.johnbishop.co.nz/writer/articles/art150607.shtml

Labour will vote against Rodney Hide’s Regulatory Responsibility Bill http://www.johnbishop.co.nz/writer/articles/art0805072.shtml

Bill English slates KiwiSaver Mark II
http://www.johnbishop.co.nz/writer/articles/art150607-2.shtml

And Pacific Blue won’t be in domestic skies anytime soon
http://www.johnbishop.co.nz/writer/articles/art0805073.shtml

Spot the Difference

“It’s not guesswork. It’s forecasting.”

Alan Bollard on Checkpoint on Thursday 7 June. He hiked the cash rate and was asked about the bank’s confidence in its prediction that higher interest rates would deter investment in property.

What’s this say?

A number plate AARYAN – seen on a red car in Wellington Is this Alan and Ann Ryan, or some statement of racial superiority? Confusing eh?

Odd sign on a Wharf in Canada

Attention dog guardians
Pick up after your dogs. Thank you

Attention Dogs
Grrrr. Bark. Woof. Good dog.

District of North Vancouver By Law 5981 11 (i)

(I wouldn’t t have believed it but I have seen the picture)

Odder behaviour

I know that cell phones and texting are the indispensable tools of the young, but why would you take your laptop to the pictures. But there she was at the Penthouse theatre last Sunday afternoon, a woman with her laptop on her knee working away at something while waiting for the movie to begin.

Behind the door of a hotel room the instructions for discovering a fire were given as “Dial 1 and then 111, and then dial 802 to inform management.”

I trust they would be interested

The Business Case for Measurement

It’s only four pages but it is free and it’s from Angela Sinickas, the guru of measurement. It’s quite useful. There are other resources there but (as usual) the best ones cost. See http://www.sinicom.com/

A parting thought

Do not mess in the affairs of dragons, for you are small and crunchy and taste good with ketchup.

© Scoop Media