Month: February 2016

In a court of law, perception can overcome science.  What is unsettled in the investigation community becomes a judgement resting on the slimmest pretexts of fact.  Consider this case.  There is no definitive proof that talc-based baby powders cause cancer, but a jury thought so and awarded $72 million to a family whose mother had died of ovarian cancer.  Their attorneys apparently made a convincing case that withstands civil judgement but not the analysis of the scientific community.  Was Johnson & Johnson wrongfully punished?  Apparently so and now the company will have to appeal. If the case had been pursued solely on the basis of science and not of perception, it might never have come to trial.  But, apparently, there was enough circumstantial evidence to proceed.  Correlation is not causation but that apparently didn’t matter.

When a company makes a change that affects customers, it should do so with care and communicate often and clearly why it is doing so.  This is why Starbucks’ shift in its customer awards program might not be going so well.  The company has moved from rewarding frequent customers to rewarding customers who purchase more of its product.  The modification makes sense from the company’s point of view, but customers are miffed.  It is slighting those who make Starbucks their daily stop on the way to work in favor of those who purchase several coffees for members in the office — perhaps once a week.  Starbucks might lose customers as a result, which could dent the bottom line.  It depends on how many use the frequent rewards program.  If the fall-off is significant, it will be a lesson Starbucks shouldn’t forget.

Google has once again engaged in act of great PR.  It is offering to protect news sites from distributed denial of service (DDOS) attacks for free.  Google is doing this to protect the flow of information to the public and the most that the company will get out of it is the assurance that voices are heard worldwide whether or not governments or other critics try to silence them.  It is easy for the cynical to say Google has vested interest in maintaining the information flow and it does.  The company, however, is making sure its interests align with the public weal.  This is true public relations.  The company will also gain the respect of the media who use its services and have been victimized by DDOS in the past.  There will come a time when that support will be needed because no company is entirely free of controversy and completely on the side of the angels.  Kudos to Google and its enlightened engineers.

As if Uber didn’t have enough PR problems with governments trying to close it down, the shooting in Kalamazoo focused concern on its driver vetting. Add to that a revolt among its drivers who are trying to build their own application rather than use Uber.  The company is beset by troubles brought on by rapid expansion and arrogance in dealing with cities and states.  It also cut driver returns in a price war that it cannot win.  The more it squeezes its drivers, the fewer of them remain to handle the business.  Uber is not exactly in a free-fall but it isn’t on the right side of perception.  It seems to be a company in difficulty rather than a thriving technology concern.  If so, Uber could go the way of dozens of other technology businesses that burst on the scene then withered.  Chances are its model can be imitated locally to the confusion of users, and there could be over time dozens of Uber-like services offered to the public.  Uber’s brand is in peril and the company doesn’t have much time to turn it around.

The demise of the Bush campaign is a reminder that throwing money at the public doesn’t always work.  There needs to be a persuasive message and appealing message bearer.  In the end Bush had neither of these but he did spend $130 million in the process.  It is not uncommon for companies in crises to undertake ad campaigns to get their side of an issue out.  It rarely works in the end.  If the public is opposed, there is little one can do.  Consider, for example, the BP effort after the oil platform disaster in the Gulf.  The company spent millions trumpeting its concern for the environment but that hasn’t stopped lawsuits and penalties.  Its advertising has been a wasteful exercise.  The Bush campaign was a large organization and money mint, but in the end it meant nothing.  The only people who profited were the consultants and PR firm that represented him.

One way to deal a death blow to a fad is to declare it unsafe.  This is what happened last week to hoverboards, the star transporter of last Christmas season.  The Consumer Product Safety Commission declared them all dangerous, no matter the brand or price point.  None will be allowed to be sold until they get an Underwriter’s Laboratory certification.  One wonders how the product reached these shores without it.  Once a manufacturer does receive the UL mark, it can start again to build and sell the machines, but the unknown is whether anyone will buy them.  They are not easy to use and there are numerous videos of people falling off of them.  They could easily go the way of the Pet Rock — a brief popularity followed by nothing.  If so, it would not be the first or last fad this happened to.  Like the Segway, which was supposed to be the mass transportation vehicle of the future, the hoverboard may recede in public consciousness.

Political campaigns have room for dirty tricks but this one is dumb.  Why photoshop the heads of Obama and Rubio on a stock photo?  Didn’t anyone in the Cruz campaign think it would be caught?  Now, Cruz has to defend himself from charges of lying rather than making his points about why he should win the primary.  One benefit of the internet age is that such chicanery is discovered far more quickly to the detriment of the candidate who uses it.  When found out, it backfires on the candidate — as it should.  If Cruz survives this, and there is a good chance he will, maybe he will think twice before using such a stupid approach again.

Apple is facing a tough challenge with a court order mandating that it help open the mobile phone of a San Bernardino terrorist.  On the one hand, it doesn’t want to be seen as spying on its users anywhere in the world.  On the other, government needs a way to find out what a person was planning and with whom he might have been in contact.  There is no easy outcome for this situation.  If Apple gives in to the US on this occasion, what is there to say when the Chinese government orders the same thing in order to track activists?  The issue will wend its way through the courts and could end up at the Supreme Court’s bench.  That will determine once and for all the limits of privacy in the online world.

This article raises a PR challenge for all online stores.  What does one do with all the cardboard from shipping goods directly to the home?  It is a mountain of recycling and the more that online takes over shopping, the taller the crag.  There is no good way to handle the issue.  Goods need to be shipped and cardboard is the medium for doing that.  No other shipping material makes much sense, such as foam or plastic.  About all that Amazon.com and other online shippers can do is to make sure that the right-sized box is used for the item being sent.  Amazon, particularly, is not very good at that.  Often it will send small items in a large box that leaves one shaking his head.  It is an issue that online shippers will need to confront sooner or later.  Meanwhile the Everest keeps growing.

The moment Justice Antonin Scalia’s death was announced, the spin began pro and con over what the vacancy on the court meant.  All sides are furiously engaged in a battle of words.  The president has vowed to move ahead with naming a replacement.  The senate Republicans have pledged to block a new Justice until after the November elections.  Each side is engaged in speculation as to what the absence of a conservative voice means for the future of the court.  Activists are out in force.  Common citizens have been forgotten in all of this.  They are bystanders watching the farce play out.  Given the importance of the Court to the law of the land, it is to be expected that vital interests tangle over its direction, but the intensity of the fight is almost unseemly.  Chances are no one will win given the face-off between the Senate and the White House.  President Obama would need to propose a middle-of-the-road candidate and Senate Republicans would need to be satisfied that the candidate is conservative enough.  Chances of either of these things happening are slim.  So, the political parties continue to spin, spin, spin.