Filed under: Environmentalism, Facebook, Hearts and Minds, Industry Reputation, Influence, Microblogging, MySpace, National Security, New Media Strategy, New PR, Online Communities, Online Community Outreach, Online Evangelism, Online Outreach, Online Participation, PR Tactics, Popular Culture, Propaganda, Propaganda Warfare, Public Affairs, Public Affairs Blogging, Public Relations, Public Space, Social Meda, Social Media Marketing, Social Media News Release, Stealth Marketing, Twitter, Viral Marketing, Viral PR, YouTube, YouTube Marketing, presidential election

T. Boone Picken’s, Texas oil man, 1980’s corporate raider and current manager of BP Capital Management has something new up his sleave. And it features an internet strategy.

In 1997, he shifted his focus to natural gas. and 10 years later, in 2007, on wind energy. He formed Mesa Power LP in west central Texas and is constructing what will likely be the world’s largest wind farm. The project will feature thousands of wind turbines and cost hundreds of millions of dollars. This follows his belief that natural gas remains the best alternative to oil for motor vehicle fuel. That’s why he formed Pickens Fuel Corp eleven years ago.

Now, with $4 a gallon gas prices, he’s funding a public affairs effort to help us cut out oil as a our primary fuel for transportation, substitute it with natural gas, and then substitute the use of gas for other types of energy needs with, you guessed it, wind energy.

Today, he’s launched an online public affairs effort to convince Americans to look to natural gas and wind as proper alternatives. He points out that we currently import 70% of our oil - up from 24% in 1970. What’s new about his effort, is that much of it is bein launched online.

He’s got a YouTube channel.
They’ve got a page on Twitter.
A fan page on Facebook.
And a page on Mypace.

They even have an online community that they’re building.

Pretty neat concept. I’ll be following this campaign to see how effectively they use social media.

No Comments » Posted on July 8th, 2008 by Jonathan Trenn

Filed under: Blog Messaging, Blog Policies, Brand Protection, Brand Reputation, Crisis Management, Industry Reputation, Online PR, Online Reputation, Online Reputation Management, Online Strategy, Propaganda, Propaganda Warfare, Reputation Management, Reputation Rehabilitation, Search Engine Reputation Management, Search Reputation Management

I think Southwest is missing an opportunity to effectively come clean on this recent story that they let 46 of the planes fly beyond the FAA mandated amount of per plane flights to have an inspection. They’re using “spinspeak” when they don’t have to.

The issue is muddled. The level of responsiblity is unclear. The nexus of blame looks to be dispersed. Southwest needs to open up a bit more. Instead, they obfuscate.

“The FAA has issued what is called a “letter of penalty” to Southwest Airlines regarding one of many routine, redundant, and overlapping inspections of our fleet. The specific inspection in question involves an extremely small area in one of many overlapping inspections designed to detect early signs of skin cracking on our aircraft.”

“Many, routine, redundant, and overlapping inspections”…”extremely small area in one of manyh ovrlapping inspections”. Please.

Meanitme, one can simply read any news coverge of this and find out that the airline went well past the alloted amount of flights. By trying to sound “reasonable”, they cause people to look elsewhere. And the term “overlapping inspections”…what they hell does that mean?

Most of the rest of what they say if fine. But in the interest of transparency, simply explain the concept of inspections based upon amount of flights. THEN you add how you found the problem and quickly notified the authorities. Keep the bulk of the story on the blog itself. Off an apology for the confusion. Thank people for their loyalty. Let them know that you’ll keep them informed via the blog. Have CEO Gary Kelly post an entry a week until the situation resolves itself.

Right now there’s a bunch of responsed showing doubt towards Southwest. And there’s a significant amount of supportive responses. Some very elaborate. Allmost seems organized, but they’re not cookie cutter. And y0u’ve got some who are defending the company by attacking the media. Saying that the media doesn’t know what they’re talking about…that the media is blowing things out of proportion. On what they’re basing this I don’t know.

Southwest has 30 days to respond to the FAA’s letter of inquiry. Let’s see how it turns out.

No Comments » Posted on March 10th, 2008 by Jonathan Trenn

Filed under: Disruption, Distruptive, Hearts and Minds, Old PR, Propaganda, Propaganda Warfare, Public Relations, Public Relations Bloggers, Public Relations Industry, stock-market

I know that the blogosphere is powerfully influential. How do I know? Well, when a blogger, Paul Kedrosky, a venture capitalist, rages at his fellow venture bloggers to stop blogging all the things going wrong with Wall Street, the stock market, and the general health of the US economy, you know that the health of the market has to do more with a perception of health than with actual healthiness. Either way, check out what Paul Glazowski says in his article Blogger Tells Bloggers To Quit Ranting About Bad Finance:

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1 Comment » Posted on January 26th, 2008 by Chris Abraham

Filed under: Abraham Harrison, Abraham Harrison LLC, Activating Bloggers, Black Hat Marketing, Black Hat PR, Black Hat SEO, Blog Counter-Messaging, Blog Ranking, Blog Search, Blog Search Engines, Blog Strategy, Blogger Effect, Blogger Engagement, Blogger Influence, Blogger Outreach, Blogger Relations, Blogger Support, Brand Ambassador, Brand Intelligence, Brand Protection, Brand Reputation, Citizen Journalism, Competitive Intelligence, Controversial Marketing, Corporate Blogging, Corporate Intelligence, Crisis Management, Defensive SEO, Google PageRank, Google Search, Hearts and Minds, Industry Reputation, Influencers, Influencial Bloggers, Influential Brand Advocates, Influentials, Integrity, Internet Culture, Internet Strategy, Journalism, Managing Conversation, Marketing Language, Media Consultancy, Messaging Online, New Media Strategy, New PR, Newspapers, Old Marketing, Old Media, Old PR, Online Brand Protection, Online Brand Reputation, Online Identity Management, Online Influence, Online Intelligence, Online Media, Online Messaging, Online Outreach, Online PR, Online Participation, Online Public Relations, Online Reputation, Online Reputation Management, Online Strategy, PR Blogging, PR Blogs, PR Hubris, PR Industry, PageRank, Pitching Bloggers, Political Strategy, Pop Culture, Popular Culture, Proactive Support, Propaganda, Propaganda Warfare, Protective SEO, Public Affairs, Public Affairs Blogging, Public Policy Blogs, Public Relations, Public Relations Bloggers, Public Relations Blogs, Public Relations Industry, Real Life, Reputation Management, Reputation Rehabilitation, SEM, SEM and SEO, SEO, SEO and SEM, Search Engine Marketing, Search Engine Optimization, Search Engine Reputation Management, Search Engine Strategy, Search Engines, Search Reputation Management, Self Promotion, Semantic Web, Shameless Self-Promotion, Social Meda, Social News, Social Unrest, Strategic Consulting, Traditional Journalism, Traditional PR, Transparency, Web 2.0, Web Strategy, Word-of-Mouth, YouTube, YouTube Marketing

With the issue of reputation management in the news, I’ve been thinking a lot about the recent discovery that many of the Mattel toys made in China were painted with lead-based paints. This had followed several other unrelated incidents that had previously caused embarrassment to either Mattel or to China.

A company such as Mattel needs to have a proactive online strategy that could meet the negativity head on, to help suppress those damaging rumors that could hurt the company both immediately and permanently. A company needs to understand what is being said about them in online forums, on blogs, and, if necessary, it needs to help blunt and diminish the negativity headed their way.

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No Comments » Posted on October 4th, 2007 by Jonathan Trenn

Filed under: Abraham Harrison, Abraham Harrison LLC, Black Hat PR, Black Hat SEO, Blog Counter-Messaging, Blog Strategy, Blogger Code of Conduct, Brand Protection, Brand Reputation, Business Intelligence, Character Blogging, Chris Abraham, Competitive Intelligence, Controversial Marketing, Corporate Blogging, Corporate Responsibility, Crisis Management, Defensive SEO, Emergent Pattern, Emergent Patterns, Emergent Search, Emergent Web, False Flag, Flogging, Flogs, Guerilla Marketing, Hate Speech, Hearts and Minds, Honesty, Influencers, Influencial Bloggers, Messaging Online, New Media Strategy, Online Advocacy, Online Attack, Online Brand Protection, Online Brand Reputation, Online Influence, Online Intelligence, Online Reputation, Online Reputation Management, Online Strategy, PR Blogging, PR Blogs, PR Hubris, PR Industry, Proactive Support, Propaganda, Propaganda Warfare, Protective SEO, Public Affairs, Public Affairs Blogging, Public Policy Blogs, Public Relations, Public Relations Blogs, Real Life, Reputation Management, Reputation Rehabilitation, SEM, SEM and SEO, SEO, SEO and SEM, Search Engine Marketing, Search Engine Optimization, Search Engine Reputation Management, Search Engine Strategy, Search Engines, Search Reputation Management, Social Meda, Spycraft, Strategic Consulting, Viral Media, Web 2.0, Web 3.0, Web Strategy, Word-of-Mouth

Over the next 13 months, we’re going to have to endure yet another campaign season here in the States. Two primaries and then a long, drawn out general election. One way to deflect these attacks is through defensive SEO. It helps suppress concerted attacks by depressing negative search results while increasing positive ones. And I think it will be vital. Hopefully, others will listen.

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1 Comment » Posted on October 3rd, 2007 by Jonathan Trenn

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