Flashes of Confusion

Posted on May 10, 2010 Written by 19 Comments
zerometh

There’s a billboard we’re seeing a lot of in central Alabama, and it jars me a little every time I see it.

Not because of what is there, but because my mind’s eye sees something that is not there.

Wait a couple of seconds, then look at the black box. Then you’ll see it.

There.

It was only up for a second or so.

What did it say again?

Drugs are bad, m’kay?

The billboard is part of a much larger campaign by district attorneys across the state, called Zero Meth. Meth-amphetamine abuse is rising here (as in many other places) because it’s cheap, and the manufacturers of the drug have figured out how to do it in less expensive and more portable ways.

The goal of the billboards is to drive awareness, and traffic to the website. On the site, you will find resources, information and links for those who struggle with addiction or the consequences. It’s not a very social site, and I am not sure the layout is all that friendly for either humans or search engines… but that’s not the point.

When the logo flashed into your retina, what did you see?

I don’t know about you, but I saw the word Aerosmith.

Every time I see that logo, that’s what pops into my mind.

Over the weekend, I saw one again, and this time asked my wife what she saw.

“Aerosmith.”

She doesn’t like Aerosmith, and might recognize only one or two songs. Maybe. I don’t know if I’ve even played an Aerosmith song in her presence (though I have been known to subject her to Rush.)

It doesn’t even resemble the Aerosmith typeface or logo in any way. It’s just the placement of the letters, the E-R-O and the M- -T-H… and the slant of that “Z” matching the lean of the Aerosmith “A.”

Simple and subtle cues that can take your attention away from the intended message, which is that drugs are bad. (The modern incarnation of Aerosmith would agree that drugs are bad, even if they made their reputation on some very good ones.) The effect is intensified with outdoor advertising, because drivers often don’t get more than a passing glance at a billboard.

The Fix?

Communicators need to remember that it’s not what you meant to say, but what was heard that matters.

I’m sure this logo scored quite well with the people who were vetting it. It’s edgy, it’s grungy-looking, and it has threatening colors that contrast well. I don’t think it translates very well to black-and-white, but that’s not as big a deal for an issue campaign as it would be for a permanent brand where the legibility of monochrome logos on stationery and business cards is a big deal.

Honestly, all it would have taken is a variant and the “Aerosmith” issue wouldn’t have surfaced. Stack the block-letters of “ZERO” on top of the “METH.” Now it doesn’t resemble the name of the band so much.

Did you see Aerosmith in the logo? Even for a moment?

Do you have other examples of poorly-tested logos, or instances where the unintended connotations got in the way?

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Imported Turf

Posted on April 12, 2010 Written by 23 Comments
sod admin blurred

While traditional media outlets claim to “embrace the conversation,” are they still holding it at arm’s length? Is it enough to host comments and invite input online, without the due diligence to see if others are manipulating the agenda?

A few days ago, I wrote about what appeared to be a fairly obvious case of Astroturfing – the practice of creating fake “grass roots” in order to make it seem like public opinion was different than reality. One of my biggest clues was the sheer volume of comments posted between the moment the story went live at 5 a.m., and the time I read them (dozens of them) at 6:15 a.m.

If newspapers were a little more sophisticated about this sort of thing, they might check their IP logs and see the source of all that recent traffic — most of which is not washed through any proxy, and does give decent geographic information.

For example, let me show you the sort of data one can mine if they use the right tools:

The two images you see to the right are screen captures from my Sitemeter administration page. They show two separate visits to Occam’s RazR, both time and date stamped.

As you can see, both of these visits came from Boca Raton, Florida, and the visits overlap in time. Curiously, you can see from the out-click information that both of them left comments. They also come from different browsers, which is a nifty little way to be logged onto the same site concurrently from different profiles.

As it happens, those comments correlate in time to a pair of comments left here, by people purporting to be “5 Points Joe” and “Garlic Rolls,” two screen names you see used in the AL.com comment threads about Bingo. “Garlic Rolls” is one of the many commenters who is firmly for a vote of the people and is pro-gambling, while “5 Points Joe” is a little more skeptical, and is often accused of being a “Sock Puppet” handle for Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial page editor Joey Kennedy. (That accusation is laughable on several counts, but I digress.)

Here is the screen shot of my WordPress comment administration panel, verifying the IP addresses of the comments. I took the liberty of blurring out the email addresses used by those who posted, for reasons I will get to later.

Since the panel shows newest comments at the top, you can see that the “5 Points Joe” comment, left at 6:27pm, came first. I seriously doubt this is from the real 5PointsJoe, because a quick look at his comment history shows him engaged on a number of issues not related to gambling in Alabama. Why would a paid lobbyist based in Boca Raton be so involved in flood warnings at schools, police trials, and whether George Barber is a good guy for offering free land downtown for business development.

Brad (claiming to be Garlic Rolls), on the other hand, has only posted in bingo-related threads. And in the comment, Garlic claims to be on unemployment in the state of Alabama, while posting from Boca Raton. I would think that someone whose lamenting the loss of his/her minimum wage job would be staying someplace cheaper than Boca Raton while cashing those Alabama state unemployment checks.

But hey, I’ve been wrong before.

I’m not a betting man, but here’s where I would put the smart money:

  • Both comments were left by the same person.
  • Neither email address shows up in searches.
  • Wanting to throw me off the trail, the Phony Joe was left first, so the Garlic Rolls could respond.

The entire thing reeks of underhanded manipulation. And it parallels a more fundamental question raised by the real Joey Kennedy of the Birmingham News, about transparency and our right to know who is paying for all the issue advertising.

Round-Up the Turf Merchants

If I were a reporter, I’d be wanting to chase down some pertinent data. A couple of years ago, this same newspaper won a Pulitzer Prize for investigating corruption in Alabama’s two-year college system, and that entire series of stories started with a request for a raw data dump. Brett Blackledge asked for the raw records, and started stitching together the tendrils until the narrative came into focus. But I’m not so certain that will be as easy to accomplish here, because most newspaper web sites are run as completely different divisions. I do know that AL.com is run out-of-state, and there is likely not decent access to the raw information that could establish patterns of astroturfing.

What about privacy? The News doesn’t publish letters sent anonymously, so I don’t buy the precedent that this is somehow invasive.

I love my lawn. It is good turf. But some turf is wrong, and deserves to be terminated.

So, who wants to do a little digging into firms that handle political campaigns and public relations efforts out of Boca Raton?

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Journalistic Sodbusting

Posted on April 7, 2010 Written by 37 Comments
astroturf-thumb

“Astroturfing” refers to any shady public relations practice where one manufactures the appearance of “grass roots” support. I had never heard of the word until transitioning from news to public affairs (a mere six years, two months and twenty-two days ago, but who is counting?)

Journalists, by nature, are fairly good at playing the skeptic; and very cranky when they get played. When part of the story centers on public sentiment – like the case study I present to you now – they may get more than irate; they might just get even.

Particulars in a moment, but first the mother of all disclaimers:

The following post references events and issues of a political nature in the state of Alabama, and unlike most of what I write here is of a very time-sensitive nature.

This post is the work of me and me alone.

Because anything that is even remotely political ends up being blamed or framed on my employer (whether warranted or not,) let me state unequivocally that my employer, supervisor, nor anyone in my company knows I am writing this, nor am I under any directive, suggestion or hint that it would be worthwhile.

For the record, I have not taken a public position on the issues of gambling/gaming/bingo in the state of Alabama, and don’t care enough to research them.

Nobody has paid me for this post. I don’t even run ads on the site.

But I am interested in the process of communications, and how organizations attempt to persuade.

Are you hooked yet? Here we go…

[Read more...]

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Y2KX

Posted on December 31, 2009 Written by 6 Comments
y2k

Of course, the proper name for the year is MMX. 2010. The Year We Make Contact, or some such rubbish. Start the countdown clock for the Mayan Calendar hoaxes.

I remember where I was ten years ago.

I was a member of the working media, assigned to sit at the “bunker” of the state of Alabama’s Emergency Operations Center, as all the authorities and grand-high Poohbah muckety-mucks gathered to observe — well, as it turned out, nothing.

Many of us had sounded the alarm that there was nothing to be alarmed about, but we were drowned out with the Millennial Panic that was Y2K. (Which, in another fit of ill-informed irony, wasn’t even the start of the Millennium, which began in 2001.)

Team Coverage of Nothing

I remember the news accounts leading up to that day. For months, the national media had a field day recounting doomsday scenarios for what would happen when internal clocks got thrown for a loop. The news media and the late-night comics had their way with the state of Alabama in particular. While private businesses, state and local governments were throwing budgets to the wind to corral this “Y2K bug,” companies and particularly municipalities in the Heart of Dixie weren’t following Chicken Little’s lead.

At one point in mid-1999, there was a wire story indicating that if Alabama tripled its Y2K preparedness spending, it would still rank last among the states. Of course, it was followed with dire predictions about what would happen, and the obligatory jokes about how Alabama didn’t have enough technology anyway, and was still coping with Y1K compliance…

…yet I don’t remember a single story after-the-fact about how Alabama didn’t waste billions of dollars preventing Dutch Tulip Blight, or the oncoming stampedes of Jackalopes. Funny how that happens.

Personal Impact

Because of Y2K, I spent that New Year’s Eve away from my fiance. She was at her apartment, and I was in Clanton at “Ground Zero” for “live coverage” of an “event” that was less than a zero. (By the time in was midnight in Alabama, more than a dozen time zones had already made it safely across the threshold. I think that would make it cease to be ‘news’ at that point.)

As it happens, I was able to pass a coded message to my now wife, in clear defiance of FCC guidelines about using the public airwaves for personal communication. My wife’s name, Brenda, happened to be the same as our lead female anchor. So when I punched the name in the sentence “Happy New Year, Brenda… I’ll be back to see you soon” none were the wiser.

Still, it sucked to be away on a nothing assignment.

Panic Feeds the Needy

There always needs to be a scare of some type, because there is a healthy percentage of the public that doesn’t feel Important unless it is seen to be caring about Big Important Things. Usually, when Big Important Things have to do with personal issues or matters of faith, they don’t have an impact. But when enough people use their panic about Big Important Things to  spur government action, they can be very adamant about saving the world with expensive remedies.

Afterward, they can call their prescription a grand success. After all, there was no Tulip Blight, and nary a Jackalope footprint in the snow.

Have a happy and blessed 2010. Make a resolution to keep things in perspective.

Filed Under: Personal Tagged: , , , , , ,

Phoxes in your Phonebill?

Posted on January 21, 2009 Written by 9 Comments

Remember that old adage about foxes and henhouses? A company in New Jersey appears poised to become the guardian of fraud for low-income Alabamians, for the low price of $180 a year.

Consumer Data Service has received approval from the Alabama Public Service Commission to perform “third-party billing” for various businesses and properties. Specifically for the following business websites:

The first two appear to be voicemail/communication consolidation services.  VERY overpriced for what they claim to do. The other four are all identity-theft protection subscriptions. 15-bucks a month? What the hell?

Notice the slick websites, that all hawk the same services and promises, but targeted to different demographics (father-led household, mother-prominent household, single female, single male.) Also note that 15-bucks a freakin’ month is way too much. Would it surprise me to find out that all are shell companies for the same ownership as CDS?

Now, look at the website for Consumer Data Service:

“Online merchants will be able to increase their customer demographics by providing our billing services to consumers that don’t have, can’t have, or don’t use credit cards. This method allows merchants to optimize their revenue through consumer expansion.”

In other words, they make a business out of targeting the phone bills of people who would have a hard time getting credit cards.

Identity theft is a huge and growing problem, but is $180/year a good wager? And will the people having this “easy service” pushed on them going to have the wherewithal to calculate that risk?

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