I wanted to comment quickly on the whole “Amp Up before you score” iphone app controversy. A lot of people have weighed in on whether it was offensive, how did Pepsi handle the backlash etc., but I wanted to address a slightly different issue raised by this contorversy,which is the usefulness of parent company brands in a time when markets have become so highly targeted.

I would venture to say that most of the criticism of the Amp Up app is coming from people outside of the Amp energy drink’s target demographic, including both men and women. Certainly any issue of Maxim Magazine or Cosmo contains content in a similar vein, and I would guess that if Amp were an independent brand the app would have barely made a ripple.

So I was amazed to see how quickly the blame was transferred to the Pepsi parent company, whose target demographics certainly contains people who would be shocked by this, as we saw. As far as I can tell, there was no Pepsi branding attached to this app at all, or to Amp for that matter.

Which lead me to thinking – if you are a brand manager for a parent company that owns a variety of branded products targeted at different target markets, for example Unilever which owns both the Dove and Axe lines, do you want both of those products linked to the same parent company in the consumers mind, and aren’t you asking for trouble if you do-given the different values communicated in the branding campaigns for these products?

Do you have one brand that is very environmentally friendly, and others that are not. Is one of your product lines organic while the other uses factory farmed meat? It seems to me there are so many ways a parent company can get in trouble with this – given how ultra-sensitive  and social media empowered the public is these days.

My own view is that if you can look across your product line and find common value proposition, than parent company branding makes sense. But if you see a bunch of different products with different brand values, probably better to let the individual brands do the talking. But of course there are investor relations reasons that that the parent brand may need brand awareness as well, so it certainly seems to be a fine line to walk.

The past two years have not been strong ones for the financial services industry’s popularity. Between the fallout from the economic collapse last Fall, the government bailouts, and now public backlash against reports of record profits and bonuses to industry executives, it is hard to pinpoint a time when public opinion on the industry was lower. Just this week, we saw an organized march on Goldman Sachs and Wells Fargo in Chicago, while CNN is running an ongoing series called “Nickel & Dimed”, a scathing review of the increased fees the financial services industry is charging consumers.

This ire at the financial services industry paints everyone within the industry with a very broad brush, whether or not that particular business had any part in the financial collapse. Monday’s march in Chicago also targeted the meeting of the American Bankers Association there, even though the organization primarily represents community banks.

This negative public sentiment is not only unpleasant, it also threatens real business harm to the industry as legislators, riding the wave of populist outrage, are working on new regulations, compensation limits and other new legislation affecting the way the financial services industry operates. In this poisonous environment, financial services companies are unlikely to find even their most legitimate concerns addressed when elected officials can score points with the voters by sticking it to the industry. In this environment, even financial services companies who do not count the general public as customers are affected by the public’s opinion of their industry.

Yet despite all of this, the financial services industry as a whole remains one of the least aggressive industries in terms of communications, especially when it comes to using new tools such as social media to reach their audiences. This has to change if the industry is to recover its former stature.

Financial services companies need to do a better job explaining their role within role in the industry, and in the larger economy. The public needs to understand the vital roll that financial services companies in the economic recovery, which affects their lives even if a company’s specific services do not. Otherwise the only stories will continue to be about bonuses and corporate greed.

Financial services companies would also be well advised to highlight their Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) activities, especially those that involve giving back to the communities in which they operate.

In addition, the industry also needs to move past its fear of social media. With the news media still looking for negative stories on the industry, financial services companies should look for ways to take their messages directly to their audiences, and social media offers a great opportunity to do this.

Until the financial services industry starts communicating more aggressively, the general public will continue to receive only one side of the story. As politicians and talkshow hosts fan the flames of populist outrage, public perception of the financial services industry will not improve, and the industry runs the real risk of facing new regulations that make what Sarbanes Oxley did for corporate auditing standards seem like a proverbial hit with a wet noodle.

The Nielson Company released some interesting new numbers this week on the use of online video in the U.S. The survey found some extraordinary year over year growth in online video use, with both total video streams and time per viewer increasing 25% for the month of September ‘09 vs. September ‘08.

Although Internet video is still a small portion of all video consumed — around 2%, according to recent estimates – this report indicates that activity still grows at a healthy double-digit percentage clip. With Nielson finding over 139 million unique viewers spending 195 minutes each watching a total of 11.02 billion video streams in the month of September alone, we are now talking about some real audience numbers here.

This continued double-digit growth demonstrates online videos’ increasing importance in the multimedia mix, and suggests that corporations should begin looking at how to incorporate online video into communications activities.

In addition to the large number of viewers, the combination of sight, sound and motion make video much more memorable to the viewer than still images or text on a webpage, much to the chagrin of companies like Dominos and Comcast, who have all had the unpleasant experience of watching an unflattering video on the company go viral.

These examples alone are a good reason for companies to ramp up online video creation capabilities and begin building an audience for corporate online video content, along with other social media community-building activities.

With every increase in online video viewership the potential damage to your company from an unfavorable online video grows as well, and with this many consumers regularly consuming online video it is a good bet that many of them are your customers.

If your company waits until a crisis hits to begin communicating through online video and other social media, your company will likely find it hard to build a supportive online audience quickly enough to effectively get the message out. Build the roof before it starts raining!

On the positive side, as more websites and social networks incorporate video capabilities, the ability to reuse online video to achieve a greater ROI on a single clip has grown as well.

A single corporate video can now be shared across your blog, your YouTube channel, your Facebook page, and a variety of other sites on the web that your customers are likely to visit, so you can get some real bang for your company buck. What is your company waiting for, an online video invitation?

I don’t usually like to pick on entire industries here on my blog, but this is a case where something needs to be said. The focus of my wrath on this beautiful Saturday morning is a new food-labeling campaign called Smart Choices, backed by most of the nation’s largest food manufacturers, which is “designed to help shoppers easily identify smarter food and beverage choices.”

However, as reported in a New York Times article this morning, a number of the foods allowed to carry the “Smart Choices” designation are anything but smart. For example, Froot Loops and Apple Jacks cereals will be carrying this label.

Since this is a communications blog, I am going to leave the obvious health issues alone and deal with the communications issues – specifically this: the packaged food industry is apparently now trying to best the tobacco industry in deceptive communications. The following quote from Eileen T. Kennedy, president of the Smart Choices board and the dean of the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University, really needs to be read twice to be believed:

“You’re rushing around, you’re trying to think about healthy eating for your kids and you have a choice between a doughnut and a cereal,” Dr. Kennedy said, evoking a hypothetical parent in the supermarket. “So Froot Loops is a better choice.”

A doughnut or Froot Loops?! Do these two choices really define the options for the parent “trying to think about healthy eating for your kids?” Are they doing all their grocery shopping at the gas station mini-mart? Why not a cube of butter, or maybe a shot of vodka? I’m sure these options contain more nutritional value than the hypothetical dougnut as well!

I would be curious to find out who prepared this woman for her NYT interview.

For an industry that has been taking a lot of heat recently for the obesity epidemic in a nation in the midst of a debate on health care, this type of of cynical attempt to, frankly, trick consumers is practically begging for the industry to be more heavily regulated by the FDA.

And furthermore, in a time when trust in corporations is at an all-time low, this type of activity will further discredit any type of industry-backed organization.

With the communications industry shifting towards trying to have direct, authentic conversations with corporate stakeholders, this type of ill-conceived effort doesn’t help anyone.

Something extraordinary has certainly occurred in the world of media and communications.

User-generated content technologies such as Twitter, mobile video and YouTube took the lead in reporting on the civil unrest in Iran, while CNN and the New York Times were forced to rely on this content for their reporting on this monumental global event.

Since journalists were barred from the streets, the use of user-generated content was born out of necessity, but in the aftermath several questions emerge:

• Does this represent a one-time event, or a sea change in the media environment?

• Has the user-generated content-led coverage of Iran permanently shifted the media environment to the point where user-generated media is an equal partner to traditional media?

• If so, what are the ramifications for corporate communicators and PR executives?

Consumers definitely value social media content created by other users. Businesses and institutions also are embracing and creating this content in an effort to communicate more directly with their customers.

If the model for media coverage seen in the Iranian protests becomes the norm, and journalists accept user-generated content as a (nearly) equal voice, then we as communicators will be faced with a truly integrated communications environment — bloggers and Twitterers will expand on stories written by the mainstream media, and “professional journalists” will advance stories originated by user-generated content.

If this mindset takes hold, then collaboration can happen with stories on every topic, not just in cases where individuals with social media broadcasting capabilities happened to be first on the scene, such as in Iran and the Hudson River landing of U.S. Airways flight 1549.

Companies that have considered traditional media and social media audiences separately need to begin embracing an integrated communications strategy that takes advantage of the increasing interplay between the journalists and other audiences that produce content, such as customers, investors, concerned citizens, and even regulators.

Given that CNN and the Wall Street Journal are looking for story ideas on YouTube and Facebook, companies must ensure that the messages disseminated via social media are aligned with the messages being delivered to traditional media. Therefore, social media efforts are direct communications to traditional media journalists.

Just when you thought that the internet was going to mean the end of interruption-based advertising, there is this article by Saul Hansell in the New York Times, which is sure to launch a million desperate searches for ad-blocking software. In his piece entitled “Make Room for the Wide Load Ads, “ Hansell describes how advertisers are turning to even larger and more intrusive online advertising to boost revenue. Saul reports:

Now the Online Publishers Association has created a series of new standards for really big, intrusive, bash-you-on-the-head sorts of advertisements, which you are going to start seeing on its member sites in coming months.

Fantastic.

One format is a version of the sort of expandable banner ad you’ve already seen. It starts big and then rolls up to fit at the top of the page. The other two formats will be more jarring. There is an ad, meant to go on the side of a page, that is 468 pixels wide — far bigger than other side-of-the-page formats. Publishers are going to have to squeeze the width of their editorial content on pages with this ad format. Another format rises and falls like an elevator on the right-hand side of the page, so the ad is always in view. This means that publishers need to clear out the various other features and ads placed on the side of pages to give this ad some space to roam.

I cannot understand how advertising models based on finding new and creative ways to get between the consumer and the online content that person is trying to consume will do anyone any good. Consumers have long been using DVR’s to zap commercials in the passive medium of television – in the active medium of the internet these interruption-based advertising tactics are sure to receive a much stronger reaction. Personally, nothing irritates me more than online advertisements that chase me down the page, obstructing my view of the content that I came to the page to consume. I don’t imagine that being chased by larger ads will give me a favorable opinion of the advertiser or the website the ad is running on.

For companies looking to engage their audiences online, content marketing is a much more effective option – creating something of value to your specific audiences and distributing it online is a much better strategy for gaining customers than clubbing them with a billboard. Interact with your customers and enhance their online experience, don’t detract from it with louder and more intrusive ads!

Continuing the “You’ll miss us when we’re gone” meme of the mainstream media farewell tour, Frank Rich wrote an interesting column in Saturday’s New York Times which I think gets to the heart of the matter from the general public’s perspective: when large media organizations go broke, who is going to pay forthe expensive news-gathering process?

Reporting the news can be expensive. Some of it — monitoring the local school board, say — can and is being done by voluntary “citizen journalists” with time on their hands, integrity and a Web site. But we can’t have serious opinions about America’s role in combating the Taliban in Pakistan unless brave and knowledgeable correspondents (with security to protect them) tell us in real time what is actually going on there. We can’t know what is happening behind closed doors at corrupt, hard-to-penetrate institutions in Washington or Wall Street unless teams of reporters armed with the appropriate technical expertise and assiduously developed contacts are digging night and day. Those reporters have to eat and pay rent, whether they work for print, a TV network, a Web operation or some new bottom-up news organism we can’t yet imagine.

Rich continues:

It’s immaterial whether we find the fruits of their labors on paper, a laptop screen, a BlackBerry, a Kindle or podcast. But someone — and certainly not the government, with all its conflicted interests — must pay for this content and make every effort to police its fairness and accuracy. If we lose the last major news-gathering operations still standing, there will be no news on Google News unless Google shells out to replace them. It won’t.

As much as the self-importance of certain newsmen may have grated in the past, Rich is correct in that the large, well funded news organizations do play an important rollin American society, and it is hard to see how any bloggers, no matter how well-intentioned, will be able to take their place.

Matthew Dolan wrote a great article in the Wall Street Journal today about an interactive campaign Ford is launching to introduce the new Ford Fiesta. Dolan reported that Ford has picked 100 young, Web-savvy drivers to get behind the wheel of its new Ford Fiesta subcompact for six months and post their impressions on sites such as YouTube, Flickr and Twitter.

According to Dolan:

“Ford selected the 100 participants from more than 4,000 video submissions viewed more than 640,000 times online. Ford assigned applicants two scores: a “social vibrancy” rating based on how much they were followed online and across how many platforms; and an overall grade based on those factors plus creativity, video skills and their ability to hook a viewer within the first five to 10 seconds. Ford is hoping the participants will serve as “opinion leaders” and generate a grass-roots following.”

The really neat thing about this campaign is that Ford is giving total control of the campaign to the participants, allowing them to create whatever material they wish with no oversight or approval process. It is great to see a huge company like Ford being brave enough to try something like this. I am really hoping the campaign is a success, and will be watching it closely.

One other interesting tidbit from the article: according to Dolan, GM in March 2008 committed half of its $3 billion media budget to digital and one-to-one marketing through 2011. While this number have likely changed due to the government bailout, it is still a huge vote of confidence in social media!

While the news media industry continues its downward spiral, it appears that journalists are not abandoning the profession entirely.

A new article in Forbes yesterday reported that applications to journalism school are up substantially  – Columbia, Stanford and NYU applications increased 38%, 20% and 6%, respectively, from the previous year. State school programs are reporting similar increases.

Where are all of these journalists going to work when they graduate, given the current destruction of media as we know it? According to the article, trade publications, freelance work and digital media will supply the bulk of the jobs.

And here we thought that all journalists were going to be looking for PR jobs!

As a public relations professionals, I am very happy to see a continued dedication to the craft of journalism in this country. Whatever the future news media business model becomes, it is certain that high-quality journalists will be needed.

At a public relations agency, generating consistent media coverage in between major announcements is often a challenge. So instead of trying to create news when there is none, it can helpful to identify what your client possesses that a reporter might need.

Some recent successes with this simple strategy had me thinking about how often we try to force our clients into the news cycle, when it is better to find a way to give journalists what they want.

For example, my company represents a number of niche social networking clients. These social networks are not near the size of Facebook, so their annnouncements don’t generate the same amount of media attention.

However, we realized that these social networks do possess something which journalists need – the collective opinions of a community of people in a specific demographic.

Reporters love statistics, so we have worked with our clients to develop easy ways to poll the members of their social networks on topics in the news.

So, for example,  for reporters who want to know about how the baby boomer generation feels about the Obama budget proposal, we have statistics they can use – and they do!