Enterprise Florida doubles down on its sexist new logo

When an organization is blasted with criticism, it has three choices:

1. Decide the criticism is justified, make amends, and communicate changes with a sense of humility. This allows an organization to turn a negative into a positive by showing it is responsive and willing to do the right thing.

2. Bury its collective head in the sand. Controversy moves lightning-fast these days, and folks will eventually move onto the next scandal involving Lindsay Lohan or pit bulls or Pitbull. The brand takes a hit, but it may not be too detrimental depending on the scale of the issue and the outrage.

3. Double down and push forward against the criticism. Extend the controversial position to demonstrate that the organization clearly believes its position and direction is correct.

Enterprise Florida, the official economic development organization for the State of Florida, is doubling down.

In early February, Enterprise Florida rolled out a new brand campaign with the tag line, "The Perfect Climate for Business."

Fine. But the new logo? It has many people tied up in knots:

Susan Stackhouse, chief executive of Stellar Partners of Tampa, which runs retail concessions at airports, told the Tampa Bay Business Journal:

"Isn't that special? It's clearly a strong visual that business and men go together."

Wait, building a state's business logo around a man's tie doesn't convey a progressive and forward-thinking image? News to Enterprise Florida. The organization has now invited participants to print out a picture of the tie, wear it and share photos via Twitter, Facebook and Instagram with the hashtag #floridabiz.

The logo sends a terrible message about Florida's business climate, reinforcing damaging stereotypes that the state's culture is far behind the times.

I am glad, however, that Enterprise Florida is progressive enough to embrace social media. Here's my contribution to their tie-centric #floridabiz campaign:

George Zimmerman's attorney goes on social media offense

Beth Kassab profiles the social media strategy used by Mark O' Mara, George Zimmerman's defense attorney:

O'Mara may be the first criminal-defense attorney to use social media in this way.

[...]

It's easy to understand O'Mara's motives. He has already helped humanize Zimmerman and wants to maintain control over his image. He wants to correct falsehoods circulating about the case. And he wants to monitor the online conversations, hoping to glean nuggets of information that could be helpful to the defense.

But he's also providing another forum — as if there weren't enough already — for people to spout unsubstantiated theories and opinions about the man who killed 17-year-old Trayvon Martin and is claiming self-defense.

Some of the Facebook threads have more than 100 comments. You have to wonder whether O'Mara is helping to calm pretrial publicity — or fuel it.

"I hope you get Zimmerman acquitted so that I can go to Florida, stalk people because I don't like the way they look, and then shoot them if they dare defend themselves," one poster wrote on the Facebook site.

There's more like that. And worse.

I disagree with some of Kassab's assumptions. First, online comments and conversations will take place no matter what. Time Magazine called the Casey Anthony murder trial, the "Social Media Trial of the Century." Zimmerman's case will create a similar level of dialouge. So of course O' Mara's should participate. Why wouldn’t he enter the conversation, to share his points-of-view and better understand detractors. There is high value in both actions.

Second, O’ Mara isn't attempting to calm pre-trial publicity, as Kassab states. He doens't have the power to do that. What he can do, through his Facebook page, Twitter feed, and blog, is:

1)    Ensure his side of story comes through unfilitered, through direct conversations that allow his team to stay on message and refute sentiment the team believes is incorrect.

2)    Measure public sentiment and review a wide range of opinions, which will help guide jury selection, the defense process and PR efforts. 

Of course O' Mara will draw heat by engaging online. But he and his client are taking plenty of heat anyway, and the upside he gains in sharing his message, listening and learning far outweighs dealing with the headaches.

O' Mara's level of direct participation may seem odd today. But it will become the norm in cases that generate contreversy and conversation -- locally or nationally. As is the case with business, there is too much upside to not participate.

The University of Florida Lost the Computer Science PR Conversation Before it Began. Here's How to Avoid the Same Mistakes.

The University of Florida hates computers - or so says the Internet. In case you haven't heard, Florida's flagship university announced that, in the face of state budget cuts, it was cutting the research arm of its computer science program. This was a hard and unpopular decision, but one made based on a clear set of priorities. 

Unfortunately, the priorities and reasoning were buried deep inside a four-page PDF which the university issued last week. Because of its inability to clearly and succinctly state its position, the university was quickly drowned out by critics online and ultimately chose to rethink its decision. Steven Salzberg, writing for Forbes.com, wrote an article that quickly got a lot of traction: 

University of Florida Eliminates Computer Science Department, Increases Athletic Budgets. Hmm.

Wow, no one saw this coming.  The University of Florida announced this past week that it was dropping its computer science department, which will allow it to save about $1.7 million $1.4 million.  The school is eliminating all funding for teaching assistants in computer science, cutting the graduate and research programs entirely, and moving the tattered remnants into other departments.

Let’s get this straight: in the midst of a technology revolution, with a shortage of engineers and computer scientists, UF decides to cut computer science completely?

[...]

Meanwhile, the athletic budget for the current year is $99 million, $97.7 million, an increase of more than $2 million from last year.  The increase alone would offset the savings supposedly gained by cutting computer science.

Politifact refuted some of Salzberg's story:

It's true that UF is struggling with budget cuts while athletic funding is up. But the blog post details are questionable. The computer science program isn't going away, for example. And it's not quite so easy for the university to move money from athletics to academics.

Salzberg told us he got his information from various news articles and the UF athletic budget, which he found by searching online. Budget documents for the UF Athletic Association show that total expenditures for 2011-2012 were $97.7 million, about $2 million more than the year before.

Meanwhile, UF is attempting to save $1.4 million by overhauling one of its engineering departments. But the department, Computer & Information Science and Engineering, isn’t being eliminated. Instead, UF is considering merging it with another department, Electrical and Computer Engineering. No one's major would change, and course offerings would remain the same.

[...]

It’s part of a total $4 million cut that the engineering college has to deal with, its share of a $36.4 million cut to the university — which is UF’s share of a $300 million cut to higher education statewide.

A few days later, Florida president Bernie Machen waved the white flag:

As many of you know, the proposal has been met with overwhelming negative response, much of which I believe has been based on misunderstanding. Nonetheless, it is clear that the University of Florida must figure out a way to make it through these financially difficult times in a productive manner. I am optimistic we can do that.

This week, the chairmen of the departments of Computer and Information Science and Engineering and Electrical and Computer Engineering have come forward together with a framework of a new proposal that would help meet the college’s budget target. It also would address issues raised during recent discussions, namely, clarify and enhance degree offerings while preserving the research mission in both computer science and computer engineering, achieve efficiency in teaching and bring faculty workloads in line with other departments of the college.

Misunderstanding. The university never had a chance to let its plan work, because it failed to clearly and simply define its narrative from the outset. Florida allowed itself to be painted as the villain. From the school's perspective, the villain is Florida Governor Rick Scott and the state legislature, which has cut UF's budget by 30 percent over the past six years. (In fairness to Salzberg, he shares this link deeper in his Forbes story).

But Florida never shared that narrative, never gave itself a chance in the furious debate that was sure to follow a tough decision. Florida should have lead with a few succinct message points that would have framed its story:

• State budget cuts -- an absurd 30% over six years -- has left the school in a very precarious position from which it must chose from a bad set of options
• To guide its decision process, the university has defined its priorities and will make cuts based on those priorities
• Restructuring the computer science program, which unfortunately affects current jobs and research, will allow the university to preserve its computer science degree programs and serve a state badly in need of engineering and technology talent.

Florida's failure to effectively communicate its position allowed the story to get out of control.

The takeaway is clear: You cannot control the message anymore in our connected world. But you sure as hell better be concise and clear coming out of the gate, with your message and proof points in order, or you leave yourself with an exposed glass jaw. And you will be knocked out.

The St. Pete Times name change: What will it mean for Tampa Bay news?

The St. Pete Times will become the Tampa Bay Times on January 1. Should we care? A 100+ year-old newspaper slightly changing its name to reflect the obvious: that it covers the entire Tampa Bay metro area, not just St. Petersburg? What's the big deal?

Well, it could be a big deal. My sense is that this isn’t just about two newspapers – the Times and the Tampa Tribune – clawing it out for shrinking market share. I believe this is about overall news leadership, regardless of media channel, for our market. None of the other news organizations in Tampa Bay really seem to be making an aggressive play to establish a transcendent news brand beyond the scope of their traditional delivery mechanism – whether that’s TV, radio, print or carrier pigeon.

I think the Times started this slow march with the decision to make TampaBay.com its lead URL over its Stpetetimes.com address. Later, it claimed the name of what was then the Ice Palace, putting a stake in the ground right in the heart of the Trib’s coverage and Hillsborough County – downtown Tampa.

The Tampa Tribune has long had TBO.com, in conjunction with Channel 8. TBO may have inclinations of becoming a transcendent brand, but let’s be honest. TBO.com has evolved little since I started reading it in the late 90s. The site regularly trails Tampabay.com in pageviews, despite its cross-promotion through the Tribune and WFLA-TV. And the Trib's money problems may take it out of the race altogether.

All the local TV stations have embraced social media to some extent. But everything is built around funneling people back to the TV broadcast. No one seems to be reaching for the bigger prize that is out there: to develop and cultivate a newsgathering community that creates a transcendent news brand. All the TV news organizations remain firmly anchored to their call letters.

Local radio? Show me one that really has aspirations beyond promoting its traditional product. It doesn’t exist.

So there is an opening. Some organization – which may or may not even exist today – is going to transcend the traditional media niches. Somebody is going to become the curator of local conversations, become the leader in newsgathering regardless of source or platform and emerge as the leader in a field no longer separated by print vs. radio vs. TV.

Looks like maybe the St. Pete Tampa Bay Times is going for it. I hope the Times is aggressive, before print ad revenues dry up completely. I hope they build on what they’ve started around conversing with their readers. I hope they make strong efforts to bring “citizen journalist” content under their umbrella. I hope they continue to expand the use of video. The Times is making strides. The company is positioned to capture a huge opportunity and should go after it.

I don't favor the Times over any other local news outlet. But I want to see one of these organizations think big, act bold and embrace the future of news. As Seth Godin says, what feels safe is risky, and what feels risky is safe. It feels safe to use online communication to push and promote your core delivery medium. But that’s not a long-term winning strategy. The future is two-way conversations, community, content curation and cross-media platform usage that is diverse and agnostic. Who’s going to grab that? Who will be the dominant news brand in Tampa Bay in ten years?  I think we have a leader in the race, but the Times must show courage in pushing away from its print product. We will see if the Times can do that, and who, if anyone, will pose a challenge.

E-books: the next hot corporate strategy in content marketing?

Sykes Enterprises. Outback Steakhouse. The Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

Big hitters in the Tampa Bay business community ... and powerhouse book publishing houses?

Well, they aren't publishing today -- as far as I know. I just named-dropped those companies to make a point: that businesses can viably get into e-book publishing as part of a content marketing strategy.

A New York Times article (shared by Steve Rubel) details how news media sites are leapfrogging publishing houses to put out timely e-books. These e-books help media sites monitize content and zip past the slow-moving processes of traditional publishers:

Swiftly and at little cost, newspapers, magazines and sites like The Huffington Post are hunting for revenue by publishing their own version of e-books, either using brand-new content or repurposing material that they may have given away free in the past.

And by making e-books that are usually shorter, cheaper to buy and more quickly produced than the typical book, they are redefining what an e-book is — and who gets to publish it.

Shel Holtz followed up on Rubel's tweet with the following thought:

@steverubel I suspect there's an opportunity for businesses to publish e-books, too as part of the "think like a publisher" philosophy.

This makes perfect sense. As the Times article says, the Kindle/iPad revolution in book publishing is perfect for shorter, more timely and niche-focused work:

“On the one hand, a Kindle or a Nook is perfect for reading a 1,000-page George R. R. Martin novel,” said Eric Simonoff, a literary agent. “On the other hand, these devices are uniquely suited for mid-length content that runs too long for shrinking magazines and are too pamphletlike to credibly be called a book.”

In other words, businesses can look at e-books as an ideal complement to social and content marketing strategies. E-books can be another social tactic to bring value to targeted audiences.

E-books can serve as a tactical component of a solid content marketing strategy

E-books can be ideal for companies looking to further explain a viewpoint in a given market, or as a way to provide deeper value than can be conveyed in a blog post. For that matter, there is no reason a company couldn't package up a series of blog posts into an e-book -- a tactic many bloggers have used for years.

What if, for example, the Buccaneers self-published an e-book that more deeply explained the team philosophies on offense, defense and personnel? E-books allow organizations to take deeper dive to engage their committed followers and fans.

E-books tend to carry a greater sense of worth than a blog post. Books, in whatever format, are still revered in our culture as a higher form of content. It won't be that way forever, but it is still that way today.



Can corporate e-books enhance your content marketing strategy?

The internet, as it always does, has declared war on the middleman, this time in the publishing industry. That has created an opening -- another way for companies to add value while cutting through the red tape.

Companies need to evaluate whether e-books can serve as a component of content strategy to better serve their audiences. E-books can serve lots of purposes for companies -- lead generation, conversation starters, or simply a different way to share content in a package with more permanence than a blog post or video.

Ultimately, it comes down to understanding how your audience finds you and consumes your content. E-books offer an opportunity to take a deeper dive with your most passionate advocates, packaging up your content in a format that is both easily sharable and offers a greater sense of permanence than other forms.

What topics do your audience want you to dive deeper on?

Not sure?

Ask them.

 Photo: Flickr/nSeika