Weekly Roundup #1: Secret menus, LinkedIn stalking, and more

Here's a new feature: A weekly collection of useful and interesting links for busy marketing and communication pros. We'll cover business topics, sure. But will also mix in some useful travel info and other items.

• More restaurants now offer "secret," off-the-menu items, promoted through social media and mobile apps. Not only do secret menus create customer loyalty by making people feel like insiders, but they offer a cheaper way to add new choices. "Secret" items don't require expensive menu or signage changes.
• Is LinkedIn a sleeping giant in the publishing game? The business networking site Is behaving that way. The company curates articles from over one million publications and sends them to its 200 million users, and also produces unique content through its influencer network.
• Christopher Penn reminds us: be where the competition isn't. He looks at the explosion in usage of the term "digital marketing," and wonders when he last got a high-quality, glossy direct mailer, for example. Digital marketing isn't really a descriptive term, anyway. Nearly all marketing is digital at some level -- even a glossy mailer.
• ESPN had a great piece this week on the integration of college football. In the 1960s my alma mater, Michigan State, took African-American players southern teams would not. The Spartans won championships, and soon everyone followed MSU's lead. (#humblebrag)
• As communicators and marketers, we've heard it before, but can't hear it too much: you have to tell a story.
• How to avoid looking like a stalker on LinkedIn, and a bunch of other useful tips for the site.
• Learn from how Southwest Airlines handled four social media crises. Among the learning: sometimes it's better to let folks sort things out themselves online. Also: targeting news to a handful of influential blogs can be just as effective as a press release.
• Speaking of airlines, aren't the majors generous to not charge fees for carry-on bags? Wait, what? Oh. It's really because airlines fear the potential add-on labor and liability costs of more checked luggage.

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:

A relentless focus on value.

A year ago, Peter Shankman posted this epic rant on social media “experts.” (I highly recommend it. The post is an ideal 101-level course on how to take a controversial but defendable position that drives conversation. Heat from readers isn’t always a bad thing.)

But I digress. Peter re-shared the post this week on his Facebook feed. One of the Facebook comments that followed really hit home:

"... I 'defriended' a business last week that asked me ‘What are you doing this weekend?’"

Feeds are cluttered. Lives are cluttered. Brains are cluttered. As social evolves, marketers can't be trite or disingenuous. We have to develop and continually sharpen a relentless focus on value when we engage our audience. People have 47 million other choices to which they can and will immediately turn.

A grammatical error or two may be forgiven. Valuable content is rewarded, even if it lacks some polish. But boredom, irrelevance and disingenuity? Those mistakes are punished immediately. 

Stop the hysteria: Social media isn't ludicrously complicated.

 Business Insider is getting lots of buzz by re-posting this graphic with the ridiculous headline "This INSANE Graphic Shows How Ludicrously Complicated Social Media Marketing Is Now":

Graphic via Buddy Media

What percentage of these logos are totally useless to a marketer trying achieve his or her goals? Eighty-plus percent? Ninety-plus percent?

A media buyer could create the same graphic out of TV networks, TV shows, cable providers, satellite providers and DVRs. Would Business Insider blare the headline "This INSANE Graphic Shows How Ludicrously Complicated Television Advertising Is Now!!!"

No. With a TV buy, you define your audience and select the networks and or/programs that your audience watches.

Hmm.

Know your target audience. Listen and discover which social platforms it uses. Then narrow the field and engage in the few areas that matter to helping you achieve your goals.

In fairness to Buddy Media, that was the point. And that's what they help marketers do: listen and narrow the field. The graphic went viral, so good for them.

And yet, I can hear the trees screaming in the forest right now as armies of social media shysters print this graphic and shove it in front of prospects to scare them into buying services to spread their messages to places it doesn't need to go.

Listening and learning isn't ludicrious, or insane, or scary. It's how you make the complex more simple, more focused. It doesn't matter if the subject is social media or cold fusion or baking cakes. The upfront work helps show the path.

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.