The spill in the Gulf of Mexico started as a news report of an explosion and eleven men missing. Only one sentence was dedicated to the oil spillage…saying only that a tiny amount was leaking.

It has now grown and threatened the coastline of several states. It is telling a story much larger and much more damning to the shrimpers and the oil people.

Here’s an example…reported by the New York Times.

“About 35 endangered sea turtles have washed up dead on beaches along the Gulf of Mexico since Sunday, sowing fears that they were done in by the growing oil spill.

But so far scientists have found no connection between their deaths and the spill. Autopsies indicated that the turtles had ingested no oil.

It is now suspected that shrimpers out at sea before the April 20 rig explosion and spill caught the turtles in their nets, which can suffocate them.

The A.P. reports that federal fisheries investigators are looking into whether shrimpers were responsible.”

So, the oil spill exposes other abuses.

And is social media having a hay day with the suspected killing of endangered species in pursuit of the dollar? Yep. Search for “sea turtles” on Twitter and it is all about turtles and the oil spill.

Why is the sea turtle episode exploding on Twitter? Because it is the sidebar that puts a new spin on the story. There are pictures. And people are becoming emotionally attached.

And this whole business is dirty.

Our dependence on oil is dirty… due to carbon loading.

According to the University of California, every car is responsible for 1.28 tons of carbon per year.  A nation with five percent of the earth’s population consumes about 23 percent of the world’s oil output. And we are currently exceeding the regenerative ability of the earth to sustain us. Today we occupy 145% of the earth’s regenerative ability.

The extraction is dirty, and dangerous.

According to the Associated Press, the U.S. Minerals and Management Service is developing regulations aimed at preventing human error, which it identified as a factor in many of the more than 1,400 offshore oil drilling accidents between 2001 and 2007.

Sea turtles are now proving that commercial shrimpers are dirty.

And this story has so many sidebars, many which are still unknown,  that it will be tweeted about, facebooked about, and blogged about …for years.

There will be more pictures of wildlife, total victims.  And millions more new media comments.

There will be villains. And more new media comments.

There will be innocent human victims. And more new media comments.

And my point?

There is no new media strategy that can solve this, next time. This is a national tragedy.

Pundits are already coming out and writing that BP didn’t handle this the right way. Well what is the right way? Set up a war room and have the best minds churn out news?  Stay on top of the issues? Be the first to break the stories…before the media?  Be transparent? Be honest? Be responsive to new media questions?

Won’t help.

Again, this is a tragedy and one that is unfolding before our eyes. And new media is a part of delivering the story and the millions of opinions surrounding it.

BP better concentrate on fixing the problem and cleaning up the mess. And pay for all of it. After nearly two decades of screwing around with the legal system, Exxon got exactly what it wanted: a Supreme Court that reduced punitive damages from $2.5 billion to $500 million. According to reports, that is just a week’s profit for Exxon.

This time we should put the big hurt on BP. 10 billion. 20 weeks of profit. Make them howl. And the judicial branch should level the fine and walk away. That will get the attention of the other oil companies.

The Obama Administration would be wise to forget about the deals they made with the Republicans to get the health care bill passed…and kill the off-shore oil drilling initiative. DOA. Period.

Shrimpers…stop killing endangered species. You might have been innocent victims, but you sure aren’t now.

This is a big story of our time. And because of new media, we are all involved. Writing. Discussing. Taking action. Being disgusted.

And there is no strategy that will lessen the impact for BP.  It is caught in a huge unfolding story.  And the federal government is caught in the same story. So are the shrimpers. And so am I. And so are you. BP is just a spoke in the massive feeding machine connected to our lifestyles.

We in new media can pontificate all we want about this national disaster, but until we view the future with sharp, clear-eyed vision and determination…expect bigger environmental disasters.

And expect our free fall into the future to continue with the ground approaching at an ever increasing rate.

We have met the enemy, and it is us.

As best as we can tell it started in 2008 with a call from Timberland to all people in social media encouraging them to make a video about their participation in a new program called Earthkeepers. The best videos would qualify for Timberland gear. Here it is.

And although many good videos were made, you’ve got to take the good with the bad.

And this was a recent response to the video you just viewed.

When brands launch a video promotion they should keep in mind a couple of things in new media.

1. You have no control of the content or the distribution. And distribution is the killer. Almost everything that gets produced for a promotion will be put up on YouTube. And if a “parody” spot on your brand takes off, the promotion ballon was just injected with lead.

2. The long tail of new media. This stuff does not die easily. It stays on YouTube a long long time. And all it takes is for somebody to discover a negative spot, send it around, and you have a new problem born by an ancient promotion.

Brands should stop believing that all people march to the same positive tune of a new promotion and its slug line.

Oh, and the slug line used in this campaign?

Take It All On.

In 2010 the whole world will be talking. Discussing everything on many different platforms. And now that new media has shifted to real- time the speed of those discussions accelerate…greatly.

In the middle of December Google announced that real time results will be displayed from Twitter, Facebook and MySpace. This means that you, literally, can follow an event or issue on a minute-by-minute basis.

Let’s go back and look at the Motrin situation. In about 24 hours after that television commercial broke, mommy bloggers were aggregating in mass. And over that weekend while the Motrin execs were on the golf course, the mommy bloggers were scaling the walls of the corporate castle. On Monday morning, the execs were being greeted with a crisis. The great unwashed were inside the castle walls.

Again, that happened in 24 hours. That will be nothin’ compared to what will happen in real time. Take 24 hours and bring it down to 2. Here’s an fictitious example:

Let’s say that an outdoor company makes baby clothing and a Mom sees that a rash has developed on the back of her child. After a couple of minutes of investigation she determines that it is the baby shirt that is causing the problem. Onto Twitter she goes.

Tweed: My baby has a rash on her back. Has anybody seen this? Think it could be the BRAND shirt.

( 1 minute later.) Response Tweet: OMG! I had that same think happen two days ago. And my baby wore that brand.

( 90 seconds after the first Tweet) Another Response Tweet: Me too. My child has a rash and we have the same shirt!

In the real-time world…right here is where the BRAND needs to both catch the conversation, and react to it. The BRAND can not wait until somebody sees it on Google Alert because Google Alert may wait an hour before posting. And then it gets circulated within the company, and perhaps a day passes before action is considered, or taken.

Ian Capstick writing in Media Style Blog writes . “Don’t get me wrong. I use Alerts. They are useful. Helpful even.  But it’s important to note the system is unrefined, often missing data and is only one part of a comprehensive listening program you should be undertaking. If Google Alerts are your primary online listening tool; you are missing information.”

Back to the rash incident. So, a whole day goes by while a BRAND gathers information, that info is distributed, decision-makers engage and action is finally taken. The Rash Incident may have grown into an Issue…or even a Crisis. And if a Crisis…a recall may be the result.

Why? Because in two hours…a hundred Moms might be tuned into and engaging in the conversation. And within 3 hours a thousand Moms might be in the conversation. 24 hours…well. I just don’t know how big it could get.

Andy Beal writing in his blog, Seeking Alpha, believes…

“Twitter serves as a real-time information network powered by people around the world discovering what’s happening and sharing the news…In the new year, Twitter will begin supporting a billion search queries a day. It will be delivering several billion tweets per hour to users around the world.”

Several billion tweets per hour.

And Google and Bing? Well, Google is handling around 300,000 to 500,000 million searches a day.

Google and Bing can not keep up with the volume of Twitter. Beal further reports, “and that is why Google ‘alerts’ for breaking news items show up 10 – 45 minutes earlier on Twitter or monitoring packages/systems.”

So, there is new velocity in social media.

With real-time search…brands have even less time.

The search must be thorough. The response quick. And a strategy in place to handle Incidents so they do not become Issues.

All in, almost, real-time.

Recently I wrote that the distribution of information had always been a funnel but it had now turned right side up.  The mouth of the funnel is wide open and consumers are publishing because it is easy and they have opinions.  The good brands are building these funnels, advertising their communication portals (Facebook,etc) , attracting consumers, collecting opinions, engaging, finding their voices and constructively inviting/channeling consumers further down into the brand storyline. During this process the brands are quietly measuring their effectiveness, learning, and becoming much better communicators as consumers elect to engage more deeply.  They are collecting excellent data on Influencers, athletes and active consumers as the information travels down the funnel.

In recent conversations I have been painfully reminded that many me-too brands in the Outdoor Industry are not building solid funnels but building buckets with holes and no bottom.

How? Well, these companies crow that they have a Web Site, Facebook Page, are on Twitter, YouTube, and Flickr.

And consumers are initially engaging…entering the bucket. But they are not directed or invited to go anywhere.  They  just sit in the bucket, quickly draining to the bottom…without direction.

And then an analyst from Channel Signal investigates. We find that they had good sign-up for the Facebook page, a decent  following on Twitter, and that YouTube and Flickr had good traffic, but that it fell off quickly.

Why did the traffic fall off?  Because these companies did not allocate the resources to engage. Employees were not assigned to respond to consumers, and direct them to the next point of interest. Consumer questions and comments went unanswered. They were not invited to go to Facebook or the Website, or YouTube, or a User Group. And because there was no natural momentum of engagement, no funnel, consumers were stranded and then took the easy way out….quickly out the bottom of the bucket. They were invited to the conversation and then nobody talked to them.

So they didn’t stick around. And  they took all of their knowledge about the brand with them.

A study by the Chief Marketing Council shows that 38 percent of the 480 executives in the industries surveyed say their companies have no programs in place to track or propagate positive word of mouth among customers. And only 29 percent rate highly their ability to handle and resolve customer problems or complaints

All that money to make products that attract consumers. All that money to sell into retail. All that money for advertising to attract consumers. All that money to set up conversation channels.  And then the pay-off…consumers responding online by engaging in one of the channels. And…

And silence. All that wonderful potential data about consumers and what they like and don’t like about your brand and products…out the bottom of the bucket. And all those potential Influencers, gone.

Never to be captured again.

Say goodbye to measuring ROI.

Just got off the phone with old friend Mike Wallenfels, the President/C0-Founder of Mountain Hardwear. Because of Channel Signal I get early access to all sorts of information. Sometimes too early, but not this time.

So…I am working and a Channel Signal analyst sends me a link, I open it and read. Then I smile, and say damn, Wallenfels. I pick up the phone and call his cell.

I start things by saying, ” So, why am I looking at this information on my monitor?”  And he laughs.

Our conversation quickly gets past the “hardest decision I’ve ever made” and “pursue other interests” and we get to the heart of the matter.

# 1 Mike spends about 70% of his time traveling, and he doesn’t want to do that anymore. He really does want to spend more time with his wife and kids.

# 2 Once a CEO builds a company into almost 100 million in revenue, challenges to move that company forward change.

# 3  Columbia didn’t want Mike to leave. This is his decision.

So, now he’s going to Timbuk2, a company a little north of 20 million. Here’s some speculation on my part. A company this size must have a CEO that gets into the dirt with his employees. Product development. Pricing. Retailer visits. Market expansion. All growth issues that challenge a company of this size. It’s also a company that focuses on outdoor and bike…in the pack business. So, it seems to me that Mike is matching up with his passions.

And now to Columbia. Another old friend, Kirk Richardson, will be the Interim President for Hardwear. Tim Boyle is very lucky to have someone with Kirk’s skill set to step in and take over. He was a long time leader at Nike, then to Keen, and then to Columbia.

And Kirk is the kind of guy that will walk into the CEO role and make the transition seamlessly. And that needs to happen because Hardwear is a very well run company with solid people and product.

So, Mountain Hardwear is under good leadership.

And Timbuk2 is too. (Sorry couldn’t resist that.)

Good luck to both companies and their new leaders.

Courtesy: New York Times

I’ve been talking with a lot of the brands in the outdoor space lately and I’m hearing the same theme. Something like…”new media is important. We are looking at its impact.  We have to determine how much time this will take, who will execute inside the company, and how much it will cost.”

Fair enough. All good concerns.

This brings me to the core problem. The more information we load upon ourselves the less time we have for…everything.

Herbert Simon, a political scientist, wrote in 1971, “What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. The more information, the less attention, and the need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it.” Quoted from A Short Manifesto on the Future of Attention by the Design Observer

In my view, this problem is now pervasive. Consumers are focusing their attention to write messages to companies about products, customer service, and branding. And it is evident that companies do not have the attention span to:

1. Listen

2. Engage.

Why?

Because companies are swamped with so much information that much of  the valuable info gets ignored . The work force is in a dingy and the waves of information are ten feet tall.

Another problem:  many companies are still in the Broadcast Mode because it takes less attention. Executives are saying “ We are on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube…and we have our own Blog. However, that company uses those channels to simply broadcast the message. Face it, that  company doesn’t have the “employee time” to engage with those customers.

Many brands suffer from information overload.  Reposition your company away from the endless silly emails that smack of over-communication in the form of “covering my ass” , positioning the responsibility to someone else ” I sent him an email!”, or ccing the universe “so I could solicit  feedback from the team” .  While all of this is going on, consumers are trying to communicate with the company.

Companies are more self absorbed than movie stars. Stop worrying about your brand image and look away from the mirror …and see.

To all major brands in the outdoor space: time to rebuild your marketing departments. Time to reallocate employee time for New Media. So they listen for the customer. Hear them. And then respond. Time to create content that consumers find worth responding to. Time to take money away from traditional advertising (and the push messaging) and invest it in real time feedback on your products, your service, and your brand initiatives.

Back to the future, where the motto is, “The Customer is King.”

Art Smith at Ogden Newspapers

Recently I have been involved in some great email exchanges with writers that I admire. Two of them are Michael Hodgson and Kris Versteegen. Well, the point was made that traditional media was not dying, just morphing to new platforms.

Let’s take a look at the facts. Nielsen reported this the first of the year.

Nielsen Online, a service of The Nielsen Company, today reported a 16 per cent year-on-year increase in unique visitors to the top 10 newspaper Web sites, growing from 34.6 million unique visitors in December 2007 to 40.1 million in December 2008.

Here’s the Nielsen list for August:

NYTimes.com — 14,277,000 — (-27%)

washingtonpost.com — 11,565,000 — 29%

USATODAY.com — 9,761,000 — (-6%)

Daily News Online Edition — 9,131,000 — 112%
LA Times — 8,938,000 — 2%

Wall Street Journal Online — 8,341,000 — (-4%)
New York Post — 6,535,000 — 32%
Boston.com — 5,274,000 — 8%
SFGate.com/San Francisco Chronicle — 5,092,000 — 13%
Chicago Tribune — 4,442,000 — 14%

Politico — 3,401,000 — 47%
NJ.com — 2,926,000 — 41%
Atlanta Journal-Constitution — 2,747,000 — (-31%)
The Houston Chronicle — 2,569,000 — (-3%)
Philly.com — 2,500,000 — 47%

Chicago Sun-Times — 2,480,000 — (-6%)
Newsday — 2,428,000 — (-28%)
The Sacramento Bee — 2,426,000 — 84%
Orlando Sentinel — 2,089,000 — 49%
The Seattle Times — 2,040,000 — 55%

Azcentral.com — 1,999,000 — 41%
MercuryNews.com — 1,871,000 — 16%
DallasNews.com – The Dallas Morning News — 1,832,000 — (-12%)
MiamiHerald.com — 1,829,000 — 36%
The Washington Times — 1,803,000 — 56%

tampabay.com — 1,758,000 — 24%
KansasCity.com — 1,708,000 — 59%
Baltimore Sun — 1,697,000 — 7%
Star Tribune — 1,662,000 — 8%
Detroit Free Press — 1,648,000 — 9%

Look at those numbers. And the numbers are also big when it comes to good magazines, and vertical publications that offer content online.

Why? Because most people want their news and serious information delivered by reputable brands. They know that journalists who work for those brands dig for the story, present both sides, and can back up what they write with facts. Editors make sure of that.

We see this on Channel Signal all the time. We have a Channel called Online Traditional Media, and the traffic is almost always much larger then any blog. Online Traditional Media is not dead. If anything it is growing. And as it morps it will get healthier as it develops a new system of payment.

I believe that people do want the facts, especially when first trying to understand an issue.

So, media employing professional journalists (to escape titles for a moment) will find a way to make money. Consumers understand the value and will pay for the privilege of solid information.

And we need debate and dialogue that is filtered with facts and reason. Spewing just isn’t working for me anymore.

Recently I have heard from a growing number of my fellow tweeters who have been receiving “follow” requests from, well, not people they want to follow. I too have been getting them. These requests come from people who are trying to sell me stuff and its the kind of stuff that I don’t want to buy. 

a. I don’t want to work from home and make 50k a month selling god-knows what

b. I have no interest in establishing a relationship with a hooker or stripper. 

c. I do not want to be sold the latest stuff in marketing or branding.

d. I have no interest in a consultant who reaches out to me via Twitter…me and thousands of other people. 

Here’s what I want. I want to follow quality people who help me grow. I want followers who find what I am writing about worthwhile. And I think that is what most people honestly using Twitter want. 

So, if I have 100 followers and they are the right people, I win. And if I follow 100 people and they provide great insights, I win.  If new media is like a cocktail party, then throw a small one, invite the best people you can, and have meaningful conversations. 

So. as we conduct more and more searches at Channel Signal, we are becoming less intrigued with a tweeter who has 3,000 followers. Why? Because many of those followers are just hoping to get followed back. There may be no substance to that Twitter account.

To be sure, there are tweeters out there that have thousands of followers who are sincerely interested in the thoughts and experiences of that tweeter. Think Lance Armstrong, especially now since the Tour is happening. However, that is a minority.

Unfortunately here is the thinking of many tweeters:

“So, you follow me and I’ll follow you. I don’t really care about you and I can’t possibly read 3 thousand tweets,  but understand I’m using you to beef up my numbers. I, in turn, am beefing up your numbers, so you should be okay with it,  right?

Wrong. Twitter is a great tool. It broke the news in Mombai, Tehran, China, and in Honduras. It is the national dialogue running underneath our daily lives. It is a great search tool for understanding the discussions around very important topics. Twitter is wonderful and that’s why it is an important Channel in Channel Signal. 

However, we can not let the riff-raff into the conversation. Hit that “block” button that Twitter provides. And don’t feel bad. These people don’t know you, don’t care about you, and aren’t going to read what you write. They are either playing a numbers sales game or they want to beef up their traffic. 

Soon, technology will qualify the number of followers a tweeter has, and who that tweeter is following. Influencers will be judged not only on the quantity of followers but also the quality…particularly the quality. 

From his first and best album, Ram, Paul McCartney wrote a great rocker called Smile Away. “Block” when you don’t want to enter the conversation, say no thanks…and smile away.

Recently I was in downtown Salt Lake and came across two people begging for money, clothing, anything. This time I looked closely, without the “go find a job” attitude that I normally carry. These were people who were looking for jobs. The signs were heartfelt, and I thought, authentic. I believed they would drop everything and follow me if I offered them a job. 

And then I started thinking about all of the excess inventory that the outdoor recreational industry dumps every year. Jackets, socks, pants, long underwear. Inventory that manufacturers try to hide from retailers by putting the stuff in the backchannels and then the product sells for dirt cheap. Or retailers try to hide excess inventory from the manufacturers by going online under another banner and selling stuff at a steep discount. (More about that in a post coming up.) 

Is there a better way?

I think so. Here’s an idea. 

Instead of dumping inventory into these back channels, take it and offer it to the out-of-work/homeless folks in ten major cities. It comes with a price tag. To receive the clothing package each person-in-need must sign-up for the brand’s environmental or humanitarian cause in that city.

Brand volunteers go out into a city and find the real people who want to work and contribute. These people get assigned to a project and are told where and when to show up. River clean-ups, parks, beach clean-ups…there are a millions projects out there. 

The projects last for a weekend. On Saturday and Sunday…breakfast, lunch, and a dinner will be served to the homeless at the project locations. At the end of that weekend the volunteers get a great clothing package from the outdoor manufacturer. 

Local retailers would volunteer and offer other types of support… and benefit by having their establishments featured in the local press. 

Can you imagine the public relations benefits of such a program? Every local television station would go “live” from a volunteer location. Radio and print would be all over it. And in ten cities. Get your PR folks to talk with the big guns…like The Today Show, GMA, etc. Would this appeal to them? Uhhhh, yea. A manufacturer giving back to ten cities and to the folks who need some help. Headline:  Manufacturer, Homeless, and Local Environmental Groups Combine To Make A Difference. 

And new media would take the story and run with it. Outdoor blogs. Green blogs. Political blogs. Big time. Bloggers would be wondering how else we can employ the unemployed for the benefit of all? Twitter would be on fire with the brand volunteers, press, bloggers, etc.  who witnessed these events. 

So, instead of dumping product, a manufacturer is putting that clothing to good use. And leveraging it by getting more publicity then that manufacturer has gotten in the last three years-combined.

Too expensive? How expensive is it to find a home for all excess inventory that disappears without profit, with no benefit to the company, and all the while contributing to price erosion?

So find a home for that excess inventory in a place of gratitude, work, and good will. Who knows, the company might change lives, and those are follow-up stories worth gold. 

Outdoor recreation has soul. I’ve seen it. Show more, and the benefits to the company will come in all forms.

Homeless person to a brand representative:  ”Thank you for the long underwear. I’d like to help further with the clean-up. Will you be doing this again?”

I read a short good article today in Junta42 about what will be the next big thing. And that is media becoming part of a brand. I started reflecting back on my Channel Signal presentations to some of the larger players in the outdoor recreational space in the last couple of weeks. That same question was asked by the company leaders. Maybe not in these exact words, but the dialogue is close. 

CEO: “So, where are we going with all of this? I get the importance of new media, but where is this taking my company?” 

Me: “You will become a media company along with a manufacturer.” 

Then I get the stare. 

CEO: “We know nothing about media, we make products.”  

Me: ” You make products and your customers now want to know how to best use them and perform better with them. And that means you publish that information as part of your product and brand offerings. 

CEO: “How do we get paid for that?”

Me: “The better the information and the better your distribution of that information, the more your brand and products spread throughout new media. And the more it spreads, the more consumers will learn and ask about your brand and products. Your sales go up.” 

CEO: “So, how do we distribute this information? I know we can develop the content, but how do we get it out there?”  

Me: “Find the influencers in your vertical markets?”

Another stare while this info gets processed. 

CEO: “What can they do for us?”

Me: “Spread your brand, product, and messaging faster and better than anything you’ve ever done in the past.”

A pause.

CEO: “If that is the case, then we need to think about the long term restructuring of this company.” 

And that leader is on his/her way to sustained growth.

“Ship to ship.” — Kirk, “Hailing frequencies open.” — Uhura,