Steven Slater, being the savvy business man that he is, has hired high-profile publicist Howard Bragman to represent him. Once those pesky criminal charges are dealt with, Howard intends to help extend Slater’s 15 minutes of fame (they’re entertaining reality show offers and potential book deals). Interestingly, while Slater has only had PR representation for less than 24 hours now and his former employer has an entire team working to keep its brand reputation crystal clean, Slater has been coming out on top in the blogosphere and Twitter-world.

Of course, being a working-class hero is great and big businesses have a harder time of looking like the good guys, but the fact that Slater seriously broke the law doesn’t seem to be affecting his public persona one iota…and hiring a top publicist is only going to help turn things in his favor.

JetBlue’s most recent response to the image issue is quite interesting as well. Back by popular demand, they have reintroduced the “all you can jet” promotion after the resounding success of last year’s promotion. However, is this enough to help them regain public favor or will consumers believe the angry spewings of a disgruntled employee? Likely both issues will subside and things will return to status quo in weeks, but it’s an intriguing case study in the powers of spin.

One of the most interesting aspects of Twitter is that it provides a neutral playing ground for every type of communications agenda. I often find myself arguing that the next wave of successful social networking sites will specialize in terms of target audience, vertical, or a similar differentiating factor. (LinkedIn would be a prime example of this theory. Infer what you will about my thoughts on Facebook.) While you can’t necessarily argue that Twitter is a pure social network, its success is not accounted for in the paradigm I just described. In fact, Twitter works because of its lack of specialization. It’s open and neutral, and people are using it for many different, equally relevant, purposes.

That means that within lots of large corporations right now, there is an internal battle royale happening between the marketing, PR and customer service teams over who “owns” Twitter. In some cases, that means owning the domain-level Twitter handle, like @pepsi (though you will find that many big brands, including @comcast, @verizon and @coke, failed to snatch up theirs).  But it’s not so much about the exact username as it is about who is speaking for The Brand, regardless of the handle. In my stereotypical scenario, marketing wants to tweet out discount codes or Shaq-style “first person who touches me gets tickets to the game”; PR wants to communicate with influencers (like journalists); and customer service wants to use Twitter as a 24/7 outlet for feedback, questions and help.

The problem? These audiences overlap. Maybe a journalist wants those free tickets, or a customer is looking for an answer they can post to their blog. When does the PR person throw it over the fence to customer service, and vice versa? This isn’t something I face on a day-to-day basis, but I do get the occasional email from my clients’ customers, if only because my email address is so visible on the company websites. But email these days is a thoroughly understood medium. PR, marketing and customer service people have all used it long enough to feel comfortable in its protocol and only occasionally cringe when the person at the call center doesn’t realize they’re talking to David Pogue. [Ed note: I made that up.]

One of the reasons the communications ownership question pops up with Twitter is because it’s so easy to see everyone’s hands in the pot. Twitter is open, public. But, as R/WW noted, services like Radian6 are being marketed and sold to PR folks, when their feature set is probably close to similar offerings on the CRM/customer service market. I wonder how many companies are using Radian6-like tools without their customer service staff having access to it, or even knowing about it.

There are a few solutions emerging to the Twitter land-grab. First, I think of Jenny Dervin’s presentation at a recent BDI conference. She and Morgan Johnston in the corporate communications department were upfront about their desire to own @jetBlue. They envisioned jetBlue’s Twitter presence as an “information booth.” If you identify the tool, and make the case for how to use it first, then you win. (The irony is not lost on me that jetBlue’s PR team is basically fulfilling a customer service role, though.)

Another solution, and one that I see gaining more traction, is the fractured approach. Many companies are creating naming conventions that users can recognize on Twitter as rolling up to the same corporation. While Comcast is ignoring their domain-level handle, they’ve got a handful of individuals like @comcastbill under the @comcastcares umbrella. In this example, each Comcast twitterer appears to be a part of the customer service team. But I don’t see why marketing, PR and customer service folks can’t do the same. The key is to clearly identify, either within the profile or the background, what this particular account is for while also directing people to the other related twitterers.

There are also individuals who — by choice or by accident — speak on behalf of brands, which poses its own set of problems: Which department? from corporate or agency? What if there are more than one? What if they disagree with one another?

I guess the question is, are PR, marketing and customer service at odds with one another? Will publicly negotiating Twitter turf make us open our eyes to the many other tools we can be using and sharing together (like Radian6)? Is this already happening, and I’m just not aware of it?

Or perhaps the corporate Twitterer will emerge as the next step in human evolution. Sometimes they’ll talk about the brand. Sometimes they’ll engage with journalists. Sometimes they’ll offer discount codes, coupons, and tips. And sometimes they’ll just say, “Good morning, tweeple!” In other words, the corporate Twitterer will transcend PR, marketing and customer service roles. Instead of being a corporate communicator, they’ll just be…human.

See also.

I thought it was a great gathering: The keynote speaker was Ray Kerins, VP Worldwide Communications, Pfizer. The panel that followed was moderated by Melanie Milstein, author of Twitter and the Micro-Messaging Revolution with Dave Armon, President PR Newswire, David Sacks, Founder of Yammer, Paul Gennaro, Chief Communication Officer, AECOM, Morgan Johnston, Corporate Communications Manager, JetBlue, and Marc Monseau, Director, Media Relations, Johnson & Johnson

The forum then broke out into roundtable sessions moderated by professionals in PR and Marketing who are involved and active in social media and real-time communications.

It was exciting to actually meet and talk to all of these good people that are the front-runners in embracing and using social media and real-time communications to strengthen their brand and connect and communicate with their customers.

I must say, it was mostly in a B2C context, but the forum tried to cover B2B as well.

Everyone was fired up; the room was abuzz with talk, questions, and networking. All the social media buzzwords you could find were flying around: Twitter, YouTube, FaceBook, MySpace, Flickr, blogging, tweeting, video, RSS, IM, email, wikis and on and on…

I felt that people could not get enough information. Everybody was thirsty to learn more.

The questions seemed to be unanimous and ubiquitous:
How do I start?
What does it take from a tactical point of view? One person or a team of 10?
What are the risks?
What are the benefits?
Can I calculate ROI?
How do I get executive management on board?
How do I manage a crisis?
What is a fast response? Two days, two hours, 2 minutes or 2 seconds?
How do I control what’s out there?
How do I manage and aggregate all the different platforms for RTC?
What about traditional media?
How do I get buzz going for a small company that’s not a JetBlue or J&J?

Some questions were tackled and answered, some were not, some got an honest “we don’t know the answer to that yet”.

My key takeaways – and I hope this helps all of us – were:
- Start by discovering what conversations are going on in the social media space like Twitter, YouTube and blogs
- Monitor these everyday by getting RSS feeds through Google RSS or Google Alerts
- Make sure you understand and define your goals and what your communications strategy is
- Don’t be afraid to dip your toe into this fast-flowing social media river.
- Conversations are happening about your company anyway, so get involved
- Depending on your corporation or business, you should decide how to become part of these conversations and who should be answering
- Key: BE HONEST, BE TRANSPARENT
- Employees are spokespeople for the company – they are out there using Twitter and the likes, so they should be brought up to speed
- To do this, and do this right, in a big corporation, there needs to be a mind shift from the top down. Changes in the organization need to be made. Processes need to be streamlined. The social media spokespeople need to be empowered to reply quickly
- To quote Morgan Jonston from JefBlue, “This is about humanization of the brand!”
- Be careful not to seem like the overbearing “big brother”, don’t be intimidating
- Open up, LISTEN to your customers, be committed to change
- Remember and be aware: The line is thinning between traditional media and social media – many journalists have left traditional media and are now influential bloggers/tweeters

Lots of *stuff* to take in…

I look forward to a follow up event, which, in my opinion, could be a full day event, instead of half a day.

If you’d like to hear the two main sessions they are available here.

*Please* add your comments – I would love to hear your opinion and additions!

There’s a conference this week called the ‘Real-Time Communications Conference‘ coming up this Wednesday, January 14th at the Graduate  Center of the City University of New York from 8:00 AM until 12:15 PM. They have a great line up of speakers (including myself but here are some highlights: David Sacks, Founder & CEO, Yammer, Morgan Johnston, Corporate Communications Manager, JetBlue, Raymond Kerins, Vice President/Worldwide Communications, Pfizer. There are general sessions that start the day and then topic-focused roundtables. Some of the topics covered include:

* Measuring What is Being Said About Your Brand
* Crisis Communication & Real-Time Communications – What’s the Difference?
* Real-time communications, real measures: Influencing audiences and assessing impacts
* Building Communities with Real-Time Communications
* Real-time broadcasting and content distribution
* Using Micro-Messaging Tools such as Twitter and Yammer (This one’s mine)
* Real-Time PR Strategies in Good and Bad Times
and quite a few more. Check out the full agenda at www.bdionline.com/realtimecommunications.

If you’d like to attend, use promo code “SPEAKER” to register for the discounted rate of $125. If you’re there, please come by and introduce yourself.

I think all participants would agree that the day was a success. While the experience wasn’t without its small snafus, like the escalator that lurched to a stop while I was standing on it, I think the folks at jetBlue should be proud. They should be proud of their new terminal, which is gorgeous, but also proud that their company’s level of brand loyalty is so high that a large group of people showed up on the weekend, unpaid, to be a part of the trial.

I haven’t mentioned this yet, but almost as soon as I hit “publish” on my previous jetBlue post, the company’s Vice President of Corporate Communications, Todd Burke, emailed me to say hi and thank me for my enthusiasm. I got to meet Todd on-site, thanks in no small part to jetBlue’s Corporate Communications Manager (and web guru) Morgan Johnston. I was only one of the many participants Morgan chatted up through the course of the day. As busy as they were escorting high profile news outlets like The Wall Street Journal through the terminal, they were still as friendly as can be.

And really, that’s what stuck with me during the T5 trial. It was obvious that jetBlue does an amazing job of recruiting employees that are incredibly articulate and friendly. They were having fun! I’m sure they were nervous (Heathrow’s T5 debacle came up in my conversation with Morgan), but it didn’t show at all.

I’ve uploaded a few more T5 photos to the Affect Strategies Flickr account if you’re interested in checking them out. Flights out of JFK will switch from Terminal 6 to T5 in early October, so you’ll soon be able to visit for yourself. Though I wasn’t able to access the old TWA terminal, Morgan says that the Port Authority will eventually open it up for public view.

Thanks again to Todd, Morgan and the rest of the jetBlue team! Happy jetting

A couple of weeks ago, I got an invitation from jetBlue to participate in a “kick the tires” day at JFK Terminal 5. If you’ve flown out of JFK, you have probably seen the mysterious, Eero Saarinen-designed Terminal 5 peeking at you from your seat on the Air Train. It’s been out of use since TWA went out of business in the mid-90s and sitting there, empty, since.

jetBlue purchased Terminal 5 a few years ago, spiffed it up, and built a new terminal directly behind it. And this Saturday at 9am, I’ll be one of a few hundred (thousand?) people pretending to fly somewhere to make sure all the kinks are worked out before the official opening. YEAH!

I can’t describe how psyched I am to participate — as an airline and design buff, a jetBlue lover, and also as a PR pro. I haven’t seen jetBlue make any noise from a PR perspective about this tryout day, though I’m sure they’re doing it because they’re eager to avoid the catastrophe that British Airways Terminal 5 experienced on its opening day at Heathrow. (Note that BA also held a tryout day.)

I’ll give you an update next week on how the day went. My shift starts at 9am. Parking is free, and barbecue will be served for lunch. Now, the important question: should I attend “in character?” I wonder where my fake ticket says I’m headed.

Related Links
Vintage photos of T5 in service
TWA in PBS documentary Chasing the Sun
Gothamist: Saarinen’s TWA Terminal to Reopen?

This is a fascinating story in and of itself, however, it also underscores the power of Twitter. At the same time, I believe that it is critical that people avoid using Twitter to send useless information out regarding their whereabouts (i.e. “I’m in line at Starbucks waiting for my coffee” or “I am on a Jet Blue flight to Boston, Seat 22E”). I have been following quite a few people on Twitter and I am often frustrated by the pointless ‘tweets’ that they send out. (Yes, if I was in middle school, I’d like to know that my BFF was at the Mall buying a 50 Cent CD, however, I’m talking about grown business men and women – however immature.)

If James had been a frivolous tweeter, his one-word tweet “Arrested” might have gone unnoticed by his friends. Although Twitter makes it easy to tell your network of friends and colleagues what you are doing, at any given moment, maybe you should wait until you are doing something noteworthy, or people will start to tune out your tweets.

Front

Opened

Baskets containing hundreds of these were sitting on top of every jetBlue check-in kiosk. If you grabbed one, you hit the jackpot — free Airborne On the Go sample, a 55 cent coupon off of your next Airborne purchase, AND a unique sweepstakes code to enter at airbornehealth.com/jetblue:

I grabbed three — one to take, one to share, and one to bring to the office to blog about. If you missed this promotion, you can sign up for a free sample of Airborne On the Go.

Well done, marketers! Here’s hoping I win that $500 jetBlue travel card.