"He became a millionaire:" Make it go away!

My daughter and I went out for Chinese food tonight, and a few seconds after this photo was taken, in the no-time-for-segues, relentless conversational pace of teenage girls, she blurted, "Oh, my gosh. My history teacher. Today. He starts singing that song. The Beverly Hillbillies. And he asked, 'What happened to Jed?' And I said, 'He became a millionaire.' And he asked, 'How did you know that?' And I said my dad walks around the house singing it ALL the time."

Whew!
 
About an hour later, Luci (my dog, the quieter of the females in my house) and I walked the mile up to our church's community garden. This past weekend, my wife and I planted a couple of tomato plants and seeds for peas, beans, carrots, spinach and other foods that we don't like but that grow in the fall, and I was planning on watering.

But I took another look at the sky just to be sure it's not going to rain, and this is what I saw ... beautiful!



 

And with the same uncontrollable mind rush that delivered "first thing you know ol' Jed's a millionaire" to my daughter, Tennessee Ernie Ford's choir launches into:

 

He walks with me

And He talks with me

And He tells me I am his own

 

Ironically, that song is In the Garden, and I remember my dad playing Tennessee Ernie Ford's album and singing along (it's a great phrase for meditation, especially if you just happen to be in a garden watering vegetables). 



 

So, what causes those "mind rushes?" What makes those memories stick.

 

Why can you say "three-hour tour" to someone my age -- many of us who can't even remember to pull our zippers up -- and we immediately break into the theme song from Gilligan's Island? Walk up to a baby boomer and say, "farm livin' is the life for me," and we're holding a pitchfork or driving an imaginary tractor, singing "Green Acres."

 

What makes words, phrases and ideas memorable? We were a TV generation, and those simple, story-telling theme songs burned forever in our brains. But how can contemporary writers deliver messages that have the same impact?

 

My daughter's Beverly Hillbillies horror reminded me of Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die (Heath and Heath, 2007) that I reported on a few years ago.

 

It convincingly outlines the SUCCESs concept to making writing memorable. SUCCESs is the authors' acronym for the key elements to creating messages that "stick" with readers or listeners:

• Simple
• Unexpected
• Concrete
• Credible
• Emotional
• Stories

Authors Chip and Dan Heath immediately make their point in chapter one, "The Kidney Heist," telling the urban legend about a traveling salesman who meets a woman in a bar, invites her to his room, and then the next thing he remembers is waking up in a bathtub full of ice with stitches on the spot covering where his kidney should be.

 

Re-read or simply re-tell that story. Like so many urban legends and other stories, theme songs, commercials and movie scenes that have created our unique cultures, it has all the SUCCESs elements to make it memorable. Made to Stick is a must-read for any writer, but especially those writer charged with delivering convincing, persuasive messages to move publics to action.

 

Or for those writers who want to plague TV-watching fans long into middle age (and their children ... bwahahahahahaha) with ditties that never die, like my own personel nemeses Underdog, Batman and, of course, The Addams Family (snap, snap).

 

My dad loved to play his guitar and sing, and he especially liked country gospel and bluegrass music. I know I've posted this photo before, but it's one of my favorites, so just think of it as a bonus. Here's my dad:

 

 

Follow me on Twitter: @FWgib

 

Heath, Chip and Dan Heath. Made to stick: why some ideas survive and others die. New York: Random House, 2007.



 

 



Judas: a bad hiring decision = bad PR

(author's note: this is not a personal Christian testimony, nor an offer to debate the Godliness of Jesus Christ, the literal interpretation of the Bible, the gender of God, the eternal status of Judas, or the demonic influence of "Jesus Christ Superstar" ... and, yes, there is a PR lesson in here)


Sometimes I'm embarrassed because I'm Peter, ripping out my sword to fight the good fight, typing words with all the smoothness of a rapier whipping through the air ... and then I accidentally cut off some poor bystander's ear. As passionate and fiery as can be, but maybe just a little off-center of understanding or communicating the real message.

As a communications professional, I sometimes I like to think I'm Paul and have been blessed with the gifts of empathy, understanding and persuasion, of being all things to all men. Best communications advice ever: be as shrewd as a snake, but as innocent as a dove.

Other times I feel like Job, sitting pitifully on my dung heap. Unlike the ever-patient Job though, I'm asking, "How did I end up in (cause) this mess? Why doesn't anybody understand me?"

But this time, I recognized myself in Judas. Not the traditional Judas-the-hated-betrayer, but Judas, the overly cautious. Judas, the disillusioned opportunist. Judas, the "problem."

A few months ago, I took a trip back in time to watch "Jesus Christ Superstar;" and that's when I noticed. Singing Heaven on Their Minds, Judas warns Jesus about his followers turning on him:

Listen Jesus I don't like what I see
All I ask is that you listen to me

And remember - I've been your right hand man all along

You have set them all on fire

They think they've found the new Messiah

And they'll hurt you when they find they're wrong

 

And then after telling Jesus that everything he says gets "twisted in some other way" and positing that he would be safer remaining a carpenter, he shows fear when he warns of Roman backlash:
Listen Jesus do you care for your race?
Don't you see we must keep in our place?

We are occupied - have you forgotten how put down we are?

I am frightened by the crowd

For we are getting much too loud

And they'll crush us if we go too far

And that's where I begin to collect my 30 pieces of silver. I like to think of myself as an independent rogue with unquestionably smooth collaborative skills; but I really like the status quo.

And that's also where I admire the true public relations professional who recognizes and thrives with opportunity and stands firm under duress. I'm great as long as all is good. A small hiccup, and I'm still there for you. Some grumbling among the troops, and I'm becoming hesitant and offering "insight" into alternatives. A plausible threat to success, and I sometimes go straight to "it's been real, and it's been fun, but ..."

I couldn't have been surprised more to see Judas and find myself saying, "hey, that's me." I had to fill a week of Sunday School earlier this month and based my lesson on this thought. I did a little research on Judas and gained some interesting insight.

Judas was the Apostles' money man. He handled all the funds, and in talking with our class, I asked them to consider an imaginary firm, "Jesus, Inc." (not the existing non-profit). Peter would be its chief operating officer, and Judas would be its chief financial officer.

In my own mind, I took a step further. Fortunately, for those of us who are believers, Jesus' death and resurrection is part of the grand plan; but the imaginary "Jesus, Inc." had a serious public relations problem, both internally and externally.

Judas definitely was an outsider. All the rest of Jesus' apostles were from Galilee, and some Biblical scholars associate Judas' Iscariot name with the town of Kerioth, near the Dead Sea and FAR south of Galilee. 

More importantly, Iscariot is a name associated with Zealots, or those militaristic Jews who wanted to overthrow the Romans occupying their homeland. The Jews had been waiting for a messiah or king, like the Old Testament kings, who could bring them back to power; and Judas may have followed Jesus so he could be there when the first shots of the revolution were fired (thrown? hurled? catapulted?).

In other words, Judas was ready for the fight. He had a cause, and Jesus was his ticket to winning. Unfortunately for Judas, "Jesus, Inc." had an entirely different mission. Back in the day, I was told by supervisors that I was hard to manage. Like Judas, I sometimes missed the bigger picture because I was painting my own.

Judas eventually recognized that Jesus was not going to win him his personal throne overlooking miles and miles and miles and miles of sand (and he probably hadn't learned about the oil yet). He even saw Jesus as a detriment to his goal, a thorn in the side of his enemies who, riled, could easily and readily crush everything in their path.
 
And that's when he went to the Jewish high priests and elders to work out the details. Afraid that Jesus would force the Romans to upset their comfortable status quo, in "Superstar," the high priests sing "This Jesus Must Die." 

When Judas sings "Damned for All Time" in Superstar -- "I came because I had to I'm the one who saw; Jesus can't control it like he did before" -- the viewer gets a better understanding of his Zealot motives (a Jesus-era Eric Snowden?).

And if you can't accept that Jesus' death and resurrection provides hope to a dying world (one way or the other), then maybe Judas' character has a point about "Jesus, Inc.'s" PR problems, when he sings the title song, "Superstar:"

Why you let the things you did get so out of your hand
You'd have managed better if you'd had it planned

Why'd you choose such a backward time and such a strange land?

If you'd come today you would have reached a whole nation

Israel in 4 BC had no mass communication

 

And that's the PR lesson.

• For those publics, internal and external, who just don't get our message, how do we adjust?
• How do we strengthen our message and our plan to be sure it endures under stress? 
• How do we address those "followers" who do us more damage than good, who misunderstand and misrepresent our mission?
• Have we tested our message to be sure it's audience-focused and clearly communicated with a minimum of being "twisted in some other way" by our opponents or those we'd like to sway to our side.
• Are we still in "Israel in 4 BC?" Or are we professionals using the most effective, current tools and methods to develop that coveted "mutually beneficial" PR relationship with our client's public?

Finally, do we have a strategic communications plan customized to the goals and informed interests of our client? Or are we our client's "Judas," focusing on our own goals and simply offering our client a cookie-cutter approach to publicity and column inches?


Follow me on Twitter: @FWgib

The rewards of doing "the manly thing"

It's that time of the year, and I didn't even think about it until a class discussion this evening on Lance Armstrong and the effect of his fall from grace on his Livestrong Foundation.

I don't remember the exact date except that it was a Tuesday evening in September 2004. I'd just crawled into bed and was doing what I refer to as "the manly thing" -- scratching and adjusting (yes, young people, romance can stay in your relationship).

And sometimes, you just know. My right testicle felt as hard and large as a pecan (a good-sized pecan, of course). A double-check, a calm-down deep breath, and I turned to my wife in the dark and said, "Feel this." Misunderstanding my motives, her response: "I'm already asleep."

I didn't know anything about testicular cancer, but I just knew; and I spent half the night on the Internet. Risk higher in tall men. Risk about five times higher among white men than Blacks or Hispanics. Oh, crap. Family history ... none, so okay there, except that only about 3 percent of men diagnosed have a family history of testicular cancer.

Good news! "About half of testicular cancers occur in men between the ages of 20 and 34." Bad news -- "But this cancer can affect males of any age, including infants and elderly men." I'd always been immature, but to get a young man's disease in my late 40s? Survival rate -- 95 percent. What about that other 5 percent (I'm an optimist until ...)?

The next few days were a whirlwind. Called my family doctor Wednesday morning. His receptionist was going to schedule me for the following week. When I told her why I wanted to see the doctor, she put me on hold to talk with the doctor; and when she came back on the line, she asked, "How soon can you get here?"

My family doctor scheduled me for a sonogram on Thursday. When he saw the results, he referred me to a urologist, who I saw on Friday.

We weren't active in a church, and I hadn't learned of God's gift of Grace yet, but I called my sister -- the one I'd referred to as a "holy-roller" for years -- and asked for her prayers. I remember thinking, "I need the A-Team on this one."

My visit with the urologist wrapped up with "I can't do the surgery tomorrow, but let's get you in first thing Monday morning."

What!!!? Can't do the surgery tomorrow? How urgent is this?

Longest weekend of my life. The doctor never used the word "cancer," but talked about a seminoma. I told my wife that I didn't really understand, but that we were getting up at 4 a.m. Monday to get "something" cut off.

I thought about my kids growing up. I thought about how Kim and I always talked about growing old together. I thought about harems I could guard as a eunuch (sometimes it's hard to shake a maudlin sense of humor). And I thought about standing waist-deep in waste materials and trash when I worked at the DuPont refinery the summer after high school graduation.

Three distinct memories of the surgery:

Handing me a pen, the prep staff asked, "Mr. Bowden, will you put an X by the testicle we're supposed to remove?"

"Mr. Bowden, I'm your anesthesiologist, and this will help you rela..."

And then Kim trying to sleep in a straight-back, recovery-room chair next to my bed. I'd look up, giggle and go back to sleep ... several times. I was enjoying the best sleep of my life.

Following my surgery, I went through radiation treatments, and I almost felt guilty for being able to walk in and out of the surgery center knowing that all would be well. Many of my fellow patients weren't so lucky. Many had to be wheeled in for what must've been the last-attempt chemotherapy treatments. Others stopped showing up, and even in the age of HIPPA regulations, the technicians' sad conversations hinted at the inevitable.

I even thanked people in stores who I saw wearing the yellow Livestrong bracelets.

A few years later, I started reading Lance Armstong's "It's Not About the Bike: My Journey Back to Life." Lance failed to read the signs. His testicle grew to the size of an orange before he sought a diagnosis (how can you bicycle with a testicle the size of an orange?).

If I remember correctly, Lance's cancer metasticized into his lungs and then his brain. I thought about how quickly my week went from my Tuesday-night doing "the manly thing" to Monday-morning surgery. And I almost passed out. I was so grateful for the receptionist who asked, "How soon can you get here?" and the surgeon who said, "first thing Monday." But I still couldn't finish Lance's book.

Lance Armstrong 'fessed up to using performance enhancing drugs during his Tour de France victories when he appeared on the Oprah Winfrey show in January. NPR broadcast an interview with Livestrong Foundation CEO Doug Ulman the following day, prior to part two of the Oprah interview.

PR professionals should take notes. Ulman was brilliant in his responses to queries about Armstrong's lying about his drug usage. He stayed the course. 

Listen to the interview, but here are a couple of his responses related to knowledge of the doping and the impact of the scandal on the foundation:

 "You know, Lance obviously founded the organization. And his story, his cancer journey, resonated with millions of people. And the Livestrong Foundation and Livestrong Movement is now at a point where it is moved beyond any one individual, and it's about literally millions of people who, unfortunately, are facing or have faced this illness themselves."

And later ...

"Well, I'll definitely watch (the interview with Oprah Winfrey) because it's important to me and to the organization. And I think it's going to take a while for people of all walks of life to process this. But ultimately, come Tuesday, this foundation is going to be, again, 100 percent focused on fulfilling our mission of serving those with cancer."

Awesome responses.

So, for me, I don't give a (insert your own point of emphasis) about what Lance ate, drank or injected. I'd like to tell him to keep his jerseys, kind of as a gift from me. I just want to say, "thanks."


Follow me on Twitter: @FWgib

(flying) Machine I Loathe to Fly

I thought it was just me. My wife, daughter and I flew Spirit Airlines for a spring-break trip to Florida, and I hated it. The cattle-car atmosphere and the I'd-rather-be-anywhere-but-here in-flight staff were only topped by the guy driving the tractor that pulled luggage carts up the plane. He ran into the front tire of the plane!

They herded us off the plane, and apparently the airline's relationship is so bad with other airlines that if the damage would've grounded the plane, no other airline would honor Spirit tickets and accept its passengers. Spirit offers so few flights that we'd have to wait until the following day to catch another flight.
 
I hate Spirit Airlines and have now vowed to never fly it again. NPR featured a story on Spirit's MILF advertising campaign ... that would be "More Islands. Lower Fares." for any of you porn-seekers whose search found the acronym. For the "culturally" deprived, MILF was popularized in the movie "American Pie" (warning: graphic description of MILF).

It does get worse: following the Anthony Weiner uproar, Spirit ran an ad with the tagline "The Weiner Sale: With fares too hard to resist."

I'm committed now. These people are so grossly offensive that I'll swim to Florida before I attempt to sit in one of their 3/4-size mini-seats again.
 
So I thought it was just me until I began looking for Spirit employee survey results to learn how this crass approach to marketing and promotion affected employee morale and retention. It certainly seems to have affected employees' driving abilities.
 
Instead, I found several sites with customer-survey results. I think the Facebook site, Boycott Spirit Airlines, pretty much sums up the customer sentiment I found on other websites. Check out these holiday postings:
 
"Sorry kids. The Easter Bunny was coming this weekend to hide eggs, but Spirit Airlines canceled his flight for no reason."
 
"If your mom's flying Spirit this Mother's Day, you might want to send the flowers to the airport.... There's a good chance they will cancel the flight for no good reason. Spirit, you suck."
 
"Its Memorial Day. I'm sure Spirit's busy screwing over a vet."
 
And between holidays: "If dog poop had a spirit... It would be called Spirit Airlines."
 
The MILF campaign was an email effort directed to existing customers who had signed up for Spirit's distribution list. Spirit's Director of Communications acknowledged that the airline had received some letters of complaint; however, he also said, in an interview with ABC News that "most found the connection amusing rather than offensive and that customers are responding to the airfare deals."

You have to give Spirit's public relations people credit. They've trained their President Ben Baldanza. In an interview with hard-charging Bill O'Reilly on Fox News' "The O'Reilly Factor," Baldanza snagged some free ad time with his response to O'Reilly's attack on the MILF ad. Baldanza replied, "Our consumer feedback has been positive, and the only thing we think is obscene is the fares that most of our competitors charge."

All I can say to Spirit is "Your mama is SO ugly that she'd never be on anyone's ..." well, never mind.


Follow me on Twitter: @FWgib
 

Buzz roll ... two beats and (sniffle)

I cry at high school football games. More specifically, when the announcer asks everyone to stand, the drums start their buzz roll and a couple of beats later, the rest of band launches into the Star-Spangled Banner. Hand over my heart, feeling my pulse kick up a few beats and, on rare-breeze Friday nights, my eyes focus on the fluttering Stars and Stripes. And then the lip-biting starts ... anything to contain the tears.

Sound like I'm a zealous Yankee Doodle patriot? No, not really.

The tears started September 15, 2001, the first Keller ISD high school football game following the 9/11 attacks on the New York's Twin Towers. I was the Communications Specialist in Keller ISD and that game capped a week of on-the-fly crisis communications.

I don't remember who won the game or even who played, but the chaos and fear on that Tuesday morning, among other things, prompted do-we-play-the-games discussions that must've burned up phone lines among administrators and school board members and probably among school districts across the United States. Do we protect our children? Is it too much to expect students to focus on athletics and arts when they're scared and grieving? Is it safe? Should we have large gatherings in contained areas? Will anybody show up?

Keller ISD had an incredible emergency action and crisis communication plan. It was in place when I started with the district late in 2000. I'm sure the 1999 school shootings at Columbine High School added a few pages to the plan, and I know that the shootings at Fort Worth's Wedgewood Baptist Church later that year (a helluva year) prompted collaborations among school districts to share counseling and communications resources. The church shooting affected a huge number of students, and attracted unprecedented, international media attention that drained Fort Worth ISD's limited resources.

The plan was beautiful. Well-conceived and refined with professional input from counselors and emergency responders. Multi-colored with tabbed pages clearly labeled so that school personnel could easily find and implement an effective and approved response to every imaginable school crisis.

And then the unimaginable happened. Hijacked airliners torpedoed the World Trade Center, and the United States was at war. More importantly, the parents in our community and the kids in our schools were scared.

Driving to work on September 11, I heard on the radio about a plane crashing into the World Trade Center in New York City. I remembered a story my dad had told me about a plane hitting the Empire State Building in the '40s, and my initial thought was "what kind of fool can't avoid a building that big nowadays?"

The rest of the morning is a blur.

An American Airlines jet (Dallas/Fort Worth is the home of American Airlines, and Keller ISD is home to many of its employees) was hijacked and crashed into the World Trade Center. No, two planes have hit both Towers. What? Another plane has crashed in Pennsylvania and another into the Pentagon.

Parents want to pick up their kids. Are we releasing kids? Channel 5 wants to know if schools are closing. The Star-Telegram is asking how we're protecting students. Do we have a statement for the media? Do we allow teachers to turn on their classroom TVs? This is history. What grades can watch the news coverage? What about the kids with parents who work for the airlines? What about employees with family members who work for the airlines? How do we let our campus personnel know what's going on? How do we communicate with parents? Are we having school tomorrow?

Email communications with parents was in its tween years, and the district's website was still in its infancy. Text messaging as mass communications was ... well, never mind. The only guy who knew how to post information on the website wanted to leave and pick up his kids. What do we want to say? Have to say? Who do we say it to, and how do we say it to them?

Fortunately, Keller ISD was blessed with an incredibly talented (and calm), media-savvy Communications Director, a district administration that had full confidence in her judgment, and campus administrators and teachers who were thoroughly trained and could take the existing crisis plan and  apply it intelligently, as needed, then wait for further instruction from the superintendent.

So, back to the football game ...

Everybody showed up. I don't remember much about that evening except that the stands were full. Keller ISD's administration, like so many school districts, colleges and pro sports, recognized that the best way to help young people -- okay, just about everybody -- get through this crisis was to keep life as normal as possible. Kids and families needed to be there, needed the comfort of familiarity and the nearness of friends.

I drafted the "message." What was appropriate in a public school setting? Who do we call on for comfort and grief? Who do we offend if we ask for God's loving hand, and who do we offend if we don't? Do I remember? Of course not.

I stood at the top of the bleachers and ticked each step of our pre-game ceremonies off our checklist. It was a breezy night. The flags unfurled. Hand over heart. The drumroll started ... two beats ... the rest of the band joined in.

And then the dam broke. I've cried at every high school football game since.

Follow me on Twitter: @FWgib