ErinM

As the semester comes to an end, I have been looking over my posts.  For the most part, I am content with my content…but there are a couple that I would like to take back.  Some posts have come out of desperation, when it’s time to go to class, and I just didn’t have anything better to say (is there any other explanation for writing about Tom Cruise).  Some were an overestimation of someone’s ability.

The Katrina post, written in the hours leading up to landfall, is tinged with optimism for how the government would handle the situation.  Of course in hindsight, I should not have been so gullible as to believe wholeheartedly what Ray Nagin and Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco stated to the public in their press releases.  When a crisis occurs, we as the public want to believe good things will come from a bad situation.  Some would sit and wait for the bad news to prove true, but I don’t think it’s healthy to live life that way.

What the hurricane season taught us this year is that we need to be able to follow through.  Planning is not enough, implementation is essential.  When the situation began to deteriorate, local and national government should have stepped up, and change their plan as new events occurred.  Their error is a good lesson for us to learn, and avoid the mistakes they made on a global stage.

Thanksgiving marks a time when many people venture out onto the roads to visit family and friends.  Lining these roads are billboards, instant advertising meant to be seen in a fraction of a second before you whoosh past and are on your way.  Of all the signs out there, Chick-Fil-A has the best.  The stacked cows, black and white symbols of the company, are 3-D standouts that are seemingly painting slogans that are fast reads, and creatively planned.  One example is the billboard in broken English (hey, the cows are doing good to be able to get that high, don’t knock their spelling) that reads, “Wize Men Bring Chicken.” 

These cows date from Chick-Fil-A’s advertising campaign that highlights a cow’s opinion of fast-food options…eat chicken, not cows!  Now, company cars bear special white with black spots paint jobs, and they put out a yearly calendar featuring bovine humor.

Aflac uses the helpful duck, Geico has the wily gecko and Chick-Fil-A has adopted cows.  They have made billboard advertising an extension of their overall advertising campaign by using the cow antics.  The sayings have few words, so it is easy to read from the highway.  The colors are black and red (add green for the holiday-themed wise men sign), and you know what you are looking at instantly.  As we are bombarded with advertising so many times a day that we don’t realize what we see, even a brief exposure to the Chick-Fil-A cows helps reinforce their other advertising. 

The use of Owens Corning products in ABC’s Extreme Home Makeover is great PR.  Through the donation of construction materials for new homes gifted to deserving people is great for the company, not to mention recognition gained by strategic product placement.  The company is already recognizable by their “Pink” image…describing both the color of the insulation and the pink panther mascot. 

The premise of the show is a draw for viewers like me.  Every week, we get to become a part of good work and community building as a selected family’s home is remodeled-well destroyed and transformed into a dream house.  Owens Corning builds on that image, and the two stay connected in our minds.  They say on the website that:

Owens Corning is proud to provide building materials that make    these families warmer, dryer, and more comfortable in homes    that  are quieter, more durable and energy-efficient-and, of    course,  more beautiful.

Owens Corning details their participation on their website, and spotlights each of the families they help.  Photographs of work in progress on each house are accompanied by a brief summary of the episode.  From the family’s page, the products used in the construction of the house are listed, and linked so users can read about Owens Corning’s products. 

There are numerous partners that make Extreme Home Makeover possible, each gaining an altruistic image.  As a consumer, I am more inclined to buy from a company that gives back…it’s my money that makes it possible right?  The initial investment in a show like this may seem giant, but the cost of the donated product will be gained back tenfold by exposure to a large audience and goodwill built with viewers. 

Earth to Candice R. Martinez, don’t rob banks on your cell phone!  Thanks to national media attention and the efforts of law enforcement, the 19-year-old Virginia woman was arrested early on Nov. 14.  This is good news for all involved-except Martinez I guess. 

I work for a bank, and most robberies are not solved this quickly.  Even though it was an FBI agent that spotted the car tags that led to the arrest, the national media attention this case received played a part in her capture.  When someone robs a bank, they are usually desperate (unless they are a professional).  From my experience, these crimes are fast and scary for everyone involved, even the bad guy – that’s why you don’t see much protest about giving up money…it’s just not worth upsetting a robber.  I am just projecting here, but I would think that seeing my face plastered on every local and national news outlet would scare me…I’m surprised she wasn’t on her way to Canada or Mexico.

National news coverage gets a bum rap sometimes, but it can be useful to use that medium to get a message to lots of people FAST.  Accusations about favoritism, like the coverage of the Elizabeth Smart kidnapping, taints the reputation of national coverage. But white female stereotypes aside, the exposure of airing your story over national media is an awesome power.

The Amber Alert is used much the same way.  That’s how Daniel Ludwig, accused teen murderer, was captured yesterday.  Police issued an Amber Alert when they discovered his girlfriend, Kara Beth Borden, missing and her parent’s shot to death.  The next day, a truck driver spotted the car and alerted Belleville, Ind., police to their location.  After a chase and minor crash, Ludwig was arrested and Borden was in police care. 

Cases that come to a resolution, if not a happy ending, will keep the role of national journalism in line with helping law enforcement solve crime.

Just a bit of celebrity gossip – Tom Cruise has dumped his sister as his publicist.  A report says that Lee Anne DeVette has been replaced by Paul Bloch, a PR pro.  I think this move is a long time in coming – at least in my opinion.  I don’t know if Cruise is a celebrity that needs to be ‘wrangled’ like Michael Jackson, but someone should have stepped in a long time ago.

What seems to be publicity stunts have backfired: impregnating Katie Holmes, chastising Matt Lauer on morning television.  These acts have made me reconsider how I felt about Tom Cruise, and his movies.  “War of the Worlds” is a movie that I would usually spend $8 on at the movie theater, but the slew of media stunts turned me off.  I still haven’t seen it.

What Bloch must get in control is Cruise’s method of speaking about Scientology.  Everyone has a right to believe what they believe, and speak about what they believe.  Cruise crossed the line when he scoffed at Lauer, accusing him of being “glib” and aggressively attacking Lauer’s personal character on television.  What turned out to be a ratings boost for NBC is a smudge on Cruise’s already dirty record.

Cruise might be one of those people who are almost untouchable.  What can he do to rebuild his all-American image?  Charity and getting married under questionable pretenses can only go so far to heal this.  Even with good works, Cruise will still be seen as strange.  Other Scientologist celebrities like Kelly Preston and John Travolta have been able to keep their religious views while being liked by the public.

I did not plan on writing about chickens two weeks in a row, but sometimes you’ve just gotta go with you gut.

We don’t often think about where our food comes from. Before its breaded and fried, that drumstick was a walking and clucking animal- one responsible for spreading the bird flu. Cases have not been linked to eating cooked chicken, but the fear over avian flu could cause consumers to stop eating chicken…and KFC is prepared.

An article in AdAge outlines their plan to launch commercials to educate people about the safety of chicken in restaurants. By planning ahead to address fears, they will hopefully keep people’s decision crispy or original recipe.

Another organization being proactive in protecting their customer base is the National Chicken Council. They comfort us through a press release:

For a food group that has more than Conditions in the United States poultry industry are also radically different from those in Asia, where millions of chickens, ducks, and other poultry live in close conjunction with swine and other livestock and with human beings. Chickens are often allowed to roam at large in the villages that dot the countryside. Live birds are sold by the millions in markets in big cities, where they can infect each other and possibly infect human beings.

By contrast, the vast majority of chickens and turkeys in the United States are raised in sheltered conditions where they have no contact with other animals and very little contact with humans. Few human beings in the United States ever encounter a live chicken or turkey. Therefore the opportunities for transmission of any virus from poultry to humans are limited.

Hopefully, we will not have to face a pandemic when dealing with avian flu. Beyond the health risks, there is a danger to poultry-based businesses. It is good that they realize the situation, and are addressing it head-on.

The bird flu, has everyone from Washington D.C to the Department of Health running around like chickens. The virus is supposed to be the next “big one,” a pandemic of epic proportions. Bush shared his strategy to fight the flu – a $7.1 billion shopping spree to stockpile enough vaccine for 20 million people…out of more than 295 million in the US!! His plan sounds like an outline for military action, saying that we must be prepared to detect global outbreaks, keep a stockpile of vaccines & other drugs to be ready to respond at the federal, state and local levels just in case the pandemic spreads here.

I would be more comforted if he would speak as if he were a concerned doctor, not a general readying the troops. Plus, the war is not going well for the administration. If national/international support were stronger, maybe a ‘go fight ‘em where they live’ mentality would build support and encourage action…but not now. We’ve not had success going and finding terrorism in the world, how will we do with a virus that doesn’t take sides?

As a (fairly) healthy 20 something, I am not worried about an outbreak of bird flu. At this point, it has the vagueness of the SARS virus which affected only 12 people in the U.S., two of which died from the infection. We may be headed toward a plague-like virus that sweeps the globe because we though we overcame polio and small pox. I’m afraid that we will not take Bush seriously about the bird flu until it has already made an impact in our country.

Halloween is supposed to be a time of fun and mischief, but this year it was boring and lonely.  I had my pumpkins carved, spooky music playing and the candy ready…BUT…the tides of costumed children never came to my door.  Instead, they were drawn away by our city’s Downtown Trick or Treat 2005.  Josh Hallett recently blogged at hyku about the zero sum games played by auto insurance ads, and this year I am the victim of the same quiet omission by the City of Auburn’s Parks and Recreation Department.  In his blog, he pointed out that you never hear about companies loosing customers, only the numbers of those who joined.  In what I’m sure will be deemed a success by the city of Auburn, I am in the unmentioned number of residents who lost business.   

The parks & recreations department has been promoting the trick or treat event for weeks, celebrating it as a safe alternative to the old-fashioned door-to-door beggar’s night.  To make matters worse, network organizations like MSNBC have been cautioning parents against Halloween traditions that would put children at risk of coming in contact with sexual predators.  While the sentiment behind the push for more safety around this holiday is good, what does it say about a city when they don’t think it’s safe for children on their neighborhood streets, not to mention the drop in candy sales as people no longer need to stock up for the little ones?

I know that not all places are like Auburn.  We’re a growing city of more than 45,000.  A blend of young, old and lots of college students.  I live off campus, in a house on a street next to other houses with swing sets in the back yards.  I pass kids walking to a nearby school every day, but only four groups of kids came last night.  It saddens me to be left out of a holiday that I enjoy.  While I’m glad Auburn had a terrific turnout for their event, but I don’t think much thought was put into how residents would feel.

Rita Dove, a 1987 pulitzer prize winner and biographer of Rosa Parks sums up the situation well:

“The facts, rubbed shiny for retelling, are these: On Dec. 1, 1955, Mrs. Rosa Parks, seamstress for the Montgomery Fair department store, boarded the Cleveland Avenue bus. She took a seat in the fifth row — the first row of the “Colored Section.” The driver was the same one who had put her off a bus 12 years earlier for refusing to get off and reboard through the back door. (”He was still mean-looking,” she has said.) Did that make her stubborn? Or had her work in the N.A.A.C.P. sharpened her sensibilities so that she knew what to do — or more precisely, what not to do: Don’t frown, don’t struggle, don’t shout, don’t pay the fine?”

We opine about ‘real women,’ and congratulate Dove and Nike for using everyday ladies as their spokespeople.  But it was not all that long ago when ‘real women’ changed the nation forever.  Instead of moving, or paying the $14 dollar fine and getting on with her life, Rosa Parks stood up against the injustice she saw in her life.  I admire that quality: today we have a hard time raising our eyes to see such injustice, much less raise our voices in protest.

I was sad to learn that Rosa Parks died today, Oct. 24, 2005.  She was old, she had been ill for a few years, but she is an icon – and icons never die.  I know that we have all learned about what she did, but I just wanted to add my thanks for showing the world how one person can be the catalyst in social change.

Instead of David Oreck lifting his 8-pound vacuum, the organization is lifting the spirits of its employees and other victims of hurricane Katrina.  As I’ve talked about before on my blog, companies have been releasing news of their good deeds following the hurricane.  Oreck used this tactic, but the company has a lot more at stake than most companies trying to put on a good corporate face.

Tom Oreck, son of founder/designer David Oreck, spoke through a press release on Sept. 1, just days after the category 4 storm wreaked havoc on New Orleans (Oreck’s home base) and coastal Mississippi (Long Beach is their principle manufacturing facility).  In the weeks following, Oreck set up operations in a Houston hotel room with his wife, father and three young children.  Immediately, Oreck stepped up, and like the events following the Malden Mills fire in 1995, each displaced employee was promised their job.

Some employees were diverted to other locations while Oreck put itself back together.  On Sept. 9, the Long Beach plant re-opened in Mississippi and 500 employees went back to work for Oreck.  I love to hear stories like this, the warm fuzzy I get must pale next to the emotion employees have after their employer not only kept their job, but fed and sheltered them when everything else was lost.  This corporate family feel is not just good publicity, but good employee relations.  A feeling that your employer truly cares brings a sense of loyalty that results in increased productivity and dedication. 

With most of their employees taken care of, Oreck is still contributing to the relief efforts following the hurricane.  Their commercial promotes that with each vacuum sold, a new vacuum would be donated to a family as they try to put back the pieces of their lives.  With all of the chaos over the misuse of FEMA debit cards, a housewarming gift in the form of a product instead of money will help victims get back on their feet.