Where Do You Stand?

Ever have a story that almost happens?

We had a peach of an opportunity. Bruce Springsteen and the E Street band booked tee times at Spring Creek Golf Club, a client of Standing Partnership’s in Charlottesville, Va. While The Boss and the band didn’t want publicity while they played (and we respected that, of course) there was potential for some photos and some post-game publicity.

Springsteen ultimately didn’t make it; he was busy rehearsing for his concert at John Paul Jones Arena Wednesday night and some of the stage and audio crew, as well as a couple of E Street band guys, kept the tee times instead.  At left is a photo of the tour bus I shot in the parking lot of the course; in the window you can see a small Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band sign.

While it was disappointing not to get to meet The Boss, it was also very exciting that he and his band had chosen Spring Creek Golf Club, Golf Digest’s 2007 number one best new affordable public golf course, as the golf course they wanted to play in Virginia.

Springsteen doesn’t know what he missed — or, he did, when his friends returned from the course to tell him how spectacular it really is. Next time you’re in town, Bruce, we’ll have the course ready for you.

Here are a few more shots I took of the course; it was a beautiful day out at Spring Creek.

I’ve been grading papers this week (a LOT of papers) for the two college courses that I’m teaching. I keep running into a problem: Students citing Wikipedia as a source. It’s not just in my classes that I see Wikipedia being overly legitimatized. A colleague of mine (bless her heart) recently used the Web site to define the term “journalist.”

As I’ve found while working here at Standing Partnership, not everything found on Wikipedia is accurate. We regularly find incorrect information on the pages for our clients. And because it’s frowned upon when the actual company or a PR agency attempts to correct mistakes (an outsider must do that), the process is quite complicated and frustrating.

In future semesters, I plan to tell my students, “Wikipedia is not a legitimate source of information for your assignments. It’s an open-source wiki, and just about anybody can post information on the site with little verification of its factual merits.” I will also tell then that they are welcome to use Wikipedia as a starting point — it’s great for that — but they need to verify the information through a more legitimate source.

I’m somewhat of a cynic, so perhaps I’m overreacting. What do you think?

After work yesterday, I went to the Trader Joe’s in the St. Louis suburb of Brentwood to buy some ingredients for a stir-fry dinner: onions, tofu, snap peas and green and red peppers. I got home, broke into the cellophane that contained my peppers, and went to chopping. Before I could cut the pepper in half, some nasty, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle-like ooze started seeping out of the green pepper. Disgusted, mad, but most of all, hungry, I packed up the pepper (and the other veggies) and trekked back to Trader Joe’s (in rush hour traffic, mind you) to report my grievance.

“This can go one of two ways,” I said to myself. “Trader Joe’s can acknowledge my situation and remedy it, in which case I may write about it on Where Do You Stand. Or, they can simply refund my money, doing nothing to fix the fact that not only was my food spoiled but I drove to their store twice during rush hour traffic amidst a time with high gas prices.” In the second scenario, I was planning to write a negative testimonial on my personal blog.

I took my bag of ooze-like vegetables to the customer service counter where the supervisor told me to go wait in one of the massive checkout lines to obtain my refund. After patiently waiting for the gentleman in front of me to pay, I was refunded my money. The cashier said, “Sorry about that,” I shook my head, and off I went.

I was formulating the complaint-ridden blog post for my personal blog, when out of the corner of my right eye, I spotted the supervisor who was rushing toward me.

“For ruining your dinner,” she said.

The supervisor handed me a bouquet of their nicest (and most fragrant) flowers … and gave me a sincere smile.

I immediately switched my train of thought from negative to positive blog post – and here I am.

Sometimes it’s little things, like flowers, that help manage a brand’s reputation.

Michelle Golden has a great point on her Golden Practices blog. At Standing, when we begin branding conversations with clients we lead them through discussion about who they ARE; what promise they’ve made and kept to their communities. A different approach, and one that may be simpler for clients who are in disagreement about who they are and what they offer, is to encourage discussion about who and what they are NOT.

I’m looking forward to having some of these brand-defining conversations with new clients in weeks to come.

A recent conversation with my mother-in-law had me thinking about the way journalism has evolved over the past few years. Are those who are in the social media world (i.e. bloggers, online news gatherers, etc.) changing the role and definition of “journalist?”

According to Wikipedia, a journalist is “a person who practises journalism, the gathering and dissemination of information about current events, trends, issues and people.” It goes on to identify journalists as reporters and columnists, as well as editors and visual journalists (photographers, graphic artists and page designers).

The entry does acknowledge modern media and “citizen journalists” who offer grassroots, non-corporate coverage. The consensus through a quick survey on Twitter (thanks, Susan!) indicates that many people prefer the term “citizen journalist.” However, some argue that “citizen journalists” can’t be called journalists, because they aren’t held to the standards and norms found in the Society of Professional Journalists ethical code.

But consider the recent earthquakes around Illinois and Missouri. I’ve heard rumblings around the office that the earthquake was first reported on Twitter - they beat the radio stations, TV crews and newspapers.

So, what do you call these modern news-gatherers? Are they journalists? What about conversation-starters? Or perhaps you like the term citizen reporters?

Talk amongst yourselves…

Standing Partnership has a cool office - elegant, organized and with a beautiful “treehouse” feel due to the view most of us have of the mini-forest right outside our office. 

At least I thought we had a cool office - until I saw these. Bonus points to Google for featuring a corgi (my furry friend of choice) as the doggie model in their photos. 

Cathy, I’m thinking our next office really needs a small roller coaster…or at least some killer bumper cars.

With the number of flight delays and cancellations I’ve experienced lately, I’ve come to expect that I’ll be stranded at an airport for an extra few hours each time I travel.

That’s why I was so happy to read my St. Louis Business Journal daily update e-mail to find out that XpresSpa will open two locations at Lambert-
St. Louis International Airport. The locations should be open in about six months.

If you’re going to be stuck at an airport, why not get a pedicure while you’re there!

Though I now make a living in the world of issues and reputation management, I’ll always consider myself an editor. Over the past 10 years, I’ve edited thousands and thousands of newspaper articles, headlines, magazine stories, brochures and other works of brilliance. I’m fallible – don’t get me wrong. I still make mistakes from time to time. And I rarely criticize in a mean way. But I cannot always hide my frustrations when I see a major typo or grammatical error. I heard some deplorable news this week that pushed me to the edge. I’m at the breaking point.

• I keep my mouth shut every time I drive by Rombach Farms in the Chesterfield area and see the “Busses welcome” sign (it’s “buses” – get it right!).
• I have stood by quietly as error after obvious error on the KSDK-TV news crawl tarnishes the most beautiful newscast in the St. Louis area.
• And I have never said a word about the missing apostrophe on the logo on the Scotts LawnService vans (it should be “Scott’s,” since the company is named after founder O.M. Scott; also, would it hurt to make “LawnService” into two words?).

Those are just a few examples. I can live with errors like that, as long as I don’t have to view them frequently. However, there’s a big error on the way for Missouri residents. The new Missouri license places feature a major grammatical error. The hyphen is missing in the state’s nickname, “Show-Me State.” You can read more about it by clicking here and here. You can also view the license plate for yourself by clicking here.

Here’s a passage pulled from one of the stories linked above that shows just how much our state cares about this pending embarrassment that will surely tarnish our state’s reputation:

David Griffith, spokesman for the Missouri Department of Revenue, said they won’t correct the mistake because that’s how it looked when voters chose it in an online contest last year.

“If the people want it that way, that’s what we’re going to deliver for the people,” Griffith told The Associated Press.

Excuse me? The people want it that way? This is ridiculous. How embarrassing for a state that many on the coasts considers “flyover territory.” Now we’re so backwoods that we cannot punctuate our own state motto correctly. This really should be considered a travesty and an injustice.

When I receive my new license plates, I’m going to take a marker and fix the mistake. I hope you do the same thing. Make a stand.

Here’s a link to a great example of an audio slideshow – one of the relatively new reporting tools the St. Louis Post-Dispatch is using. As reporters look for new ways to cover the news, it also means companies have new opportunities to share their messages, so keep this new option in mind when pitching reporters.  

You can view more examples by visiting the Post’s MultiMedia section, which features both audio slideshows and video footage.  

Also, an audio slideshow is a great way to add visual interest to your board meetings, gala events or Web site for less than producing a full-length video.  

Check out this 2-minute video we developed in partnership with Coolfire Media for Parent as Teachers National Center’s Heroes at Home program. 

We had a problem at Standing. No one liked his or her headshot and we all pretty much hate getting our picture taken. Rather than using a photo, I’d been using an avatar that a friend of mine created for me to use on my personal blog. It became my brand, and I rather liked it. Other people did too, and before long, we hired my friend Shawn to create avatars for the entire Standing crew. We’ve been having fun using them on the blog, on social networking sites like LinkedIn and Facebook, in instant messaging and in comments we leave in online spaces.

We’re finally finished with the whole crew’s set, and will add new avatars as we hire new employees. You’ve already seen many of them on this blog, but here’s the slideshow of the whole set. Let us know what you think of our look!