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Shel Holtz
Communicating at the Intersection of Business and Technology
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Friday Wrap #156: Vanishing voicemail, FTC’s native ad focus, two new crises, PR’s low score

Friday Wrap #156: Vanishing voicemail, FTC’s native ad focus, two new crises, PR’s low score

Friday Wrap #156
Wikimedia Commons photo courtesy of Edward
The Friday Wrap is my weekly collection of news stories, posts, studies, and reports designed to help organizational communicators stay current on the trends and technology that affect their jobs. These may be items that flew under the radar while other stories grabbed big headlines, though with the release of Mary Meeker’s annual report on the state of the internet and the annual Google I/O previews, held yesterday, a couple of the items in today’s Wrap have made quite a splash. I collect material from which I select Wrap stories (as well as stories to report on the For Immediate Release podcast) on my link blog, which you’re welcome to follow.

News

Another company dumps voicemail—Coca-Cola made waves when it announced it was eliminating voicemail from the set of messaging tools at its Atlanta headquarters and research center. Now JPMorgan has followed suit. for Coca-Cola, cost savings wasn’t an issue, but it’s a consideration at JPMorgan, which is looking for ways to cut expenses. “We realized that hardly anyone uses voicemail anymore,” said the head of JPMorgan’s consumer banking business. Voicemail has already vanished at the company’s technology group, while managers in other departments are considering it. The replacement is the same as the one at Coca-Cola: Text messaging over employee smartphones is already a standard practice. Read more

Yahoo kills Pipes—Yahoo Pipes was one of the company’s most innovative offerings, an easy-to-use tool that let users create RSS feeds from a variety of sources. The ability to create new Pipes will end on August 30, and the entire service will vanish a month later. Pipes is one of several Yahoo services being sunsetted, along with Yahoo Maps. Yahoo Music and Yahoo TV in some regions. The rationale: Yahoo needs to focus on core products. Read more

The continued marginalization of Google+—Google insists Google+ is alive and well, but words and deeds aren’t entirely in sync. The search giant has removed the link to users’ Google+ profile that appeared at the top of its web properties (you saw it if you were logged in), and Google+ has vanished from Google’s app menu. Read more

Tim Horton’s damned if it does, damned if it doesn’t—Iconic Canadian coffee-and-donut spot Tim Hortons wouldn’t be facing backlash today if it had never run an energy company’s ads on its in-store digital signage in the first place. Those opposed to an Enbridge pipeline project took to social media to object. The company removed the ads, leading proponents of the project to complain. Risk assessment is a bigger job these days than ever, but most companies haven’t yet built it into their processes for activities like deciding whose money to take in exchange for in-store advertising. Read more

FTC to hold publishers accountable for misleading native ad labeling—It’s not the content of native ads that concerns the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC); it’s how they’re labeled. Publishers like Buzzfeed and Atlantic that have set up units to create native ads will be in the FTC’s crosshairs if they fail to make it clear to readers that these are, in fact, advertisements. A “sponsored” label won’t cut it. Read more

Supreme Court rules in favor of man who posted violent threats on Facebook—Anthony Elonis posted a series of violent messages on Facebook after his wife left him. His defense: These were actually rap lyrics he wrote for therapeutic purposes. He was convicted, though, under a federal threat statute, but the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Monday that his “negligence is not sufficient to support a conviction,” according to Chief Justice John Roberts. The Court found the legal standard used to convict Elonis was too low. The Court did not address the larger constitutional issue of free speech. Read more

Spirit Airlines goes anti-social when responding to questions—One of the promises of social media is authenticity, the ability to engage with a real person. Don’t count on that from Spirit Airlines, a budget carrier that sacrifices just about everything in order to offer the lowest fares. The most recent action is to eliminate real people from the process of responding to customer queries through social media. The airline has put a robot in charge of its Twitter account. The company explained, “A big social media team costs money, so we put our feed on autopilot to save you cents on every ticket.” The result is pretty inhuman. One passenger demanded a solution to a canceled flight and got a response, “You can contact us here,” with links to websites and phone numbers. I’d rather pay the few extra cents per ticket. Read more

Trends

Lack of accountability slowed FIFA’s crisis response—The arrests of 14 FIFA officials should have led to the quick adoption of a crisis plan, but lack of accountability allowed the organization to delay the inevitable response: President Sepp Blatter’s resignation. Misbehavior has no consequences for FIFA, which will still attract big money from sponsors and hopeful bids from countries for the World Cup. The two potential change agents, sponsors and FIFA’s membership, are key to establishing accountability. Read more

American Red Cross is facing a crisis of its own—A scathing report from NPR and ProPublica questions the distribution of $500 million raised by the American Red Cross to aid victims of the devastating earthquake in Haiti. In response, the Red Cross posted “13 facts about the Red Cross Response in Haiti.” The table juxtaposes “Myth” and “Fact,” but fails to address specific charges in the NPR/ProPublica report. Worse, it violates one of the basic tenets of crisis communication: Don’t argue facts in the face of outrage, since it just makes you look guilty. Most of the comments left to the post reflect dissatisfaction with the response. Read more

Will brands follow Vox’s lead and make content embeddable?—News site Vox.com has introduced an embeddable version of its card stacks, letting any blogger or website publisher add these “flash-card-like explainers” to their own articles, similar to embedding a YouTube video in a post. According to Vox’s executive editor and co-founder Matthew Yglesias, “We want to have our storytelling across a variety of formats where the audience is to see it.” That sounds like the mission of many brands, so it’ll be interesting to see if any marketers latch onto the idea and adapt it for their own content. Read more

Marketers up their emoji game—As users adopt emojis (thanks to more and more social networks adding them), marketers are taking them more seriously, and it’s not just a matter of incorporating them into campaigns. At least one company is tracking emojis to figure out how customers are using them to express their views of the company and its products. Read more

It’s not so easy to be a media company—Tom Foremski’s famous axiom, “every company is a media company,” may be true, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy. Honda pumped resources into digital destinations (a dedicated content site and a YouTube channel) that failed to attracted users. Now, the company is reversing course, dropping a central content destination from its marketing plans. Read more

We did not ask for this—Google’s artificial intelligence researchers are developing an app that can calculate how many calories are in your meal by analyzing that Instagram picture you took of your food. I hope it’s an opt-in program. Read more

Beware the John Oliver Effect—Tweets referencing four major FIFA sponsors spiked in the hour after the organization’s president resigned. Tweets mentioning Budweiser surged 525% in the hour after the resignation compared to the hour before. For Coca-Cola, the increase was 97%, 71% for Visa, and 53% for Adidas—all brands that elected to maintain their relationship with FIFA after the scandal broke. Why the surge? Analysts attribute it in part to awareness of the brands’ FIFA involvement created by comedian John Oliver’s challenge to the advertisers on Sunday’s episode of Last Week Tonight. Read more

Well, that’s one way to deal with negative comments—On its Facebook page, Delta Airlines likes and responds to positive comments, but they ignore negative comments completely. As a result, the majority of comments are upbeat and those with gripes don’t keep spamming the page seeking a response. Delta’s policy, based on privacy concerns (they say), is to deal with negative comments via the contact page of its website. Read more

Research

PR scores are abysmal among financial journalists—Only 13% of financial journalists find company PR practitioners to be highly credible sources. That’s a shockingly low number, considering 61% see CEOs as credible, along with technical experts and financial/industry analysts. Subject matter experts are the primary source for story ideas, followed by reading newspapers or other publications and research studies from public or private institutions. Press releases are sources for 46% of respondents to the Gorkana 2015 Survey of Financial Journalists, with corporate newsrooms serving the needs of only 26% and social media sites delivering the goods for only 16%. Want to fix this? Ninety percent of respondents said the way to do that is to be honest while 88% said PR people need to have a better grasp of what the journalists cover and whom they cover it for. Read more

Consumers are willing to seek out ethical products—The drumbeat for ethical corporate behavior continues with the results of the 2015 cone Communications/Ebiquity Global CSR Study, which found nine out of 10 consumers expects companies to be responsible, addressing sustanability and social issues, in addition to making a profit. Eighty-four percent of respondents said they look for responsible products when they can, though product availability is a key obstacle to buying more of such goods. Read more

Social networks used for positive feedback more than complaints—Conventional wisdom suggests dissatisfied customers complain more than satisfied customers praise. New research, though, demonstrates the opposite. The survey from eDigitalResearch found that 6% of consumers have used social media to share positive feedback about a company; only 2% said they used it to complain. Knowing this should bolster efforts to earn positive reviews. Read more

Visuals edge out blogs in content ranking—Social Media Examiner looked at how marketers are using social media content and found visuals were used by 71% of respondents, with blogs weighing in at 70%. Videos are used by 70%. Videos were used 57% and podcasting only 10%. Twitter, YouTube, and LinkedIn are the services that marketers plan to use most in the future. Video is becoming more important, and podcasting is growing, with 26% planning to increase their podcasting activities while 43% want to learn more about it. Read more

Customers prefer live-chat for customer service—One-third of customers expect companies to make live chat available for contacting the business, according to Forrester Research. eConsultancy says customers experience their highest satisfaction from live chat—73% compared to email (61%) and phone (44%). Read more

Facebook is top source for political news among Millennials—61% of Millennials get political news from Facebook, with CNN in second place at 44%, according to the Pew Research Center. Facebook is also tops for GenXers, with 51% getting political news from there with local TV coming in second place. For Baby Boomers (like me), Facebook is toward the bottom of the pack, at 39%, with local TV taking first place and NBC News coming in second. Facebook should have a significant impact as the 2016 U.S. presidential race heats up. Read more

Millennials aren’t so different from the rest of us—You’ll have to put results of a Forrester study into context. The research company says treating Millennials like a new breed of young person is misguided. The report says their spending patterns are based on having less money to spend and being more focused on technology that didn’t exist for prior generations. Still, Forrester’s contention that Millennials are not fundamentally different doesn’t square with Pew’s finding that they rely on Facebook for political news. As is the case with so many of Forrester’s conclusions, take it with a grain of salt. Read more

Handy infographic identifies core users on key social platforms—Sprout Social has created an infographic that aggregates the demographics of Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Google+, and Snapchat. For each (except Snapchat, which makes less data available), you’ll get information on gender, age, location (urban, suburban, rural), income, and education. Read more

Mobile and Wearables

Wearable prices drop, shipments rise—The wearables category is booming. As prices drop—40% of all wearable devices retail for less than $100—shipments are on the rise, with 11.4 million devices shipped worldwide during the first quarter. That’s the eighth consecutive month of solid growth for the market. Read more

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