Poster child for poor sportsmanship

Elizabeth Lambert might be a nice person. She might genuinely feel bad about what she did in a soccer game that now lives online for all the world to see. Again and again. (ESPN has more of the video, and analysis, here).

But thanks to letting her emotions “get the best” of her, she’s now forever the “angry soccer player” from the University of New Mexico. With the evidence prominently on display on YouTube for who knows how long.

You want her coaching your daughter on a youth soccer team in 10 years or so?

Aside from the obvious idiocy of her actions – calling it “poor sportsmanship” doesn’t seem to cut it – Lambert’s 15 minutes of fame provides yet another study in how a university’s media relations/communications team has to put together an apology for an athlete who decided to play dirty.

While New Mexico’s damage police at least used the “uncalled for” phrase in the statement below – No, I don’t think Lambert wrote this – I don’t think it goes far enough:

Cash for Christ followers

(Photo courtesy: Chicago Tribune)

If a Chicago-area pastor’s goal was to create a little buzz, it has certainly worked.

But will that buzz around his church’s cash weekly giveaway lead people to a meaningful, personal relationship with Jesus?

Only time will tell. Maybe the real goal is to raise awareness of the church itself and its impact on its community. In any case, not unlike many PR and marketing campaigns, you can’t always measure it and judge it while it’s still in play.

I read about Rev. Dan Willis and his Lighthouse Church of All Nations in Alsip, Illinois on the PR Junkie blog, as well as a story in the Chicago Tribune.

The Tribune explained the premise:

Hey Verizon, can you hear me now?

Anyone who knows me well knows that I have have zero patience… for crappy customer service.

Usually, I let the offender know via a nice old-fashioned letter. Feels good to get it all out, stick the stamp on, and see what happens. 100% of the time I get a call or letter seeking to remedy the situation.

I’ll be doing the letter-writing thing again for what I experienced today at a Verizon store in Apple Valley, Minnesota.

But… I also want to let it breathe a bit here on my blog. Because an online rant seems fitting for a company that tries so hard to get it right in its ads and in what it does online. And, is trying so hard to compete with Web favorite, Apple. Case in point, the whole iPhone envy “There’s a map for that” campaign.

Well, as Yoda said, “Do or do not, there is no try.”

By the way, I’m not holding my breath for a response on this one. Because I simply don’t think the particular store manager on duty today cares, or is informed enough about the phones Verizon sells.

The issue:

Favre’s return to Green Bay

(Photo courtesy: Star Tribune/Time)

Before I tackle some PR-related points about Brett Favre’s return to Lambeau Field this Sunday, let’s make something clear right off the bat:

I bleed Viking purple.

And I’m not thrilled Brett Favre is on the Vikes right now. I’m just not big on one-year fixes with 40-year-old quarterbacks. But that’s just me. While I’m pleased the Vikings are winning, and I realize they wouldn’t be 6-1 with any other quarterback on the roster at the helm, I’m also preparing for a playoff collapse like any good pessimistic Minnesotan.

If you’re one of those goofballs who went out and bought a Favre #4 Vikings jersey, you and I couldn’t have more opposite takes on his place on the team.

That said, I do think Brett Favre has a will to win, and an ability to win, unlike any other quarterback in NFL history. He’s fun to watch. Win or lose.

So it puzzles me why the Green Bay mayor felt the need to spend his and the city’s time on a photo-op campaign dubbed “4 Days to Victory.”

Lessons on motivation

If you want employees, colleagues, your kids or a 4th grade basketball team to perform better you offer an incentive, right?

Dan Pink doesn’t think so.

I recently watched his TEDtalk titled “The surprising science of motivation” and found Pink’s argument pretty compelling, in terms of what it means for business and other areas of your life when motivation matters.

Put simply, Pink challenges traditional thought that incentives are necessary to get people to perform better. Not the case, Pinks says. He believes incentives can dull thinking and creativity. He says there’s “a mismatch between what science knows and what business does.”

Pink, who I first became aware of through A Whole New Mind (via a reading assignment from my boss for our external communications team) has built his latest book, Drive, around his take on motivation. That book comes out in late December. So, his TEDTalk is a bit of a preview.

Here are a few quotes from Pink to consider:

*”…too many organizations are making their decisions, their policies about talent and people, based on assumptions that are outdated, unexamined, and rooted more in folklore than in science. And if we really want to get out of this economic mess, and if we really want high performance on those definitional tasks of the 21st century, the solution is not to do more of the wrong things. To entice people with a sweeter carrot, or threaten them with a sharper stick. We need a whole new approach.”

*We need a “new operating system for our businesses [that] revolves around three elements: autonomy, mastery and purpose. Autonomy, the urge to direct our own lives. Mastery, the desire to get better and better at something that matters. Purpose, the yearning to do what we do in the service of something larger than ourselves.

*”…here is what science knows. One: Those 20th century rewards, those motivators we think are a natural part of business, do work, but only in a surprisingly narrow band of circumstances. Two: Those if-then rewards often destroy creativity. Three: The secret to high performance isn’t rewards and punishments, but that unseen intrinsic drive. The drive to do things for their own sake. The drive to do things cause they matter.

Will businesses listen to Pink? Is there truth to the concept that performance can go down when the reward goes up?

Maybe it explains why some youth basketball teams I’ve coached go in the tank after I reward them all with Gatorade for a good practice.

Okay, maybe that’s a motivation post for another day.

Again, check out Pink’s TEDTalk if this interests you, Great stuff.

By the way, Pink has a great blog and he’s on Twitter.

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What happens in Vegas

Now there’s a blog headline that can’t be ignored, right?

With just four words it proves the case of the marketing effort I got a chance to learn more about at the annual workshop for the National Association of Bar Executives (NABE) Communication Section – in Las Vegas, appropriately enough.

In a session titled “Marketing Las Vegas in the Pasta Economy,” Terry Jicinsky, the senior vice president of operations for the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, talked about the “What happens here, stays here” campaign.

Before I go into some details, I’ll explain the pasta reference. Jicinsky defined it as an indicator of the choices Americans are making in terms of discretionary income. That is, the number of people/families staying home on a Saturday night eating a cheap pasta meal versus going out for dinner.

Makes sense.

Las Vegas clearly is a discretionary destination. And that distinction requires a different approach to marketing and public relations.

Jicinsky outlined his case to the professional communicators in the room by considering the challenges we have in common:

That wasn’t a mistake

Yes, there are bigger things to blog about.

But I can’t ignore the PR flap that the University of Minnesota – in my neck of the woods – had to clean up this week.

Before I go on, here’s the video in question:

Clearly, the approval process at the U of M for carefully crafted media statements must be a nightmare. Or at least demands that several people massage the words and sentences before it sees the light of day. That’s certainly typical in the corporate world, and painful.

Because this statement released by the U of M after that insanely stupid Goldy Gopher incident at Penn State reeks of too many cooks in the media statement kitchen. I could be wrong, but have a look:

“The life of a mascot at a sporting event is fast-paced and enormously high-energy. This was plainly a mistake.”

Okay, get past the “fast-paced” and “life of a mascot” nonsense, I think we all agree there was nothing fast-paced about the endzone prayer. Focus on the “mistake” part.

This was no mistake.

I make a mistake when I don’t realize that I just threw in a red shirt with the whites in the laundry, and wash it on hot water. It’s not a mistake if I know I’m doing it.

The goof inside the Goldy head knew what he was doing. At the very least, he thought it would be entertaining. I’ll give him that. But it wasn’t.

And don’t get me started on the cheerleader who fist-bumped Goldy after his “mistake.”

Please.

The U’s statement also clearly struggled with trying to address the faith angle, but failed:

It certainly wasn’t his intent to offend anyone or trivialize their religion… …On behalf of Goldy and the University of Minnesota, I want to apologize to the Penn State player involved and anyone else who may have taken offense from this incident.”

What’s so hard about actually calling the prayer-mocking what it is, offensive?

Here’s my version of a statement:

“The actions of the students involved are inexcusable. They showed poor judgment. Mocking prayer is offensive to many of our University of Minnesota students, alumni, staff and administration and we apologize to them for this incident. We also apologize to Jerome Hayes and the entire Penn State community.”

It’s offensive to many of the people you’re depending on to fill your new stadium every Saturday. So call it that.

It wasn’t a mistake.

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John Wooden’s definition of success

Basketball coaching legend John Wooden recently celebrated his 99th birthday. He hasn’t coached in 34 years, retiring at age 65, but he has certainly remained in the public eye through several books and public appearances. He’s such a treasure of wisdom for sports and life.

With his birthday in the news, I saw a link someone shared to one of those public appearances, his TEDtalk in 2001, and wanted to share a few thoughts on it.

The focus of Wooden’s talk was his definition of success:

…peace of mind attained only through self-satisfaction in knowing you made the effort to do the best of which you’re capable.

Wooden says, “If you make the effort to do the best of which you’re capable, try and improve the situation that exists for you, I think that’s success. And I don’t think others can judge that.”

Whatever you’re doing, whatever your line of work. Wooden believes it’s about giving your best effort.

Did you catch that? It’s not necessarily about winning.

Winning is a product of what you do.

Wooden says, “…if you make effort to do the best you can regularly, the results will be about what they should be. Not necessary to what you would want them to be, but they will be about what they should, and only you will know whether you can do that.”

That’s a quote every youth sports coach should digest.

Wooden also quotes Cervantes, who said “The journey is better than the end.”

Yes, it’s the getting there where the real work happens, the “fun” as Wooden says.

Indeed.

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Rethinking a college education

Think back to when you were debating what college to go to. It likely came down to cost, location and curriculum among the many factors, right?

You probably liked something about college A, something else about college B and so on… But you had to roll the dice and pick one, just one, to spend your four or five years at.

But… What if you could attend certain classes at several colleges before your degree is done? That is… As a broadcast journalism major, I would have loved to take a few classes at the University of Minnesota, even though I was officially a student 100 miles away at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire. Or, it would have been fun to spend a semester at Medill at Northwestern. Or, maybe another semester at a respected journalism school in the South.

Imagine being able to skip the red tape of an official transfer to do that. It’s really no different than studying abroad, I suppose. So with the massive advances in technology since I was in college, pre-Internet, why haven’t colleges embraced the possibility?

How easy would it be to take a class from another campus online or through iTunes. Why not use technology to provide a unique experience? Get past the notion that you have to be a grad of college A… it’s about producing smart and productive people for the greater good of society. Isn’t it?

Online or in-person, this kind of open enrollment just makes sense.

This concept came up for discussion in the latest episode of the Media Hacks podcast (#18), hosted by Mitch Joel. As Joel points out in the podcast, imagine how much better you’d be if you got to learn from the best at say eight different universities rather than relying solely on the faculty of the college you’re physically attending?

The Media Hacks discussion was inspired by a report in Fast Company magazine.

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News is about credibility

So what’s the fallout from the ridiculous balloon boy nonsense?

As I wear the hat of a former local TV news executive producer, here’s my conclusion:

The loser here isn’t Richard Heene – a sad, pathetic product of the YouTube and reality TV era who made his own bed here. Sure, it was fun to watch him implode. But, America’s already sick of this story. Don’t think so? Give it a couple days.

No, the true loser is cable TV news.

Yes, if a boy had truly been in that jiffy pop foil baggie, excuse me “LAV” (low altitude vehicle), it would have been a heck of a story. That’s why people tuned in. That’s why Denver’s news helicopters went up. That’s why the cable TV “news” turned away from the less sexy stories on their rundowns and went wall-to-wall on finding out what was going on in Colorado. I get that. Cable TV news has never been able to avoid the pack mentality.

Well, once the kid came out of hiding, and people saw this news conference, it was pretty clear what took place:

Notice he said he didn’t want to talk about his LAV… but he did.

And that Oscar-winning performance all came before the “we did it for the show” quote from the child who shall not be named here.

And the rest is history.

Hey CNN and your buddies, want to show your viewers you’re bigger than the next American idiot’s attempt to manipulate you? Then recognize the sanity of the people you’re dealing with sooner. Take a stand. Get your credibility back.

Who am I kidding, right? None of them will do that. These are “good stories.”

In this case, Richard Heene’s bizarre behavior and interest in doing interview after interview became the story. Of course it did.

He made his kid puke. Twice!

I’ll keep tuning out when this crap dominates the live TV news airwaves. I’ve got plenty of other programming to watch on my DVR, without commercials thank you.

So, beyond this “Dad of the year” episode for newsrooms to ponder, I leave you with two more takeaways:

-It’s going to be harder to stop the next American idiot fascinated by having or promoting a “show.”

-Some age 30+ people in cable, network and local TV news are likely wondering if they really feel good about the future of the profession. If not, it might be time to seek out a new line of work.

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