Exclamation blog: Stories, Ideas and loud noises
Reflections On TechCrunch40, Part II
I was viewing this one from the sidelines, all right. I spent most of last week in LaunchSquad’s new New York office, in Midtown - well, really the Garment Distric. It sorta makes sense, since LaunchSquad’s all about rolling up your sleeves, you know?
Most of my views on TechCrunch40 were largely filtered through my colleague Ryan’s views, since he was there, beaming me emails of cool companies to check out. So here’s my quick roundup:
Flock: They’ve got a hyperactive blog, and the people I know over there (Evan) are pretty cool. The browser itself is better and faster than both Firefox and Safari, but I can’t quite figure out what to do with some of the add-on features, especially the media browser and feed-reader functions. But I must say the in-browser blog editor kicks ass, and I’m using it as I type this.
Animoto : It’s a bunch of fun to use. Definitely competes with RockYou and Slide, but not nearly as robust. The fact that their stuff outputs to email, social network, iPhone, iPod, disc and a number of other formats is pretty cool. The production process is also fairly idiot-proof. Their load times and music partnerships are terrible, but that’s to be expected at this point in the game. As far as quality goes, though, this is pretty kick-ass.
My video’s right here, and LaunchSquad’s Jerry and Miko like it too.
“I don’t really share my photos except through facebook albums, but I know people who would use this” - sez Miko.
Ponoko: Like Etsy, but for furniture. My green-blogger pal GreenAmy would have a blast on this one. This will definitely catch on with the Make Magazine/Readymade crowd, but strategic partnerships are also needed to amplify the lifestyleish PR in this sector. The pricing model looks pretty ingenious, and as device printers (like, yeah, 3D) become more ubiquitous. Could be a prime acquisition for Etsy.
Musicshake: Doesn’t work on Macs, pretty much. Apparently huge with the WebKinz Asia crowd. Definitely one of those products that I’d want to try out with a room full of 9 year olds and videotape to see if they like it. I think it’s cool, but I’m biased, since I play music.
We’ll have part three from Ryan next week.
The Promise of Journalism 2.0
Is journalism dying? It’s too easy to view the field as a declining one as a fast-increasing number of [mostly amateur] bloggers sprint to get their copy online, often ignoring factual accuracy, embargoes and other processes journalists are schooled to consider. As businesses and PR firms like ours consider a story in an influential, high-trafficked blog to be the new “holy grail” in media, one can’t help but think the fate of true professional journalism may be doomed.
As a graduate of the Medill School of Journalism, I was taught to value the societal role and contributions of publications like The New York Times, Chicago Tribune … Anna Quindlen’s column in Newsweek. The Pulitzer Prize-winning articles of Friedman, the amazing sports stories of Rick Telander – that was the holy grail of journalism. But today, as a publicist for the new generation of tech innovators, I find myself in a different role. I am part of a changing industry of journalists, bloggers and media professionals– an industry called Journalism 2.0.
Journalism 2.0 is a melting pot of different people, ideas and approaches to the digital information age. The industry is not declining, it is evolving, just as the Web is evolving into “Web 2.0” and sales is morphing past the old days of cold-calling into “Sales 2.0.” J-schools like Medill are tailoring their curriculum more and more to focus on the role of “new media” in order to prepare a fresh crop of students entering a completely different era.
Rich Gordon, a professor of journalism I studied under at Medill, blogs regularly and inspires his students to blog and think of journalism with a “new media” mindset. In one popular article I remember, he wrote, “But I, for one, do not believe that journalism’s future is gloomy. In fact, I think that when we look back on the early years of the 21st century, we will recognize it as a period of exploding opportunity for journalists and the start of an exciting new era for journalism. I also think it’s quite possible that we’ll look back on these years as a period when a better informed public began to emerge, thanks to new communications channels and technologies. Am I nuts? Maybe. The signs of decline in traditional forms of journalism are real. But declining audiences and financial returns for newspapers and television news do not necessarily translate into worsening prospects for journalism, nor into a more poorly informed society.”
As Journalism 2.0 continues to mature, so do its problems and limitations. Journalists are curious people, and they report best by touching, feeling, experiencing. I recently spoke about these issues to my good friend and colleague Tim Roberts, who I reported with at the Silicon Valley Business Journal. Tim’s feeling was that Journalism 2.0 has brought readers closer to reporters and made more information available to the public than before. But he says it has also produced many more distractions: “Reporters who spend too much time in front of their computer screens are not getting a very complete view of the world (even with Google Earth).”
I think that insight is spot on. Journalism 2.0 should continue to get bigger, connecting reporters, bloggers, publicists, students – and most importantly, the public – to one another. But its complexities should not replace the subtle details, nuances and thoughtful analyses that can only be told through a story in the Times (or NYT.com for you J2.0-ers out there) that makes you stop and think.
Reflections on TechCrunch40, Part I
TechCrunch has entered the fold of must-attend confabs with its inaugural TechCrunch 20, err 40, held last week at The Palace Hotel in San Francisco. As a newbie to the Bay Area, it was a quick study on the state of ideas and venture capital in Silicon Valley and globally. I couldn’t get the thought out of my head of it being a DECA competition for grown-ups and, as such, could have stuck to 20 companies. It was a lot like a web conference in 1999 or early-2000 — enthusiasm, opportunity and capital abounds. The questions I kept asking (both skeptically and optimistically) were:
How is this company going to get customers?
How will this company make money?
Is this company creating a need?
Why that name?
In thinking about the presenters, here are some thoughts around those questions.
Cubic Telecom will get customers because it’s a practical service — free international phone calls for the business traveler. The management team was smart, polished and experienced. If you ever travel out of the country, watch for the launch of Cubic Telecom later this fall.
CastTV and Mint are two different examples of companies that seem poised to make money fast. CastTV has impeccable search for video and will likely get acquired. That’s one way to do it. Create a service that outperforms any other and complements an existing company’s service and, voila, a couple hundred million (or more) could be yours.
On the other hand, Mint has a very smart, sustainable model that, most importantly, provides access to customers that advertisers want and has an excellent value proposition for its users — control your finances. I can aggregate all of my bank accounts and track spending, performance, payments and more with Mint. If I can get a better rate on a credit card than the one I’m using, Mint will tell me and direct me to the offer. This is the most basic example and one that shows you why the site is a win for user and vendor. Mint won the TechCrunch40 grand prize, so while I’m front running, it got my attention and had me logging on as a user by the end of its six-minute presentation
ZocDoc was another company with an idea that solves a problem I have: finding a medical provider. Around this problem, however, they’ve built a rating system and have gone deeper into the doctor’s profile than I find online with Blue Cross Blue Shield, for example.
The question I kept asking was, why can’t I just do this on Yelp, where hundreds of doctors are getting rated now? The only incremental value I could see was that it linked to a list of insurance providers and could tell me if that doctor took my insurance. But isn’t this something that I can cross-reference on Yelp in a five minute phone call?
Speed was also an issue with ZocDoc. It allows you to see who has appointments available that day so you can get right in with that nasty case of poison oak or a cracked tooth, but I wonder if the doctors will keep their scheduling info up to date? What I did like a lot was CEO Cyrus Massoumi’s vision and conviction about solving this problem.
Look for more TechCrunch reflections soon…
Will Comcast’s Unhappy Customers Show Them How To Die?
I was watching John Batelle’s opening remarks at the Conversational Marketing Summit at San Francisco’s Presidio last Tuesday afternoon; the entire event surrounds trends in marketing that involve the consumer, presumably as a co-creator of marketing content.
I was introduced to the people sitting on both sides of me, and, two people to my right was a guy from Comcast. I turned to the guy to my right and said, “Man, has that guy been on the blogs this week? They’ve been getting slaughtered.” The guy shrugged his shoulders and said, “Uh, I don’t know,” which made me wonder what the hell he was doing at a conversational marketing event if he wasn’t aware of the Comcast situation, but I digress..
Ad Age’s Bob Garfield, among others, has been going ballistic about Comcast, and Jeff Jarvis (Dell Hell) took his tragicomic account of waiting for the cable guy and kicked it to the next level: stating that “every company — every industry — that makes its money by screwing its customers is doomed.” Well, he’s got a point here.
The kids today aren’t really just into being spoon-fed professionally made content. In fact, according to a Deloitte study referenced on David Weinberger’s blog last week, stated that Millenials (yes, I’m officially old because I called people aged 13-24 the kids) are adopting new forms of content consumption faster than ever, but all generations are demanding UGC faster than ever. Essentially, 51% of the Internet is watching user-generated content. That is, one half is watching what the other half if saying.
When Garfield challenges Comcast’s unhappy customers to start an anti-advertising campaign, customercials, to make a video explaining why the cable behemoth sucks so bad, he’s already a week or two late. Jeremy told me about the infamous sleeping Comcast technician video posted on YouTube a year ago.
This video is so popular (over 1 million views) that it actually comes up on the first page of Google and Yahoo for search-rankings, so it goes without saying that customercials can have enormous effect, especially when they’re highly viewed on video portals like YouTube. Will videos like this have a long-term pervasive effect on conversations about brands? Absolutely.
But until the other day it wasn’t empirically clear that a majority of the customer marketplace was listening to the content-creators among them. To quote one of my favorite consumer advocates, Garth Algar: “Game On.”
Comcast Customercial Link Love:
What’s Your Brand Mantra: I Hate Comcast
Virgin Airlines: Alex Albrecht Was Right
I must admit, right off the bat, that I have a little bit of Virgin guilt; I left the Virgin Mobile phone service to jump ship to the iPhone (and their obstreperous deal with AT&T, who have sent me 100% erroneous bills, so far). So I expected to be a bit biased in favor of the new airline. Aside from hearing the initial Diggnation reports from Alex Albrecht, I’d heard little more than secondhand anecdotal about flying Virgin, all of it uniformly positive. So I was prepared to like them.
I can now say that flying Virgin is about as nice as flying first class on Delta, for about half the price. I know this sounds lame, but I hope they jack their prices up a little bit, just so Southwest and Delta don’t lose too many of their price-sensitive customers over the whole deal. (Note to new airlines: filling your first flights with influencers/bloggers is a pretty freakin’ smart thing to do.)
Without giving the whole anecdotal experience, I’m going to do a 2-minute highlight rundown. These are just a few reasons I think I’m switching from United, unless I’m traveling a route that Virgin doesn’t fly.
10. Bottled water is expensive at the airport. At JFK or SFO, a 33 oz. bottled water typically costs about $5. If you can suffer through the pre-boarding sans water (due to FAA security restrictions), it’s all-you-can-drink once you get on board. And the cute little bottles are available in little glowing bins next to the restroom. Economic benefit: $5.
9. The mood lighting is no joke. When you walk into the plane the pink and purple mood lighting really is calming. I can’t picture how someone could go into full-on screaming jerk mode with this kind of lighting; it would be like starting a tiff with a server in some hipster nightclub. What are the other airlines even thinking with harsh fluorescent lighting? Economic benefit: $10 (What I’d be willing to pay to arrive 25% more relaxed).
The music selection is an extension of the mood lighting. The plane is like one fairly well-chosen iPod, programmed by thirtysomething Londoner. Looking through the selection, I realized that it would entertain my dad, one of my octogenerian great uncles (if they could figure out the interface) or my 21-year-old brother. My in-flight playlist consisted of some interesting surprises: the new Orbital, Bloc Party, Cold War Kids, High School Musical (so, I was curious), John Legend, a few interesting early U2 tracks, and a bunch of Led Zeppelin album tracks that I hadn’t heard in a while. The 3000+ track library contained a few things I didn’t expect to find on a plane: Coltrane’s A Love Supreme, a bunch of Steve Earle, and an hour’s worth of good Frank Zappa. A few audiobooks would be a heavenly addition. (Economic benefit: $5 - not having to use my iPhone/iPod on the flight, period.)
7. Non-branded coffee, and it’s good. I’ve had enough burned Starbucks on United to last a lifetime. (Economic benefit: nothing, but there’s something to be said for not drinking bad coffee).
6. Allows for prosumerish full-control of the in-flight experience. Want to watch a movie? $8. Want to eat the fruit and cheese plate (mediocre)? $7. The plane’s Linux-based Red in-flight entertainment system, while still obviously in beta, gets the job done. While it may feel like they’re nickel-and-diming you on the amenities, the base flight of the flights are great, and they don’t box everyone in to watching the same crappy movie. While I’m unsure if average joes are going to start a chat session with the person across the aisle, the feature will be radically popular with groups traveling together. Who knows, maybe it’ll get kids to think that chatting with their parents is cool. (Economic benefit: at least $50. Having a dynamite playlist probably allowed me to get more done than I would have at work, with no email to interrupt me.)
5. Really loud music in the bathrooms. It may seem a little intense to do your business to really loud salsa music, but if it gets each person in and out of the restroom 10 seconds faster, that’s a heck of a lot less waiting around for everyone. (Economic benefit: $1. I’d pay that much to get in to the bathroom 10 seconds faster whenever I went on a flight.)
4. No obnoxious announcements. Not once on the flight were persons told to stay in their own cabin. It’s sort of implied, by the black-outfitted flight attendants, as if by doing so, you’re being, well, uncool. The only thing that came close to being a little too cheeky is the announcement that the airline doesn’t accept cash.
3. Exit row: $25. United, I’m sick of begging. Please, just let me pay the extra $25 up front so that I don’t have to beg, plead and flash my cheesy Premier Associate card so that I can have an exit row seat. Virgin just lets me lock it down when I make my reservation. (Economic value: $0, since I paid for it.)
2. The plugs, the plugs. Being able to calmly sit and do email on the snappy T-Mobile connection in the terminal was good enough, but not having to stake out an outlet and sit on the floor like my dog, Teddy, was worth ten bucks to me. Getting off a plane having just listened half of Stevie Wonder’s Songs In The Key of Life because you saw it on the in-flight system - bonus. Getting off of a plane with a fully charged laptop? Double-bonus. (Economic value: $0, since I’d get this on United.)
1. Total lack of logo-based branding Virgin America’s in-flight branding was more like, “Welcome to the Virgin Mobile building” than “You’re flying in a really exciting airline today!” It made me realize that, in all of their attempts to reach me, United and Southwest have failed with their in-flight magazines and mediocre toiletries that don’t reach my demographic. Virgin, in providing a low-key whole-experience brand (fresh flowers at check-in, relaxed staff, super-clean planes) spoke more than a dozen logos and forced smiles could. (Economic benefit: I’d be willing to pay $8 to get rid of all the logos. And another buck to empty the seat pocket.)
So, from my initial estimates, even if the cost of the United flight is the same as Virgin’s, the economic value of the Virgin Flight is $80 higher. Thus, even if Virgin jacks up the price of the SFO-JFK run to $190-200, each way, I’m still game. The math works.
Wish-list: Individual droppers of Natural Tears to fight in-flight dry eyes, better breakfasts, planes that never lose connection with the satellite feed.
Exclamation Conversation: Geekbrief.TV’s Cali Lewis And Her Nerdy Past
I love it when you’re reading a magazine like Guitar World or Rolling Stone and the editors unearth some interview with Duane Allman from 1970 that they never ran (translation: somebody got really stoned and lost the story behind the radiator). I ran into Cali Lewis at Gnomedex about a month ago in Seattle, and we sat down to have a chat, but, much to my chagrin, the audio fidelty (avoid recording podcasts on a cheapo Olympus Digital Voice Recorder) was too lousy to post on-line. So, before I let this one get locked into the vaults, I’m gonna ping out a lean-and-mean written version of my chat with one of the leaders in tech video podcasting today. As of today, Geekbrief.tv is up to Episode 227. One week’s worth of episodes, watched back-to-back, makes for the funniest and most bracing 15-minute tech news show I think I’ve ever seen. Don’t get me wrong; This Week In Tech is great for the post-game show and punditry, but when I’m running to catch a bus, I’d much rather be getting the download from Geekbrief.
I’m really sorry; I was eating breakfast when you gave your talk this morning; what did I miss?
Well, we started with no production experience at all;i had never been in front of the camera and Neal had never been behind the camera. We had a web company before the bubble burst, and after that happened, we took some time off. Nothing in technology really piqued our interest until we heard about podcasting, and when we found out, we were like, “Wow - we have to do this.” So, what we talked about was our story, but we didn’t want it to be about us: the fact that you can do anything you want to.
Tell me a little bit about getting into podcasting full-time.
When we decided to do podcasting full-time, we were in a bubble. We were in this frame of mind that nothing else mattered, that failure wasn’t an option and we were just going so hard and so focused on what we wanted to do, and getting it done. Yesterday, Guy Kawasaki spoke, and he talked about something: “Don’t worry, be crappy.” That’s exactly how we got started. We knew what we wanted to do, and we knew how we wanted to be, but Brief #1 was crappy. [The earliest easily searchable Geekbrief episode is Episode #7]. It’s still not where we want it to be. We found a video of Ira Glass on Current.tv - it’s an awesome inspirational video. He talked about how you have this vision and you have this talent, but it’s not “there” - you go through so many years…it doesn’t matter how long it takes you to get to this point, but you just have to start, and you have to get it done, and you have to do stuff to get to the point where your talent meets your expectations.
The Simpsons Movie came out about [seven] weeks ago, and I feel like Lisa Simpson’s sign in rising, and there’s been a lot of bloggage about women in tech, and especially younger women in tech. What do you think has been the trickle-down effect from your show? Have you heard any stories from girls that are like, “Yeah, I’m a geek and proud.”
I don’t think that it’s just my show, but I can talk about the audience of my show. Definitely, we’re seeing a change where girls are saying, “Yup, I’m a geek, and I’m proud to be a geek, and I don’t care what you say about me.” And, at the same time, they have that defensiveness, maybe, but I don’t think that people on the other side are looking at geeks and saying, “That’s a bad thing” anymore. It was, when I was growing up. We were cast aside, and the least popular…
Did you have glasses when you were growing up?
This is not something I want to share, but I’m going to anyway [nervous laughter]. My parents didn’t have a lot of money, and I had these huge glasses that covered my whole face, and that wasn’t fun. But I got contacts as soon as I could. And I enjoy my glasses now that I can fit glasses.
Now I know that Michael Butler [host of the Rock and Roll Geek Show], his daughter Martina has been podcasting for almost two years. Are you having teens come to you and say, “I wanna be like you in five years: what do I do?”
Absolutely. I get emails from teenagers all the time, and I’ve seen a bunch of teenagers that are incredible at video production. There’s this talent out there that just wouldn’t have been seen before. There’s a person [at Gnomedex] who I talked to his daughter in Second Life one time. I said, “Hi, Amanda.” He was telling me today that she went off Second Life and called all her friends and said, “I met Cali Lewis! I met Cali Lewis!” He and his wife were thinking, “That’s not really meeting Cali Lewis.” I’m really, really excited about how girls are coming into tech, and being willing to call themselves a geek. And I don’t really care about the term “geek” - it’s the idea. It’s the idea that they are into technology, and I can’t wait to see that grow.
Squeezing Life Out of Organic Boxed Chicken Stock
On Saturday night, I realized how rarely I go to the theater. And I don’t mean Theater, with a capital T. I mean low-key, do-it-yourself, break-down-the-set-afterwards-and-be-outta-here-in-15-minutes theater.
Aside from a community-theater version of Same Time Next Year and a birthday trip to Avenue Q (South Park meets Sesame Street Live!, essentially), I haven’t seen a real play in years. So, when I saw Amy Tobin’s show, Organic Boxed Chicken Stock at the San Francisco Fringe Festival Saturday night, it made me realize that independent actor/writers have every bit of as much of a challenge as many of LaunchSquad’s clients do.
Indie actors and directors have to write, direct and act (and in Tobin’s case, play and sing) the entire production. Our clients have to conceive, execute and sell their entire product or service to a marketplace that, while familiar with new ideas, is immensely skeptical about adopting any one of them unless they’re seen as a whole product. But, that too, is something that actor/directors also have to face: if the audience can’t contextualize the show in terms of their own experience, they can only appreciate it on a limited level. Both situations leave “the artist” exhausted, at the end of the day, when it comes time to do the media relations, and attract attention to your art (or product, as the case may be).
Tobin’s spoken-word-meets-cabaret performance (which crammed four songs and eight monologues into fifty minutes) is a really coherent piece about consumerism, identity and, in her words, “being stuck in between two worlds.” I couldn’t help but laugh at the part where she admits a secret joy at occasionally throwing away plastic bottles. I could only imagine how it would have gone over in a completely packed room, rather than the half-full one that it played in.
Post-show, chowing on Indian food with Tobin and her partner and A Little Friction bandmate (ex-Beatnig) Kevin Carnes, it became all too clear to me that the only way to for an independent artist to dedicate the requisite amount of time to “the art” and “selling the story” requires a trying 50/50 time investment - which few artists believe they have, with day jobs, tech rehearsals and, well, sleeping getting in the way. Moments like these make me realize why so many innovative brands are out there looking for someone to tell their story: they simply lack the human capital to do so, because they’re so busy working on their “production.”
A painter friend of mine, Aliza Cohen, is about to debut her first full-scale San Francisco art show in mid-October, and she’s grappling with the same problem as Tobin; so much art “work” to do, and not nearly enough time to talk to bloggers and local media to tell the story. While I think she’s becoming much more media-savvy, I can tell that it’s a slow, blocky transition for someone who’s obviously much more comfortable behind her easel. When I told that I thought she should spend 50% of the time between now and her mid-October show publicizing the event, she looked at me like she thought I was a little nuts. But, like Tobin’s work, Cohen’s paintings are too good not to talk about. They just don’t tell you in art school that part of the “art” includes being willing to spend three or four hours a day doing email and making phone calls.
After my recent experiences with Tobin’s show and Cohen’s connundrum, the next time I meet with a perspective client who has awesome story to tell (but looks a little exhausted), I think I’ll have a bit more insight as to where they’re coming from.
Organic Boxed Chicken Stock plays on Friday, September 14 through Sunday, September 16 at the Exit Theater, at 156 Eddy in San Francisco. Cohen’s show opens at 1890 Bryant Studios in San Francisco on Friday, October 19.
Diigo Debuts WebSlides - The Ten-Minute Preso Fix
Normally, I wouldn’t pop a vendor’s release in the Exclamation blog, but I really think that Diigo has come up with a pretty novel idea. Slideshows, when they’re good, tell a story. And that’s exactly what Exclamation is about - telling kick-ass stories.
This morning, Diigo officially released WebSlides. They’re probably hanging out at Office 2.0 right now, basking in the glory of their slideyness. This release puts social tagging and bookmarking a little bit closer to the average joe, as it lets them enjoy the benefits of the medium without having to learn the guts of how it works.
Here’s a good example of how WebSlides looks: a slideshow on genealogy 2.0.
We’ve been using Diigo here at LaunchSquad for about five months, and while we normally use it to forward cool sites around the office (and share with clients), there are some pretty solid applications for marketing, PR, social media and communications here too. WebSlides allows the user to make a slideshow of anything they tagged in Diigo. So, for example, if you have about 10 minutes and a decent wireless connection, you can prepare a narrated clip portfolio to show some of your company’s work (e.g. great articles written about your company or your clients). As long as these sites are already bookmarked in Diigo, you can pop them into the drag-and-drop interface and create the show very quickly; a web-slides feature has always been an Achilles
heel of PowerPoint. (Well, geez, one of many - who am I kidding, here?)
WebSlides differs from, say, Slideshare, because (1) it’s not just for uploading pre-existing Pages or PowerPoint presentations into a slideshow. It’s meant for making web-clipping slideshows, quickly. Not to diss Slideshare too much; they’re good for what they are - a post-presentation YouTube - but you really can’t make anything that looks too polished due to their bric-a-brac UI.
For the time being, I’d go easy on using sound and narration gratuitously on WebSlides, as it doesn’t seem to have quite caught up with the rest of the product, but Diigo is usually good about fixing all bugs in a few weeks. WebSlides is a practical innovation from a company that’s been percolating with good ideas for some time now.
How Starbucks Should Have Burned Mr. Smith
San Francisco Weekly writer Matt Smith’s dad got burned at Starbucks in July. The Red Bluff, California retired Methodist pastor ordered a cup of coffee, and the barista accidentally knocked it off the counter. Coffee spilled down the front of Mr. Smith’s pants, burning his crotch. Some of the hot coffee ran into his shoes. That sounds painful, and embarrassing. I can only imagine how Mr. Smith felt when the barista ran to get a questionnaire, instead of summoning medical attention.
According to the elder Mr. Smith:
“There was a man in the shop who was a male nurse. He came from where he was sitting and said, ‘I’ve been watching this, and I’m a nurse, and I must say to you, you must not fill out this form. You must take yourself to the bathroom and make sure you get some water on your foot.’”
After not hearing from the location for two days, Mr. Smith returned and was given a case number and a 1-800 number to call. Two weeks later, Starbucks mailed Mr. Smith a $50 gift card for the scalding.
As a point of comparison, Matt Smith cites the infamous 1992 Liebeck V. McDonalds case, in which a 79-year-old woman who accidentally scalded herself with hot coffee (also in her groin area), eventually settled for $160,000 in compensatory damages and $2.7 million in punitive damages. There are two key differences between the cases: (1) Smith didn’t undergo skin grafts like Ms. Liebeck did and (2) an employee was involved in Mr. Smith’s scalding. While the depth of his dad’s injury doesn’t compare with Liebeck’s, one incident took place in the customer’s car, and the other took place in coffee shop, with employee involvement.
Starbucks spokesperson Tara Darrow closed ranks when Matt Smith interviewed her for his August 1 article, citing a secret corporate “program” they have in place to deal with scalding incidents. Darrow said:
“Do we have a policy in place for responding? Yes, we do. We have a policy in place. I can’t really give you details”.
From a PR or social media perspective, this definitely looks like a case of “death of a thousand cuts”. Starbucks committed several wrongs here, none of which are entirely unforgivable, but combined, are pretty atrocious:
1. They scalded a customer;
2. They made him fill out an incident report before giving him medical care for his burns, without knowing their severity;
3. They weren’t transparent about their reaction process to such incidents, after admitting they had a program in place to deal with such incidents;
but the most egregious wrong was Starbucks regional manager Chris Gage’s written response to the article, in which he wrote:
It is difficult to provide specific details on how we respond to incidents, as each situation is unique and our response is tailored accordingly. However, I can assure you that in any situation that involves injury, our partners are trained to first offer to call for outside medical assistance and, if a more immediate response is necessary, use on-site first-aid supplies to assist the customer.
Here’s the spot where Starbucks could have come clean and said:
1. We messed up by spilling coffee on you and not giving you medical attention, pronto
2. We’re really sorry and we train our employees to act differently in these situations
3. This employee was disciplined and we re-emailed all store manager to ensure they know how to deal with this kind of situation
4. We’re going to send you a $10 gift certificate every month, forever, so you can always take a friend to Starbucks for a cup of coffee. And so you don’t think we’re total jerks.
They should have done this within about 48 hours of the scalding
This would have done a few things:
1. Shown the customer that the company is not afraid to admit when they do something wrong
2. Shown the public that the company is quick to act on customer-safety related issues
3. Shown that the company makes good when it makes an error
To take more a few rules from my forthcoming eBook on social media, Do Not Print At Work, I’ve got to delineate a few crucial tenets that Starbucks is going to need to follow in all “crisis” communications from here on out:
1. Success in the blogosphere is generally proactive - go out there, Starbucks, and look proactively for people that have been burned by your baristas, who, like most humans, are prone to spilling 1 out of every 100,000 cups of coffee they pour. Address each and every one of these incidents, even retroactively. Become known as the company that lives up to the imagery of the shiny, happy coffee drinkers portrayed on its gift cards (like the one sent to Mr. Smith, sans apology).
2. Be super-freakin’ transparent communications matters relating to public safety.. Now, I know what you’re thinking. Metz, you’ve got it easy - none of LaunchSquad’s clients are capable of scalding someone with hot coffee, or, god forbid, killing someone. Well, that may be true, but if one of our clients’ tech products failed, critical business processes could go awry, costing companies untold fortunes and even, jobs. So, we know high-stakes. And, what misfortune could possibly befall Starbucks for revealing their burned-customer program, when this information is obviously accessible to any Starbucks associate with a rank higher than assistant-manager? This information will likely leak out, soon enough on the Starbucks Rumor website anyway. This brand has more citizen marketers than any food brand, ever. It would be so easy to make them say good things about the brand, if the brand did good things.
I tried to get comment from Darrow and Gage, but thorough searches on both Google and LinkedIn yielded no results, so I invited them to comment via email on the Starbucks website.
It should be noted that I dug through a utensil drawer thick with knives to find a coffee measure so that I could hand-measure a pot of Peet’s Major Dickason’s blend (instead of the 10 packets of pre-measured Starbucks) before typing this entry up. It seems that everyone has their own measure of good taste.According to his son, Mr. Smith mailed back the gift card, and Starbucks has chosen not to respond to this posting.
