Blame it on Canada - Facebook and stricter Canadian Privacy Laws

I had to publish this from Mashable. Not only because of the privacy issue but of the fact that 33.333333 per cent of Canadians are on Facebook. OMG!!! That's a third of country - wild! Oh yes, and did I mention that I'm Canadian so very interested in these cross-border cultural differences.

So here goes:

Facebookcanada - A Canadian privacy commission report released on Thursday says that Facebook breaches privacy laws there.

The report, outlined by Canadian Privacy Commissioner Jennifer Stoddart at a press conference in Ottawa, criticizes the fact that Facebook retains user information after users have closed their accounts.

Facebook has around 12 million Canadian users, which equates to 1/3 of the population; and yet the country’s privacy commission expressed “an overarching concern” that Facebook’s privacy information displayed to users is “often confusing or incomplete.” Other criticisms were targeted at Facebook’s apps program: the report says too much private data is provided to 3rd party developers.

Meanwhile, Facebook’s retention of data from deactivated accounts violates the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act, the commission claims.

Facebook has been given 30 days to implement the changes, and has already agreed to “most” of them, according to a release. Facebook (Facebook) Chief Privacy Officer Chris Kelly is quoted in an AFP report on the issue as saying “We continue our dialogue and have every confidence that we will come to acceptable conclusions. I think the concerns are fully resolvable.”

An Ode To Authenticity - Walter Cronkite's legacy

Walter Cronkite has left this earth. What made him unique was his passion for the truth no matter how difficult or how pressured he was by censorship. He felt an immense responsibility toward his audience. He was authentic, he was someone who spoke your language - someone you could trust. He left an incredible legacy and imprint on all of us. His emotional reporting of the Kennedy assassination through heartfelt tears, his glee and encouragement for the Appolo astronauts flight to the Moon, the debacle of the Vietnam war and a America forever changed.

The world is a different place without this statesman of the truth. As a celebration of Walter's goodness, his authenticity, his wisdom and heartfelt connection to the telling of the human condition, I wanted to share this lovely Ode from Walt Whitman:,

Song of Myself, Part 1

I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.

I loaf and invite my soul,
I lean and loaf at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.

My tongue, every atom of my blood, formed from this soil, this air,
Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their parents the same,
I, now thirty seven years old in perfect health begin,
Hoping to cease not till death.

Creeds and schools in abeyance,
Retiring back a while sufficed at what they are, but never forgotten,
I harbor for good or bad, I permit to speak at every hazard,
Nature without check with original energy.

Walt Whitman was a poet of great standing. His book, Leaves of Grass, published in 1876, is full of inspirational messages for poets everywhere.

Song of Myself, a poem with over 50 parts, is a deep "song" of Whitman, and aptly portrays him as he believed himself to be.

The new un-Starbucks

Starbucks has announced that it is launching a new concept - a cafe that will serve beer and wine in addition to coffee and tea. While the concept of serving wine and beer at a cafe isn't innovative - the Europeans have been doing this for centuries, what is interesting, however, is that Starbucks is launching a chain of un-branded cafes. The pilot cafe will simply be called the "15th Avenue Coffee and Tea shop" - a rather neighbourly if generic name. Starbucks plans on launching a couple more of these cafes - one assumes using neighbourhood descriptors.

And this from Starbucks - lauded the world round as the king of the branded experience. The very same Starbucks whose green dot logo is worth billions.

Hmmm. Can you brand and create intrinsic value from a look or experience without a logo? Can you create a chain of cafes without a common name? If there were no more logos, what would Naomi Klein call her next book? (OK, just kidding)

What do you think about Starbucks new move?

United Breaks Guitars - UA's PR Gaff

You can run but you cannot hide when it comes to PR blunders. This week, United certainly received a tough lesson in customer relations and how not to manage a PR crisis. All brand managers take note - social media can be your friend, or in this case, your worst nightmare.

In the spring of 2008, Canadian singer songwriter Dave Carroll was traveling with his band Sons of Maxwell to Nebraska for a one-week tour and witnessed his Taylor guitar being thrown by United Airlines baggage handlers in Chicago. He later discovered that the $3500 guitar was severely damaged. While United didn’t deny the experience occurred, United employees kept passing the buck from person to person, refusing to deal with his issue. After nine months, United finally said they would do nothing to compensate Dave for his loss.

Frustrated, Dave decided to go viral with his complaint in the best way he knew how - he wrote a song and produced a video which he launched on YouTube. The story was picked up by CNN and other news channels and within days Dave became a hero; an overnight sensation. United responded to the video by agreeing to reimburse Dave, but the damage to their reputation was already done. As I write, over 2 million people have played Dave's video and it has prompted a viral outpouring of empathy.

This is another great case study to add to the annals of social media and brand crisis management (along with Motrin and Dominos), where companies learn the hard lesson in today's digital world, that every customer's voice counts and that the tenor of that voice can be echoed a million times in a matter of days. But the real issue for United goes much deeper. You've got to believe that there is an aspect of the culture at the airline that enabled this crisis - a culture where employees are limited by rulebooks rather than empowered to do what's right for the customer. In brand building every consumer touch-point counts, and as we've seen in so many other companies whether they be Southwest, Starbucks or Zappos, employees at every level can make or break a brand experience.

Maybe this crisis will make United start to think a little differently about managing the brand experience.

State Farm Insurance and the tale of the moonwalking crazy pink bunny

Last week I wrote about smartphones. Since one out of seven minutes of media consumption today is through mobile devices, this is an important communications platform for brands. With mobile usage expected to grow by 60 percent over the next two years, marketers should be thinking about how they can leverage these devices to build the brand and drive the business.

Mobile advertising is certainly one avenue marketers can pursue. According to new research from IPG's Universal McCann and AOL, mobile users are surprisingly accepting of advertising. Amongst 1800 respondents polled, 38 percent said they had taken action based on mobile ads. Almost 30 percent said mobile ads had led them to share information, while 22 percent said mobile ads had influenced a purchase decision.."

However, Forrester Research isn’t as bullish as the AOL folks who commissioned the study referenced above, citing hurdles such as complexity around metrics, carrier relationships and limited consumer mobile data use as stifling mainstream mobile marketing today. The firm doesn't expect mobile spending to pick up until mid-2011 as brands continue to rely on more established avenues for marketing products and services.

Advertising complexities aside, what I continue to find promising for brands are mobile apps; where you are building something of value that your target actually wants to download. Mobile apps are a great example of permission based or “inbound” marketing, something that does not buy you immediate eyeballs but builds more meaningful relationship with your users. All sorts of brands are experimenting with mobile apps as it's an area rich in possibilities for building loyalty and driving sales.

Recently the savvy (e)retailer Best Buy introduced Best Buy Weekly Deals, a mobile app designed for the iPhone and iPod Touch. Once the app is downloaded, users can view weekly deals and mobile-only specials and find the nearest Best Buy store. A mobile app can offer a richer, faster customer experience than a mobile commerce web site because many of the features and design elements are stored on the smartphone. This means that these elements do not have to be regularly downloaded from servers, and because an app can integrate with smartphone features such as an address book or GPS navigation, it can greatly enhance functionality.

And then there is State Farm and the tale of the moonwalking crazy bunny. State Farm has recently introduced an iPhone app that acts as a "pocket insurance agent" allowing you to submit a claim directly, with pictures and details, the moment you're in an accident. Now, I don’t personally expect to have an accident happen frequently enough to have an insurance app taking up valuable storage space on my iPhone, but perhaps some do and will covet this app.



However, it’s not the app that I have an issue with – it’s the ad campaign. State Farm is attempting to offer convenience and build trust by “being there” with this app, however, their advertising is totally out of brand character. The ad features a pink bunny that goes berserk and dismantles a guy's car in a parking lot. While this is happening, the car owner is sitting in the car using the app to send in the damage report.

I don’t know about you, but I'm scared

Who’s in charge of brand strategy over there?

Cell phones - addiction, bane or remedy for modern life?

We are tethered to our cell phones – we leave the house with the “holy trinity” – keys, wallet, cell phone. And if you’re a smartphone user like me, we manage our life through our smartphones by staying organized and plugged in through the calendar, email and text functions. We amuse ourselves with our favourite pics, games and music. When we’re lost we use the navigation function to pinpoint our location and give us directions. Oh yes, and it allows us to stay connected to folks through Facebook, Twitter or MySpace and, let’s not forget, the actual phone. And I haven’t even started on some of the cool apps out there. Where would I be without my iPhone?

It seems, according to a poll conducted by Best Buy Mobile, that I am not alone in my attachment to my mobile phone. “One in three people would prefer to give up TV for their cell phones, 60% say they'd rather give up alcohol for a week than their cell phones, and 37% would rather have a cell phone than an umbrella if caught in a rainstorm. About 15% even say they'd rather have their teeth drilled at the dentist's office than give up their mobile phone for a week”.

What I also found interesting in the poll was that while one in five American adults had a smartphone, everyone else is befuddled by all the choices. The poll, which included 500 men and 500 women, found that of those who plan to buy a smartphone in the next 12 months, 47% say they are too confused to make a decision yet.

The major barriers? More than half -- 53% -- are torn about which brand or model to buy, including 52% of women and 42% of men. And close to 40% of those planning purchases say they have not taken the plunge yet because they hate shopping for electronics, period -- with 45% of women expressing this concern. And 64% of the respondents overall say they think the devices are just too pricey.

Is it any wonder? Buying a phone, especially if you don’t know what model you want can be daunting. Not only do you have to figure what phone to get but then there’s the complexity of the carrier and the plan. Is it better to get your cell phone at Best Buy or go directly to a carrier’s retail store front? Yikes – just thinking about it is dizzying. This spells great opportunity to cell phone companies to simplify the buying process and to continue to amp up the branding/emotional connection. It might also be a great opportunity for an e-commerce entrepreneur to 'amazon' all the phones and plans out there and create a selector process based on lifestyle, features, benefits and pricing to help consumers with the purchase process. (Did I just give away a good idea? ;+)

So what about it? Are cell phones an addiction, bane or remedy for modern life?

Polaroid – brand cardio pulmonary resuscitation

Innovate or become obsolete is the new mantra in Detroit. It should be the mantra for all brands, because as we're seeing in so many industries, resting on your laurels is not an option, whether you're a computer company, a car manufacturer, an airline, or a restaurant. Many brands disappear into oblivion without making headlines. Yet some brands are like emotional signposts along the highway of our life. They seem irreplaceable, and we lament their loss when they are gone.

How does a brand achieve that kind of iconic status?

Well - they fulfill the classic brand strategy to the tee - (differentiated, functional & emotional benefits). Yet iconic brands also create experiences that drive emotional connections, art and science to be sure with some alchemy thrown in. The right timing helps as does an innovation that sets the industry on fire.

Enter the Polaroid - a child of the 60's and as cool and innovative as Google or Apple today. As revolutionary as digital - you could instantly see the result - better than digital because it was printed and off you went with your original piece of art or moment in time.

Early in my career I worked in the tv commercial and feature film business - or in "the biz" as everyone called it. Polaroids were a staple of any set - they were used to capture wardrobe, continuity between scenes (was her hair parted on the side or middle...), every audition "headshot" was captured by a Poloraid. Polaroids were even used for lighting tests by the Cameramen.

Picture: "JUST TRYING TO FLY HIGHER 1/2" (Rb67 + polaback) shot by S.OMBRE

Speaking of art, the Polaroid also led a rich life with many artists and photographers. Creamy soft colours...some artists even baked the picture to achieve amazing effects. And then there was the ultimate...... the amazing 20x24 camera which takes big, detailed 20X24-inch instant color and black-and-white photographs. Polaroid created it to make large format photography available for a wide spectrum of uses, from getting close-up magnified views of Raphael's Transfiguration for the Vatican Museum to taking portraits of President Clinton at the White House or Dave Mathews and His Holiness the Dalai Lama in Seattle.




William Wegman has also used this puppy to shoot portraits of his Weimareinars. However, weighing in at 235 pounds, this camera is not exactly what you'd take backpacking.

Ok - so now you're saying - I saw one of those smaller Polaroid gizmos up in the attic. Cool - I can be retro and artistic too! Are you sitting down? If not, take these words in very slowly. Polaroid has decided to stop making film.

Yes - no more Polaroids, except.............

The Impossible Project was launched in the Netherlands. An Austrian scientist and a bunch of radical smart Dutch folks (mainly former Polaroid employees) are trying to rescue Polaroid by reinventing it using new, more cost effective and hopefully more earth-friendly materials. They've given themselves 12 months and are asking everyone around the world to help them innovate around a solution. How cool is that?

There's a real drama too about how they saved the last Polaroid-making machines from destruction from an old Polaroid manufacturing plant. It's a story filled with intrigue, a crook, and a Ponzi scam (no not Bernie Madoff). You can read the story here in the New York Times. With the launch of Project Impossible, there's been an outpouring of emotion and love, yes love, for this brand. Let's wish these guys success!

But the real point here, is that when you have a great brand and the business is strong and healthy, it's difficult to imagine any other scenario except continued success, high stock valuations and a case study of your brand published in books like "From Good to Great". But even the mighty fall, and success can never be taken for granted. Keep the the core, the heart of your business strong through innovation so your brand will never need CPR.