The Dangers of Inauthenticity

Is inauthenticty a word? Maybe in the spirit of Stephen Colbert, it is now. We need something for the opposite of authenticity. That's the word. Here's an example.

I caught on SA a news story from the US about a high school 'scared straight' stunt where students were told their classmates had died, only to discover later that it was a deception intended to 'shock' them about the realities of drunken driving.

Quote from the article:

On a Monday morning last month, highway patrol officers visited 20 classrooms at El Camino High School to announce some horrible news: Several students had been killed in car wrecks over the weekend.

Oceanside Unified Schools Superintendent Larry Perondi discusses the DUI program as a student looks on.

Classmates wept. Some became hysterical.

A few hours and many tears later, though, the pain turned to fury when the teenagers learned that it was all a hoax, a scared-straight exercise designed by school officials to dramatize the consequences of drinking and driving.

As seniors prepare for graduation parties Friday, school officials in the largely prosperous San Diego, California, suburb are defending themselves against allegations that they went too far.

At school assemblies, some students held posters that read, "Death is real. Don't play with our emotions."

Michelle de Gracia, 16, was in physics class when an officer announced that her missing classmate David, a popular basketball player, had died instantly after being rear-ended by a drunken driver. She said she felt nauseated but was too stunned to cry.

"They got the shock they wanted," she said.

Some of her classmates became extremely upset, prompting the teacher to tell them immediately that it was all staged.

"People started yelling at the teacher," she said. "It was pretty hectic."

Others, including many who heard the news of the 26 deaths between classes, were left in the dark until the missing students reappeared hours later.

"You feel betrayed by your teachers and administrators, these people you trust," said 15-year-old Carolyn Magos.

On one hand, I applaud the school for teaching their students to distrust authority figures and question the veracity of what they are told. Not that high school students need much encouragement in that area, but it's always a good lesson to reinforce. So bravo to the administrators for that.

But there's something even more deeply disturbing here that relates to my job. I realize I haven't blogged about work recently, but I'm going to start doing it again, so bear with me.

Manipulation is something that is so ingrained into so many people for so many reasons that it can become justifiable to them in instances like this. The administration's argument, that the ends outweigh the means, is faulty. I could post statistics that show being honest and straightforward with kids (and people) is the best way to influence their behavior. I could post a rant about schools manipulating their students (as soon as you're born, they make you feel small.) But instead consider it from the side of authentic communications, in which my company has become a major thought leader.

The fact of the matter is the old model of manipulate and obfuscate doesn't work. At some point your deception will be discovered, and the ends do not justify the means. Ever. Some marketers view the public as children to be manipulated. Traditionally, this thinking may work. It may get headlines. But like the student response to this deception, is the backlash worth it? If the administrators had instead sat down and shown them something equally shocking but not deceptive, for example, photos of DUI victims that you can easily find online, they would have achieved their goals without the need for lies and without the inevitable negative backlash and loss of trust.

The quote by the girl at the end really sums up the risks and dangers of inauthenticity: "You feel betrayed by your teachers and administrators, these people you trust."

Captain America: Dead. Capitalism: Alive and Well

Major hat tip to Angus for pointing me towards this story.

Even if you aren't part of my comic-readin', game-playin' crowd, you are probably aware that a couple of months ago, Marvel decided to kill off Captain America. You know this because you probably heard about it on the news; Marvel's PR team did a fine job of getting the word out. Character "deaths" happen in comics all the time, but the last time I can remember a comic event like this (hell, any comic event) getting this much mainstream media coverage was the death of Superman in the early 1990s.

His death was the talk of the geekosphere for quite a while, and I didn't weigh in because I really didn't have much to say (Jeff, however, had quite a bit of interesting stuff to say if you want to get up to speed.)

It turns out that there's another interesting side to this story that takes place well outside of the Marvel universe, and firmly in ours.

A little preface for the non-comic-reading Puppeteers: Wizard Magazine is pretty much the only print publication that caters exclusively to comic book readers. There are others, of course, but none come close to scratching Wizard's subscriber base, sales, and quality (and by quality, I mean the quality of their layout and print.) The mag tends to cater to the juvenile side of the aisle - it's kind of like Maxim, but with female superheroes instead of airbrushed celebrities - but it is a solid and credible news source for comics and entertainment news.

And Wizard Magazine is the main character of our story today.

Wizard Magazine is only one arm of Wizard Entertainment, who run the various Wizard World conventions as well. Wizard also runs its own online store, selling comics and collectibles. At WizKids, we worked with Wizard on several promotional figures that they sold both through their magazine and their online store. The idea behind those offers was to increase circulation numbers of the print magazine, and because Wizard is basically the only show in town when it comes to comics news, they tend to get what they want when it comes to things like exclusive promotional tie-ins. Companies want to see their product featured as a promotional item, because it's basically free PR. (You HCRealms guys: pay attention.)

Now you might know that print publications, like game companies, tend to run pretty far ahead of schedule on their news - meaning they have to know things about 3-4 months before they release/happen, so they can cover them in a timely manner. This is all the more important for them now given how fast news travels over the Internet; more than once, WizKids had exclusive news we'd given to a magazine leaked online, and the mags were none too happy to have been scooped.

Perhaps you see where I'm going with this. Wizard almost certainly knew of Captain America's impending death weeks, if not months, before it happened. And magically, within hours of the release of the issue - when it was sold out at almost every comics store in North America - the Wizard online store had plenty of copies. They had so many, in fact, that they had already graded them (a comic industry term for putting a funnybook in plastic with a permanent grade of its status, for hardcore collectors only) and put them on eBay - in the hundreds.

They also engaged in a major Google ad buy to purchase ads that redirected people searching for issues of the comic right to their online store.

In and of itself, that's not so terrible. This isn't Martha Stewart-esque insider trading; it's comics, and their profits on this venture could probably be measured 4 digits, 5 at the most. Does it hurt comic book retailers? Sure, a little, but I would also argue that comics and games retailers can be their own worst enemies (I'll get into this another time.)

But retailers themselves would probably disagree, and Brian Hibbs in his "Tilting At Windmills" column certainly does. (Brian's column, incidentally, is where most of my facts regarding the timeline of events came from). But Brian is also arguing for something new and interesting that, so far, the comics industry has seen very little of. It is something I experimented with at WizKids, and it's something I've discussed here before: transparency. I'll let him tell you:

To me, as a guy who sells comics and stories for a living, knowing months ago that Cap was going to die would have helped me sell more comics, not less. Because it’s not the action itself that’s the important thing, it is the execution of that action. That’s what people are buying.

I couldn't agree more. I'm not calling for a radical, "Marvel ought to let us know every line of dialog from every upcoming comic" - that's unreasonable. But as I've argued before, that information would have been relevant to the overall discourse. And I doubt very much it would have impacted the media blitz surrounding Cap's death. If anything, people lining up in front of comic book shops - people who had knowledge of the event because their comic shop guy told them about it - would have been a great picture to put on CNN.

Kevin Huxford at Newsarama did an excellent interview with Wizard's PR guy Drew Seldin about the issue, where Drew all but concedes the company, operating as one unit, did in fact have advanced knowledge of the issue. I can empathize with Drew, being a PR guy myself, and I'm not sure I would have handled it quite like he did (Hey, I'm new! only goes so far, especially in the comics industry where insiders tend to frown on outsiders to begin with), but I present it a Wizard's reaction to the debate.

Frankly, what matters here is not whether Wizard did anything shady. It's that people in the comics (and games) industry should closely consider what Brian had to say about releasing information sooner. It is antithetical to the "old way" of doing things, but those are the kinds of steps that might need to be taken to reignite interest among fans used to having more information at their fingertips than the sum-total of human knowledge 50 years ago.

"Radical Transparency" and Me

I have to admit, last week's little kerfluffle over blogging and transparency made me think far more than I thought it might. And not think in a "well, that's interesting" kind of way - it really created the kind of existential crisis that I typically only face every couple of years. And rather than shy away from the abyss, I stood my ground, stared back, and I feel as though the flames of Internet discussion have tempered me a bit.

It wasn't the notion of Radical Transparency (discussed in the issue of Wired in question, and on Chris Anderson's blog here and here) that caused the crisis - but what resulted from it was that I had to redefine what transparency, radical or otherwise, means to me and my job.

Two things caused me to really start thinking. The first was a comment on Frank Shaw's blog, reproduced here unedited:

Dude, somebody needs to wipe that candy-ass :) off your lyin' face!

The sad part of this business is that PR guys like you have sold your soul to the man, and are too smart by half.

You lie for a living. In the old days, that meant you would burn in hell for eternity. Now it just means that you can take home a fat paycheck.

You look in the mirror & what do you see? That :). Yuck.

The second was something Seth said to me in an IM discussion. I didn't save the transcript, so it's not exact, but he said something to the effect of the perception of many people is that PR is an inhibitor to communication. Referring of course to the "spin factor" - call it lies if you wish - people associate with the term "PR."

Taken together, I sat and stewed on this one for a while. Not long ago, I sat in on a meeting with Edelman's Corporate PR team - the guys you call when something really bad is about to happen, like a product recall or something. I asked them point-blank if they would ever turn down a potential client who was obviously guilty of something pretty terrible (the answer, incidentally, was yes.) But before that, they told me that it's important to keep in mind that everyone deserves equal representation - everyone deserves to have their side of the story told.

The answer really didn't sit well with me. I mulled that over on the way home last week, after reading about the Wired kerfluffle for most of the day. My belief in the American system notwithstanding, aren't there some douchebags who are better off just ignoring? Perhaps it was the fact that, just a few days prior, I saw the slimy defense lawyer on Battlestar Galactica use that exact same phrase to explain why he would defend Dr. Baltar, who was responsible for assisting the Cylons in their destruction of the Twelve Colonies - and then later responsible for collaborating with them during the occupation of New Caprica (I'm a geek, deal with it.) But one of the awesome things about Galactica is that it shows us Baltar's side of the story. He was an unwitting accomplice before the attacks, because a Cylon was using his hubris to gain access to information. He kept his involvement a secret for fear that the survivors would simply shove him out the nearest airlock. On New Caprica, it is certainly possible that he was collaborating because he thought it was the way to save more lives - the Cylons had superior firepower and any attempt to fight them on a mass scale would have resulted in a lot of deaths - possibly the deaths of all on the planet. It's a utilitarian argument, but a plausible one.

But seriously, is that the best defense I have - that I'm like the guy defending Gaius Frackin' Baltar (I warned you I was a geek) because "everyone deserves a chance to tell their side of the story?" Well sure, on one hand, that is true. It's the foundation of the American justice system for fuck's sake. But on the other hand, people tend to form opinions that are very hard to change. When you read something that presents a point of view from only one angle, you're more likely to agree, especially if you don't have a previous opinion about the subject matter. And if you've already formed an opinion that's similar to that being expressed in the story (X is evil, or Y is good) then you're even more likely to agree. I simplify, of course, but it's basic human psychology.

But it's not the best defense I have. What Seth said stuck with me, and I thought about it more in the context of what I used to do at WizKids: I was the guy who was responsible for entering information into the HeroClix figure gallery. I was the guy who put out press releases (and wrote them.) My job was to let the community know what was coming in future HeroClix releases, because it got them excited. Did I have to break bad news? Sure. But I did it honestly, in a straightforward manner, and I'd like to think they appreciated me for that.

So the dissonance here comes from what I do and the perception of what I do: I don't inhibit information flow. If anything, I facilitate it. And I use that term in its true definition, not the "new business" definition - I'm not going to petition to change my job title to "Information Facilitator" anytime soon.

However.

As any HeroClix players reading this site can attest, we didn't simply dump every bit of information out into the community. We announced expansions at a certain time so it wouldn't deflect interest from current releases. We trickled information about set contents to keep people interested. We knew what people wanted to know most, and we knew we could drive traffic if we held back a couple of days on posting that information, so we would (Superman anyone?)

More importantly, there were things that were never discussed in public. We never released the HeroClix point formula, and to this day no one has accurately cracked it. This occurred for two reasons: if we released it, people could simply create their own dials (or try to "correct" our dials), and second, it was WizKids' intellectual property and probably worth quite a bit of money to the right people. Games are a competitive business. Nuff said.

Nor did we discuss other internal goings-on: meetings where we decided what conventions we would attend, how to reorganize things to meet our budgets, and which people in the company argued for various sides to those questions. Why? The public simply doesn't need to know that stuff. There is no benefit whatsoever to the public at large seeing that information.

On a more personal note: look around the blog you're reading. You can make some fairly accurate assumptions about me here based on information I have chosen to share. I like comic books, and specifically Groo. You can see things I've taken pictures of. You can see my friends and interests by reading who I link to. You can see what music I've listened to most recently on my laptop. You can tell when I'm playing my Xbox 360, and when - exactly - I've reached certain points in certain games. You can tell I have cats, I'm married, and get a vague idea of where I live.

However, you will never see other kinds of information here. You won't know before or while I'm taking a vacation - only after. I don't want you to know why my house is empty. You won't know my exact address. You'll never learn my phone number, because I value my privacy (just ask some of my former WizKids pals, who were woken one morning by a gamer calling their house to ask them rules questions for the MechWarrior game.) You won't know when my wife and I fight. You won't know if I'm looking for a new job, because people from my office read this blog (it's OK guys, I'm not going anywhere.)

Why? Because that information isn't relevant to the discussion occurring here. Sure, some of it shapes who I am - from my experiences in the long run to my current mood - and there are people who share all that information online. Bully for them. But for you, the reader, it's simply not relevant.

And that's basically where I arrived. Chris Anderson, as much as I agree with his Long Tail theory, needs to acknowledge that even "radical transparency" has its limits. There are nods to this in the print issue of Wired - he notes that Coca-Cola probably shouldn't publish its secret formula online - but there are simply things that are not relevant to a conversation. In other words, there can be - can be - such a thing as "too much information."

Not that Anderson's underlying idea about radical transparency is necessarily a bad one. There is something to be said for a CEO blogging about his doubts about business decisions - traditional thinking says it will spook the investors, lower public confidence, and damage morale. And those things may be true. But it also creates a rapport with the public in ways that no amount of traditional PR or advertising ever could, ever. But I'll bet that the same CEO does not blog about specific meetings, publish every memo or email he writes, or mentions when he waits a couple of extra seconds on the elevator to watch a shapely intern walk by. Because that information simply isn't relevant.

One response might be "well, selectively sharing information isn't really being transparent at all, is it?" And the simple answer is: I don't know. Transparency, radical or otherwise, isn't defined and it certainly isn't quantified. It's certainly not extreme, as many of the community members who commented on Frank Shaw's blog viewed it (and, I suspect, many in the community would view it - tell us everything, damn it!) And there is a lot of information out there now. The Internet is, basically, a neural network that represents the sum total of all human knowledge. If you want to find information, you can do it. MSNBC can run up to five scrolls of stock reports and news tickers at once. Football games are full of statistics, cameras and microphones on the field are now the norm. As Lewis Black said, "the only place left to go is to put a camera up the linebacker's ass to see what he had for dinner last night."

A cynic might say it's disingenuous to talk about transparency in the same space as talking about choosing which information to share and not to share. Is that any more disingenuous than selling an issue of Wired about being "transparent" by putting an extremely airbrushed model on the cover? Perhaps. Perhaps I'm simply rationalizing this in my head, and I'm wrong. But somehow I don't think so.

After all, ten years ago I could not have conceived of working a job where I wouldn't have gotten fired for posting what I just wrote - as many of my readers perhaps can imagine as well. And I sit here ten years later, encouraged to think about - and blog about - these kind of things by my supervisors.

Information facilitation. It's what we do.

David Lynch On Product Placement in Films

Although certainly not being discussed at the moment in the same way PR efforts are, marketing and advertising efforts to place products in films and TV shows is a far older discussion. If you can spot a product in a movie, chances are the company paid to put it there.

My favorite director weighs in:

Via MeFi. Incidentally, the interviewer is wrong: this isn't a "growing trend," it's been going on for years.

By the way, one of my favorite solutions for a movie that couldn't receive any product placement offers, Repo Man:

Image comes from an interview with Repo Man director Alex Cox, which contains the story of the awesome generics.

Ain't That a Kick in the Head

I've blogged somewhat about transparency and other requirements of PR in new marketing, but today's bruhaha is more about the crossover between traditional PR and the blogosphere. The line between journalists and bloggers has always been a blurry one, especially when many journalists themselves have begun to blog. And I can say from working on the inside that when it's crunch time before a big outreach effort, it's doubly-important to make sure you've got things right.

Like say, for example, not sending a briefing bio to the journalist rather than the client. Oops.

All things considered, this is really just a minor screw-up. Someone at Waggener Edstrom sent Fred Vogelstein of Wired his own briefing bio. Other than a rare inside look at the machinations of corporate PR, there really wasn't much relevant information in there. Fred posted about it online, and posted the bio itself (PDF). Chris Anderson blogged about it at the Long Tail, and Wagged responded on their blog.

My first (and snarky) thought was "thank God it wasn't me/us!" But I have to wonder if this even would have been a story if it had happened before the blogosphere. Chris Anderson (full disclosure: I am a big fan of the Long Tail theory of online distribution, and I was involved in some outreach to him when I was on the Xbox corporate account) titled his post "Some choose radical transparency, some have it thrust upon them." As PR evolves and we try to find our footing with a top-tier blogosphere that consists largely of journalists like Anderson and Vogelstein who are actively (and rightly so) blurring the lines between traditional journalism and blogging, our internal machines will change as well. Does that mean us PR types are going to stop creating briefing documents? I seriously doubt it - as some of the comments on Anderson's post indicate, that's what our clients pay us to do.

But just as we can't expect to create a blog supposedly by 12-year-olds for a video game system, we also can't expect that kind of information to stay secret - and thus the need even for internal transparency. This would have happened eventually, whether it was a bio accidentally pasted into an email or some less-than-scrupulous person stealing the information and posting it online.

The interesting thing to watch here will be the blogosphere's response to this: will they act like journalists and see it for what it is? Just as PR is taking its steps out of childhood and into our awkward adolescent phase when engaging with bloggers, so too are bloggers looking across the dance floor at us. Both "sides" (and I use that term loosely) are gangly and not quite sure of themselves yet, but it'll be interesting to see whether we can manage to hold hands and dance for a song or two.