Author: Brian Lee

When communications professionals get together

Posted on by Brian Lee

In 2008, when I was president of PRSA-Madison and vice-president of Ad 2 Madison, I noticed that we had so many communications groups in town, yet we never got together. That notion is extra odd when you consider in the working world, most communications is integrated, meaning that people in PR, marketing, graphic design, etc., are working in tandem, not in silos.

Thus my idea to organize a joint holiday networking party came to be. That year we had PRSA, Ad 2, Design Madison and Madison MAGNET (a networking group for young professionals).

On Dec. 12, I get to be the MC of the latest edition, which features PRSA, Ad 2, AAF-Madison, AMA Madison, Design Madison, MCA-I Madison, AIGA, SMPS Wisconsin and IABC. If it weren’t for the fact that there are so many competing events the same night, we’d probably get more than the 200 people expected to show up.

I really enjoy getting to catch up with colleagues and meet potential new vendors, partners, clients and employees. Plus, it’s fun to see a group of professionals known for drinking and socializing have a great time.

One last thought: I’m crossing my fingers for good weather. We’ve had two years with snow/ice storms that kept the attendance down.

How desperate the media have become

Posted on by Brian Lee

I know, I know. Newsrooms are shrinking, reporters have more beats to cover, no more enterprise stories, more articles on the weather, more AP articles, etc. I get it. But sometimes, you can really see the desperation to generate a story at all.

On Nov. 19, Madison’s online newspaper, The Capital Times, wrote a story titled “Boys and Girls Club CEO, grocery store owner go undercover as homeless men in Madison.” But the Cap Times didn’t end there.

Three hours and 15 minutes later, the Cap Times implored readers to check out the story in an article called “In Case You Missed It.”

The next day, the paper published a follow-up piece titled, “Men’s expedition into homelessness in Madison sets off lively discussion on social media,” which other than a handful of paragraphs mentioning the Boys and Girls Club Facebook page, was a complete rehash of the original article.

But wait, there’s more!

The day after that, the Cap Times wrote how Yahoo! wrote about the same topic in an article titled, “Story of Boys & Girls Club CEO going undercover as homeless getting national attention.” That was immediately followed by a mention of the Yahoo! piece in another “In Case You Missed It” article.

Finally, on Nov. 24, the Cap Times wrote a story on how its homeless story was its most read story for the week.

Let’s recap: one real story, one story to tell you to read the story, one repeat of the original story disguised as something else, one story on another media outlet’s coverage, a reminder of that story and then a pat-yourself-on-the-back story. Six articles for just one story!

This, my friends, is an example of the sad state of the media today.

Why review sites like Yelp are bad

Posted on by Brian Lee

Snarky comments on online news articles really annoy me, but a close second are the reviews found on sites like Yelp.

Let’s be honest. The reviews are often useless. You will often find someone who:

  • Thinks their reviews are the best thing since sliced bread and adds meaningless prose to sound more sophisticated,
  • Likes or dislikes something but doesn’t list their rationale,
  • Is hell-bent on writing the most negative review ever and/or enjoys nitpicking everything, or
  • Writes a suspiciously positive review.

On that last point, did you know a study shows that 20 percent of Yelp reviews are fake? I’m actually surprised the number is not higher.

Anyways, I feel bad for business owners who have to deal with undeserved negativity that stems from Yelp reviewers. And even when a business does something wrong, why not tell the owners so that they can fix it?

That’s why I’m interested in seeing how the new app, Goodsnitch, fares. It’s been described as the “anti-Yelp app” because it doesn’t allow one-sided, glory-seeking rants. Instead, users provide private feedback to the businesses.

Whether this service replaces Yelp remains to be seen. I’m hopeful, but Yelp is probably too prevalent, unfortunately.