Author: Brian Lee

Voting early doesn’t hurt democracy

Posted on by Brian Lee

I voted absentee this week, as I’ll be on vacation in Florida on Nov. 6. Coincidentally, Wisconsinites could vote as early as Monday of this week, and media reports showed long lines in Madison.

I was stunned by an op-ed in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel titled “Early voting is bad for democracy.” The author, Christian Schneider of the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute, claims voting early is like watch the first three-quarters of a movie or football game.

Does he not live in reality? As an article in the Evansville Courier & Press notes, “most politically engaged Americans chose sides in this year’s presidential election long before they ever heard of Barack Obama or Mitt Romney.” This means there’s really nothing the opposing party can say to sway our votes, and this fact alone is a good enough reason to vote early.

Of course there are the undecideds, which according to an AP-GfK poll, make up about 23 percent of registered voters. Let that minority continue to hear both sides until Election Day. For the rest of us, we’re helping our democracy.

2012 PRSA-Madison Alchemy Awards

Posted on by Brian Lee

Revelation PR, Advertising & Social Media won a PRSA-Madison Award of Excellence for the second straight year, this time in the category of integrated communications, in last week’s annual Alchemy Awards.

Judging this year’s entries was the Suburban Chicagoland Chapter. Feedback on our entry included “this was a good effort to obtain a great result using earned and social media” and “very strategic and well-placed implementation.”

I’ve previously won in categories such as media relations, new communications vehicles and special events, but this is the first time I’ve entered into integrated communications, so I was really happy to have won.

When heads roll …

Posted on by Brian Lee

Someone tweeting for @KitchenAidUSA posted “Obamas gma even knew it was going 2 b bad! ‘She died 3 days b4 he became president’. #nbcpolitics” during the debate. It was immediately taken down and replaced with this apology: “Deepest apologies for an irresponsible tweet that is in no way a representation of the brand’s opinion. #nbcpolitics”

This is not an excuse, but it’s likely this was an accident. Someone tweeted using the company account instead of their personal account. However, the repercussions are mounting. Within an hour, both Adweek and Mashable had stories on this.

The best thing for KitchenAid to do is explain what happened, then fire the person (or have the agency fire the person) who tweeted it. Someone needs to be held accountable. If no one is punished for this, then KitchenAid deserves to keep getting its ass kicked in the social media world.

No punishment is like KitchenAid saying this incident was acceptable, and that it doesn’t mind insensitive jokes (no matter which side of the aisle you’re on, the tweet was still out of place).

Update:

New tweets from @KitchenAidUSA:

“Hello, everyone. My name is Cynthia Soledad, and I am the head of the KitchenAid brand.”

“I would like to personally apologize to President @BarackObama, his family and everyone on Twitter for the offensive tweet sent earlier.”

“It was carelessly sent in error by a member of our Twitter team who, needless to say, won’t be tweeting for us anymore.”

“That said, I take full responsibility for my team. Thank you for hearing me out.”