One thing that annoys the heck out of me about the end of every year is that starting in December, the entire blogosphere becomes Miss Cleo and obnoxiously tries to predict what will happen in the next year in social media/tech trends, fake Jamaican accent and all. (OK, maybe I just read them in a fake Jamaican accent to make them more entertaining and bearable. Try it–you’ll see.)

Yet, seldom do most of those fake-Jamaican-accented, blogging tech prophets actually compare how well their last year’s predictions stacked up to what really happened.

I’ve never been a fan of this yearly tradition of Miss Cleoing*; all it ever does is just stir up more unnecessary noise in the echo chamber. Any idiot can pull predictions out of their butt about what the next year will bring, and few ever do any real research to make educated guesses.

As fate would have it, last year I was charged with doing just that — not pull predictions out of my butt and write a blog post, but researching past and current trends, past and current predictions, what might be under the radar, yet up-and-coming, etc. and, along with the assistance of a colleague, write a big ol’, in-depth paper of educated guesses

predictions for our own “11 Trends to Watch in 2011″ (original, I know).

Unfortunately, because of some situations beyond our control that we could not have predicted, our paper was never published.

However, I’m a pack rat when it comes to research (both digital and hard copy), and upon cleaning my desk a week or so ago, I came across my printed-out research for this shelved project, an inch-thick stack bound together by a binder clip which must have been magical because it seemed to defy the laws of physics. (I should have taken a picture.)  Practically every end-of-the-year Miss Cleo post and whitepaper I could find in the blogosphere, printed out, hand-highlighted, notes written in the margins — it was enough for me to basically say  to myself, “Holy crap, I did this all in vain.” 

Or maybe I didn’t.

I’d like to not think that all of my research and efforts were futile. After all, I did subject myself to combing through everybody’s Miss Cleoing, which not only fueled my disdain for end-of-the-year predictions posts, but was enough to unconsciously get me reading everything in a fake Jamaican accent for the next three months. (It’s funny when you do it in your head but when you accidentally do it out loud … well, I digress.)

Anyway.

Even though it was never published, I wanted to see how I did in my educated guesses

predictions compared to what actually happened. So I dug up the outline from my files and took a look. I didn’t do too bad. I was WAY off on a few things, but you know what? Very few end-of-the-year blogosphere Miss Cleos revisit their last year’s predictions and compare them to reality (or, at least not publicly). But I will.

So here it is. The outline for the unpublished paper, my own attempt at Miss Cleoing last year and predicting what 2011 would hold. I haven’t modified it except to add the preface at the top, and clean up a couple typos.

About the beginning…

From everything I read of everybody else’s, I noticed that there was a LOT of what seems to be a common problem in this field — stating the obvious. In December 2010, many people were “predicting” what was already happening, things that were already a given. Saying that people will use a lot more apps for their every day needs (whether on tablets, phones, in browsers, etc.) is hardly prophecy. It was already happening. Saying “search will get more social” had been happening, too. Growing concern for privacy? That too.

Things that are obviously becoming  (if not already) omnipresent do not count as “trends” to “predict.” That’s called practicing your superpowers as Captain Obvious.

So I acknowledged these things and moved on. After the jump, I’m going to attempt to examine each of these and whether or not they came true. As I said, I know I was way off on a few of these. Some of them I was right, but others, I’m honestly not sure and maybe you can help me out to let me know if it happened or not.

[Note: This ended up being a much longer post than I originally anticipated, but it reads quickly, I promise.]

Oh hai! You’re still reading! Woo! Now, let’s get down to it…

Theme 1: Stop the Insanity!

• Trend 1) People suffer from internet information overload; strive to pare down and simplify their social stream.

I would have to say CORRECT.I don’t know about you, but I’ve noticed a lot of my friends go on mass unfriending exoduses on Facebook, mass unfollowing on Twitter, etc. (I haven’t yet but it’s on my To Do list.)

• Trend 2)  “Everything old is New Again” — smart brands understand Trend 1; need to stand out of the clutter so revert back to tangible content marketing (Sbux pamphlet), direct mail

I don’t know to what extent “smart brands” have noticed they need to bring content marketing back offline in the past year, but I have noticed it. A pamphlet about Coffee 101 from Starbucks I picked up while waiting for my drink. Leinenkugel inserts a newspaper-like publication in their 12-packs.  David Meerman Scott recently wrote about content marketing historically being offline and reminded his readers after being inspired by a placemat from a hotel in Finland.

• Trend 3) Gadgets and other devices continue to get simpler in design, ease of use (see iPod, FlipCam, Jitterbug phone, Amazon interface, etc.)
• “Less is More”

OK, so the FlipCam died, and I don’t know how many grandparents use the Jitterbug phone, but the point was more simplicity in design and function of gadgets. I’d say this could have been filed under Captain Obvious in the beginning, but really, who’d have thought this simplicity and ease of use would stretch so far as a learning thermostatbeing one of the year’s hottest items?

Theme 2: Social/Mobile Melding

• Trend 4) Peace Treaty in the “Location Wars”
• Facebook doesn’t “win” as many project because of privacy, slow adoption, apathy
• Other LBS grow but stay niche
• Gowalla/Whrrl will rise in numbers dramatically, be more mainstream
• FourSquare plateaus and becomes stagnant because of difficulties in partnerships, slow to introduce new features, loses its “cool factor”

I don’t know if I would say there was a “Peace Treaty,” but it was certainly a busy year for location-based services.  Facebook killed off their “Places”  mobile “FourSquare competitor” check-in feature. Groupon bought Whrrl and shut them down. FourSquare raised an insane amount of money and it looks like they’re doing even more partnering. Facebook bought Gowalla.  So I was pretty off on this one.  But whether or not location will ever become “mainstream” … I doubt it.

• Trend 5) SHOPPING because a seamless geo-social-mobile group (or individual) experience (I drew a diagram for this)

Yesterday I bought a Groupon from my phone for a sandwich at a nearby restaurant and within ten minutes walked to said restaurant and got my sandwich. ‘Nuff said.

BLIPS ON THE RADAR:

• Trend 6) Augmented Reality rises, remains niche, but WordLens opens door for tipping point in future

Yep. Augmented reality got a bit more attention but it’s hardly mainstream yet. It wasn’t until later in the year that household brands like Starbucks and Volkswagen Canada (definitely check out that link) started integrating AR into their marketing efforts, but if big brands like them continue to do so, expect AR to be much bigger in 2012. 

• Trend 7) NFC gets more attention, not as big a blip on radar as AR, there are infrastructure reasons for why this will take a lot longer to catch on than people think

Yep. Near field communication is the technology behind the Google Wallet idea. Theoretically, you can pay for something with your phone by tapping or holding your phone close to a “reader.” (NFC can obviously be used for more than payments but I’m using this as example.)

The problem is, not all phones/devices have the NFC chip. And not all merchants have the technology (yet) to process such payments. The biggest hurdles are time and logistics. NFC payments will eventually become commonplace, but just like it took a long time for merchants to be able to process credit card payments, it will take a while for this technology to be widespread and fully integrated. People usually get a new phone every couple years, so outfitting phones won’t be the problem, it will be on the receiving/processing end. It’s going to be at least 2015 before this NFC payments are as common as Google wants it to be now.

• Trend 8) Social Scoring (Klout, PeerIndex, etc.) gets a lot of attention, but lack of accuracy, etc. leads to much debate, this one’s a big miss

If there was anything we (read: I) got sick of hearing/reading about other than the word “occupy” in 2011, it was The Great Klout Debate. Just google “social media influence score”and you’ll see what I mean.

Theme 3: It’s DATA’s Time to Shine! (“DATA is a ROCKSTAR”)

• Trend 9) Visualized Data will be HOT

Personally, I’m a total geek about data visualization. I seek out stuff from FlowingData and JESS3 because it fascinates the crap out of me. That said, because I seek this kind of thing out, I don’t know how popular it was to everybody else. (Help a sista out here?) If I had to guess, I’d say infographics were much more popular in 2011 (there is a difference), but really bad, misleading infographics.

• Trend 10) Email will make a comeback (esp. since the rise of Groupon & clones)

Email never really went anywhere to begin with. I was implying email marketing, thanks to Groupon and its clones, but I don’t know this to be true or not. I do know that every day I get an email from Groupon, LivingSocial, CBS Daily Deals, and a couple others, but I don’t have any stats about the rest of the world and their reception to email marketing, and daily deals in particular. Anybody?

• Trend 11) Cloud consumer data becomes an invaluable resource as brands/corps realize the value in target marking w/the info they already have

I was a year ahead on this one. Seems everyone under the sun is now predicting 2012 to be “the year of Big Data.”

Bonus Round/Conclusion

• Tablet Frenzy – iPad will remain dominant

I’d say this one is true.

• Mobile Handsets – BB is safe in home base in corporate environments (iPhone won’t take over) because BB is much more secure; Android wins in VOLUME of handsets, but iPhone/Apple still dominate

Boy, was I wrong about Blackberry!!  As for the other, as of December 30, 2011, Android has the volume, but iPhone/Apple do still dominate.

• Apple incorporates each of these trends into its brand in some way, shape or form, with design/simplicity, streamlined ecosystem/platform for content, other reasons

I think that the iPhone 4S is a pretty good indicator here.

What do you think? 

If you’ve made it this far in reading this gargantuan post, I’m impressed! Thanks for sticking around.

Overall, I think I did pretty darn well, save for a few things. Of course, many things happened in 2011 that nobody on the “outside” of those projects could have predicted, such as Google+ and the Facebook Timeline. And of course, there will always be the unexpected … in the field of tech communication and the world at large. Which is why I’m not a fan of year-end Miss Cleoing, but I am a fan of research, educated guesses, and postmortem analysis.

Now it’s your turn.

Did you make year-end predictions last year? How did they fare in retrospect?

If you were a year-end Miss Cleo blogger last year, I would love to see you do a similar post comparing how your predictions last year stacked up to what actually happened in 2011. I think it would be both interesting and a good exercise, not to mention a great habit to get into. If you do, please track back to this post so I know where to go look, or drop me a link in the comments.

Thanks, and Happy New Year! Here’s to a great 2012!

 *I just coined that term. I encourage you to use “Miss Cleoing” liberally and incorporate it into our modern lexicon. Attribution appreciated but not necessary.

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Way back in July 2010 (which is light years in internet time), the “create-your-own-social-network” platform Ning decided to nix its freemium model in favor of a tiered pricing plan. Even though its lowest tier, for groups under 150 members, was only $2.95 a month, many small nonprofits, civil service organizations, and other groups already strapped for cash that were using the Ning platform as their main hub were up a creek with nowhere to go. So I wrote a post about a service I was familiar with called Amazee, and called it “a winning alternative to Ning for cause-based communities.”

It was recently brought to my attention in the comments of that post by one Tobias Eigen of Saidia.org that Amazee will now also be shutting down, as of December 23 of this year. Tobias wrote a post about this story, and drew some lessons from it in particular for civil society organizations looking for “free” places to host their campaigns and other stuff. He feels very strongly that they should be looking to open platforms (preferably run by other civil society organizations), so as to not get shafted again.

Said Tobias,

This trend reminds me just how important it is to have civil society platforms run by civil society organizations. We need to have reliable places we own and can rely on to put our stuff and to run our campaigns to fight for our communities, our environment, the future of our world.

I couldn’t agree more, and encourage you to visit Saidia.org to read further into his points.

As an example of an open platform, Tobias points to Kabissa, a volunteer-run platform which is a “space for change in Africa,” and supported by donations from the community. While I personally love this idea, unfortunately not all nonprofits have the knowledge of how to set something like this up, which as I pointed out, was why the Nings and the Amazees existed in the first place.

An alternative open platform,  WiserEarth.org, was mentioned in the comments, and while it is an open platform, I personally found the usability rather poor and hard to navigate. There’s very little “social” about it, and most of the causes I indicated interest in hadn’t had any activity in months. I see WiserEarth (as a concept) as a step in the right direction, but they really need to work on their UX.

When looking for alternatives a couple months ago I found  Mixx, which since I began researching for this post, has change into a platform called Chime.in, a network based around interests. When researching what happened to Mixx, I found this on the Wikipedia entry:

As of October 4, 2011, the Mixx Classic website has been shut down and now only displays a “we’ll be back soon message” and a e-mail address collection form which subscribes you to a newsletter that will announce the relaunch of Mixx. As of October 8, 2011, this message still exists. All former Mixxers lost all their saved and indexed data despite being promised otherwise by the Mixx staff. All Mixx user profiles have been deleted. The profile pages return errors, do not even 301 redirect to home, and the site lost significant PageRank and potential rankings. Apparently a total fail.

As I write this, obviously the Wikipedia entry hasn’t been updated, but I’m sure it will be soon. (I’m too lazy to do it myself right now.) The concept of Chime.in itself is fine and not too unlike what the original Mixx was, but this serves as yet one more reason you should not be reliant on third-party platforms. They’re always subject to change, and like Amazee, Mixx offered no downloadable CSV or XML file, or any other way for users to preserve/archive their content.

While the majority of the emphasis in this post thus far is on civil society organizations/nonprofits, as I said in the comments of Tobias’ post, it isn’t just  those folks that need to keep this in mind.

No matter if you are nonprofit, for-profit, a public figure, musician, etc. — You need to have your own “home base.” Period.

I’ve personally always advised my clients, regardless of what kind of entity they are, that they needed to “own” their presence on the web and not rely on other platforms such as Facebook, though those are a nice complement to your online presence.

I don’t know how many musicians I’ve worked with who have insisted that they “didn’t need a website because Facebook/Twitter/ReverbNation/whatever was enough.” All I had to do was point to MySpace and the demise of its relevancy on the social web, asking them if they’d REALLY like to keep migrating from platform to platform all the time and not having an online “homebase.” Oh, and grab your digital knapsacks, kids, as of the other day, there’s now Google Music.

I also know there are myriad small businesses who are in this similar mentality that they don’t need a website, their presence on Facebook is “enough.” Guess what? It’s not enough. If you’ve got a presence on Facebook, Twitter, now Google+, etc. … THAT’S GREAT. Good for you for learning how to check off a box, no matter how much you might hate the “hassle” of doing it. BUT, unless you own it, you’re just squatting on free property until “the next big thing” comes along or, in the case of Amazee, that property decides to close down.

“Oh, but where to start?”

I undertand that a lot of the ins and outs of this can seem overwhelming or intimidating to people who are not “digital natives” or otherwise comfortable on the web. But it doesn’t have to be.

There are plenty of resources out there to buy domains and host a site. I personally prefer 1and1.com for my domains and host elsewhere (though they host, too), but there’s GoDaddy, BlueHost, Rackspace, and plenty of others out there. If you fear the technical stuff or the design stuff, most of them offer “one-click installs” of various content management systems, including WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, and others. For collaboration purposes, in the place of something like Amazee, MediaWiki is usually one of the one-click installs offered, and it’s pretty popular with the nonprofits and rather straight forward.

If you are still overwhelmed and don’t know where/how to start, there’s also Page.ly, where you can set up a WordPress self-hosted site and host it, and they’ll even give you plenty of templates to get you started with a “look.”

I can’t stress enough how important it is for everyone, no matter if they’re a nonprofit, band, brand, small business, “public figure,” singing midget telegram service, rodeo clown, or WHATEVER that you can’t rely on third party, “free” service for your main online presence. It’s a relatively small investment to purchase a domain (less than $10) and host it (varies).

The best part? It’s YOUR site, that YOU own, and nobody can take it away from you.

Detroit Tigers photo via heidigoseek, rodeo clown via Bill Gracey.

Possibly Related posts:

1. Amazee: A winning alternative to Ning for cause-based communities

A couple weeks ago, I was having “one of those days” … you know, those days where nothing’s going right and you’re in a crummy mood and you can’t seem to shake it. Out of the blue, a friend of mine sent me a tweet that said something like, “Hey, @damnredhead, check it out: No Shoes Radio! Come join me!” followed by a link.

Curious (and knowing she’s too smart to have been hacked), I clicked and found myself suddenly in a much better mood. I wasn’t in Margaritaville, but I was close — I found myself in the neighboring world of country singer Kenny Chesney’s No Shoes Radio, an online radio station of feel-good music that spans everywhere from Simon & Garfunkel to Coldplay to the Pixies to yes, Kenny Chesney and Jimmy Buffet.

I could have just said “thanks” to my friend and stopped there, but being of the marketing mind something immediately stood out to me — No Shoes Radio is one fine piece of content marketing.

For some reason, it seems like people are just now waking up to the fact that gee, content is kind of important in marketing. In fact, as Will Davis points out in this excellent piece featured on Social Media Today, when many companies say they want to “do social media” they really mean content marketing  — they just don’t know it yet.

Is “content marketing” a new buzzword? I sure hope not, because it’s certainly not a new concept. Or, as as Ian Laurie says so eloquently in this awesome post,

‘Content’ has been important since your great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great ancestor clubbed a close relative and explained themselves by saying ‘ook’. And content drives internet marketing. It always has. Saying it’s revolutionary is like taking a deep breath and declaring “OH MY GOD I’VE DISCOVERED AIR.”

So, what makes No Shoes Radio so special? What makes it great content marketing? Here area few reasons:

It provides a service.

I was in a crummy mood, and the music made me feel better. Not only that, it was great to have on in the background as I worked. It played familiar songs I could sing along to like Dusty Springfield’s “Son of a Preacher Man,” as well as some newer songs I wasn’t as familiar with. It made my day a lot more pleasant by discovering it.

It’s branded, but it’s not overt or intrusive.

Yes, it’s to promote Kenny Chesney’s upcoming recently kicked off “Going Coastal” tour, and yes, it’s co-branded by his tour’s sponsors. But you wouldn’t know it right away. Sure, there are some audio clips of Kenny goofing off and doing interviews about the upcoming tour, but it’s much less in-your-face than say, any of the commercials you’re usually made to watch before viewing a video online.

On the right side is a panel that, if you’re curious, will slide out when you mouse over it, and offers some promotions to win concert tickets and other things from his sponsors, but everything is optional and it’s rather subtle. If you want to sign up at the top of the site, you can, and every time you sign in gives you a chance to win something, but again … it’s far from shoved down the user’s throat.

It’s not writing.

There’s a widely-held misconception that when people hear “content” or “content marketing,” they think blog posts and whitepapers. While yes, those are considered content, the truth is content is anything that can be consumed.

All bases are covered, and it’s fun!

Of course, there’s a Twitter feed, a Facebook page, a store, news, a Firefox add-on (more of a skin), and yes, iPhone users, there’s an app for that. Every day there’s a different background picture, but everything about No Shoes Radio stays consistent with Kenny Chesney‘s fun, laid back brand.

So there ya have it … a great example of content marketing, by none other than a country music singer. Check out No Shoes Radio and let me know what you think in the comments. If you’ve got any other great examples of content marketing that’s not the usual, run-of-the-mill stuff, I’d love to hear about them.

Oh, I almost forgot — for the uninitiated, No Shoes Radio is named after his song/philosophy “No Shoes, No Shirt, No Problems.” See the video below.

Hat tip to Nichole Brown for bringing NSR to my attention.

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(Part 2 of 2. For part 1, see the last post.)

In my last post, I responded to a request by a reader who asked how a small business could be more like Walt Disney World, which was a comment on this post. As I was outlining, I realized that for length considerations I’d have to break it into two parts. So here’s Part 2 of how your small business can be more like Walt Disney World.

Again, none of what I write here should be considered a “Disney secret.” (For my full disclosure, see Part 1.)

Keep all hands and feet inside the vehicle, kids, because it’s gonna be a fun ride. Here we go …

#4) Tell stories.

This seems to be a popular theme in business writing in recent years, although it’s nothing new. Disney was WAY ahead of the times in this regard, and let’s face it — they built an empire out of it. People enjoy stories because that’s how they learn. Sparksheet recently had an excellent article on storytelling in business, which I highly recommend reading. I found it today, after I had already outlined this post, but they really hit it home within the first few paragraphs with this line:

The ability to directly address problems and provide solutions to complexity is the bedrock of storytelling in the 21st century.

Sparksheet goes on to give some excellent examples of brands that have done this recently, including Charmin, HP, Nike, Dove, and American Express. But don’t let the fact that those are behemoth brands intimidate you into thinking you and your small business couldn’t do it. Remember my second point in Part One, which was “Celebrate and share your heritage”? That’s a good place to start.

Meet The French Laundry. It’s the most talked about restaurant of my hometown, Fenton, MI. Not only is it a hotspot for locals, but people come from miles around to eat here. The Laundry’s owner, Mark Hamel (not Luke Skywalker) says in his newsletter,

“… For me, it’s always been my cracker-barrel podium, or stand-up chat room where I’ve been able to share, one-on-one or in our classes, what I have learned, discovered, and come to appreciate about the amazing foods and beverages of our planet.”

… and that he does, and always has. At any given time, you can find Mark walking around, greeting his patrons, and having conversations with them. Yes, they do have classes at the Laundry, but I’ve always found that the small-town camaraderie of both Mark and his staff the most appealing. Everybody at the Laundry has a story to share. Like at The Laundry, if you do it right, your customers will then start telling their stories about your business for you.

#5) Have a parade every day.

Well, not literally, although Disney does.  Find something to celebrate. I’m not saying you should have a sale every day. What I am saying is to have fun and enjoy what you do. Shake things up a bit and color outside the lines. For example, declare Thursday “Hawaiian Shirt Day” just for kicks.

Need an example of a small business who has a proverbial parade every day? Meet another business from my hometown, Uncle Ray’s Dairyland. Here’s a great clip from a couple years ago:

There’s not a person in town that doesn’t love Uncle Ray’s and doesn’t know the Durants. In fact, they’re doing it so well that their customers, too, are telling their stories for them now. From their customer service to making their ice cream right there in-house, Uncle Ray’s has made a name for itself as being “a landmark of Fenton.”

(Disclosure: I am friends with Dave Durant and have consulted him a little in the past, drawing from a lot of my Disney experience and training manuals.)

#6) Internal communication is key.

This is a biggie. As an organizational communication major and while interning at WDW, I was continually impressed at how well cast members were kept informed of everything they needed to know. This company of 60,000 employees (give or take, depending on the season) had internal communication flow so smoothly that there was no excuse for not knowing what was going on.

How did they do this? Multiple touchpoints within the organization.

Every area of every department had their own hotline, which was updated every single morning by the managers, who passed on the information that cast members needed to know. Whether it was upcoming promotions, changing of park hours, changing of times for fireworks or parades, which managers were on duty that day, etc. they had it covered. Everybody was expected to call that number on days they weren’t working.

Disney also utilizes an extensive intranet that they call “The Portal,” for which every cast member has a login and is expected to explore to find just about anything going on within the parks whatsoever, whether continuing education classes, clubs of their interest (Toastmasters, anyone? Crew club? You got it.), Disney history, if the (internal Disney) library had a certain movie they wanted to check out, look up a certain cast member in a certain department — literally anything they can think of.

Every park also has its own print newsletter that is published every week that includes information they need to know, heartwarming stories of cast members’ interactions with guests, etc.

There’s also a pocket-sized “cheat sheet” published every week that cast members are encouraged to use, which has basic things like hours for the parks, parades, and fireworks, special phone numbers they might need, special events, etc. Trust me when I say these cheat sheets have come in handy way more than I can count. Not every question is as easy to answer as “What time is the 3 o’clock parade?” (The fabled most commonly asked question in Magic Kingdom. Personally, I got “Do you work here?” more often.)

And of course, never underestimate the value of team meetings. Before every shift, there is a team meeting where managers would give everybody the lowdown and address any issues that need addressing.

Now, contrast all of the above to an independent coffee shop I worked in after my stint at WDW.  There were a total of nine employees, including the couple who owned the place. The entire year or so I worked there, we had a total of TWO all-staff meetings. Instead, the only way for any kind of “official” internal communication was a notebook we supervisors were expected to write in about anything pertinent, whether it was that we were low on espresso, that we signed for a shipment delivery, that we closed early one night because of a snowstorm, etc.

Sure, this sounds like it would be simple enough, right? Oh, no. Because of the very nature of having a passive-aggressive notebook be the sole medium from which employees communicated to the management, it created more internal politics, misunderstandings, and contempt than one could imagine. Sure, we had everybody’s phone number and once in a while would make a phone call about an issue, but for the most part, the passive-aggressive notebook, which was intended for internal communication, became a symbol of our disdain.

I remember a couple times that supervisors got reprimanded by the owners for not doing something that they were apparently supposed to do, but because it wasn’t written in the notebook, they didn’t even know they were supposed to. Never underestimate the power of face-to-face communication, and multiple internal touchpoints for employee communication. Don’t have a passive-aggressive notebook. If Walt Disney World, with 60,000 people working on-property, can keep all those people in the loop, there’s no reason whatsoever that a nine-person small business can’t keep everybody on the same page (no pun intended).

So there you have it, @roakian and others who have been following along at home. Between this post and the last I’ve laid out six ways your small business can be more like Walt Disney World.  I actually thought of more ways as I was writing this last part, but I’ll leave it at that for now. If you didn’t learn anything else, you ought to know by now that if you ask me a question, you should prepare yourself for a pretty lengthy answer.

If you’ve noticed any other ways small business can borrow from Disney’s best practices, please feel free to share!

Photo 1 is free stock I found somewhere, photos 2 and 3 are my own, and the notebook photo is courtesy of sarah.mckenzie11, whose license allows modification.

Possibly Related posts:

1. Three ways your small business can be more like Walt Disney World
2. Product launches: Why put on a circus when you could be like Disney World?

(This is Part 1 of a two-part series. For Part 2, see this post.)

Not too long ago I received a comment from a local reader on this post, asking,

… could you do a followup post or provide some resources as to HOW to be more like Disney World than a Circus? I agree that the marketing strategy of Apple/Disney World is more sound than a circus, but for a small business, it’s hard to sit back and let people come to you….especially when no one is coming. Would be great to hear some advice on how to get to that point or what it takes.

Well, Miss Adventure, I’m glad you asked.  You’re absolutely right — no, you can’t “sit back and let people come to you,” you have to be proactive. As I was outlining and writing this, I realized that I’d have to break this up into parts for length considerations, so consider this Part 1 of 2.

Before I get into it, let’s get this out of the way:

Full Disclosure: I used to work at Walt Disney World as a trainer of new hires in retail guest service. I educated new “cast members” (what they call employees) on WDW’s history, service guidelines, protocols, sales procedures, crisis management techniques, and more. There are many “Disney secrets” for which I am sworn to secrecy by the deal I made when I sold my soul to The Mouse, however nothing I write here should be considered a “Disney secret” in any way, shape, or form.

Here’s a secret I can tell you: Many of Disney’s “secrets” aren’t secrets at all. A lot of companies are just now waking up to the techniques Disney’s been employing all along, but by no means should they be considered “secrets.”

Okay then. Let’s get this ball rolling, shall we?

#1) Put customers first. Always.

Every Disney World cast member has a shared purpose, and that is “to make sure that every Guest who comes to the Walt Disney World Resort has the most fabulous time of his or her life.”  That means going above and beyond what’s expected of you. It means putting little unexpected touches on things. It means if you have to bend over backwards to make a customer happy, even if you have to stay late, even if you have to call all over the world to find whatever they’re looking for — do it. It means making sure that every touchpoint of your business is centered around the customer.

Honestly, I thought this was normal, but the thought of building a business around the customer seems to be a newer revelation in the business world. My friend Beth Harte recently wrote about this concept of “customer centricity,” which as I mentioned in her comments, I always knew as “The Disney Way.” One of the 10 lessons of sparking a powerful movement, according to the smart folks at Brains on Fire, is “movements make your advocates feel like rocks stars.” It’s the same idea. If it weren’t for your customers, you wouldn’t have business at all, so make them feel special.

#2) Celebrate and share your heritage.

“I only hope that we don’t lose sight of one thing — that it was all started by a mouse.” — Walt Disney

This oft-quoted saying of Walt Disney’s is one of the most prevalent in Disney culture.

As legend has it, Mickey Mouse was “born” in 1928 as a doodle on a train ride Walt Disney was taking from New York to Los Angeles. Disney was returning from an unsuccessful attempt to regain financial control and copyright of his cartoon creation Oswald the Rabbit. He did not want to return to his animation studio in Hollywood empty-handed, and he had to tell his animators something. So he spent the remainder of the trip developing a little mouse in red velvet pants, a character he first named Mortimer. At the suggestion of his wife, he renamed him Mickey, and the rest is history.

Don’t tell me your small business didn’t have an interesting start. Surely, doodling on a train ride isn’t that exciting or interesting in itself, but it’s the circumstances that surround the story and what happened since then that make it interesting.

One of my favorite attractions at Disney’s Hollywood Studios is a walking tour called Walt Disney: One Man’s Dream, which is an homage to the man himself and a museum of the company’s history. Think way ahead into the future — let’s say 100 years — and your company is still going strong. If there were to be a physical tribute to you and the beginnings of your business, what would you like to see included? Start there.

Think about how your small business got its start. What were your circumstances? What made you decide to take the leap? Once upon a time, there was something that made you decide to go out on your own. Honor your history. Celebrate your accomplishments, no matter how big or small. And definitely share it with your customers.

#3) Establish and enforce customer service standards for ALL employees.

Every cast member at WDW is held to the exact same standard of guest service. In Merchandise, where I was a trainer, there is a specific procedure in which cast members are expected to interact with guests at the park, and they are candidly evaluated and graded at least once every few months by their managers. For example, a couple specific points on the evaluation include using the guest’s name, acknowledging children in the party, and informing them about upcoming events within the parks. (“Hi Carol, what a gorgeous little girl you have. What’s your name? Who’s your favorite princess, Suzy? Ariel? Did you know she’s going to be in 3 o’clock parade?”)

Standards enforce consistency. Consistency builds trust. Trust builds customer sustainability. There’s a reason you can order your favorite drink at any Starbucks in the world and it will taste the exact same. Starbucks also prides itself on its consistency standards.

So sketch out your “pie in the sky” idea of how you’d like to see every one of your employees interact with your customers. Focus on the most key points, and draft up a standards procedure. (Nothing is too cheesy — I had to tell guests “Thank you and have a magical day!” after every transaction.) But drawing up standards isn’t enough, they’ve got to be enforced for consistency. Go ahead and tell your employees they’ll be graded on it. After a while, going through the standard customer service procedures become second nature. It’s been five years and I still use the two-fingered “Disney point” and probably will until the day I die.

There ya go. Three easy ways your small business can be more like Walt Disney World, and less like a circus. It’s not rocket science, and it literally IS Mickey Mouse. I hope I’ve answered your question, @Roakian, and if not, I’ve got three more points in the hopper to share soon.

Meanwhile, I’m wondering … anybody out there notice any other ways a small business can learn from Disney? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments.

[Update 3/7/11: Part 2 is up, you can find it here.]

Photo of Cinderella’s castle by anneohirsch.

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1. Product launches: Why put on a circus when you could be like Disney World?

Do you remember when you were little, and the circus came to town?

It was spectacular.

The circus, for all its excitement — the animals, the trapeze artists, the clowns, the daredevil acts — came into town, did a few shows with some cool stunts, and then they left.

That was it. You might be left with a plastic inflatable monkey or some other cheap overpriced souvenir.

A couple weeks later, the circus was barely a memory in your mind — it went out of town just as fast as it came in.

Now think about Walt Disney World.

Those who have been fortunate enough to go to Disney World when they were younger (or older, as my case would be) know that no matter how long you stay at the park(s) — it could be a few days, a couple weeks — you are left with many, many memories for years to come.

Walt Disney World is no circus. You don’t go in and out and then forget about it. It is an experience, one whose vision is to ensure that “each and every guest has the best time of their life,” a place where “dreams come true” and memories are made. It sticks with you, and on your way home, you already can’t wait to go back.

Which would you prefer, the circus or Walt Disney World?

Disney World, of course.

Why is it, then, that when companies launch new products, almost all of them prefer the circus approach?

Here’s what I see all too often:

Company X has a new Thingamabob coming out. It could a new phone, a car, a gadget, a boat, it doesn’t matter. They’ve talked about it for a long time, gotten some press about the long-anticipated, brand new Thingamabob. So, when it comes for Thingamabob launch day, what does Company X do?

All the usual tactics. They go to certain cities, solicit high profile journalists and/or social media pseudo-celebs, spend an insane amount of money on treating them like kings for a day, tons of media buys, the whole shebang. Company X parades around like bulls in the china shop of their choosing, hoping, just HOPING, that they’ve done enough to generate some good press for the Thingamabob in traditional media, get the social media pseud-celebs to blog and tweet about it a lot, and hey, maybe even sell a few Thingamabobs!

And then Company X rides their china-shopped bull into the sunset and calls it a “product launch,” and talks about it ad nauseam, patting themselves on the backs until it’s time for the next Thingamabob circus to come to town. Lather, rinse, repeat.

This is old. This is tired. This is not memorable.

WHY in the world do companies insist on doing this?

Apple, on the other hand, takes a more Disney-esque approach.

Rumors of the new iWhatever start circulating all the top tech blogs for a long time. Because of the loyalty Apple has from its fans, they start chatting feverishly about even the possibility of a new product long before there’s any official word. (There may or may not be an accidental or purposeful iWhatever “leak,” but that’s a different story for a different time.)

Finally, the day comes for the iWhatever launch.

Apple holds a special keynote presentation, hosted by their CEO, Steve Jobs. Journalists and other important people are invited to attend. The same presentation is also put on the web so that anybody who wants to watch the presentation can. Apple builds up enough anticipation and excitement about the iWhatever that people come to them. Much like Disney World. Jobs does his thing, reveals the iWhatever and all the cool stuff it can do, does a few live demos of it, then tells you how much it costs and when it will be officially available for purchase.

When that day comes, people flock to their nearest Apple store, some camping out overnight outside just because they HAVE TO HAVE THE iWHATEVER. After the initial fervent fans have their iWhatevers, more people flock to the stores if not to buy one, but to at least play with one so they can tell their friends, “Yeah, I was at the Apple store the other day and got to try out an iWhatever, it’s amazing.”

The entire process of an Apple product launch is an experience. It resonates. It sticks with people. Apple doesn’t have to bring a dog and pony show to town, people come to Apple, and people tell all their friends about it.

Much like people come to Disney World.

Now, ask yourself, which would you prefer your product to be more like, a circus or Walt Disney World?

Which do you think sells more product, makes more money, generates the most loyal fans, creates the most memories?

Circus photo via David Shankbone at Wikimedia Commons.

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This wonderful gem showed up in my Gmail box the other day:

What’s wrong with this picture?

Well, what isn’t?

For starters: “selukasavitz” is not my name. It’s my Gmail ID, which is the combination of my first two initials plus my last name.

Secondly, WHAT KIND OF A SUBJECT LINE IS THAT?! “Hello ___, buy some products” … um, what kind of products? Peanut products? Electronics? Rolex watches? Your subject line must not be a command (“buy my stuff” is equivalent to “click my junk“) and should be at least somewhat descriptive as to what you’re talking about. The only reason I opened it was because I thought, “Who has the audacity to send such a P.O.S. marketing piece?”

Thirdly, the copy made me suspicious that it was a phishing scam, malware, or something equally skeezy. The lack of punctuation, poor grammar and sentence structure, and lack of any real description or even graphics does not make me want to buy from them at all.  I was hesitant to even click the link but I took my chances, and yes, it looks like a legit company trying (desperately) to sell their hard drive disk recovery software. I don’t know if it is legit because I didn’t click anywhere on the site, which is why I just said it looks like it. That’s one reason why I’m not linking them here. The other is that they just don’t deserve the traffic. (If you want to check it out, type it in your address bar yourself.)

Fourthly, the signature. I can’t decide which is worse — that “peter miles” didn’t capitalize his own name, that there’s no real information about the company, or that it says he’s with the HR department. Is he trying to sell products or recruit employees? Maybe “peter miles” is attempting to be the e e cummings of the email marketing world, I have no idea. But this crap doesn’t work. None of it does. I’m surprised this didn’t fall in my spam folder, truthfully.

If your email marketing pieces look like this, it’s time for a real intervention. Chances are, they’re not being opened because they are falling in the spam folder. Even if they’re evading it, “Hi screenname, buy some products” is not a way to get people to open your messages.

I’m not really a “how to” blogger (enough people cover that kind of thing), but I do subscribe to a very informative newsletter from eMarketing and Commerce magazine that I highly recommend if you want to know more about that.

I can honestly say that this is one of the worst pieces of eMarketing I’ve ever seen. What I want to know is if you guys have seen worse. Do you get any gawd-awful attempts at eMarketing in your inbox that is just so bad you have to share? Air out that laundry in the comments, it’s time to play show and tell.

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1. The stuff I can’t go without reading every day.

Recently on Facebook, I posted the story about how Michael Arrington over at TechCruch quit the iPhone. In a nutshell, Arrington loves Google Voice but doesn’t like having two numbers, which is understandable because changing your number is a pain when everybody already has one for you. Soon Google will be introducing number portability, meaning that you can keep your number and transfer it to Google Voice. Well, it turns out that Apple and AT&T are blocking the iPhone app that makes using your one Google Voice number much more seamless between the two.  Says Arrington:

Why? Because they absolutely don’t want people doing exactly what I’m doing – moving their phone number to Google and using the carrier as a dumb pipe.

So I have to choose between the iPhone and Google Voice. It’s not an easy decision. Except, it sort of is. Google isn’t forcing the decision on me, Apple and AT&T are. So I choose to work with the company that isn’t forcing me to do things their way. And in this case, that’s Google.

I have Google Voice now and so far I like it, but I’ll admit that yes, having two numbers is inconvenient.  However, I do not have an iPhone, because my brand loyalty was with Verizon long before it was with Apple. When I posted the story on Facebook, I prefaced it with my own commentary, which was:

I won’t get an iPhone because I refuse to leave Verizon, and I knew that a LOT of iPhone users weren’t happy with AT&T, but whoah … had no idea people were all-out abandoning theirs. I have Google Voice, a different number than my usual one, and now I’m wondering how long it’ll be before I can just transfer my usual number to it.

I had no idea that that little post on Facebook would spark such a conversation among my friends. I know a lot of people who share the same I-love-Apple-but-I-love-Verizon-you-can’t-make-me-switch sentiment as me, but I wasn’t prepared for the comments of some of my friends. Here’s a sampling:

I know, my husband and I just recently had this conversation, and iPhone is cool but I know I cannot beat Verizon! They have proved over and over and over again that they take care of the customers, not to mention the service is great! - Leah McChesney

[My fiancé] & I both have Verizon (LGenV2′s) and we LOVE it. He’s been working in NYC for about 5 years & in that time, we had tried at least 3 different carriers. Verizon is the ONLY company that we didn’t get dropped calls with every five minutes (or less!) I’m sorry, but AT&T SUCKS. I have several friends with iPhones — our calls drop randomly — it’s always THEIR phones dropping the calls, not mine! Even out here in the Poconos, we have friends come to visit & the only company that has a signal consistently out here is Verizon. I’m with them for the long run … I have my iPod Touch … it’s the best of all worlds w/o the pain in the ass service you HAVE to take with the iPhone… – Marilyn

Will have to pry my Verizon service from my cold clammy hands. ATT is the worst. – Michael Spleet

Verizon, are you listening to all this? People love you. People are refusing to get the “Jesus Phone” because they don’t want to give up your service. What are you doing with your marketing to tout this?

I had to Google what Verizon was doing as far as social media. Whaddya know, they have a social media hub that links to their presences elsewhere. Except, I had no idea any of it existed, and I keep up on this kind of stuff. So I decided to take a look at what Verizon was doing on the social web.

The Good News

Verizon has an active community forum where staff and consumers help each other out and discuss things like FAQ, plans, devices, and other products and services. That’s great.

Also, Verizon is blogging. Every day on their PolicyBlog, and at their Verizon At Home blog. Entries look pretty interesting and helpful.

The Bad News

Most entries on the PolicyBlog have zero comments, and they were almost as sparse on the At Home blog. One entry I saw had 24 comments, but the next most popular one had 5, and it went downhill from there.

Nobody is reading them, because nobody knows about them. Here’s why:

Twitter

As of this writing, Verizon Newsroom has 693 followers on Twitter, FiOSFans have 118 followers (I didn’t know what FiOS was, I had to look that up. It’s only available in New York and New Jersey, apparently), VCast Music has 33 followers. Eric Rabe, the SVP of Verizon Communications – “internet, FiOS TV, all that” is on Twitter with 149 followers.

Facebook

The Verizon Facebook page has 160,000+ fans, but if you think about it, for the nation’s largest network, that’s pretty sad. Even sadder, the Verizon Newsroom Facebook page has 51 fans.

YouTube

There’s a YouTube channel with 10 videos, and it’s been a month since anybody signed in. There is some video on MediaSeed.tv that I stumbled upon accidentally, but if I didn’t know it was there, most people don’t either.

Come on, Verizon. You’re the nation’s largest network. You can do better than this. Here are a few suggestions, from me to you:

Ditch the “Verizon Newsroom”

When I found this a few minutes ago, I was expecting to see a social media newsroom about all things Verizon. [Note: I eventually did find the Verizon Newscenter, which isn't bad for a SMNR, but it wasn't where I expected to find it.]  Instead, I saw this page that looks like it’s trying to compete with Yahoo, MSN, and other portals. That’s not your game. You do cell phones and wireless service. Don’t try to compete where you can’t compete. Nobody is going to go to Verizon for news, they’re going to go to get a new phone or change their plan. If I want to change my wireless plan, I don’t go to the Huffington Post, do I?

Don’t call it “PolicyBlog”

That’s misleading and confusing. I was hard pressed to find anything about Verizon policies on the PolicyBlog at all. Call it something Verizon-relevant, but don’t call it something it’s not. Call it “Can you hear us now?” or something. There are 9 authors on that blog, together you can come up with something a little more accurate, I’m sure of it.

Don’t make us register to comment

As a general rule, if people have to take extra steps in order to comment on a blog, they won’t.  Oddly, though, the Verizon At Home blog requires registration and the PolicyBlog doesn’t, yet the At Home blog has more comments (though they’re both sparse). Just think of the interaction you’d get on the more popular blog if you didn’t make people jump through that extra hoop.

Please do something about your Twitter problem.

To be fair, Eric Rabe is doing pretty well interacting with people on Twitter. He pimps his blog quite a bit but overall he’s not doing bad. But he could do better if he were listening and responding to when “Verizon” is mentioned, and gain many more followers that way. I also suggest that somebody please do something about http://www.twitter.com/verizon. Is the brand jacked or does someone at Verizon actually have that handle and isn’t doing anything with it? Either way, it’s orphaned and it needs some love.

Integrate online and offline

OK maybe Verizon already does this, I don’t know because I don’t watch TV and I’m not very observant when I go to the Verizon store. But something just as simple as saying “Follow @EricRabe on Twitter” at the end of a commercial will call enough people to action to take notice of other Verizon online stuff. Integrating your marketing campaigns even further can have pretty awesome results.

Listen.

I save for last what you should be doing first. I already suggested the simple act of following a keyword on Twitter. Set up an RSS feed for it. That’s easy. But there are other ways to listen, ways as simple as setting up Google Alerts, blog searches, and stuff like SocialMention to monitor the social web. Since Verizon is ginormous and has the budget, I strongly suggest a professional social search like Radian6 because it’s better and more comprehensive. If you were doing these things, you’d be much more visible on the social web, more people would be commenting on your blogs (hell, more people would know about your blogs), you’d be responding to any concerns people may have with your products and services, and the great customer service I know you have would be bleeding over to your web presence.

If you really were listening, you’d know how awesome you are to people like me who sacrifice having the most kickass phone just because we don’t want to leave you, and you’d be using that to your advantage in your marketing efforts. And you’d be reading this blog post.

So, Verizon, can you hear me now?

No related posts.

Back in February I did a two-part case study series on WildEarth.tv, a online wildlife channel that broadcasts live from the Djuma Game Reserve in South Africa. Not only is this concept unique in and of itself, but what fascinated me the most was (and still is) their vast and incredibly cohesive social ecosystem. In my not-so-humble opinion, WildEarth.tv and its community are among the most awesome things on the internet, right up there with LOLcats, Twitter, and instant rimshot. It’s hard to imagine that the WE community and all it encompasses was built in less than two years, but it’s true.

Tomorrow, April 27th, 2009, marks the 2nd anniversary of WildEarth.tv.  It was exactly two years ago that they first broadcast their live, 24 hour “window into Africa.” I am so, so happy for them and so, so happy for their existence. April 27th is also Freedom Day, the day South Africa commemorates their first democratic elections, 15 years ago.

So Happy Birthday to both WildEarth.tv and South Africa! You’ve both come a long way, baby!

To celebrate, WE are having a special fireside chat at 19:00 CAT (which translates to 1:00 p.m. Eastern Time), just go on over to the site and tune in, even chat. Better yet, join their official Ning so you can join the  chat there and see all the amazing photos and videos the community have contributed, and enjoy all the features of a Ning community. (I’m a big fan of Ning.)  I hear there’s a “planned surprise that you won’t want to miss” at the fireside chat, too.

Have you checked out WildEarth.tv yet? What do you think?

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1. Someone in South Africa’s doin’ social media right!!
2. Q&A with Graham Wallington of WildEarth.tv

I was off the grid for most of the day yesterday because I was in Ann Arbor for the Annual Meeting of the Cultural Alliance of Southeast Michigan, for which social networking was its theme. I was glad I finally got to meet Laurie Laurent Smith, a Twitter pal and fellow social media geek in my area* that I kept missing at Tweetups. My buds Shauna & Kevin from Biznet were also there, which means the kickass factor was significantly higher.

While I was away from the internet, however, it seems that the people behind the ThisAin’tFlint campaign fiasco (see the previous post) issued a public apology to the mayor and citizens of Flint. . . sorta. I’m not going to copy and paste it here on this blog, you can go read it for yourself at their gaudy site with the irrelevent creepy doll. What you will read is a very verbose, vague non-admission to any wrongdoings a la [insert least favorite politician], with backpedaling about how they meant to start a conversation all along.

The campaign is a local radio/outdoor initiative (and not a “viral” campaign as many “experts” have suggested) and was not targeted nor meant to include the citizens of Flint . . . We are sorry that some people have been offended by the campaign. That was never our intent. We chose controversial images and content because our experience indicates that this is what is required in order to get meaningful conversations started. Just because someone hears or sees something they don’t like, however, doesn’t justify putting an end to the conversation.

It is our hope that the positive conversations will continue now on both sides of the border.

Uh huh, sure. “We didn’t mean to offend or denigrate you in any way, we just wanted start a dialogue! Yeah, that’s it! But it wasn’t intended to be ‘viral,’ just an outdoor campaign . . .”

An outdoor campaign of posters sending people to a website that didn’t exist until 6 days after telling folks to go there. Sending people to a website, with a video, with links to a Facebook fan page, a Twitter account, et. al. thinking that word would not spread online, only face-to-face by the people waiting at the bus stop that see the poster . . . yet somehow have conversations going back and forth across the border sans internet.

What kind of fantasy world do these people live in?

I’ve been to Canada. I’ve also been to Disney World. In fact, I lived and worked at Disney World — I know the difference. Disney’s idea of Canada in the World Showcase at Epcot is very stereotypical and highly innacurate. Yet, it is miles more on target (or should I say kilometers?) than these few Canadians’ idea of Flint.

The Flint Journal issued an editorial reaction yesterday regarding the “apology” in which they call it “a kick in the gut” and call for the creators of the campaign fiasco, Newcap Radio and Alphabet Creative, to take the video off the internet, as if people like me haven’t already ripped it off their site for whatever-our-motives-may-be. Furthermore, The Journal is encouraging citizens to spam Newcap & Alphabet with more than just email until the video is removed — they also published the companies’ phone/fax numbers and street addresses.

“Let’s continue to show them our strength — our community mettle — by continuing to write, call or e-mail to share our complete story.”

While the letter-writing campaign tactic is considered an “old stand-by,” other than the satisfaction of thinking/believing that your voice is heard if you get what you’re calling for, what good is this going to do? They already know Flintstones are upset with them, and in their minds, issuing this insincere apology was enough for them to think everything is all puppies and rainbows.

Leave it up!

While that may or may not be true, I say leave it up. Leave the site up. Leave the video up. Leave it all online. Why? Because as I commented on Matt Bach’s Facebook profile, ”

The quality of that “apology” is equal to the quality of that “campaign.” Those people don’t know the difference between “obtuse” and “obscure,” nor the difference between “capital” and “capitol.” How can we expect them to know the difference between sincerity and patronization?

My point being — why call for the removal of a video/website/”campaign” that caused so much dissonance, when there is so much to be learned from its very existence on the web?

This is a perfect case study of how NOT to do a campaign, whether outdoor or online (as I hoped to have outlined a bit in the previous post), that students of many disciplines can learn from, by many facets.

English majors — take note of the horrible copy and poor grasp of the language. How can you improve it?

Marketing/Advertising majors — take note of the lack of strategy. . . what would you do? How would you approach the concept and make it fly?

PR majors – use this as an opportunity to expound on what was done and what could have been done, from both sides of the border. What would you have done?

All majors — take a look at the ethics in this case. How would you approach a Potter Box in this case?

The lessons to be learned from this are endless. To call for its existence to cease online only increases the chances of similar disgraces (or far worse)  to happen by future professionals. I don’t want any other city to have to deal with this kind of thing, and I don’t want Newcap Radio & Alphabet Creative to NOT have this as a stain on their SEO.

Sure, the blogs and other conversations will be indexed, but calling for the video to be taken down is helping these two companies sweep the whole situation under their brands’ (and the internet’s) rugs, making it easier for them to all but expunge it from their professional records and pretend like nothing ever happened. . . until somebody else hires them for their “proven media formula.”

Is that what we really want? For these kind of practices to continue? Or do we want to help educate others and ensure that this doesn’t happen again?

I say leave it up. What do you think?

Epcot Canada picture by WDWinfo.com.

*By “area” I mean Ann Arbor/Metro Detroit. The vast majority of Greater Flint/Genesee County has yet to discover Twitter . . . but that will change if I have any say in it.

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