360DigitalInfluence

Earlier today, Jared Cohen, a member of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s Policy and Planning staff, spoke at an Ogilvy Exchange presentation on how the State Department is using social media and other Web 2.0 technologies as part of everything it does, ranging from counter-narcotics in Mexico to crisis response in Haiti to advancing social issues in Russia.  C-SPAN covered the speech and we will post a link to the presentation when it becomes available. 

However, in the interim, Jason Miller of Federal News Radio (WFED-AM in Washington) attended the speech and presented a long report on this afternoon’s DorobekInsider program.  The segment runs about 10 minutes.

After about six months off from blogging, I’m back.  Don’t worry, I didn’t have a David Schuster moment.  So to cover the time off, some things I think I think.

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I have to admit I was not amazed that The New York Times knew about the Securities and Exchange Commission filing a civil case again Goldman Sachs before many at Goldman Sachs did.  (According to Politico, someone must have tipped off the Times since they were able to get a 1,200 word story up on their Web site minutes after the suit was filed — updated version here.)  On the other hand, some at Goldman Sachs found out when the story appeared on CNBC. I originally thought Goldman’s DC lobbyists would have known something was coming, but I’ve been hearing they are viewed as lepers and treated accordingly.

This has been a bad year for the vaunted Wall Street investment firm. Suspicions about Goldman’s activities in the AIG and Greece collapses, the ongoing talk that it puts its interests over those of its clients, the so-called revolving door between the firm and the government and other real or imagined black eyes have united the left and right  in putting the firm as the centerpiece of their anti-Wall Street, anti-bailout opposition.

But there have been a number of self-inflicted wounds too.  Whether it was Lloyd Blankfein’s comment about the firm doing “God’s work” in The Sunday Times that quickly went viral, the widely mocked announcement from the firm’s charitable foundation about  making a billion dollar donation to small business around the same time that firm reported it has  billions to release as bonuses, or the firm’s increasingly frosty relations with reporters, the firm has made a number of missteps that the firm’s in-house PR team was slow or unable to counter.  (UPDATE: Another example, CNBC’s Erin Burnett on “Morning Joe” Monday morning said that it took Goldman 10 hours to get out any response the federal charges, which esstentially lost the firm one whole news cycle.)  The fact that Goldman hired an outside public relations firm (not Ogilvy PR) showed that some at the firm were not happy with the results the in-house team under Lucas van Praag was producing.  When Charlie Gasparino, who has both defended and attacked the investment firm, went live on Fox Business to report about the infighting by the board over the outside PR firm’s recommendations, you could tell how divided the firm’s leadership was on what steps the firm needed to take to stop the reputational bleeding.

Now, with the SEC suit, the firm has gone from having a PR problem to having a real problem. Look for the firm to circle the wagons even tighter.  The Obama administration will likely use the SEC suit as justification for pushing harder for financial services reform, which will create more headaches for the firm in the short term.  (What, you thought the filing on the law suit and some of the White House’s harshest criticism of Wall Street was coincidental?)

UPDATE 2: President Obama is going to Wall Street on Thursday to make a speech on financial services reform.

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There was a very interesting story in Politico about the views of the Obama administration inside the Beltway and outside the Beltway.  Here are several key paragraphs:

While Washington talks about Obama’s new mojo, polls show voters outside the Beltway are sulking — soured on the president, his party and his program. The Gallup Poll has Obama’s approval rating at an ominous 49 percent, after hitting a record low of 47 percent last weekend. A new poll in Pennsylvania, a bellwether industrial state, shows his numbers sinking, as did recent polls in Ohio and Florida.

So there are two Obamas: Rising in D.C., struggling in the U.S.

Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell admits that Republicans won the health-care messaging war and says he has been traveling to dinners and fundraisers across the country to implore Democrats to fight back.

“The spin took hold,” Rendell said. “I expected more of a bounce than he got, but again it all goes to 16 months in which the Republicans have dominated the spin on stimulus and health care. … It’s time for us to roll up our sleeves and say, ‘Game on.’ And the more we do that, the better it will be.”

It’s yet another deficit for Obama to tackle: The Republican Party has closed its popularity gap with the Democrats, and people say they’d be at least as happy with the GOP in charge of Capitol Hill. Wall Street sees a recovery, but everyday Americans think their country is still on the wrong track. And health reform is even less popular now in some polls than it was before it passed.

“Everyone in the pressure cooker in Washington got all excited like the millennium had arrived [when health care reform passed], but I don’t think most reasonable people read it that way,” Democratic Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen said. Bredesen said people are worried about the cost and “appalled at the process in the Congress that produced it.”

Bredesen said that in the states, it’s not about power politics and who’s up and who’s down, but about the cost — an estimated $1.1 billion for the Volunteer State from 2014 to 2019, with the costs ballooning just as the state was expecting to begin recovering from the trauma of the past three years. “We haven’t given raises to state employees for three years and probably won’t for three more years,” Bredesen said.

Now there are still six months to go until the mid-term elections and plenty could change if the unemployment rate goes down.   But right now the signs are not good for the Democrats.

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Speaking of November, my first post on The Intersection asked if it was time for MoveOn.org to move on.  One of the things I pointed at was threats by it (and other liberal activist groups) to punish Democratic incumbents they viewed as insufficiently liberal by finding candidates to run against them in the primaries.  Even if their candidates didn’t win, they hoped that the incumbent would tack to the left in the future.  That strategy had limited success in 2008.

In 2010, MoveOn.org and others are trying the same strategy by backing Arkansas Lt. Gov. Bill Halter in a primary challenge against incumbent Blanche Lincoln.  To help Halter the groups helped raise millions to fund his campaign through their grass roots networks.  Now, with less than a month to go before the primary, the most recent Daily Kos/Research 2000 poll (April 12-14) shows that Lincoln is leading Halter by 12 points (45-33).

Assuming no major changes until the May18 primary, the question becomes what did MoveOn.org get for its effort? It has forced Lincoln to spend money on a primary challenge that she certainly needs for a general election campaign where she currently trails all five potential Republican challengers.  The primary battle has also driven up Lincoln’s negatives, again something she didn’t need.  She was always one of the most vulnerable Democrats incumbents in a state that has been trending increasingly Republican.  If she loses, it would be fair for the Democratic National Committee and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee to place some of the blame at MoveOn.org’s feet.  If the Democrats lose control of the Senate, look for MoveOn.org and its allies to be placed in the center of the Democrats’ circular firing squad.

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If there was any issue where public relations setbacks have slowed momentum on another one of President Obama’s  signature goals, it is the environment.  Even before the Copenhagen climate change conference, it became apparent that the widely-hyped talks would go nowhere.  Despite attempts by the President to rally the talks, all Copenhagen really produced were some largely meaningless announcements and an agreement to try to rally in upcoming talks in Cancun.  Attempts to spin them differently were knocked down by pundits and the press not associated with the environmental movement.

Copenhagen was not the only public relations setback. First, the so-called Climategate scandal put climate change advocates on the defensive for several months.  When the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the organization that shared the Nobel Prize with Al Gore, was forced to retract a study on the melting of glaciers in the Himalayas, the environmental movement suffered another set back.  Industry and conservative attacks on cap and trade as “cap and tax” and a job killer largely stuck and Sens. John Kerry, Joe Lieberman and Lindsey Graham were forced to stop using the phrase since it was a seen as a political negative (much like the environmental movement had to stop using global warming since the public no longer “bought” the phrase).  At the same time, President Obama’s green jobs speeches fell largely of deaf ears.

As a result, and in conjunction with high unemployment, the public has soured on environmental issues.  For the first time ever, a Gallup poll showed that Americans preferred developing energy supplies over protecting the environment by a 50-43 margin.  A March CNN poll confirmed something that Gallup noticed last year, the public thought the country should give a higher to improving the economy than protecting the environment. (Interestingly, this is a generational issue with Americans over 50 largely supporting economic growth, while those under 50 still supporting protecting the environment over economic growth.)  The poll also showed that only two percent of voters thought that the environment would be the biggest issue influencing their vote in November.  Finally, a Rasmussen poll from March showed that Americans had flipped on the cause of climate change in a year:

Nearly half of voters (48%) believe global warming is caused primarily by long-term planetary trends, a number that also has held steady since last July. Just 33% blame the problem on human activity, which is one point below the lowest level measured in over a year. Eight percent (8%) attribute global warming to some other cause, and 11% are undecided.

Belief that human activity is the primary cause of global warming has declined significantly. In April 2008, the numbers were nearly the mirror image of the current findings. At that time, 47% blamed human activity, while only 34% named long-term planetary trends as the reason for climate change.

While Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has made noises about personally leading the fight to pass a climate bill, the public support for the issue and a cap and trade solution is much lower than it was a year ago.  There is an outside chance that the a less aggressive bill, pushed by Democratic Sen. Maria Cantwell of Washington could pass, but time is quickly running out on the Senate calendar for action this year.

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Fun post from the Washington Post’s Howard Kurtz on Twitter today:

Love that @KeithOlbermann is broadcasting his hate-tweets (kind that would’ve been written in crayon years ago). Very entertaining.

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I understand the need for companies to get their name aligned with a  good cause, some known as corporate social responsibility in PR-speak.  But I pity the ESPN play-by-play announcer who has to  regularly mention the new Kraft Fight Hunger Bowl (the old Emerald Bowl  in San Francisco).  Given the number of 250+ pound players on the field, I’m not sure that this is the best use of Kraft  marketing dollars.

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Speaking of sports…college football added an additional game with the new Pinstripe Bowl to be played at the new Yankee Stadium.  The game will feature the number six team from Big 12 and the number three team from Big East.  I’m sorry, but I don’t get it.  I’ve always questioned the need for the Eagle Bank Bowl (Washington in December?) and the Roady’s Humanitarian Bowl (Boise in December?).  I assume the bowl organizers are hoping that local teams Rutgers or UConn make it into the bowl every because — well, have you ever tried to navigate Manhattan or reserve a hotel room in New York on December 30?  Add the potential for lousy weather and I see a lot of empty seats, similar to what we get here in DC for the Eagle Bank Bowl.  Let’s call the game for what it is, another game between two mediocre teams during an increasingly crowded and irrelevant bowl week.

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Finally, it appears that the Nike/Tiger Woods ad backfired on Nike.  According to a poll by HCD Research, the percentage of Americans who had a favorable opinion of the company dropped after the ad ran and went viral.

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In the words of Maury Povich, until next time America….

I have to admit, I was never so happy to see a car chase on television as I was yesterday.

For those of you who weren’t watching, around 3 PM yesterday, all three cable networks cut away from coverage of Arlen Specter’s decision to switch parties and the seemingly never ending coverage of the Mexican swine flu crisis (oops, not supposed to call it that — more on that later) to follow a stolen tractor trailer race the cops on I-75 outside of Atlanta.

While the blanket coverage of Specter’s decision was understandable, the coverage of the media’s coverage of the situation in Mexico and elsewhere around the world was threatening to overwhelm the Obama administration’s measured and, so far, spot on response to the crisis.

As my other colleagues will point out in greater detail elsewhere, the administration’s response so far to the crisis has been measured and straight from the crisis communications 101 manual.  As far as I can tell, the administration has preached calm and encouraged Americans to be rational about the situation.  The have also reached out to industry to explain how the disease could affect companies that do business in Mexico.  At the same time, they have not tried to underplay the situation with officials pointing out that while everything is good so far (at least in the United States), things could change and more than likely at least one unlucky American will probably die. UPDATE: As of this 6:30 AM ET this morning, there was the first U.S. death — a 23 month old toddler in Texas.

The only thing that I worry about is the administration’s call on Americans, including the media, to stop calling the virus “swine flu.”  At her presser today, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano repeatedly referred to the disease by it technical name — H1N1 — while other officials argued that the name “swine flu” was incorrect since the illness is not carried by pigs.

While accurate, I’m not sure that tactic is going to work.  To mix metaphors, the horse is out of the barn and that term has already slipped into the media’s and public’s vernacular.  Moreover, as Howard Kurtz pointed out in yesterday’s Washington Post, the media has been hyping the swine flu story since Sunday and the wall-to-wall coverage of the disease’s spread, along with actions taken to contain it, has threatened to overwhelm calls for calm.  If the administration wanted to get ahead of the media, it should have started using the term on Sunday.

The other thing that has impressed me so far also has been the lack of politics around dealing with the disease.  Although it is early, so far it appears that most of the politicians at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue are letting the administration deal with the crisis.

But I said most….

Yesterday, USA Today and other outlets picked up a story from the liberal blogosphere trying to proactively put the blame for any deaths at the feet of Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) after she led the charge to remove additional monies for pandemic preparedness from President Obama’s stimulus bill.  That effort seemed to go nowhere for several reasons.

• First and foremost, several Democrats, such as Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) also criticized the inclusion and argued that the money should not have been included.  (Collins and others argued that the money should be appropriated through normal channels.)
• Second, even those who criticized the decision to remove the money, such as Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), admitted that it would not have had any effect in the current situation.
• Finally, since Sen. Collins was just reelected last year, the opportunity to use this against her won’t happen for another five years.

While this was relatively minor, there is one political decision that should concern the Obama administration AND the Republicans.

That one came from China and Russia.  The governments in Beijing and Moscow announced they were suspending imports of pork from the United States as a result of the ongoing crisis. As public health officials have pointed out, properly cooked, you can’t get swine flu from pork products.  Instead, it appears that the Chinese and Russian governments used a dubious threat to public health to protect domestic producers from U.S. meat exports.  This explains, in large part, the decision to have USTR Ron Kirk at yesterday’s presser.  This in itself is not unusual — governments in Japan and South Korea have used similar tactics in the past.  However, the threat is that other countries will follow these governments and keep the ban long after this situation as passed.  (UPDATE: The Ukraine has also banned pork imports from the United States.)

And that is something to worry about.

For the latest information of swine flu, check out this link that our office in Hong Kong has developed.

Search is huge.  Think about how you use the web.  Sometimes you know exactly where you want to go but many times you know you want to get information about a particular topic or issue but don’t know where to go.  You start at Yahoo or Google and go from there. 

I’ve received more questions about how to improve or maximize search in the last couple of weeks than during the whole Q4 of 2008.  Hint, expect more digital efforts this year! 

PBS’s MediaShift has some are some tips to get you started if you’re so inclined to boost your search power.

I was interviewed by Communications Daily in regard to the deal between Comcast and BitTorrent. My quotable quotes are below.

Comcast’s announcement probably won it public relations points, Ogilvy Public Relations Vice President Greg Stanko said. “It was a short-term success for Comcast,” he said. “Certainly it removes a lot of the attention that reporters might pay to the Stanford hearing.” It gives Comcast a chance to claim that as the largest U.S. cable operator it already has dealt with the problem, likely spurring similar actions by cable industry peers, he said: “It sort of defangs the issue, at least in the short term.”

Comcast probably acted to blunt the threat of regulation, he said. “Comcast saw the handwriting on the wall, decided it was probably easier to make an agreement with BitTorrent, and let the FCC commissioners know that something was coming,” said Stanko. That way, the commissioners wouldn’t be blind-sided and were more likely to react positively, he said. “By the looks of it they were partially successful.”