I created my latest contribution to For Immediate Release using AudioBoo.  Fun experiment.

It’s below – about Web 2.0 and Gov 2.0 – and even includes a British to American translation.

Mark

The views in this post are mine and mine alone and do not necessarily reflect those of the Chairman of the SEC, its Commissioners or my colleagues.  I am not a lawyer and do not offer legal advice.

As you may have guessed from my uber-disclosure above, I am the Director of New Media for the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.  We have three pillars at the SEC, one could argue the most important of which is to protect investors.  This is why we hold most publicly traded companies to a very high standard, regulating what they can say, when they can say it and how.

This is one of the reasons that I closely followed Frank Eliason’s departure from Comcast and subsequent landing at Citi.  Frank is truly one of the pioneers of using social media in general and Twitter in particular – as a platform for customer service.  “Comcast Cares” was arguably one of the best uses of social media to help resolve customer service issues.  I got to meet Frank at BlogWorld Expo last year and I found him to be down to earth and likable as well.

Technically Philly noted of Frank:

He was the start of a social media craze from Comcast, chasing down and responding to online complaints from customers. In the history book of social media, Eliason, who popularized Twitter handle @ComcastCares, will be among the forefathers of the movement.

True ‘dat.

Throughout a long and checkered career, every new job I have gotten has been based largely upon the experiences and successes from prior jobs.  This is true for almost everyone and, I presume, the same for Frank as well.  And since he was so successful at Comcast, I cannot help but wonder which of the social media tools and tactics he can take with him to Citi.

Tech Philly Frank describes what he will be doing at Citi:

Together with my Citi team, we can … further build relationships with our customers. Since my days at Vanguard Investments, I have always enjoyed the industry, and with the transformation that has been taking place, now seems to be a great time to return.

Here’s where the social media rubber hits the financial regulation road.

As I stated, the SEC issues strict guidance on what publicly traded companies say, what they can say and when they say it.  Much of this is encapsulated in something called “Regulation FD” – the “FD” being “fair disclosure.”  Feel free to read the SEC explanation of Reg FD, but in plain English, this means that the SEC mandates that all publicly traded companies must disclose material information to all investors at the same time.  Hence, “fair disclosure.”

FINRA , the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, Inc., also has a say in financial disclosure (they regulate  individuals and entities as well) and they issued some pretty detailed requirements in January 2010.  If you’re interested, read their notice, but they list social media platforms – one by one – and their requirements.  Really good, detailed stuff.

Since Frank is beginning anew at Citi, I can’t help but wonder which strategies and tactics will be replicable at his new job.  As I note above, communication in the financial services industry is, quite “frankly,” more strict and controlled than it is in the non-regulated industry.   Oftentimes, there is a lot more legal approval that has to go through internal compliance offers to ensure that companies are, well, in compliance with FINRA and/or SEC regulations.   Strict stuff.

None of this is to say that Frank will be anything less than successful – what he has been in prior stops in his career – but I wonder how much more challenging it will be to deploy a wide array of social media tools and tactics to inform and educate investors and other market participants.

Good luck, Frank, but I doubt if you will need it.

Mark

P.S. – Have I mentioned that these words are mine and mine alone?

Image credit:  Citi.

Apple issued a big “screw you” to detractors yesterday when they announced their quarterly profit results.  The cold, hard facts are below, but in recent weeks, the media has issued shrill warnings that Apple had lost its touch and become “arrogant.”  Apple had lost its way.  Apple was producing crappy products.  Antennagate.

Working in the financial sector, I know that the proof is always in the earnings pudding – and in Wall Street’s take on it.  Here’s what Apple announced, according to yesterday’s Wall Street Journal:

• Quarterly profit surged 78%, as the company booked strong initial sales of its iPad tablet computer and the latest version of its smartphone, the iPhone 4.
• Apple’s revenue in the quarter ended June 26 rose 61% to $15.7 billion. SIXTY ONE PERCENT.
• Apple is selling iPads and iPhones “as fast as we can make them” and “working around the clock to try to get supply and demand in balance.”
• Shares of Apple rose 2.5% in after-hours trading. The stock closed Tuesday at $251.89 on the Nasdaq Stock Market.
• Apple sold 3.5 million computers, up 33% from a year ago.
• Apple said it sold 3.3 million iPads since the tablet went on sale, generating revenue of $2.16 billion. The company said the average sales price for its iPad was $640, suggesting many customers opted for higher-priced models with cellular-data service.
• Research company iSuppli earlier raised its estimate for iPad sales in 2010 to 12.9 million from 7.1 million, saying the only limitation was production capacity, not demand.
• While analysts were also concerned that consumers might hold off buying iPhones in the quarter until the iPhone 4 was released, Apple sold 8.4 million iPhones during the period, up 61% from a year ago.
• Apple posted a fiscal third-quarter profit of $3.25 billion, or $3.51 a share, compared with $1.83 billion, or $2.01 a share a year earlier.

I  could go on and on, but let’s first address the iPhone 4.0 issue.  According to Jobs’ press conference, demand has not abated since “Antennagate.”  People still want the phone.  BUT – if iPhone sales fell, other sectors are still strong.  iPads are selling as fast as Apple can make them and Macs sales are up by a third.  Even if they did not sell a single iPhone 4.0, they would have generated a profit.

I held my tongue in recent weeks because I wanted to see what the earnings and Wall Street said.

The verdict for Apple?

Screw you, Antennagate.  We’re as strong as ever.

Mark

P.S. – Since this post touches on the financial sector, I’ll let you know that the thoughts expressed in this post are mine and mine alone and do not reflect those of the Chairman, Commissioners or my colleagues at the Securities and Exchange Commission.  So there.

Last week, I did a Q&A with Smart Blog insights about crisis communications in general and associations in particular.  I want to expand on that this morning a bit.

I used to teach crisis communications at the University of Maryland and have done a frequent bit in the private sector (let’s not even get into government – ugh).  It never ceases to amaze me how many organizations just plain mess up crisis work.

I have listed five tips below, but want to put this is perspective for associations.  What I think is unique to associations is that they are caught in a vise.  They are expected to be the leading voice for many controversial companies and industries (read: they take the hit), but need consensus in an organization made up of members who compete with each other on a regular basis.  Bad, bad recipe for success.

And tomorrow, I’ll talk about this on a panel at Buzz 2010 in Washington, DC.

A few of the crisis communications basics I mentioned in the Smart Blog Insights  piece (and a few more) include:

• Rule #1:  Avoid the crisis to begin with. Many companies (see Nestle), without even realizing it, take a communications mole hill and make it a crisis mountain.  Some crises cannot be avoided, but this is the step that most people just plain forget.  You need to help define an issue with your stakeholder groups or you risk having others define it for you.
• Rule #2.  HAVE a crisis communications plan. This is the “duh” rule.  Think about this.  If you are in the midst of a crisis, responding to media, operating under enormous pressure, are you going to be able to craft and deliver compelling messages?  Create stuff that will convince people not to blame you (best), or at least to accept an apology (second best).  This is why having a plan (updated at least quarterly) is critical.
• Rule #3:  Make the crisis plan easy to access.  When I did crisis work, I consistently advocated for putting a crisis communications plan online. Again, like the Nestle example, opponent driven crises are often propagated during weekends or other times that companies are not in the office.  You get attacked when nobody is manning a desk. And if your CEO or VP of Communications is at the beach, it makes things a whole lot easier when the plan is not a huge, written document sitting on your shelf at work, but is online and you can access it 24/7. And  you can better coordinate with others as well.
• Rule #4.  Tell the truth.  Period.  Full stop.  If you lie, people will find out, bust you and you will lose all credibility.  And it’s ok to tell people that you don’t know the answer – just tell them when you will tell them.
• Rule #5.  Segment your audiences. A lot of crisis plans are based upon talking to the media – and this is important.  But also think about employees, stockholders, retirees, elected officials, federal officials and even law enforcement people.  Bottom line is you need to have custom-tailored messages for ALL of your stakeholder groups that matter.

Again, for associations, this means something even tougher. You have to develop all of the above in conjunction with the member companies – the ones who pay your salary.  And deal with lawyers. And gain consensus under stress.

Oy, vey.

Mark

The nauseating Lebron James-induced headlines this morning buried a story that has intrigued me for some time.

Google vs. China.  The world’s largest search engine vs. the government of the world’s most populous country.

I wrote about this in Media Bullseye a few months ago (Is Google Really the Good Guy?) when, in January 2010, Google took what appeared to be a principled stand regarding Internet censorship – oh – and that their servers were hacked from China too.  It was Google vs. China and the company placed a ten gallon white hat atop its head, let’s again remember, that they company AGREED to the Chinese government’s censorship policy when the entered the Chinese market.  Period.  Full stop.  And today?

ZDNet reports that Google’s license to operate in China will be renewed.  What?  I thought that they were redirecting all searches to a server outside of China where the results are not subject to censorship?

Nope.

ZDNet writes:

The Google.cn home page now offers only a link to its “uncensored” Hong Kong site, but those searches are easily traced and China’s firewall can then censor the results. Services other than search are still run out of China. No Google user searching in the Chinese language can thus access information about anything the government decides, on its whim, the people should not know about. That was the government’s position all along. That position has been upheld.”

I am a bottom line sort of guy, so let’s cut to the chase.  Google screamed and pulled out, but not really.  Any link can be blocked in China.  The U.S. government howled, but Google never pulled out of China completely.  And today, very quietly, Google gets their license renewed.

Google seemed principled, but never bailed completely.  In fact, they resorted to a public relations stunt backed up by a half-assed solution, which, in the end, was not where they ended up – right back to mainland China censorship.

Google – shame on you.  Shame on you.

Mark