"This is a test of the emergency Twitter broadcasting system. This is only a test."

Those of us who grew up during the cold war, within range of American TV signals, will remember this traumatizing sound:



Here's what one version of the "Emergency Broadcasting System" looks like in the 21st century:

Twitter Alerts: A new way to get accurate, important information when you need it most. Learn more: https://t.co/ygFxyE04AO
— Twitter (@twitter) September 25, 2013

Hell, we all get our emergency news from Twitter already. But this is a great opportunity to ensure you get the most "official" news as it happens.

According to the Twitter blog:

If you sign up to receive an account’s Twitter Alerts, you will receive a notification directly to your phone whenever that account marks a Tweet as an alert. Notifications are delivered via SMS, and if you use Twitter for iPhone or Twitter for Android, you’ll also receive a push notification*. Alerts also appear differently on your home timeline from regular Tweets; they will be indicated with an orange bell.

It looks like you have to subscribe to individual organizations' Twitter Alerts. Here is FEMA https://twitter.com/fema/alertsRight now, Twitter alerts are limited to public safety organizations in the U.S., Japan and Korea, with plans to include more public institutions and NGOs around the world.

Having done emergency preparedness (and actual emergency) campaigns for clients like Public Safety Canada and the Public Health Agency of Canada, I can see this being pretty essential.

And I'm glad Twitter Alerts don't use that awful noise...

Big Corn and Big Sugar: Fighting (sweet) tooth and nail

The Consumerist reports that Big Sugar is none too sweet on Big Corn's attempts to rebrand high fructose corn syrup as "corn sugar". In fact, Western Sugar Cooperative, Michigan Sugar Company and C & H Sugar Company, Inc. are suing rcher Daniels Midland, Cargill, Tate & Lyle and the Corn Refiners Association in U.S. District Court for false advertising.

"This suit is about false advertising, pure and simple," sayeth the President and CEO of Western Sugar Cooperative. "If consumers are concerned about your product, then you should improve it or explain its benefits, not try to deceive people about its name or distort scientific facts."

The commercials in question are linked to the images below. (The Corn Refiners don't like embedding.)

Watch "Maze" (new window)

Watch "Question Mark" (new window)

The corn people are, obviously, not amused:

"The name 'corn sugar' more accurately describes this sweetener and helps clarify food products labeling for manufacturers and consumers alike. The Corn Refiners Association petitioned the Food & Drug Administration in September 2010 to more succinctly and accurately describe what this natural ingredient is and where it comes from—corn.
High fructose corn syrup makes many healthy foods palatable and affordable for American consumers. It is disappointing that another sweetener would sue the competition for its own gain - and stand in the way of consumer clarity about added sugars in the diet.
Simply, this lawsuit is without merit, and we will vigorously defend our right to petition the FDA to clear up consumer confusion about the name."

Interestingly, this new PR campaign comes at a time when consumers are starting to demand real sugar again — just look at the Pepsi Throwback phenomenon.

The health differences between cane sugar and high fructose corn syrup are debatable. But there is some evidence that HFCS, calorie for calorie, is processed differently in the body. A Princeton study, for example, found that HFCS led to significantly greater weight gain in lab rats:

"Some people have claimed that high-fructose corn syrup is no different than other sweeteners when it comes to weight gain and obesity, but our results make it clear that this just isn't true, at least under the conditions of our tests," said psychology professor Bart Hoebel, who specializes in the neuroscience of appetite, weight and sugar addiction. "When rats are drinking high-fructose corn syrup at levels well below those in soda pop, they're becoming obese -- every single one, across the board. Even when rats are fed a high-fat diet, you don't see this; they don't all gain extra weight."

Me, I'm just turned off by the whole corn situation in the United States: heavily subsidized, industrialized, genetically modified, and grown for fuel as well as being slipped into so many foods, it's a $15.1 Billion industry that obviously pulls a lot of weight as a political lobby.

I'm trying to cut down on all sugars, but somehow cane seems a little less evil — or at least more wholesome — these days.

Have you changed your sweetener habits lately? And why?

The End of Brand Fascism

I'm going to take a humpday break from blogging Emergency Preparedness Week to talk about something else close to my heart: the evolution of branding in Web 2.0.

But first, let me set the scene with a 25-year-old ad:



It's not the brand itself that I'm bringing up for context: it's the tone. Because when it comes to old ways of branding, I feel like social media is the woman with the hammer.

I've been working in branding for about 14 years. I understand the traditional approach of absolute control over your positioning, message and image. And to a large extent, those things are still important basics.

But there's a different thing happening now, and it's one that not all businesses are comfortable with. It's conversation. The free exchange of opinions and ideas.

This challenge probably sounds familiar to agency and client peeps alike. The idea of having to manage an ongoing conversation with your audiences, in real time, and opening yourself up to criticism and even rampant trolling is terrifying. It takes time, money, and most of all commitment.

But, from my point of view, one-way, micromanaged branding is no longer a wise strategy. Millions of people can be out there talking about you, or issues that relate to you. If you don't actively join the conversation, you're like the coworker who skips going out for drinks after work: if you're not there, you're going to be talked about even more. (And perhaps not in the most positive light.)

The other thing to consider is that brands really are like people. The reasons for this are buried in our psychology. We're evolved to read and understand other people, and as a side-effect we anthropomorphize objects, organizations, and other inanimate things. We guess their intentions, and we decide whether we like them or not. There's no escaping this.

All this to explain why your brand needs "personality". Traditionally, brand personalities were developed through market research, insight and strategy, then set in stone for a time. There was ongoing PR and CRM, to be sure, but brand evolution came in fits and starts.

Today, your brand has the opportunity to be more lifelike than ever before. If you can find the champions within your organization to engage in an authentic conversation with fans, critics and even enemies, your brand can become a better "person" — confident, honest, and open.

Think of it this way: How do you feel about friends or public figures who disregard or even stifle all criticism? Does that give you confidence in their point-of-view, or does it come off as insecure or dishonest?

Taking criticism is never a problem. It's not being able to take it that's seen as weakness.

Now, please feel free to criticize me in the unmoderated comments below:

An actual advertising emergency

Blogging Emergency Preparedness Week was something I had been planning to do as part of promoting our work for Public Safety Canada, but I can't let the coincidence of the swine flu epidemic pass me by. Especially since it's now in Ottawa.

You see, we're actually working on the crisis communications for the Public Health Agency of Canada, creating ads like this in your local paper:



These ads are part of a strategic readiness plan that we have been involved in for some time. The Government of Canada has been planning its social marketing along with other measures for dealing with pandemic flu since the avian influenza scares of a few years past. What's important now is to get authoritative, factual information about infection control in peoples' hands (literally!) to counter the mass hysteria that's burning through the social media.

One great tool for us so far has been Google AdWords, reaching people as they search for more information.

This is an important time to be a social marketer, so rather than blathering on about advertising insights today, I'd just like you to get the facts.

Please visit fightflu.ca for the latest information on H1N1, don't panic, and take care.

Unprepared for the tinfoil hat brigade

Today is the first day of Emergency Preparedness Week across Canada. I'm a bit of a boy scout about these kinds of things already, but this year I'm paying particular attention because I worked on the Government of Canada's 72 Hour Emergency Preparedness campaign.

You can watch the TV ad here: Link.

I'd like to embed a YouTube link, but we can't post the ad there due to talent rights. I did, however, search to see if anyone had bootlegged it. And that's what I was truly unprepared for.

Here's one, for example. A lower quality copy, but otherwise unaltered. However, it was the context imposed by the poster that really threw me off:

"Ask yourself - why would the canadian government be putting out this commericial - not to mention at the end where there is a big bang outside - say like a nuclear device??? (I realize that its thunder, but its the idea) And everyone turns as if - oh -sh*t - it happened...

God help us..."

I was informed, while working on this campaign, that no matter what the government tries to do to help people prepare for emergencies, someone will always react with "OMG!!! What are they not telling us?!?!" But I was still amazed when another YouTube search brought up this gem of paranoia:

"Canada has recently started a new advertising campaign to ensure that Canadians are prepared for an emergency. They call it the 72 hr response. This is a very heavy campaign and considering we the public aren't expecting anything ... what is it that the government is preparing for?
This coincides with a threat on Fox television from their media that "maybe the US should invade Canada" ..."

Easy on the foil there! Our ad was also noticed in the States by something called the "National Terror Alert Response Center" which is a little over-the-top, but at least they got the message.

I guess there's no escaping misinterpretation when the government advertises, but as someone who actually creates and writes government ads, I can tell you that there is absolutely no ominous backstory or subtext to this spot.



(That's me bothering the director, Yan Lanouette-Turgeon, while he was having a snack.)

Like every other government social marketing campaign, this one was developed based on research into how aware Canadians were about their role in emergency planning. The emergencies they want to prepare people for are mostly natural disasters, which are common in Canada and quite diverse.

It was precisely because of this diversity that we chose a power outage caused by a storm as our "symbolic" disaster. Thunder and lightning are easy to portray in a 30-second video, and everyone can relate to the situation, no matter where they live. (As opposed to floods, forest fires, earthquakes and other events that are more regional.) The creative team at Acart developed several different scenarios to use as ad concepts, but we kept coming back to the stormy blackout as the easiest to comprehend. These concepts were focus tested, and the one you saw is the one everybody understood and liked.

It's interesting to see how a viewer can analyze the details of the commercial. We really do put a lot of work into production, and no word, action, prop or set is there by accident. However, most of the effort we put into the details is about ensuring that the emergency kit contents were accurate (but generic), that the house and story were average enough for anyone to identify with, and that the production quality was high enough for people to suspend their disbelief and get absorbed in this family's story for 30 seconds between hamburger and car commercials.

Government advertising is many things, but it is never purposely cryptic. (That's just the accidental outcome, sometimes, when too many people are involved in approvals!) The 72 Hours spot was one of the most straightforward public information campaigns I've done for the government, and it was for that reason that we were able to produce a nice, professional TV spot. There's just no need to look any deeper for motivation than that you should be able to look after yourself for the three days or so it can take first responders to set up emergency services in any disaster.