Jane Genova: Speechwriter - Ghostwriter

"DWTS" - Chaz Bono as controversial ratings-getting guest

Chaz Bono, born a female but now legally and physically a male, will be a guest on the pop-culture cult classic "Dancing With the Stars."  The controversy has already begun.  "DWTS" can anticipate a surge in viewership when Chaz appears with his dancing shoes.

Communications experts, ranging from writers like myself to public relations gurus like Jack O'Dwyer, have a wonderful phenomenon to analyze what gets, keeps, and grows followers in this over-connected era.  After all, "DWTS" happens on the old-media platform of television.  Yet, two days in a row its doings have dominated digital and mainstream headlines.  Yesterday the buzz was about legal television anchor Nancy Grace being a "DWTS" guest this fall.  Today, of course, it's all about Chaz.

 
So, what might be the elements of "DWTS" that create this amazing pull force?  Here are some possibilities:

• Positioning the trival or even silly as an pursuit done with great earnestness and by big brandname folks.  The juxtaposition traps us between the intersections.  Remember when buttoned-down conservative Tucker Carlson worked up a sweat, both practicing and actually performing. He also accepted feedback with great gravitas.

 

• Bringing back the glamour and glitter of ballroom dancing. There are the fancy dress, the formality, and the civility.  This is a world in which we economically wounded warriors can feel safe and dignified.

 

• Creating mystery about who will be next on the show.  Will Hillary decide it's her time to dance? During Campaign 2012, will Rick Perry or even the Barack Obama [should his polls go low enough] do a one-night gig?  At Apple, Steve Jobs turned mystery into a core marketing device. 

 

• Milking the suspense about who will win.  There have been surprises.  One never knows.

Clearly, the medium of television, if programmed in an offbeat way, has a lot of runway left.  Just as in the 1950s, some of us have our lives scheduled according to what's on the small screen.  Sunday nights are reserved in my household for AMC's "Breaking Bad."

 

Ana Marie Cox: Publishing on Campaign 2012 in Guardian.co.UK

Ana Marie Cox left the Washington D.C. area but not opining on politics.  Her opinion piece on Mitt Romney was published yesterday in Guardian.co.UK.  Here you can read it.

Social Media: Is decline of daily deals sign of The Great Pushback

"Are We Approaching the End of the Daily Deals Era?" That's the headline for Ben Parr's column in MASHABLE. 

In the article, Parr presents evidence of the decline of consumer interest in the frantic digital chase after daily deal discounts.  It is also dawning on businesses which participated in that discounting that they weren't making much if any money. Customers who swung by for the bargains weren't returning to shop the traditional way. 

No surprise, Groupon traffic has had a 50% drop in traffic since July 2011 [Source: Experian Hitwise].  Facebook dumped its four-month old Deals.  Yelp, which began testing out daily deals in July 2010, is phasing out of that niche.

Might this be a sign of The Great Pushback against the total embrace of social media as an end in itself? That was hot and not it's not.  

The analogy here goes back to the time when organizations and individuals were determined to be state-of-the-art in their implementation of technology.  High-tech companies could sell them just about anything.  Then, there began the return of common business sense.  Good-enough systems and stand-alones would remain good-enough.  There wasn't going to be change for innovation's sake.

In my conversations with social media colleagues as well as prospects and clients, there is that same realization that being up-to-speed with every new social media platform, capability, gadget, and more might have little or no correlation to increasing revenue.  If Facebook is working just fine, why make the decision to add on Google+ or transition away from Facebook? Sure WordPress has many more features than Typepad.  But, if those features such as transmitting newsletters aren't needed, then why transfer to another platform? 

Then there are more fundamental questions, especially about the numbers game.  Businesses want to convert browsers into buyers.  If the lion's share of the browsers to the site aren't likely to buy, then the traffic metrics aren't relevant.  Targeting trumps trafficking. 

Those same number issues apply to that now-mature medium of blogging.  If the objective is to develop new business, then what matters is that the right prospects come to the blog, not the raw traffic statistics.  Those kinds of metrics count if the objective is to sell advertising.  For the more common creation of partnership the focus is on who's visiting and coming back for more.

As the fall business season starts after Labor Day we can observe what organizations and individuals declare "basta" [Italian for "enough"] in relation to what's new in social media.

Dick Cheney: Determined to remain king-maker

Unlike the old unified, internally disciplined GOP, the party is now fragmenting.  There is even public discord as between Karl Rove and some Tea Party members.

Clearly, Republicans from the Reagan and Bush eras want to remain relevant.  To do so, of course, they have to demonstrate that their judgment, values, and influence still count.  That could be the motivation for Dick Cheney's memoir, profiled in THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.  The tone and content of his new book "In My Time" position him as the wise, seasoned, right-minded seer amidst myopic, amateurish, self-interested political players.

Certainly "In My Time," as do most controversial tomes, is getting attention.  Whether it will assist Cheney in maintaining power in a time which is no longer his remains to be seen. 

"Dancing with the Stars" - Edge of ambiguity

"Dancing with the Stars" has become a classic in pop culture because of its brilliant play on ambiguity.  Those who dance - are they there because they are shrewd rising stars who recognize the advantage of this exposure or are they willing to make this move as a tool for a career comeback?

 
It's likely every agent and manager weighs whether the client should go on "DWTS."  This season Nancy Grace will be on.  One wonders if she is reaching for greater success or a different kind.  Or has her career hit a wall or even a speed bump and she needs to restore momentum.

We can all make a long list of those who should be on "DWTS."  In the rising career category is Chris Rizo of Business Law Daily.  In the comeback category is Eliot Spitzer. 

Research Papers: In the wrong voice

Did we develop lousy habits of presentation in college because of all those research papers?  For example, THE NEW YORK TIMES discussion on this weighty topic raises the question: Does the genre of  the "research paper"encourage conventional thinking and a suppression of voice?

There may be something to that.  For four years, I had hammered into me, whether it was a research paper on Richard Wagner's music or on the history of the labor movement in America, that I had to seek objectivity and not superimpose my personality or opinion.  In the last few paragraphs, the student was permitted to summarize the findings and in one sentence or two of that to opine on what the "facts" [we believed they existed] indicated.

It took me decades to drop all that.  Even when I started blogging, my coach Paul Chaney had to struggle to release me from the stance of great objectivity and zilch personality.  The process of finding a voice required about 10 months.

Commercially speaking, there isn't a big market for the the old myth of objectivity.  Traditional journalism, which claimed to be impartial except in editorials, is dying.  Even THE NEW YORK TIMES could have a financial heart attack and keel over. Meanwhile media properties with a clear point of view and bellowing voice are thriving.  They range from Mashable to Abovethelaw.

Yes, academia should review the ritual of the research paper.  If Harvard ditches them, so will the rest of higher education.

Barnes & Noble: Hero of Connecticut Small Business

Hurricane Irene has been the enemy of small business.  Much of our low-cost communications systems were knocked out.  After all, we don't have all the redundant back-ups of a large corporation.  Without the Internet, we would soon be out of business. 

The hustlers we are, it occurred to so many of us that we could have free wireless in the cafe section of Barnes & Noble. 

 
Every table is full.  No one is looking up from their screens. After all, most of our laptops [we're not post-PC, yet] have batteries which will run out sooner than later.  

A newbie to wireless at B&N, I brought my adapter cord, expecting to be able to plug in.  No such luck.  I will have to make a recharging run home.  My section of Connecticut was one of the few which didn't lose electricity.

"Breaking Bad" - Money does strange things to ordinary people

Once ordinary people, Walter and Jesse are now rolling in easy money [if risking your life or a long prison sentence can be considered easy action].  On last night's episode of "Breaking Bad," they both acted very strange.

Skyler told Walter the new car he purchased for Junior had to be returned.  When neighbors and in-laws like Hank and Marie see it they would find a disconnect with the White financial story.  Skyler was probably right.  Junior told Hank about the car when the latter was investigating the murder of the meth cook.  Surely Hank filed that away in his head.

Walter doesn't cotton to Skyler's command, not at all.  So, he burns rubber with the car in the desert, puts a flame to a piece of paper, and then puts that paper in the gas tank.  He calls a cab and waits for the car to blow.  A former high school teacher, he earns more than seven million. 

Another strange move is to continue in his determination to off Gus.  Although Jesse if being allowed into the top of the organization, Walter tries to enlist him into his murder plan.  Jesse agrees.

Jesse is even acting stranger than Walter.  He tells his 12-step group that he only came to sell them meth.  Any one of them can tip off the police.  There are some badass members of the group so it would predictable that they would rat him out.  Hank, who is connecting the dots on the murder of the "genius" meth cook, will get wind of that tip. 

It may just be that the writers for "Breaking Bad" have decided that funny money - that is way too much of it earned way too easily - can cast an evil spell on folks.

Career Crash 2003: Breaking open to way too much choice

Bottoming out has become the 21st-century success formula.  Plenty of brilliant theorist and players endorse that road increasingly traveled in this era of multiple career crashes.  They include:

• Nassir Ghaemi - "A First-Rate Madness"
• Henry Cloud - "Necessary Endings"
• David Brooks - "The Social Animal"
• Mark Matousek - "When You're Falling, Dive."

The career crash establishes a platform for professional homeruns we never anticipated hitting because it breaks us open.  Suddenly we are without our categories or mental models.  Instead of thinking what group to join for networking or what degree to pick up, we look straight into the realities of economic survival.  Like Kurtz in "The Heart of Darkness" we can only scream "The Horror" and then do the next right thing to make a buck.  Many of you have read my story Download Geezerguts.

As predicted by Cloud et al., good things happen once we let go of the past.  That's the rub.  Once we leave that familiar territory, there are so many choices.  Too many for most of us to handle. An old print communicator, I was stunned to be able to not only make that great leap forward into digital but be given opportunities which usually only go to Generation Y.  Confused, I tried to become a Generation Yer like Ana Marie Cox, formerly of Gawker, and Elie Mystal, with Abovethelaw.com.  I lost the best of my own voice.  I also wound up in the glutted world of journalism.

Therapy, consulting a mystic, and popping for a coach - all that was needed to exit unproductive lines of work.  Now, I am settled into, including a strong knowledge base, portfolio of samples, and network,  marketing communications with special expertise in social media marketing.  Meanwhile, I had entered another dark zone, crying out "The Horror," again.  None of us who hit bottom expect to have to continue re-positioning and re-packaging.

Given so much new choices, how do we go about trying out what could work, in fact, lead to success beyond our wildest dreams?  Answer: Cautiously.  There's opportunity in turbulence.  There's also possibly even a deeper bottom.  A career crash doesn't confer infallibility on us humans.

 

Irene, Climate Change, End of Alternate-Housing Fantasies

Today Irene stops life-as-usual even here in boring central Connecticut. 

 
Streets and highways are becoming sad-looking corridors of fallen trees, unable to get up.

According to some climate experts, reports THE NEW YORK TIMES, planet earth can expect more of this kind of turbulent weather.  So, unless we want to wind up habitually in shelters during storms, we are thinking twice about taking up residence in "alternate housing."

Those alternates range from the 300-square foot house on wheels to mini mobile homes to tents.  Green, of course, started us thinking in this direction.  There is no need for one or even a family of human beings to inhabit so much residential space, so we argued.  The brutal economic downturn made that mindset resonate.  First, we couldn't hang on to the house we had bought or get a mortgage to buy one.  Then renting began to look like a big-ticket item on our budget. 

We were in the minority.  Most in my circles - prefiguring Google+ - rolled their eyes.  Their primary objection was the stigma associated with alternate housing. 

"Did you go to a mobile park and see who lives there?"

Obviously, they won.  I'm still in conventional lodging, a renter in New Haven, Connecticut.  Twice I visited the mobile complex in Warwick, Rhode Island.  The situation is binary: You go there.  You don't go there.  I didn't go there.

Now, we greens seem pre-global-warming dreamers.  That little house, mobile single, or tent could, like Dorothy in the "Wizard of Oz" be swept up into the clouds.  The ground could be flooded.  The source of power is too vulnerable [here in the 1400-unit complex where I live, the power company will lend us an ear]. 

It's tough to surrender a longing for the road less traveled.  Without a fantasy, we are just like everyone else, constrained by the realities superimposed on us from the outside world.   Green just bumped up against the short-term survival issues of not being blown away, drowned, or sans electricity.