Jane Genova: Speechwriter - Ghostwriter

That Verizon Fee: Came & gone in 24 hours in social media age

Yesterday, Verizon Wireless got a taste of its own technology.  It had announced [duh] that in January it would impose a $2 fee for customers who paid by phone or through its website.  The web and mobile responded.  Here is my post published by financial-information powerhouse Motley Fool.  Within 24 hours, Verizon announced it was tossing that whole inane idea.

Why did the push-back have such mass and passion?  We cut slack for organizations and individuals which need to get their arms around whatever.  That whatever ranges from the new kind of consumer [value conscious] to how technology has empowered everyone to become an effective lobbyist. 

We didn't cut slack for Verizon Wireless because it had plenty of time to learn from the horrific public-relations which Bank of America set in motion when it announced a $5 monthly fee [total = $60 a year] for use of its debit card outside its own ATM system.  Eventually, it too eliminated that revenue-making tactic but not soon enough to become a case study about what not to do when 1) your industry is under attack, and 2) there's a global economic downturn.

Given the genius of public relations strategists, sure Verizon Wireless can bounce back.  After all, until its 3 outages for data in December, it has been the premier brand in the smartphone niche for reliability.  But a comeback demands an internal paradigm shift: Verizon Wireless must focus on the pain points of customers.  At the top of the list is money. 

 

Verizon: Mirroring Bank of America Fee Stumble

Verizon Wireless has been having a bad December.  Its premier branding is based on its reputation for reliability.  Yet, there have been three outages this month.  There's more.  Yesterday, it announced that it's imposing a two-buck fee for payment by phone or to its website.  Deja vu Bank of America proposed fee mess.

Read more about this on my post on financial-information powerhouse Motley Fool about Verzion's problems.  Here it is.

UPDATE:

Verizon dropped the plan to impose the $2 fee, reports THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.

Mary Tyler Moore, 75 Years Old, Gave America New Heroine Mary Richards

Mary Richards, career gal, became the new American heroine.  Although just as nice as Margaret Anderson on "Father Knows Best," Richards was also ambitious.  Her job was important to her.  In the process of doing her best, her co-workers and even her boss Mr. Grant, became her family in the big city. 

Off the job, Richards found support among her girlfriends like Rhoda.  Instead of scheming against each other for that engagement ring, they kept each other on their diets and from getting lonely.  Today, I am part of the digital community All The Single Girlfriends which serves the same function.  We got each other through the holidays, mostly with attitudes of gratitude.  Mostly we are grateful for having a latter-day Richards - Toby Bloomberg - as our founder.

The woman who helped create this breakthrough character Richards was Mary Tyler Moore.  She took on the role after she had portrayed the traditional wife of an ad guy and mother of a small son.  Yeah, remember that all-time hit "The Dick Van Dyke Show."

Today, Moore is 75 years old.  She did go on to other breakthrough roles such as the cold but complex wife and mother in "Ordinary People." However, to us Baby Boomers she will always be Richards who throws her hat in the air and decides it's all going to be all-right, after all.  We at All The Single Girlfriends do just about that every day.  Click by and visit us.

Even Carson McCullers Got Writer's Block: And, she was friend of Gypsy Rose Lee

When Carson McCullers, author of "The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter," was working on "The Member of the Wedding" she got a classic case of writer's block.  The harder she tried to mesh plot and character the less her creativity was accessible to her.

Then, as it happens, there she was walking down the street with Gypsy Rose Lee to watch a fire and it dawns on her that 12-year-old misfit Frankie is in love with her brother and his bride.  The book got rolling again.

I bumped up against the tidbit as I was struggling with my own lack of inspiration for what stock I should cover for Motley Fool.  That and a lot more dirt about the celebrities of yesterday are in the new biography of Gypsy Rose Lee "American Rose" by Karen Abbott. 

New Year's Eve: Struggling to remember what a hang-over was

No slouch when it comes to deconstructing the culture, THE NEW YORKER has an essay by Joan Acocella on the hang-over.  It's an interesting phenomenon we associate with the generational divide [young people drink excessively enough to incur one] and/or the days of wine and roses before we bellied up to a 12-step program. 

Unlike most memories of pain, this one usually doesn't get deeply embedded.  Most of my professional colleagues and those on my social network are over-40.  They never bring up "the days."  They do, though, bring up their divorces, employment gaps, weight battle [mostly lost], and looking in the mirror and seeing their mother/father or grandmother/grandfather, not the snapshot they retain in their heads.

Maybe boozing to excess or refraining from all boozing is over-rated as a key part of the human condition.  The majority seem to outgrow it or simply don't think about it much any more.

Keyword Traps: "Footprint" overused, substitute "presence"

The keywords which will be effective both in search engine optimization [SEO] and in attracting and growing readers keep changing.  Those who excel at picking the right ones at the right time and placed in text just right usually have plenty of experience on the web and with mobile.  It's not as formulaic as checking Google Adwords and other guides, free and paid. More often, it's trial and error.

For example, for a client I used the popular term "footprint."  It wasn't resonating, not on search engines and not with human eyeballs.  I substituted the term "presence" and that did the trick, on both counts.

Here is a piece I posted on SEO several years ago which has had more than a million downloads.  And here is a more recent update of that which was published in INDIE READER and picked up by Huffington Post.

"Criminal Minds" - Repeat

We have to wait until after the holidays to find out how the relationships are mutating on "Criminal Minds."  Those are both the connections among team members and the relationship each of them has with him or herself.  After Emily was supposed to be dead and then had been resurrected, there have been shifts.  Also Spencer is not holding on so tight to rationality.

As with "The Good Wife," where legal matters have taken a back seat, crime has become less important on "Criminal Minds."  On both hit shows, relationships are everything.

Apple: Sorry, Steve, but marketing, PR trump legal

Business leaders are human, therefore subject to blind spots.  Those include the late Steve Jobs of Apple.  One of his last moves was to declare legal war on iPhone competitor Google's Android.  And that's how things have been going. 

Maybe that wasn't such as smart tactic.  In my commentary for financial-information company Motley Fool, I opine that better Android killers are marketing and PR.  Here you can read and read between the lines.

 

FaceBook: Still the 800-guerrilla

With Twitter's growth and Google+, Facebook looks vulnerable.  Maybe it is.  But it nevertheless is the 800-pound guerrilla in social networking.

According to ComScore, reports MASHABLE, 1 in every 7 minutes online is spent on Facebook and 3 of every 4 on social networking sites are on Facebook.  Also, let's not forget that Facebook is the genius in capturing and levering data from its users.

 

New York Times Inc.: Cuts overhead, returns to core competence

The New York Times Inc. seems to waking to the possibility that it might not be in business five years from now.  Finally, it is taking decisive steps to remain profitable and influential in a digital era.

As we all know, overhead has gotten cut through the recent retirement of Chief Executive Janet Robinson.  Now, reports Reuters, it is going to return to its core competence: managing its flagship newspaper, print and digital.  It is selling its 16 regional newspapers such as the HERALD-JOURNAL, where profits are low because of declining local advertising.

Closely watched will be what other steps New York Times Inc. takes to survive.